La Vida Vampire (18 page)

“I’m ready,” I said and headed for the door.

Saber pushed the Off button on the remote, stood slowly, and turned to me. In the time it took him to look me over from head to toe to head again, I could’ve changed clothes another three times. Maybe I
should’ve
changed, because I didn’t want to like the way his cobalt blue eyes gleamed. In appreciation, I thought, until he opened his mouth.

“Is this a fancy restaurant you’re dragging me to?”

I rolled my eyes. “This is a tourist town, Saber. Nothing is that fancy except the Casa Monica Hotel.”

“Then why are you—” He flipped a hand at me. “—dressed up? You have a boyfriend we don’t know about?”

“I wish,” I muttered. “Can we go already?”

TWELVE

Café Cascada was usually packed on a Friday night, the multiple fountains with their mini -waterfalls a tinkling background music to dining. Tonight, it seemed quieter, the lighting seemed dimmer, more intimate. Danielle, part-time hostess, part-time dance instructor, greeted us before Saber and I got all the way in the door. Looking gorgeous in her full, iridescent blue skirt and off -white peasant blouse, her flame-colored hair loose around her shoulders, she beamed at us.

“Francesca, you brought a dance partner tonight. How delightful!”

“No, no, Danielle,” I denied, “he’s just here to eat.”

“Not to dance?” She gave Saber a blatantly feminine appraisal—one I wished I could pull off—and stepped closer to him.

“What a shame. You look like you can move.”

He waggled his brows. “I can.”

I restrained myself from doing an eye roll.

“He’s hungry, Danielle. For food. He hasn’t eaten all day.” I shoved Saber toward a table—which was rather like shoving my truck—but I got him to a table for two.

“Go ahead, Saber,” I said, motioning to the chair. “Sit, eat, have some wine. The class won’t last too long.”

Danielle, who had followed, pulled the chair out for him, something I’d never see her do for other guests. He rewarded her by aiming a dazzling smile over his shoulder. At me he smirked.

I escaped—okay, flounced—through the arched doorway into a slightly smaller room ringed with dining tables for two and four. The middle of the floor was left open for dancing, but it looked to be a tiny group compared to most Fridays. The Franklins, a middle-aged couple, sipped their usual sangrias. Two blonde women I didn ’t recognize, who couldn’t have been much over twenty, sported tight jeans and tighter sweaters. They drank something dark from clear glasses —rum and cola, I thought, though the rich aromas of the restaurant almost overrode the smell of the liquor. When the salsa music started, Danielle made her entrance in a swirl of skirts. We reviewed the steps, spending more time on review because this was the blondes’ first class, and because a few diners who had finished joined the fun. After fifteen or twenty minutes, we began dancing in earnest, and I lost myself and all sense of time in the music and movement and energy of the dance. Mr. Franklin gamely took turns partnering the three of us singles, but we didn’t mind practicing the steps on our own. We laughed, swayed our hips, and twirled to the driving rhythm. I was having a blast, until I twirled smack into Saber.

I knew I hit him hard enough to send him reeling. He didn’t. Instead, I bounced off his body, and he reached out to steady me, his hands on my upper arms. My mostly bare upper arms that now crawled with goose bumps. I reached for my hair as if to straighten my ponytail, and his hands fell away, but his mischievous grin stayed put.

“Finished with dinner already?” I asked, a little more breathless than I wanted to sound.

“Decided to catch the floor show,” he said, “up close and personal.”

I blinked. His looks, which had struck me as vaguely Latino the first time I saw him, now seemed more so. Even his startling cobalt blue eyes spoke of Latin passion and seemed to challenge me. I felt suddenly hot, the salsa music thrummed in my body, and a nanosecond later, he stepped into me. He gripped my waist and hand, and moved to the rhythm. Body memory is a wonderful thing. It lets you move in ways you know by instinct —or by practice—while your brain is screaming “Oh. My. God.”

My brain screamed that and more, but I didn’t break free of Saber. I didn’t want to. I simply let myself follow his lead, even when he changed the dance from salsa to merengue.

I went from hot to flash point when he plastered us pelvis -to-pelvis and rocked to the driving beat. His blatantly sensual gaze held me in thrall. The brush of our bodies made me forget to breathe, but I met him step for timeless step. When I was nothing but molten cells, he dipped me so low, my hair brushed the floor. I didn’t even realize he held my leg behind the knee until applause started and he caressed the bare skin up my thigh as he helped me stand again.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Danielle exclaimed from behind me.

I scrambled out of Saber’s arms and turned, breathing harder than I thought was possible for me. At my back, Saber didn’t sound the slightest bit winded.

“Really,” Danielle continued, “I’ve never seen the merengue danced with such passion. You two could win a competition.”

Saber gave her a little bow. “Thanks for letting me horn in on your class, Danielle.”

She grinned broadly and patted his arm. “Anytime, honey.”

She dismissed class and reminded us that she wouldn’t be teaching next week. The Franklins looked disappointed, the coeds, crushed. They shot drooling gazes at Saber.

“Ready to go home?” he asked, taking my elbow to escort me from the restaurant. Home with Saber? After an intimate dance that made my erotic dreams look like patty -cake? Ay-yi-yi. He might be my jailer, but there was no way I was ready to be completely alone with him right now. What could we do with the rest of the night?

Oh, wait! Wal-Mart. Nothing remotely erotic about Wal-Mart, right? Not much erotic about Target or Kmart or a dozen other stores, either, but Wal-Mart was open 24-7!

Now if I could just get him to take me there.

“Don’t tell me a manly man like you can’t be seen at Wal-Mart. Heck, Saber, nobody in town knows you.”

Oh yes, he’d driven me to the store, but he’d groused about it the whole way.

I took a shopping cart from the nice cart lady at the door, looked over my shoulder and said, “Let’s go.”

Since Maggie really didn’t keep much food in the refrigerator—or the cabinets for that matter—I headed to the grocery department first.

“We have Saturday and part of Sunday to get through. What do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Will it bother you if I broil a steak?”

“Broil away.”

I pointed him toward the meat counter and followed at a distance with the cart —the distance because the smell of meat turns my stomach, even in a store. The odor of cooking meat is worse, but what could I expect when the villagers had deep roasted vampires, and I’d had to smell it? On the other hand, I love the aroma of charcoal. Go figure. After he grabbed the biggest T-bone in the case, Saber moved on to the vegetables, where he picked up a bag of pretossed salad and baking potatoes. Next we moved to dairy, where he snagged real butter, sour cream, and a package of cubed cheddar cheese. As we moved up and down the other aisles, he added two kinds of steak sauce to the cart along with salad dressing and a box of animal crackers. The dressing was French, a sharp reminder of why we were together in the first place. The animal crackers? Maybe he ate creatures now instead of hunting them, but the choice was rather endearing. When he was satisfied with his grocery selections, I wheeled the cart toward the clothing section.

“You’re not buying Wal-Mart clothes, are you?”

“Actually, I’m looking at purses, but what do you have against Wal-Mart fashions?”

He shook his head. “Vampires don’t wear Wal-Mart.”

“They don’t know what they’re missing,” I said as I paused and eyed the purses. A quick look told me they didn’t have the color I was looking for. I’d try Bealls Outlet another time.

I wheeled through the women’s department to a major aisle and turned right to head toward the back of the store.

“Didn’t like the purses?” Saber asked, trailing behind me.

“I need a different color.”

“So now what are you looking for?”

“The classic movies they have on DVD.”

“And then what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, waving a hand. “I might price an external hard drive for my computer. Wander through the small appliances. Pick up self-tanning lotion and hair straightener.”

“Your hair is fine the way it is.”

My heart stuttered a beat. “It is?”

“Yes, and stop fishing for compliments. You’re milking this Wal-Mart trip to annoy me, aren’t you?”

I stopped the cart, my back to the sporting goods section.

“You know, now I understand why women hate to take men shopping. Sheesh! What are you in such a hurry to do? Is basketball on tonight? ‘March Madness’?”

“I want to review the narrative with you, ” he said, all business. “A woman is dead, and you’re involved, however innocently. You saw something or heard something that might help find the killer.”

“So you
don’t
think I did it?”

“No.”

“Oh,” I said, biting my lip and feeling ashamed. “And if I didn’t remember to write this particular thing?”

“We’ll go over and over those two days until we find the key. Unless you want March to put your butt in prison.”

“Prison, hell,” a gravelly voice said behind me. “You ought to be executed.”

I whirled to find Stony—Victor Gorman—not five feet away and closing fast. He was dressed like a black ops guy from TV, but with less gear. Worse, he carried a box of gun cartridges in one hand and a bow—as in bow and arrow—in the other.

“You have some goddamn nerve setting me up,” Gorman growled. “I could kill you right now and be glad to die for the cause.”

Saber stepped in front of me, and I let him. “Mr. Gorman, I’ll remind you I’m a state investigator and caution you to watch what you say.”

Gorman gave Saber the evil eye and pointed the tip of the bow at him. “What the hell are you doin’ here with…that. You used ta kill these things, and now you’re shoppin’ with ’em?”

I leaned around Saber. “Hey, I have excellent taste.”

“You’re not helping,” Saber warned me, then turned back to Gorman. “In light of your new threats, if Ms. Marinelli turns up with so much as a stubbed toe, I’ll be sure we haul you in for it. Do you understand me?”

“Ms. Marinelli?” He sneered and raked my sole dressy outfit with a look of disgust. “Dress ’er up any way you want, but she’s a fuckin’ parasite. I got the right to free speech, and you can’t tell me different.” He shifted his cold blue eyes to me. “You’re gonna pay for killin’ that Frenchie, bitch. I know where to find you.”

With a last glare, he spun and stalked back to the sporting goods counter. If Wal-Mart carried missile launchers, he was fired up enough to walk out with a dozen.

Saber faced me and put his hands on his hips, but I was way ahead of him.

I made a NASCAR-worthy one eighty with the shopping cart and headed to checkout.

I changed while Saber put the groceries away. We hadn’t talked much on the way back, but I knew Saber was ticked from the way his hands had clenched the steering wheel. If he’d been using vampire strength, he would’ve crushed it to dust. The confrontation had shaken me, but I was calm by the time I called Maggie again. She took the news of Saber staying at the penthouse in stride when I told her he was protecting me from Gorman. Fine, she said. The linens on her bed were clean because she’d anticipated Janie using her room. All in all, not the ordeal I thought the conversation would be. In my jeans and St. Augustine T-shirt, I walked barefoot into the dining area to join Saber at the table, where he sat reading my notes. His eyes held no warmth, no appraisal now. Nothing to make my tummy flutter, but it did anyway. Maybe it was just his holstered weapon on the table.

“Find the missing links?” I asked, hoping against hope he had. Especially when I noticed a chair set squarely beside his.

“No, but I have a list of questions.”

He turned the page of a white legal pad, headed it
Suspects
, and wrote Victor Gorman’s name first. I tapped the page as I sat. “I thought you’d cleared him.”

He shrugged. “In light of the threats he made tonight, he’s staying on the list. Let’s start with what he said and did, and how the others reacted.”

I closed my eyes and started from the beginning—from the first time I noticed him until he stormed out of Scarlett’s—while Saber took notes.

“So the French couple indicated that Gorman had been following them even before they all showed up for the tour.”

“Right. Yolette said he was spoiling their honeymoon, and I told her they should report it to the police.”

“Which she didn’t.”

“No. I specifically asked on Tuesday when Yolette threw a fit about Gorman being on the tour again.”

“Cover the time after Gorman left the tour on Monday.”

Again I closed my eyes to picture the scene. “We walked back to the substation chatting. I asked why Yolette and Etienne came to St. Augustine for their wedding trip, then Millie asked if they were staying in a B and B downtown.”

“And that’s when you knew where to find them.”

“No,” I snapped. “I never knew where to find them, and I didn’t want to.”

“Then what exactly did they say?”

“They were staying in a modern place on the beach where they watched the sunrise.”

“That’s it?”

“You want to hear this or argue with me over every detail?”

“Go on.”

“That’s about the time Yolette made a crack about Millie’s perfume. She said it was strong, and that her first husband—no wait, her
late
husband—had an aunt who overused Shalimar.”

“Was Millie insulted?”

“She was when Yolette said it had made the dead husband sick.” I paused. “In fact, Millie looked more than insulted. She looked—”

“Angry?”

“Stricken. Insulted, but sort of sad at the same time.”

“Then what?”

“Millie asked how Yolette’s husband died, and Etienne said it was an accident.” I looked at the table, then back at him.