La Vida Vampire (26 page)

“Can you take any legal action against Ike?” I asked when we passed the bikers. Saber peered at me. “You mean to call him off Eugene?”

“Gee, no, I meant getting him to wear more cotton blends, less leather.”

“Smart-ass,” he said with a quirk of his mouth. “I could make noises about revoking his protected status, but he’ll probably drop Eugene once the case is solved.”

“What if it’s not solved? I mean, we
are
down to Etienne as the killer, right?”

“He feels right for it, but we can’t prove it.”

“Then we’re missing something. I know we’ve looked at this six ways from Sunday, but there has to be something we haven’t stumbled on.”

“Maybe, but this isn’t one of your mysteries where the case is neatly resolved. Killers do get off, and Etienne isn ’t a U.S. citizen. We can’t compel him to stick around without cause.”

“Then we have to find cause,” I muttered.

By unspoken agreement, we crossed Avenida Menendez and climbed the cement steps to the walkway running along the bay. I plopped down on the ledge of the seawall to think, leaned back where I thought one of the bollards was, and almost tumbled backward into the bay.

“Watch it!” Saber leapt to catch one of my flailing hands and jerk me off the ledge. And into his arms.

We stood frozen, chest to breasts, pelvis to pelvis. His arms clamped around my waist, my arms encircled his neck. Breath caught and stuck in my throat as he looked into my eyes.

“You nearly went for a swim,” he said, his softly exhaled words caressing my face.

“I wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“No, but the water’s cold.” His sensuous lips lifted in a seductive smile. “This is much warmer.”

Warmer? If my body temperature careened any higher, I’d be a puddle at his feet. His hips rocked minutely against mine, and my breath came in hitches.

Then his cobalt gaze settled on my mouth.

“S-Saber,” I whispered.

“Hmmm?”

“Are you planning to kiss me?”

His scent spiked—assertive, erotic, urgent. “Yeah, I am.”

I waited a beat. “S-soon?”

He lowered his head with such excruciating slowness it felt like years before his lips brushed mine. Once. Pause. Twice. Pause.

“Cesca,” he said so low, my vampire hearing kicked in.

“Hmmm?”

“Close your eyes.”

His mouth neared, his hand cupped the back of my head, and I let my eyes drift shut. His lips nibbled mine, coaxed me to open to his tongue. I inhaled, drawing his scent into my lungs, his breath into my body. Fireworks exploded behind my eyelids.

Then it was over.

He broke off the kiss, slowly, and eased space between us.

I blinked against the glow of streetlights. In another second, I adjusted to standing without the brace of his body and slid my hands from his shoulders.

“Ready to go home?” he asked.

Home. With Saber. The idea didn’t scare the bejeebers out of me anymore.

As we strolled southward, I listened to the muted sounds of sailing ships rocking at anchor in the bay. A rowboat glided toward one of the ships anchored nearest the seawall, but the rower didn’t seem to be having an easy time of it. A woman at the rail astern called down, “What’s wrong, Cappy?”

“Damn boat’s leaking again. It was supposed to be fixed.”

“Honey, it was only a patch job.”

Saber caught my gaze and grinned. We walked another dozen steps before it hit me. Yolette. A boat. I stopped, spun, and stared at the rowboat. “That’s it, Saber. That’s what we’ve been missing.”

He turned sharply. “What?”

“The boat. Yolette,” I said fast, gut instinct telling me I was on the right track. “She was killed on land, but we found her in the ocean. How did she get there?”

Saber gave me a long look. “You think she was dumped on a sinking rowboat?”

I waved a hand and rushed on. “Not a rowboat necessarily, but I thought I saw a small boat just past the breakers before we all hit the surf Thursday morning. I reported it to March but didn’t push it, because I figured it could have been a pelican riding a swell.”

“With vampire vision you can’t tell the difference between a boat and a pelican?”

“I didn’t bother with vamp vision, not with the wind, spray, and blowing sand that morning. Besides, I was there to surf, not scan the horizon for whatever might be out there.”

“Why do you think Yolette was in a boat?”

“One, because when Shelly Jergason mentioned the loud renters that night at bridge club, she also said they’d borrowed a rowboat from a neighbor without asking. That gives Etienne access. Two, if Yolette was dumped straight into the water, her body would’ve sunk. She wouldn’t have been found for days.”

“A body will float longer in salt water.”

“How long?”

He shrugged. “Thirty minutes, maybe more. Water seeps into body cavities eventually.”

“But you said she was killed between two and five in the morning. We were on the beach at six. And Etienne was getting his fishing boat somewhere in Gainesville—which is a good hour and a half away, even if you’re speeding—at six fifteen.”

“I’m following,” Saber said slowly. “Etienne couldn’t dump the body much after four thirty and still get to the lake.”

“And with the nor’easter coming, isn’t it more likely the body would either wash back up on shore or be pulled out to sea by the riptides?”

He frowned. “Could’ve been a fluke of the storm and incoming tides that she washed up when she did.”

“But she hadn’t been nibbled on by fish or crabs or whatever. She couldn’t have been in the water that long.”

Saber looked back at the rowboat, now tied off and riding low in the water. “If she were in a boat, it would tend to suck her body under as it sank.”

“Not if it sank slow enough.”

“Waves would’ve swamped it.”

“Maybe, but it won’t hurt to see if there’s a boat missing from the neighborhood. See if there were splinters in Yolette’s body.”

“All right, I’m convinced it’s possible,” Saber said with a small smile. He took my hand and tugged to get me moving. I worked at not hyperventilating when he kept his hand snug around mine. “So we’ll call March right now?”

He sighed. “First thing in the morning.”

“But Etienne’s had days now to cover his tracks,” I protested as we neared the Bridge of Lions.

“Yes, but since the murder, the neighbors have been watching him every second he’s outside the house or on the beach.”

Saber waggled his brows.

I pictured Shelly, then a neighbor like Mrs. Kravitz on
Bewitched
, and grinned. “I take it these are nosy neighbors?”

He gave my fingers a squeeze. “Civic-minded. March said dispatch is sending deputies out there at least once a day.”

I chuckled and matched his steps as we crossed the street. The bank parking lot, shrouded in shadows on my right, reminded me that Etienne was our vandal as well as our murderer.

“Etienne trashed my truck, too.”

“Like you said, it was a diversionary tactic, and so was planting evidence at Gorman’s house.”

We passed a Greek restaurant and small shops closed for the night, and I fished in my skirt pocket for my keys. Only steps from home, I wrinkled my nose at the still-lingering coppery odor. Saber gave me a sideways glance.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, holding his hand out for my keys.

“The blood smell is still here, but there’s not a drop of blood on the sidewalk, the stoop, or the walls.”

“Could be some of Gorman’s blood soaked into the soil.” Saber pointed to a planter box nestled against the sidewalk wall. As he unlocked the door, I leaned over the neatly cut shrubs and native lantana and sniffed. “It could be in the dirt,” I conceded, straightening, “but the scent is awfully strong. Like if an artery or vein were opened. You can’t smell it at all?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “No. Don’t take this the wrong way, but is there a chance you’re imagining the smell?”

“As in the power of suggestion?” I challenged him, fists on my hips. “No. It’s too similar to the blood smell on Yolette and on my truck.”

“Then there has to be an explanation,” he said, pocketing my keys and stepping over the threshold.

“Wait, are you saying you believe me?”

“Come here.” Saber came back to the stoop, caught my hand, and gave me a gentle tug up the single step. In another second he’d kiss me right there in the doorway. I saw it in his eyes as cobalt darkened to midnight blue. A sound between a crack and
pufft
came from the plaza, and Saber’s eyes widened as I lurched into his arms, a blaze of burning pain in my right shoulder.

As he pulled me through the door to safety and laid me in the hall, cursing all the way, I had only two fears: that the shooter was coming for Saber and that the bullet in my shoulder was silver.

EIGHTEEN

I’d never been shot, so I didn’t know what physical symptoms to expect from silver in my body any more than I knew exactly what to expect from sex.

Except I didn’t figure sex would hurt as much.

Turned out the bullet wasn’t silver. It was plain lead, shot from a .22 rifle, according to Saber, who saw it come out of my shoulder and
pling
into a surgical steel bowl. From there, an officer from the St. Augustine Police Department took custody of the slug as evidence.

Saber insisted on staying with me in the treatment room. The same doctor who ’d changed out my GPS tracker was on duty, and, because my vampire body was already healing the wound, the doc decided to remove the bullet on the spot in the ER. Facedown on the exam table, I cringed when the doc cut away the blouse of my Minorcan costume and my bra, squirmed when the nurse cleaned the wound. The scent of my own blood might ’ve made me woozy, but the doc smelled of lime cologne, antiseptic, and pine cleaner. A freaky combination, but an effective distraction. Of course, Saber stroking the back of my legs from knee to ankle during the impromptu surgery was darned distracting, too.

We left the ER just over an hour after we ’d arrived. I wore a blue cotton hospital gown over a bulky bandage and my costume skirt. Saber wore a scowl so fierce it sent a young ER clerk scuttling back to his desk. The crime scene still crawled with activity when we returned to the condo building. Saber ’s hand at the small of my back, subtly guiding me through the onlookers and some press, was reassuringly warm.

So many city and county cop cars and uniformed personnel milled around, I wondered why they were all needed. Yellow tape cordoned off most of the block and plaza, breaking only at the street where police stopped anyone attempting to get in or out. The cop we checked in with was the same woman who’d shown up when my truck was vandalized Thursday night. Only two days and a lifetime ago.

Detective March and another man in plain clothes met us in the street in front of the bank and condo entrance.

“You find the weapon?” Saber asked immediately.

“Negative,” March said. “This is Detective Balch, St. Augustine Police Department.”

“Balch,” Saber acknowledged, shaking hands with the thin, blond man.

I murmured a greeting but kept my arms pinned at my sides so my flimsy gown didn’t flap in the off-bay breeze and expose more than I wanted seen.

“Ms. Marinelli,” March said, “I imagine you want to get upstairs, and Balch and I need to get statements from both of you, if you’re up to it.”

Saber’s hand flexed on my back, and from the corner of my eye I saw his look of surprise. “You’ve finished processing the front stoop and hallway?”

Balch answered. “I made it a priority when March explained the victim’s, uh, special needs.”

I didn’t like the way Balch’s eyes slid away from mine, but putting him on the spot wouldn’t be mannerly. Besides I was tired, so I aimed a grateful smile at both Balch and March.

“You’re right, I need to be in my own space. Thank you.”

Balch ducked his head and turned to lead the way to the tenant entrance as he filled us in.

“Looks like the shot was fired from a .22 rifle somewhere between the gazebo and the old market, ” he said, gesturing across the street to the plaza. “If the guy didn’t keep the rifle with him, he could’ve tossed it anywhere.”

“Including the bay,” Saber agreed, running his hand through his dark hair.

I stopped on the sidewalk and shuddered.

Saber eyed me a second. “You still smell the blood?”

I glanced at Balch and March, who’d walked ahead of us. “Not as strongly now, but yeah, I do.”

Saber nodded and turned to the detectives. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Take a sample of the soil in this planter by the entry. Test it for blood—fresh and old blood.”

“Why?” March asked, his frown puzzled. “Ms. Marinelli wasn’t on the stoop long enough to bleed into the planter.”

“I know, but Cesca keeps sensing an odor we’re trying to track down.”

“You’re smelling blood?” Balch asked, his voice heavy with distrust. “Is this a vampire thing?”

“Yes, Detective Balch.” I met his guarded gaze matter-of-factly. “I don’t know if it
is
blood, or if I’m just sensing it that way, but it could be important.”

“And you’d like us to check it out.” Balch held eye contact a moment, then shrugged and called a female tech over. Once he’d given her instructions, he said, “Ready to go up?”

I glanced at Saber. Judging from his impatient expression, we were more than ready. In the condo, I excused myself to change into blue nylon elastic-waist pants and a dark green cotton shirt. I’d bought the shirt large and loose to wear as a light jacket over sweaters. Tonight it helped hide the fact that I was braless. My shoulder hurt more by the time I’d finished, but I managed not to grit my teeth when I returned to the living room. Saber handed me a glass of ice as I settled at one end of Maggie ’s blue couch. He held a Coors bottle and sat on the middle cushion. March and Balch took the armchairs and held little spiral notebooks.

“We got the basic facts from Saber while you were changing,” March said. “What do you remember, Ms. Marinelli?”

“We got near the tenant entrance,” I started. “I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I smelled blood and mentioned it to Saber.”