RoseBlood

Suspicious Circumstances

Edith sighs heavily and puts her laptop lid down with a tired smile, looking over at me after another hour of typing.

"How did you get on? Find anything useful?"

"Not particularly," I tell her with a shrug, "but I'm looking in the wrong places. What about you? Did you find out which sonnet those words belong to?"

"I might have done," she says thoughtfully, "but I don't want to say until I know for sure. I'll double-check everything tomorrow too."

"You'll need to be paying attention to your surroundings tomorrow," Emerson speaks up, taking his iPad and tucking his chair in. "I think we should set up some hidden cameras, and you and Elias can observe from the car."

Edith nods, her attention shifting to the library doors and empty corridors beyond them.

"Where'd Elias go, anyway?"

Emerson shakes his head, glancing at the door too. "To his room. He knows what to do. Take a break, Edith, it's getting late."

She nods again, gathering her things up and giving me a small smile.

"I'm gonna go to my room too, I think. Need anything, just knock, okay? And you know where food and everything is downstairs, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Thanks."

Edith leaves the room, and Emerson goes too, walking with me down the hall to where my temporary room is.

"What are we talking about, then?" I ask him, pushing open the door and putting my casebook on a table. "About the funeral?"

"I need to ask you if you'd like to say a few words at the funeral," Emerson says, closing the door behind him as he goes to sit on the edge of the bed. "A eulogy, that's what it's called. Paul and Lorraine Jones are going to dedicate a short speech to them, and if you'd like to as well, then you can."

"A eulogy?" I repeat, looking down at my hands briefly in thought before meeting Emerson's gaze again. "And say what, exactly? Nothing that the celebrant won't have already said. Condolences and everything."

"Well, you could say something simple about a nice memory of them, and how they'll be missed, especially by you. As their daughter, you'll know more."

A slight smile tugs at my lips at the phrase that I'm getting sick of hearing. "You really think that, don't you?"

Emerson blinks, taken aback somewhat, and his indifferent facade slips ever so slightly. "Are you saying you don't know much about who they were?"

"What's to know?" I respond with a shrug. "I knew and know nothing about the murders, and honestly, they seemed like the least obvious targets for any killer to have. And it's more about the killer than it is about my parents, really, if we want to understand. I guess my dad was just too nice to the wrong person."

Emerson nods, his dark lashes curling at his cheeks as he looks to the ground. "I guess he was."

"What about yours?" I dare ask, and his eyes flick straight back up at me. "Was he too nice?"

Emerson doesn't respond straight away, probably considering his answer before he gives it to me. "My father was a private investigator, like we are. He started the Tyrel Trust. We just aren't your average detectives, we work for Brunsley and the police, when there are suspicious circumstances that they need another viewpoint on."

"So, big cases that are hard to solve and are done in weird ways? That's when you're called to help?"

"Basically," Emerson agrees. "Our dad was close with Brunsley, and Dad didn't want to stop being a private detective and work with the police instead. So this arrangement happened. We mostly deal with murders and missing persons, but, as you said, ones with out-of-the-norm circumstances."

I nod, my brows raising. "Like this one?"

"Like this one."

I focus on Emerson's face, still not giving much away in his thoughtful trance. "How similar is this case to the only one you didn't manage to solve four years ago? The one Elias mentioned when we first went through the case? It's... it's the same case as the suspicious circumstances your father was left in, isn't it?"

He freezes, then, and I pause with him, waiting for a reaction. Would he snap, storm off, shut the conversation off? Be much more cautious of what he lets me hear? I'm used to all of that, if I'm being honest with myself.

But he doesn't do any of that. Emerson looks up, staring straight at me for a few long moments, a look of confused interest and wonder in his eyes.

"You're a lot cleverer than I thought, Holly."

I scoff lightly at the compliment. "Well, thanks."

"No, I'm being sincere," he insists. "And you're right. My father died four years ago, and his murderer is most likely your RoseBlood Killer. We didn't manage to solve it because there were hardly any leads. Our dad didn't write things down, he kept them in his head. Always careful and observant and calm, until he wasn't."

"It doesn't make any sense yet," I say in frustration, taking in Emerson's words. "Brokenhearted twice?"

"Probably," Emerson says. "There was music by the same artist as Run Bobby Run, except it had my father's nickname as the title."

"But... you don't know anything about the killer either?"

"I know as much as you do," he tells me. "We knew he'd met someone that he wanted to help, and I suppose that his good motives overpowered his cautiousness. He was usually always careful. She didn't even tell him her name. Didn't trust anyone. Me and my siblings never saw her, and our father never really spoke to us about personal things like that. We didn't push it. And then he was found dead."

"What did you do when you found the body?" I ask in awe, and Emerson looks at me for another long moment, before answering in a lower tone.

"I didn't find my father's body, Holly. Elias did."