22
“How many days’ worth of clothes should I grab?”I asked Lev as we piled clothes into her bag.
“I don’t know. How long is he planning to keep her there for? It can’t be that long. Fuck, man, people will start noticing,” Lev said flatly as he walked into the bathroom and dislodged the loose panel where we hid the dead rat and checked it.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Sickle seems pissed that she called the cops on him, but what did he expect, though?” Lev said as he walked back into thebedroom, holding a bottle of shampoo, and opened the lid to smell it. “What’s conditioner for?”
“Hair softener or something,” I replied, unsure, but I noticed chicks used conditioner, whereas I didn’t know a single man who admittedly used that shit on their hair, so it must be a beauty thing.
“Should I grab that as well?” he asked, stepping back into the bathroom as my hand knocked on something interesting in her luggage bag.
I shrugged, “I guess, and soap and deodorant,” I said as my hand brushed against a strange surface inside the bag. Pulled back the black lining and pushed my fingers on the panel, and came loose. “Look at this.”
Lev peered inside the bag as I removed the panel and found it empty. “For the gun and knife?” Lev assumed, and I was about to replace it when he grabbed something and held it in his fist. “A note.”
He unraveled it and read it aloud.
“I want to surprise Leslie for her birthday. Can you find old school photos of her while you’re there, take pictures with your phone, and save them for when you come home? Also, look for other information you might find about her. Please keep this a secret. Thank you.”
“Shifty as fuck,” I spewed, suspiciously. “Why the fuck would he need to write a note and leave it in a secret compartment in her luggage? Why not call or message her?”
“Because he didn’t want Leslie to find out?” Lev supposed.
“Does she check his phone or something?” I stated. “You've got to admit, this is weird.”
“Yeah, it is.” Lev reread the letter, cherry picking a line, “Find old school photos of Leslie and…look for other information you might find about her.Pleasekeep this a secret.”
“Like what?” I pressed. “Please keep it a secret? I don’t think Adina was that fond of Leslie. I doubt that she would want to look for anything about her evil stepmother. So it must be a codeword for something?”
“Or…he wanted her to find some dirt on Leslie?” Lev said as I zipped up the bag and pulled it off the bed. “I bumped into her in the library when she was searching through old class photos one time, and I think she was struggling to find anything.”
“That’s what it looks like to me. Bro, find some dirt on Leslie the stepmother, because I’m betting that Maxwell Boleyn had his suspicions about her,” I said.
I swung the door open, eager to get back to the basement to see Adina, when I stalled at someone standing in front of me.
“Ezrah Warwick, just the man I wanted to see,” he said, almost comically. “How about we have that meeting right now?”
“I can’t, I’m expected somewhere,” I told him as he looked past me to Lev standing in Adina’s room.
“Well, I’ll walk with you,” he offered as we stepped out into the hall and Lev shut the door, then checked that it was locked. “Where are you heading?”
“To the Lud,” I mumbled.
“Great, I'll go with you,” he said in an overly cheery tone that told me he wasn’t concerned about me being a Warwick and the Warwick name wasn’t going to stop him from pursuing his objective. That was the armor that stopped our father from being arrested, and the fact that the police were afraid of him and he had plenty of dirt on the police commissioner and his lackeys to screw them over.
But somehow, they managed to silence him when my father hired a contract killer to eliminate Maxwell Boleyn, and Maxwell found out about it. It was the wake-up call our family needed. We weren’t as invincible and impenetrable as we once thought, but we still had some sway with lowly police officers.
As we walked down the hall toward the stairs, Lev closed Adina’s door, checked that it was locked, and Det. Magone pointed his thumb behind him and casually stated, “That’s Adina Boleyn’s room, isn’t it?”
I hesitated to concoct a lie. “No, it’s Lev’s room,” I glanced back at Lev and said, “you can take your bag,” when Magone glanced down at the luggage bag I was dragging behind me.
Lev took the bag and backed off as I walked down the stairs. Magone stuck to me like glue, chatting in a friendly way as if we were great buddies. He was an expert at putting his target at ease so they’d drop their guard, allowing him to go in for the kill and siphon information from them.
“Here’s me thinking that Lev Ashthorn’s room was next door to it,” he stated smugly, dropping a hint that he was on to us. Fuck.
We lost Lev, who was still upstairs, as we trotted downstairs just as the cello player, Mila, was coming upstairs. “Oh my god,” she gasped, looking at Magone, whom everyone had become very familiar with. “Is Adina here? Is she okay?”
