The woman was tall and pale with a luscious mane of red hair. Like Wesley's homekeeper, she had that air of superiority reeking off her from head to toe. She filed her nails nonchalantly, her eyes distant as she crossed her legs.
Miles could still feel the stinging of his eyes and the headache continued to pound at his head, pulsing against the very bony structure of his skull.
Alice stood up beside him, dusting her blue pants before leaning on the table.
"We would commence the interview now." She said this loudly, probably to the officers in the control room, that was separated from the conference room by the one way wall mirror that took up the whole of the north wall.
"This is detective Alice, badge number 816, conducting an interview with Alicia, concerning the death of one named Andrew Lii."
"Could you state your name for the record, please?"
Alicia gave Alice a sour look, eyes looking her over as though she were a pest.
"Do you people live under a rock? How can you not know me, the star of the whole of Rivera city. The queen of the handicapped miscreants of this city. The one that gives light to the heart of men and women, old and young. The pearl in the seas-"
"Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt but all we need is your name."
Alicia gave Alice a glare and Miles could only watch the woman with veiled annoyance. Miles, of course knew her. There was no way no one would not have known her. Owner of the Silver Curtain Theatre, a vivid poet, artist, actor, very outstanding in everything relating to the theatre. But her pride often made her less desirable in the general public. Not like she cared anyway.
"Well, I am quite sure my name shouldn't be so hard for you to know. Peasants of this city, even though defective, can still acknowledge when power enters their midst." Her thick, deep, Brini accent added richness, no matter how small to the room .
"Ma'am, you just-"
"Nonsense. I do not need to introduce myself to lowlifes like you. " She gave her another nasty look which further made that same bubbling annoyance to rear its ugly head. Ever since yesterday, after the argument with his sister, he had been feeling very angry. Something that wouldn't normally happen given that he was used to ignoring things like this.
Why were people this conceited?
He really wished he knew the answer to that question.
After two rounds of silence, the woman flicked her red hair and squared her shoulders,
"Well let me just have mercy on you miscreants so that I can be well on my way. So, my name is Alicia Ken."
"So, I think you would have been well aware of the death of one Andrew Lii, right?"
"Excuse me, I know no such person."
She looked disgusted and gave no room for any other expression that should display even an iota of nervousness. She was an actor so Miles knew they had to be very careful.
"That is interesting to say, given that just yesterday, the person that called in the death said that they saw you about to leave his room when they came in."
"Why in heavens would I be in the house of a nobody that doesn't even deserve to breathe the same air I breathe?"
"That's the same thing I wanted to ask you."
"Preposterous. Your confidant, or whatever it is you police people call it, was obviously blind. There are many that wish to meet me so he must have conjured up that illusion. If you called me here just to accuse me, then I believe my work here is done."
She stood up, pushing her chair back which made a jarring scraping noise.
"You do realize the testimony of that sort is heavy-"
"A testimony that is obviously not true! Do you have any idea about the amount of people that wish to tarnish my image?!"
"You-"
Before Alice could utter any more words, the woman had already strutted out of the conference room, heels clicking without giving them a
backward glance.
Miles shared a look with her as the room elapsed into silence. Alice hissed, kicking the table before rubbing her forehead, looking drained. Miles coughed before turning to her and speaking,
"I think we shou-ld go back to the house, sea-rch up wheth-er or not we can find any more leads."
Alice made a face at him before raising a hand. "First of, I was going to say that. Secondly, there's only you in that, I have a rather important meeting to attend so you'd have to do that but remember, anything that you discover goes through me first, got it?"
Miles tried not to let the disgust show on his face at her childish antics. He sighed in response, satisfied that at least he could work alone and be effecient at it.
***
Miles came out of the car, the sun slowly drawing down in the orange laden sky.
It was always such a wonder to him. That Rivera City could host so many glorious places while others were left to corrode like termites infested wood in an abandoned house.
Unlike Squalor Square, Downglen district wasn't as tightly packed and stinking with faeces. Instead, there were multistory buildings with waning red paint, patches in the wall, overgrown ferns siding the path with chipped pavements.
Miles looked keenly through the hedge of buildings, the name of the apartment still fluttering to memory. Block C, FLOOR 6, APARTMENT NUMBER 57.
With that, he walked to the building with a bold C etched into the side with chalk. He entered the building, first noticing the equally faded red walls and the dark graffiti that had been scrawled onto it. Each step he took carried a flurry of dust off the floor causing him to cough intermittently.
After a few minutes of trudging through a number of wonky stairs, he finally reached floor 6. The silence was as death filled as the one that held the man's apartment during the first investigation.
No doubt people would have already started running for the hills, if they could.
The only thing that broke the silence was the clank of his dark boots against wood, each step as monotone as the drab walls that seemed to close in on him. After walking past a number of doors, he finally reached apartment number 57 which was still walled off by police tape, barring others from entering.
Miles ducked underneath the tape before pushing past the mildly battered door that had obviously seen less termite eating days. A stale smell snaked through the air like thick murky waters that couldn't be so easily flushed away. Miles gave the small joint living room and dining room a once over. The chairs were in fairly good condition, ripped at some parts while some rips had been sealed with off color second hand material that had a fading tint to it. There was a distant smell of moldy bread and rotten eggs that made him to be distantly reminded of the time that he was eating scraps when he first ran away from home. Goosebumps swept across his arms.
The floor was partly padded with newspapers that crinkled faintly underneath the buzzing drone of silence that hung over the environment. Miles looked quizzically at it by bending low, there was already a layer of dirt spread flat across most of them so he gave up soon after trying. After looking through the cobweb strewn shelves, the stack of books lying on a table and everything that looked even the slightest bit substantial, he decided to proceed to the room.
The room was still how it was before he left the first time. Now, the putrid smell of smoke no longer invaded the room now, its absence as strong as the presence it came with. He walked towards the bed, like the other two deaths, this one was scattered and cluttered but it was obvious that apart from the rumpled sheet, the bed was still in perfect condition. The house was still in perfect condition, actually, as regards the fact that a person was burning alive inside. So once again, how was this possible?
His left eye began to burn so he quickly fished out his eye drops and applied some.
As he continued to study the bed, he remembered something. The coroners after they had taken the body away had discovered that he had been holding four tablets of cardioryx, a powerful drug used to improve the efficiency of cardiac muscles. A normal dose was two tablets and even then, most knew enough to know that anything more than that could cause acute heart failure.
Had he wanted to commit suicide? And if he did, why?
Moving on from that, he walked to the other furniture in the room, the wardrobe. He pulled the iron handle open causing a scratching sound to fill his ears, as if the joints were working to kick back to life. The clothes were beyond scattered and Miles felt somewhat irritated by the clutter but he chose to ignore it. After minutes of rifling through packs of stained shirts, he stumbled upon a well pressed suit. Unlike his other worn out clothing articles, this one was very new, neat, in fact it even still had its garment bag. Miles grabbed the hangar and pulled it out before swiftly removing the garment bag.
It had a gold handkerchief in the breast pocket. Black buttons that almost glinted like marble lined the white shirt and the musk of a perfume that embraced his nostrils once he brought his face close to the material only spoke one word. Expensive. How would a man living in these conditions afford a suit like this?
Two hypotheses formed in Miles' mind. Maybe he had gotten this from someone? Or he had saved for a long time to be able to buy this? But even then, another question came to fruition in his mind, what event would he even wear it for? As far as most people that knew him were concerned, he was always quiet, always locked up in his house aside from the time he went to work. He looked through the pockets of the suit and he felt a small squeezed cardboard paper underneath. He quickly brought it out and noticed it was a severely battered card.
There were rips along the edges but even then he was still able to see a big heart on the front page. He licked his lips before he opened the card and noticed that it was a bit damp, the ink was runny because water had sullied it. Squinting, Miles could still make out the words that were scribbled roughly onto the side.
A thousand roads beneath my feet,
Guided by a pulse I seek.
In shadows deep, a spark, a light—
Your voice, my compass through the night.
A whisper floats across the dark,
A rhythm etched within my heart.
When silence falls, you call me home,
An echo soft, yet never alone.
Colors shift as you draw near,
A world anew when you are here.
In miles that part, I feel you still—
A song that distance cannot kill.
So stay with me in endless sound,
In beats of love, where we are bound.
In this heartbeat, where we both belong—
My heartbeat echo, my only home.
Miles wondered who this had been addressed to. So did that mean he had a lover of some sort? Or was he the one that received the letter?
He kept looking after he had returned the suit and he found a small box hidden underneath a layer of patched and worn out socks that were in need of some serious washing.
He tried to open it but realized that it was locked with a tiny padlock. What would be so important to keep this locked away? Judging from the note, could it be a ring?
He stowed this away in his bag with the card to get it opened later on.
Miles continued searching and
after not finding anything else worthy of note, he turned to leave.
As soon as he walked out of the room, he saw an old man who looked gaunt from appalling malnutrition with a sick pallor and cracked lips. The man was trembling all over as he held himself tightly with threadbare clothing, eyes hooded and hollow. Compassion swept over Miles though he still eyed him warily.
"Sir, you do reali-ze this plac-e is out of bounds?"
"I'm sorry..... son." The man croaked and he coughed a number of times. Miles rushed to him, concerned that the man could fall at any moment. Miles led him to sit down on one of the seats to prevent him from collapsing to the floor.
The man inhaled shakily before coughing again.
"I'm sorry about this." He wheezed between coughs, the racking not stopping as his already pale skin seemed to get paler by the second.
"There's only so much medicine that a poor man can get." The man smiled shakily but even that action seemed to take the breath away from him because after he doubled over coughing. Miles assessed him in his mind as he massaged his back, trying to alleviate whatever pain the old man must have been experiencing in that frail body of his.
The man coughed again.
"There's a pha-rmacy not too far, if you can h-old on. I can get you som-e drugs-"
"No, boy. I will be fine, besides, I need to tell you the reason why I came here."
"But sir you-r cough-"
"I'll be fine boy. You're a detective, aren't ya?"
Miles nodded.
"I know you must have been here scrounging for clues or something so I just decided to lend you assistance. Information wise though." The man barely finished the statement before he started coughing again. Miles began to protest to say he needed to go to the hospital when the man waved him off. The man righted himself, taking a deep breath before he started talking.
"Andrew's death is something that would haunt me for life. I feel like I could have done something, detective. I feel like-"
Another set of deep reverberating coughs escaped the man's throat making his shoulders jerk violently as tears sprung on his eyes. Miles grabbed the man by his before the coughing fit ceased again but it took a moment for the man to orient himself.
"Andrew has not been himself for sometime."
As the man said this, his face gaining a more shadowed appearance.
"Ho-w so?
"He would normally be indoors till the next morning when he would go to work like 9 am but lately, every single Sunday, he would leave the house by between 10 pm and then come back between 2 am. Plus, he became much more secretive, later stopped talking to me and he had writing letters more often. Love letters to be precise and a lot of them."
Miles remembered the card in his bag and his interest piqued.
"Love letters?"
"Yeah, there was a time I came here just to say hello when I found the letters scattered across his table. I was able to read some of them before he entered and started shouting at me to leave."
The man's wrinkles deepened at the statement and Miles wished he could help him in some way but despite himself, he knew he needed this information so he prodded him to continue by saying,
"Wha-t did yo-u see?"
"Hmmm, the letters didn't have addresses neither did it have any form of stamp. In fact it was mostly poems, the only reason I knew it was a letter was because at the beginning, he would write, To My heartbeat."
"Oh."
So that meant it was more likely that he had given the card to somebody else seeing that he had written all of those love letters. He needed to get those letters if possible.
"Do yo-u by any chanc-e know where I could find those letters?"
The old man shook his head before coughing a number of times.
"Also, this fell out of his pocket one day."
The man handed him a small golden tag. WDG was written at the bottommost right corner in curly letters. Miles furrowed his brows as he knew that it rang a bell, somewhere in his mind.
Miles considered it for a moment before storing it inside his bag.
"Woul-d you mind if I ask, h-ow you kno-w him exa-ctly?"
"Oh, that. He's my nephew. I live down the hall so ever since my daughter's died, the ones who were formerly taking care of me, he decided to live here so that he could help me out. He stopped his education, just so he could take care of me." His voice wobbled, a sheen of tears glossing over the man's eyes.
Miles could only imagine what the man would do now, now that he was once again alone. Unless he had other relatives. Anger stirred up in his chest and he felt much more motivated to continue down the line of this case.
"I will do the bes-t I can."
Miles meant every single word and he quickly added,
"But first, let's go t-o the pharmacy."
***
Miles stopped at a park before lowering himself down onto the bench. The breeze was crisp, the faint dampness underscoring a storm that was looming over them. The cries of children were distant as he could see a playground, bright and colorful, standing not too far away after which a long line of trees swept by at either side. His shoes crunched on the grass which flattened in response.
He brought out the plaque and looked at it again. It was golden. He scratched the sides to check whether or not it was fake gold but nothing came away, showing that it was pure and unadulterated. Miles studied the name, Andrew Lii, and allowed his hands to caress the WDG at the extreme end. He brought out his phone and searched up the full meaning of WDG. search results came up instantly and it explained that it stood for Weekly Dinner Galore.
He cocked his head as he scrolled down a little more. It said it was hosted by the current owner of one of the biggest theatres in more than half of Acacia. Alicia Ken.
Did that mean that she really was involved in this?
Some other questions popped to mind as he reasoned it all.
First of, he knew at least from what he heard that because of the amount of celebrities and big shots involved in it, that security was tight and they didn't just allow just anybody. Miles fiddled with the tag in his hand, the smooth edges brushing against his coarse palms.
Andrew Lii was no celebrity, that was for sure. So could it be that he was one of the workers in the dinner? A waiter maybe?
If so, how did he even get to wait on tables in such a place?
Judging from Alicia's personality, it was sure she didn't like anything having to do with the poor and mediocre. But could it be that he was actually just waiting on tabls if he really was a worker. Miles remembered the card that he had found in the pocket of the suit and wondered who it was that he was addressing.
Andrew Lii just became much more interesting.