One of the secretaries in her own company wore colored contacts. Some days she came in with green eyes, some days with blue. Yet, Jackie had never considered colored contacts. God, for a detective, she was an idiot, but it had never occurred to her to think that an immortal would want to hide their beautiful eyes behind contacts. "Why?"
"Many of us wear them. Having silvered eyes tends to draw attention."
"I've never met another immortal who wore them," Jackie argued.
"Would you know they were immortal without their silvered eyes?" Lily asked archly, then laughed again. "You've probably met many immortals and just not recognized them, because you didn't see silvered or bronzed eyes."
Jackie breathed out slowly, knowing Lily could be right.
"Immortals who don't have to interact a lot with mortals don't tend to bother, but anyone who wants to blend with mortals, does their best to blend."
"I didn't know," Jackie muttered. Bastien had never mentioned this tendency and her father had never made a note of it. Perhaps her father hadn't known, and perhaps Bastien simply didn't think of it. She was pretty sure Bastien never used contacts. Nor did anyone who worked for him that she knew of, but then Argeneau Enterprises was filled mostly with immortals.
"So much mental effort wasted on my eye color," Lily said with a shake of her head, making it obvious she was reading Jackie's mind. "I would have thought you'd ask me something more important."
"Why did you steal the list of employees on the New York play when you weren't even on it?" Jackie asked, and the question brought another smile to Lily's face.
"No, I wasn't on the list," Lily admitted with amusement. "As it happens, I was on vacation, first in Canada, then in New York."
"The fire at the theater in Canada," Jackie realized. Lily would have had to go there to set it. And then she'd followed Vincent to New York to sabotage that play too.
"Yes," Lily said, having read her thoughts. "I planned it all out ahead of time, and didn't want to risk being under suspicion for the sudden case of anemia that went around in New York. So, I asked for some vacation time. I flew to Canada, caused a little trouble, then flew to New York ahead of Vincent and took a position on the janitorial staff as a young boy named Bob. I put overalls and a baseball cap on and pretty much disappeared for everyone. It was incredibly easy." She smiled faintly. "But to answer your question, I stole the list to lead you down the garden path." Her smile widened. "And you all followed so easily."
Jackie felt her mouth tighten. She'd wondered about that the night the papers had gone missing, but they'd had to look into the names on the list anyway. Of course, there had been reason to do so when the lists had shown up missing from the office as well and Stephano had nearly died.
"It was a lot of effort to get us off the track; removing the list from every office and then attacking Stephano."
"Yes, but it was worth it," Lily assured her, then added, "though I never meant to kill Stephano. Up until then it was all terribly easy. I simply went into work early, while all the mortals were still on shift, and had them erase the computer files while I pulled the hard copies."
"Accounting was the last office," Lily said and pursed her lips. "I'd done all the others. The human day secretary was still there when I arrived, but it was getting late. Meredith, the night girl would be there soon.
"As I'd done with the other offices, I had the day girl erase the computer files, but then I sent her on her way and went into the filing room to retrieve the hard copies myself. I was coming out of the filing room with the files when Stephano Notte walked in."
"And you killed him," Jackie said when she stopped and grimaced at the memory.
"Not right away," Lily countered. "He was in a rush. Apparently, he had some hot date that night, but needed some information from Phillip's files before he went. He asked what I was doing there, of course and I said I'd needed a file for Vincent, but that Meredith had been leaving the office as I arrived and said to feel free to grab it myself. Was there something I could do for him?"
She frowned. "I knew I'd probably have to