Chapter 3 - The Room They Had Already Searched
Police reached the apartment before Kiora did.
The doorframe had been shattered.
Drawers covered the bedroom floor.
Julian’s clothes had been pulled from storage boxes and cut open.
The kitchen cabinets stood empty.
Even the lining beneath the baby’s bassinet had been torn away.
The intruders had not come for jewelry.
They had come for information.
Detective Lena Torres met Kiora in the hallway.
“You cannot stay here tonight.”
“What did they take?”
“We are still checking.”
Kiora entered slowly.
The apartment had never been luxurious.
It contained two bedrooms, a narrow kitchen, and a living room crowded with baby furniture.
After Vanessa removed her from the Vale estate, Kiora had created a home from whatever remained.
Now someone had turned that home into evidence.
Marcus stood near the broken window.
“They were searching for Julian’s second drive.”
Kiora looked at him.
“What second drive?”
“He told me he divided the evidence.”
“One copy came to me.”
“The other went to someone Vanessa would never suspect.”
“Who?”
Marcus looked directly at her.
“You.”
Kiora shook her head.
“Julian never gave me a drive.”
“Did he give you anything shortly before his death?”
“He gave me a music box for the baby.”
“Where is it?”
Kiora turned toward the nursery.
The white wooden music box sat on the shelf.
Its lid was open.
The tiny dancer had been broken from the mechanism.
Detective Torres lifted it with gloved hands.
“The intruders found it.”
Marcus examined the base.
A circular indentation remained beneath the velvet lining.
The hidden compartment was empty.
Someone had removed whatever Julian placed there.
Kiora felt the baby move sharply.
“They have the evidence.”
“Not necessarily,” Marcus said.
“The compartment held a key.”
“To what?”
“Julian did not tell me.”
Detective Torres called from the bedroom.
“We found blood.”
A dark smear marked the broken window latch.
One intruder had cut his hand.
Forensic officers collected the sample.
Another officer discovered a dropped phone beneath the kitchen table.
The device had no personal contacts.
One recent message remained visible.
FIND THE KEY BEFORE THE OLD MAN REACHES HER.
The sender was saved as V.
Vanessa.
Detective Torres photographed the screen.
“This helps.”
“It does not prove she ordered the break-in,” Evelyn said.
“It proves someone using that contact name discussed the key.”
Marcus looked toward the nursery.
“Julian built systems in layers.”
“If the music box contained a key, the location it opened may be hidden in the song.”
Kiora wound the damaged mechanism.
A slow melody began playing.
She recognized it.
Julian used to hum it while cooking.
“Clair de Lune.”
Marcus frowned.
“That is not what the box played originally.”
“What did it play?”
“Something Julian’s mother taught him.”
Kiora listened more carefully.
The mechanism began with Clair de Lune.
After twelve notes, the rhythm changed.
A second melody emerged beneath the first.
Marcus closed his eyes.
“The Vale family lullaby.”
Julian had converted the notes into a sequence.
Kiora wrote them down.
Evelyn compared the pattern to the papers recovered from Marcus’s drive.
One document contained a list of company properties identified only by numbers.
The melody matched Property 17.
Vale International owned an abandoned children’s hospital outside Asheville.
Julian’s mother had funded it before her death.
Vanessa closed the hospital years earlier.
Marcus looked toward Kiora.
“The key opens something inside that building.”
Detective Torres stepped closer.
“You are not going there alone.”
Kiora looked around her destroyed apartment.
For months, Vanessa had counted on fear making her smaller.
That strategy had worked until the courthouse.
“No,” Kiora said.
May you like
“I am not going alone.”
“But I am going.”
