Under Suspicion

Chapter Seven

We must have looked like a motley crew walking out of the police station and down the street toward the diner: me, flaming red hair, white puffy ski jacket, and my business-on-a-budget suit; Will, looking like a cross between an Abercrombie model and David Beckam’s long-lost brother; Kale, her mod teen-hates-world black-and-deep-purple ensemble thrown off by her puppy-in-love grin; and Vlad, stern-faced, slicked hair, and dressed like a Dracula reject—sans cape, though, thank God. But this being San Francisco, and veil or not, no one batted an eye as we angled our way through the secretaries in business suits and sneakers, through the kids in baggy jeans and backpacks loping around, and all the way to the Fog City Diner—aptly named as we all huddled against the frigid city summer.

I breathed deeply in the warm restaurant. My stomach rumbled as a plate of meat loaf and mashed potatoes whizzed by.

“Okay,” Will said, once we were seated, “where do we start? Do we know what we’re dealing with?”

I put my menu down. “Wow! You must really be into this case. Usually, Alex can’t open a file without a three-course meal.”

Something flashed in Will’s hazel eyes and he studied the menu hard until the waitress showed up. I could see the hint of amusement playing on her matte red lips. She welcomed us, refilled our water glasses, and told us her name was Shirley. “What can I get you all?”

I quickly scanned the menu and ordered a chef’s salad, with dressing on the side, and no bread; Will went for a double bacon cheeseburger, with whiskey barbecue sauce, and fries.

I smacked my menu shut. “Actually, I’ll have that, instead.”

Will eyed me with a wide grin. “I love a woman who can eat.”

“And for the lovebirds?” Shirley grinned at Vlad—stiff, and as close to the end of the booth as possible—and Kale, snuggling up to her un-snuggable undead beau.

“Nothing for me,” Vlad said, his eyes settling on Shirley. “But thank you.”

Shirley’s eyes slowly widened, her mouth hanging slack. “Anything,” she murmured.

“Vlad,” I hissed. “No glamours!”

Vlad looked at me and rolled his eyes. Shirley sucked in a deep breath, looking as though she had just awakened with a start. “Nothing for the gentleman, and you?” Her eyebrows rose expectantly.

Kale looked from Shirley to Vlad, then back again. “Clam chowder in a bread bowl.”

Shirley scurried away and Kale turned to Vlad; her cheeks were flushed, fire raging in her eyes. She looked a bit like Drew Barrymore in that old movie Firestarter—right at the point where whole buildings went up in flames. I nudged a glass of water across the table toward Kale, and I reveled in the fact that off duty or not, Will played a San Francisco fireman in real life.

“You were totally flirting with her,” Kale said, eyes narrowed at Vlad.

Vlad shrugged. “She looked delicious.” He licked his lips. “You can’t blame me, baby, I’m a vampire.”

I wondered quickly whether it was too late to change my order to Pepto-Bismol and soda water.

“Guys! We’re here to work on Mrs. Henderson’s and Bettina’s cases.”

Kale picked at her fingernail. “Bettina didn’t look like anything was wrong with her this morning. And what’s up with Mrs. Henderson?”

I opened and closed my mouth dumbly. “Didn’t you hear?”

A sudden spark of interest crossed over Vlad’s porcelain features. “Hear what?”

I leaned in and lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. “Mrs. Henderson is dead. Didn’t Dixon say anything?”

Kale’s eyes were wide. Her hand subconsciously went for Vlad’s sleeve. She pinched his shirt fabric between thumb and finger, rubbing like a child rubs a blanket for comfort. “What happened?”

I swallowed hard and looked at Will. He gave me a tiny, nearly imperceptible nod. “She was murdered.”

“How do you know that?”

I pulled a lock of hair and wound it tightly against my index finger. “I went over there yesterday. No one answered the door. I went in, saw what looked like a disaster, and called Alex.”

“Oh my God!” Kale’s eyes were wide. “She’s dead?”

I felt a lump forming in my throat and I coughed. “There was blood everywhere. It was awful. I told Dixon, and he said he would take care of it.”

Vlad stiffened. “Then he must be taking care of it.”

“But no one knows about it. And the centaur and now Bettina? No one knows that they should be on the alert.”

Kale leaned in, brows raised, the pale blond hair on her arms standing on end. “For what? For whom?”

I bit my lip. “We don’t know, exactly. Vlad, you’re one of Dixon’s right-hand men now. Have you heard anything? Did he call a meeting? Was he writing anything up or checking with the police?”

Vlad shrugged. “Not that I saw. But if Dixon said he was going to handle it, I’m sure he will.”

I’m sure he would if the victim was a vampire, a tiny voice at the back of my skull nagged. “Let’s just take a look at the files, please. Kale?”

Kale handled over her precious stack and nudged against Vlad.

“That’s kind of scary,” I heard her whisper to Vlad. “I don’t know anyone—like us—who has ever died.”

Vlad just shrugged, his brooding countenance unchanged. “Things die,” he finally muttered, before huddling over his paper place mat with a black pen and doodling dark and broody things on it.

Kale alternately looked frightened and lovestruck, one hand kneading the palm of the other.

“Okay, Mrs. Henderson.” Will read from the manila folder he was holding. “Filed under ‘other.’”

“Yeah,” I clarified, “we don’t have a lot of dragon clients.”

Will raised his eyebrows. “A dragon? You don’t say.” He studied the stack of pages that flopped out of her folder. “According to this, the bird was punctual. Never missed an appointment.”

“Until last week.” I nodded solemnly. “And now we know why.”

Kale inched closer to Vlad. Her hands circled his bicep in a move that was part predatory, part fearful.

“Kale, you hadn’t heard anything from her?” I asked. “Before this? Or maybe from the kids or husband?”

Kale’s oblivious expression remained unchanged at my question.

“Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” Vlad asked, looking up from the doodle on his place mat.

Will snorted and turned over his coffee mug as the waitress flitted by. “You are being watched, gov.”

Crimson washed over Kale’s cheeks and she lowered her eyes, focusing intently on peeling a stripe of silver nail polish from her thumb.

“I don’t mean from in here,” Vlad said. “From out there.” He inclined his dark head toward the big picture window as the fog thickened outside. “I’ve felt it since we went outside. Don’t you feel it?”

“Don’t you have super vampire sense or something?” Will asked.

“Don’t you have a fire to put out?”

“Touché.”

Vlad looked out the window again, and my eyes went to where he was looking. I watched cars speed through the intersection and the same group of businesspeople on their lunch break that I usually did, but gooseflesh now pricked out over my arms. I glanced over my shoulder. Though it was noon, the sky was streaked an ominous gray; the sun was choked out by ribbons of fog. People bustled by outside, looking straightforward, avoiding each other’s gazes; the stores went about their business, with neon signs flashing, doors opening and closing.

Vlad gestured with his chin at my bare arms. “You feel it, too, huh?”

“I do now,” I said, with a shudder.

Will picked up the next file and caught my eye. “Shall we?”

Vlad cleared his throat and sat bolt upright; his fingers were laced and sitting in front of him. He looked startlingly Dixonesque.

“So,” Vlad said, “the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement is concerned that whatever is happening to these demons could soon be happening to our brethren. If it hasn’t already happened.”

“Me too,” Kale piped in. “Except about witches, too.”

“Ten minutes ago you didn’t believe anything was wrong with anyone.”

Kale swallowed hard. “That’s before we knew that anyone was dead.”

Kale’s plain statement struck ice at the base of my spine. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with.”

Vlad looked hard at me. “If we’re dealing with anything at all.” He shrugged while I gaped. “If Dixon had the Investigations team out, and didn’t say anything to the staff, then maybe they didn’t find anything.”

I opened my mouth to interject, but Vlad held up a silencing hand. “We live in a big city, in a weak economic climate. Mrs. Henderson could have walked in on a burglary.”

Will looked impressed. “She’s a dragon, right? That’s one ballsy burglar.”

“Weren’t you just very concerned about how this might affect your ascot-wearing buddies?”

Vlad shrugged, picked up the next file and flipped through the pages casually. “From her description, it looks like Bettina was mugged.”

“Would a mugger say he was out to eradicate her kind?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

“People do all sorts of crazy things for all sorts of crazy reasons, Sophie.” Vlad grinned, fangs glowing white. “This is San Francisco. Last week Santa Claus was being walked by a dominatrix through the Mission. It wasn’t even Christmas.”

Will blanched and I knocked on the table. “Can we focus, please? We have a series of strange happenings that may or may not be combined. Demons who never miss appointments are missing appointments. Mrs. Henderson”—I shuddered—“murdered, and Bettina reporting an attack.”

Will looked at me.

“I think all of these things seem a little too coincidental to be, you know, coincidence, don’t you think?”

Kale nodded. Her large eyes let me know that she agreed with me.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“I didn’t jump. I answered the phone. I got out of my car at the Henderson house. Lo and behold, there conclusions were. There is a full-blown Underworld attacker loose in San Francisco,” I said definitively.

“As long as you’re not going overboard.” Vlad sighed.

“Four events. Four!” I held up my hand, wiggling four fingers. “All within a few days of each other? This is bad.”

Shirley came back with our food and we stopped talking, suddenly trying to look casual in that completely suspicious way. She angled an eyebrow at us. “Can I get y’all anything else?”

I pressed my lips together and forced a smile, though my stomach quivered nervously. “No, no, I think we’re okay.”

The second she left, Vlad swung toward me and Will. “So there is no evidence that any vampires are in danger?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that we’ve seen so far, especially if these are all the files.”

Will’s eyes flashed and I sucked in a hard breath. “Well,” I started, “someone did try to stake me.”

“Stake you?” Vald’s eyebrows went up.

I made the universal stabbing/staking motion and Vlad grinned. “Then it’s official,” he said, “this guy has no idea what a vampire looks like.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Well,” Vlad said, puffing out his damask vest,

“please keep me abreast of the situation, particularly should something change.”

He gave each of us small, curt nods and slipped out of the booth.

“You know, I should probably get back to work, too,” Kale said, trying to scurry out behind him.

“Aren’t these files your responsibility?” I asked.

Kale waved me off with a flick of her hand. “I trust you to get them back.” She popped up onto her tiptoes to look over my head and I craned my neck to follow her gaze. Through the plate glass window I could see Vlad was already on the sidewalk, pulling up the collar of his trench coat against the light drizzle that had started. I looked at Kale’s flimsy, short-sleeved T-shirt.

“You’re going to get soaked to the bone. Take this.” I handed her my white puffy jacket and she slipped it on, the collar swallowing her mass of dark hair.

“Looks cute on you,” I said, smiling. “But you can’t keep it.”

Kale grinned and turned on her heel. “Thanks!”

“Such a nice work ethic with kids nowadays,” Will said ruefully. “Send them out to protect something with their lives and ...” He shrugged, cocking a boyish looking half smile.

“I think the only thing she was protecting was—”

The screeching of tires just outside the glass cut off my sentence. Will mumbled something to me, but his words were lost in the booming crush of metal and shrieks of people on the sidewalk.

“A girl’s been hit,” someone yelled from a booth behind us. “Somebody call 911!”

The few bites of lunch I had eaten sat in my stomach like stones. I wanted to get up and look, wanted to turn my head to glance out the plate glass window, but my whole body had gone statue-stiff. My every bone was feeling leaden. When I tried to speak, I realized my mouth was papery and dry. “Do you think ... ?” was all I managed to get out before I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. “Do you think-think ... ?” I tried to start again, but another sob choked my words. They settled in the back of my throat like a solid lump. I tried to swallow, tried to steady myself, tried to get myself to move.

“The guy took off!” I heard someone yell.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Will seemed to leap over the table. He gripped my arm and pulled me with him out the double doors. I think I heard him yell, “Stand back!” and “I’m an EMT!” but I felt like I had cotton in my ears—everything sounded muffled and strange.

I know I felt the cement scuffle underneath my shoes, once we made it outside. I know I felt the sting of the cold air on my exposed skin, felt chilled drops of water prick my scalp and dribble down the back of my bare neck.

“Did anyone see who it was?” a stout man in a shin-length trench coat asked the crowd.

“Does anyone know what happened?”

I looked around blankly. The slow movement, the muffled sounds—I was observing a dream. This couldn’t be right.

And then I saw Kale’s shoe. It was wedged under the tire of a parked car. My heart sped up and I sucked in gusts of cold air.

He missed her! I thought. She must have lost her shoe when she jumped out of the way! I felt a cold mist of sweat, felt the painful thud of my heart against my ribs. She’s okay.

I pulled the shoe out and ran into the middle of the street to where a crowd had gathered.

“Will, Will, she’s okay!” My mouth must have stopped in midspeech because I felt a cold lick of wind whip across my teeth.

“Kale?”

Will looked over his shoulder at me and I could see his hands. He had two fingers pressed against Kale’s lovely pale neck. Her dangly purple-stoned earring was laid daintily across her cheek; it flopped out of sight when her head lolled toward the cement, listless. Her eyes were mostly closed; the heavy mascara on her lashes made a shadowed spiderwebbed pattern on her apple cheeks.

But it couldn’t have been Kale.

Kale ran away and left her shoe. She left her shoe. I had it in my hand.

I had it in my hand.

In agonizing slow motion, I felt the shoe slip from my fingertips and heard the sound of it thudding on the ground; it was a weird, hollow echo. The rest of the world dropped into silence. Kale’s eyelids fluttered but did not open. Will eyed me and I could see that his lips were pale and pressed together; his fire chief badge winked in the few shards of sunlight that pierced the gray, pregnant clouds. There was a smudge halfway up Will’s right arm and I felt my stomach lurch.

It was blood.

Will pointed to me and I saw his lips moving, but I don’t think there were any words. The rain started up again in a slow drizzle; I watched as people milled about, losing interest in the scene. They turned up their coat collars and clicked their umbrellas open. An ambulance wailed. There were fingertips on my arms and someone was pulling me backward. I stumbled over my feet, bit down hard on my lower lip but allowed myself to be led.

“She’s okay,” I heard myself mumble, finally able to work my mouth. “She’s okay, but she lost her shoe.”

I don’t know how I ended up on the sidewalk, but I sat down hard on the cement. The cold, wet reality struck me and suddenly everything was loud and chaotic—the ambulance shot down the street, sirens wailing, flanked by police cars with bright lights that tore through the gray fog. People were talking; someone was crying; seabirds were squawking. Will was kneeling in front of me and I felt the warmth of his hand on my shoulder, his fingertips squeezing me gently.

“Sophie, Sophie,” he was saying.

I blinked, finally registering the concern in his wide hazel eyes.

“Is she going to be okay?”

Will nodded slowly, a wet, sandy-colored lock of hair flopping over his forehead. “She’ll survive, but she’s going to be pretty banged up.”

My heart started to thud again. The blood began to course through my veins again, and I felt a fist of anger burning low in my belly. I sprang up, fists clenched. “Who was it?”

“Who was what?” Will wanted to know.

“Who hit Kale? Did the police take him? Did they get his car?”

Will laid a tender hand on my shoulder and I winced when I saw his eyes cloud—a sure sign that something was coming that he didn’t want to say—and it was likely something I didn’t want to know.

“He took off, love.”

“Took off? He took off?”

“Bloke didn’t even stop.”

I felt the torrent of tears again, but this time they were bitter, angry. “He didn’t even stop?” It was a whisper and I felt my lower lip quiver pitifully. “How could someone do that?”

Will guided me back into the diner and into our booth. I slid in and stared down at my burger and fries, the grease from the patty congealing in a slick brown pool. I slid my plate aside and took a large gulp of ice water. “Who the hell would hit someone and just drive away? He had to know—he had to know that he hit”—I could barely form the word—“her.”

“Unfortunately, hit and runs are really common in this city. Pedestrians are walking into the street—”

“You’re blaming Kale?” I was incredulous.

“No!” Will held out his palm, stop sign style. “No. The only person I blame is the idiot who hit her.”

Will started pulling dollars bills from his billfold.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “God, I need to get out of here.”

“Do you want me to walk you back to work?”

I swung my head, trying my best to clear the hum of thoughts fogging my mind. “No. I want you to take me to the hospital. We have to make sure she’s going to be okay.”

Will sucked in a breath. “Okay. Let’s go.”