cell again and hit speed dial again.
“Underworld Detection Agency, San Francisco. This is Kale. How may I direct your call?”
“Hey, Kale, it’s Nina. Can you put me through to legal?”
“Nina!” Kale’s voice brightened, then dropped to a low whisper. “Can you do me a favor and tell Vlad something?”
I swallowed. “Who told you he was here?”
“You just did.”
Before I could respond—or backpedal—Kale had put me through to legal where my “call was very important to them and would be answered in the order it was received.” I drummed my fingers on my purse while listening to an instrumental version of “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” and told myself that I would deal with Kale’s Easter egg hunt later.
I was still on hold when I made it to the fourth floor, a perky UDA employee breaking in between during “A Groovy Kind of Love” to ask me if I knew I could file most basic UDA legal documents online. I clicked my phone off, depressed at my lack of a solution and dearly missing the good, old-fashioned slam of a receiver on its base.
Sliding an icon wasn’t very satisfying.
I was standing in front of Reginald’s door now, one piddling strip of crime-scene tape strung across the jamb, the door sealed with a flashy red sticker warning that no one other than the police, an inspector, or the coroner was permitted entry.
“Or the resident vampire,” I muttered under my breath before taking my fresh manicure to the thing.
Once the sticker was slit, I was surprised to find the door unlocked. I slipped into the apartment and winced, getting another sickly sweet hit of that new-dead smell.
I crossed the living room and cracked the kitchen window, letting the musty scent of New York summer seep in, letting the throb and bustle of the city pierce the silence.
“All right, Reginald, show me something that will help me.”
But there was nothing overtly cluelike in the apartment. The furniture, modern and standoffish, was pristine, not even bearing a telltale crease where some murderer may have taken respite after his job was done. There was nothing—except . . .
I climbed up onto the dining table, careful to skirt the dark smudges where Reginald’s shoes had scraped, and rolled up onto my tiptoes. There, on the top of one of the exposed beams, was a forgotten scrap of fabric—Emerson’s fabric. The fabric that Reginald’s murderer had tightened around Reginald’s neck until he had stopped breathing. I shuddered, pulled my barrette from my hair, and used it as a sort of makeshift, evidence-sustaining pair of tweezers and grabbed the swatch.
Other than the raggedy ends where the fabric had ripped, there was nothing significant or incriminating about it. The strip was about two inches wide, followed the print of the fabric, but was cut against the grain. No name plates, no fingerprints, no “if found please return to.” I held it up to my nose, whiffing the slightest scent of tuberose and freesia locked into the stitch. Apparently it hadn’t been in Emerson’s apartment long enough to adopt her scent.
There was nothing and I was annoyed, but I shoved the scrap in my pocket anyway, jumping off the table and closing Reginald’s door behind me.
What a waste.
I was only able to grumble for a millisecond; a feeling of stiff unease washed down the skinny hallway and my hackles went up. I spun, staring down Emerson’s closed door.
My nostril flicked.
Emerson’s patchouli smell still hung light on the air, but there was something else now, too, something that wasn’t there earlier.
And then there was the slightest, softest sound.
A footstep.
Someone, doing their best to step lightly, to carefully avoid the creaking floorboards. A drawer slid open. Someone rifling.
I slowly wrapped my palm around Emerson’s doorknob and was met with a lock. I bit my bottom lip, considering.
Then I slid a bobby pin out of my extensive updo (which was quickly falling due to my surprisingly helpful multiuse of barrettes and pins) and quietly stuck it into the lock. A single jiggle and the lock popped, the door popping open a millimeter. I pushed it open a tiny bit more and sucked in my stomach—a human habit that hadn’t yet died—peering into the apartment.
It was quiet, and the heaps of clothing and crap all around could have signaled that Emerson’s place had just been ransacked, or that Emerson employed the same kind of housekeeping style my roommate did back at home: slob chic.
I slid through the doorway, head cocked, still listening.