Playing With Vampires - An Izzy Cooper Novel (10 page)

Thinking to get an early start the next morning, I was ready to walk out the door by eight, which was unusual for me. I figured now I had even more incentive to solve the case, considering there was a fairly good possibility that the next body they found could be mine. True, he might not actually be able to kill me unless the reaper allowed it, but he could certainly make the rest of my life uncomfortable if he took my nose.

I opened the door just in time to see Elias raising his hand to knock. His sudden appearance was so unexpected, I about jumped out of my skin.

“Elias!” I gasped.

“Izzy. I take it I caught you at a bad time.”

“I was just on my way to work,” I explained, a little flustered.

I hadn’t seen or heard from Elias since the town meeting so he was about the last person I’d expect to show up at my front door at eight in the morning.

“Sorry.” He grinned. “I didn’t have your phone number, or I would have called.”

“Is this a personal visit, or business?” I asked, not sure which one I was hoping for.

“Both. I was getting fuel this morning and heard one of the deputies talking about what happened to you last night. I was worried about you.”

Knowing that he was actually worried for me made me feel a little giddy inside. “Thanks, but it was just a threat.” I figured I shouldn’t actually mention that the threat included a body part.

“Any word on Catherine Emmons?” he asked.

He’d lost me, which was evident by my blank stare.

“The girl who went missing last night.”

“Oh … the missing cheerleader?”

Elias nodded.

“I didn’t think people in Roseland got our news so fast?”

“It was on the evening news,” he pointed out. “And Catherine’s mother lives in Roseland.”

“Oh … I see,” I said, though I really didn’t. I’d never heard of someone in Storm Cove actually being related to anyone from Roseland. Like Elias, the other people of Roseland were werewolves. The Roseland pack and the Storm Cove pack didn’t get along too well, though for as long as I could remember, there had been an uneasy truce between the two.

Since the missing girl had a father in Storm Cove, and a mother in Roseland, her parents must have had one of those forbidden romances.

Oh well. It was eight in the morning and I was in the middle of a murder investigation. This was one subject I was going to have to leave to my imagination.

“No … nothing yet,” I told him, figuring it was best not to let him in on Ayden’s theory being that the nose in the box probably belonged to Catherine.

Placing one hand on the doorjamb, he leaned into me and kissed my forehead. He was so close, I could actually feel the heat radiating from his body. Right away, I felt the burning spread through me.

“What do you say about lunch today?” he asked, a casual smile lighting up his handsome face.

Elias was an ex boyfriend, recent lover, and an all around hot guy. There was no doubt he had a way of making my heart do somersaults, but he’d made it clear that his pack came first. It was more than just the fact that he was the alpha of his pack, he was also a member of the Knights of the Eclipse, a secret order whose sole purpose was to assassinate supernatural creatures that had gotten out of control. The Roseland Pack had come to Mystique Island to watch over the Marsh Estate, and the banished Captain Beaufort.

Elias might have been okay with casual sex, but me, not so much.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Things are getting crazy around here. There’s no telling where I’ll be at lunch.”

“Izzy,” he sighed. “When are you going to stop being mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you … I’m just busy.” It was only half a lie.

“Well I’ll be at the Bayside Grill about noon, if you decide you want to chat. I actually do have some business to talk with you about.”

“Okay.” I gave him a vague smile.

Brushing my cheek with another kiss, he left. When he’d pulled his truck away from the front of my house, I noticed that the deputy was still parked across the street. It was a bit strange that he hadn’t bothered to see who was visiting my house.

Getting into Lady Luck, I backed out of the driveway and hit my horn. The deputy’s head popped up.

The sucker had been sleeping on the job. A lot of good having a cop outside my house was going to do. If Elias had been our perp, I would have probably been meat by now.

I hadn’t gone half a mile when my phone rang.

“Hello.’

“You will want to get down here to Founder’s Park. We found Catherine,” Tim informed me in a grim voice.

“Okay. I was on my way to the office, but I’ll turn it around and head that way.”

I had no more than ended the call when the phone rang again. Since getting ran over by that truck, one of my rules of survival was never to look at my phone while I was driving or walking.

Most of the time it wasn’t a problem, but today, someone seemed to be going out of their way to make sure I was on the phone while driving.

“Hello,” I sang out, after putting it on speaker.

“Hello dear. I heard what happened last night and was worried.” Granny Stella was doing her best to sound cheerful, but I could tell something was wrong.

“It’s not that big a deal. Whoever this perp is, he apparently forgot to check in with the Grim Reaper to find out if I was actually available to kill. What’s wrong Granny?”

“Well I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but after Miss Jones, down at the produce stand mentioned your problem last night … I thought I should bring it up.”

Did the entire town know about the body part delivery already?

“What’s that Granny?”

“Well I saw a death beetle the other day.”

Parking in front of Founder’s Park, I killed Lady Luck’s engine.

“That’s not surprising. There has been a lot of murdering going around lately,” I said, after picking up my phone.

“Well I know, but this one was in your old room, so it kind of has me a little worried.”

“Don’t worry Granny. I don’t think the man upstairs is going to let me out of my penance just yet.”

True, Julius had mentioned the fact that I might be called back to the other side soon, but I had my doubts it would be in the middle of a homicide investigation. Then again, you could never know for sure.

“Well okay,” Granny mumbled, just don’t forget to check in once in a while.”

“Got it. I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you later.”

The park was crawling with police cars. This was getting to be quite a familiar sight on the island. The M.E team appeared to be centered around the park bench.

Getting out of Lady Luck, I maneuvered my way through the crowd to the bench. The old sea captain was still sitting there, staring off into space. Next to him, or more correctly half on him, was the body of a girl.

Tim was several feet away, interviewing an elderly woman.

“What do you have?” I asked Myron.

“More of the same, just extra mutilation this time. Her nose is gone, and it appears that her heart is missing, as well as her female organs. Look at her face,” he pointed.

There were cuts on her eyelids and mouth.

“Yuk!” My face twisted into a sour expression.

Tim made his way to my side. “Looks like she is probably the missing girl, but we’ll have to wait for a positive ID. Mrs Reynolds saw her as she was taking a shortcut through the park this morning.”

Mrs Reynolds being the old lady Tim had been interviewing.

“Time of death estimate yet?” I asked.

“Early evening,” Myron spoke up.

Using my head to shield my eyes from the sun, I scanned the crowd, looking for anyone that seemed out of place. “That means he has changed his MO a little. He killed the others on the spot.”

Nodding, Tim stuck his notebook back in his pocket. “He took this one somewhere that would have allowed him to have some extra time with her.”

“Let’s start interviewing people in the crowd,” I suggested. “There’s a good chance the killer is here.”

* *  *

Two hours later and not a lot wiser, we completed our interviews.

Glancing at the clock tower that rose above Founder’s Park, I saw that it was almost lunch. Elias would be waiting for me at the Bayside Grill.

The lunch invitation was something that had been at the back of my mind all morning. I wanted to see and talk to him again, but I didn’t want him digging at my emotions. That’s the last thing I needed.

But he did indicate that it wasn’t all personal. He had something to talk with me about.

Giving into pesky curiosity, I crossed the street and strolled down the sidewalk toward the Bayside Grill.

Elias’s truck was already in the parking lot. Whatever he wanted to talk with me about, he was definitely serious.

He was waiting for me in a corner booth and had already taken the liberty of ordering me a cup of coffee and a hamburger.

“How could you be so sure I would come?” I asked, sliding onto the bench seat opposite of him.

When he shrugged his wide shoulders, I couldn’t help but remember how it had felt to place my hands against those shoulders, while he did incredible things to my body.

“I figured if you didn’t show up. I could always eat your lunch.”

“That’s sweet.” I smiled. “So you mean there was no … soul connection that told you I would show up today?”

A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I didn’t say that.”

After adding some cream to my coffee, I took a few swallows. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“The Marsh place.”

I should have known it would have something to do with that old vampire. After all, that was the entire reason his people were on the island to begin with.

“What about it?” I asked, a sour note in my voice.

“Do you know how stupid it is to let them open a resort there?”

It was my turn to shrug. “It isn’t like I can do anything about it.”

“Maybe not, but the least you can do is stay away from there yourself. I heard you were spotted there recently.”

“For work,” I pointed out. “We had to go there and question Dupree and the business manager.”

Giving me a wry smile, he shook his head. “Dupree is actually better known as Captain Beaufort. Somehow he escaped his confinement during that charade he orchestrated. You have to understand Izzy … he is very dangerous and very powerful.”

My mouth fell open. “You’re kidding. So all that was for nothing and he got out anyway.”

Elias nodded. “Now we really have our job cut out for us. Keeping an eye on him isn’t going to be easy. We can’t get near that place without him sensing us.”

“Do you think he is responsible for these murders? Whoever it is, we are sure the perp is a vampire.”

“I don’t know. It could be, but it seems a little messy for someone like Beaufort, or Dupree, whatever he wants to call himself. From the stories I’ve heard, he is a little more elegant than what we are seeing with these murders.”

I smiled. “Yes … I got that impression. Really, for being a dead guy, he was kind of charming.”

Elias scowled. “You need to stay away from him. He has a reputation for playing with his food, literally.”

I didn’t doubt it for a minute, but I wasn’t going to let onto Elias that I was already aware of Dupree’s dangerous nature.

“So that’s why you wanted me to have lunch … so you could warn me about Dupree being dangerous?”

“Mostly,” he admitted.

“By the way. We found your missing girl … dead.”

The expression on his face turned even darker. “That means the killer is not involved with any of the wolves for sure. Neither pack would have killed her.”

“Like I said, we believe it to be a vampire.”

“But there are only a couple vampires on the island … and they are both at the Haven Resort.” He pointed out.

“And you have your doubts that either one of them is the killer,” I added for him.

He nodded. “It’s just not their style.”

Again, I agreed with him but kept silent. There had to be another vampire on the island, and he or she was hiding in plain sight.

“I have a question.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I was under the impression that vampires couldn’t be in sunlight, and I know Marty Morrison can’t. How is it that Dupree and his business manager are able to?”

“That is one of the reasons he is so dangerous. He is one of the few vampires out there that have managed to harness the power of witchcraft. It is magic, though I can’t be sure if he is the witch, or he has one under his control.”

“So that means that our killer might have the same power. That’s scary. He could be anyone.” I shuddered.