Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (120 page)

Despite myself, I laughed, and shortly, Tammy started giggling. I reached out and tickled her and she laughed even harder, and as we both laughed I saw a pair of headlights appear in the parking lot, then another and another. Three cop cars closed in, with Sherbet in the lead.

I looked at Tammy. “Sweetie, someday we need to talk about something very important.”

“
I know, Mommy.”

I opened my mouth to speak but stopped. I tried again, changing directions. “You know what, baby?”

“About you.”

“
You know
what
about me?”

“
You’re special, Mommy.”

“
Special how?”

She smiled sweetly and said, “You know, Mommy.”

As Sherbet appeared, looking red-faced and relieved, I thought of Lady Tamtam and her supernatural powers. The mother who could fly. The mother who fought crime. The mother who shot lasers from her eyes.

Still, two out of three weren’t bad.

Chapter Nineteen

Russell Baker and I were at a Starbucks in Fullerton.

It was the same Starbucks where I’d met the very creepy Robert Mason, one-time soap opera star, one-time owner of the Fullerton Playhouse, who was now a full-time resident of a jail cell.

My time here with Russell Baker was decidedly more pleasant.

The young boxer was wearing a loose tank top and shorts. He had just finished working out with Jacky. Jacky wasn’t his official trainer, but, like many young boxers, they sought his help and considered it an honor to work with the legendary Irishman.

More importantly, Russell looked good in a tank top. I suspected he would look good in just about anything. Of course, being in shape and looking good was expected from a professional boxer. Still, professional or not, sitting across from me was a very breathtaking man. Even for someone who doesn’t need much breath.

I said, “I spoke with Dr. Sculler in Las Vegas.”

“The medical examiner,” said Russell, sounding very un-boxer-like. He had a quick mind. I only hoped it wouldn’t be beaten out of him by the end of his career.

“
Right,” I said. “The official cause of death is epidural hematoma.”

“
I know,” he said. “I’ve read the report. A dozen or so times.”

Russell was sipping from a bottle of water. Who goes to a Starbucks and orders a bottle of water? Then again, I looked down at my own bottle of water. Well, boxers in training and vampires, apparently. I wondered if we just might be the first two people in the history of Starbucks to only order two bottles of water.

Big picture, Sam.

I continued, “I’ll admit it. I thought I was going to come back here and tell you that you don’t have a case.”

He glanced up at me, blinking. He cocked his head a little. “You
thought
? What does that mean?”

“
It means that it’s Dr. Sculler’s
un
official opinion that you could not have caused the kind of brain damage he saw in the autopsy.”

Russell sat up. I knew that this was the kind of news he was praying for. “I...” he paused, gathering his thoughts. “I don’t understand.”

“Officially, based on probable evidence, Caesar was killed in the ring. After all, he collapsed in front of the world.”

Russell nodded.

I went on, “But Dr. Sculler didn’t see enough evidence, based on what he saw of the fight, to warrant the scope of damage he saw in Caesar’s brain tissue.”

“
Then why had he reported that it had?”

“
Caesar was a boxer. He died of a brain hemorrhage. It’s a slam-dunk case for everyone involved. The evidence is obvious. Unless—”

“
Unless you look deeper,” he finished.

Interesting. That was exactly how I was going to finish the sentence. I wondered again if I was somehow opening myself up to other people. How I was doing that, I didn’t know, but I made a mental note to learn to stop it. At any rate, Russell seemed oblivious to the fact that he might have gotten a sneak peek into my thoughts. Into the mind of a vampire. Maybe his oblivion was a good thing.

“Right,” I said. “Dr. Sculler also let it be known that he was by no means an expert in boxing-related brain trauma and could not, therefore, give me a true expert’s opinion.”

“
So, a non-expert declared that Caesar’s death was boxing related?”

“
That’s about the extent of it.”

“
Man, that shit ain’t right.” He turned away, swearing under his breath. He looked back at me. “I didn’t kill him, Sam. Caesar and I were amateurs together. We practiced a few times, sparred together in the early days. That guy could take a punch. That last fight...we were only feeling each other out. I landed maybe one solid punch. One. And even that wasn’t my best shot. Caesar could take dozens of those, maybe more.”

And that was the crux. How much could one man take before his brain finally gave? How much was too much before a guy collapsed in the ring, dead?

“There’s one other thing worth pointing out,” I said. “The doctor does not dispute that Caesar suffered an injury that could cause death.”

“
Just that he didn’t think I caused it in the ring.”

“
Right,” I said.

“
So, if I didn’t hit him hard enough to kill him...”

“
Then someone else did.”

Chapter Twenty

I was on my way to L.A.

With me was a list of names provided by Russell Baker. On the list were three names: Caesar Marquez’s trainer, cut-man and manager, all three of which would have been in Caesar’s locker room prior to the fight. And
prior
was key here.

After all, something had happened to Caesar before the fight, something that had directly led to his death. What it was remained to be seen.

As I followed behind an endless sea of red brake lights, my cell rang for perhaps the dozenth time that day. And for the dozenth time that day, I saw that it was Kingsley Fulcrum. This time, as the phone rang, a text message appeared. Virtually simultaneously. I guess the big oaf could multi-task.

The text message read:
Sam, please pick up.

I thought about ignoring him again, until I realized the hairy bastard would just keep calling me...and since I wasn’t in any kind of mood to see him face to face, I thought I might as well hear what he had to say.

The phone rang again and, when it was about to go to voicemail, I picked up.

“
It’s your dime,” I said flippantly.

“
Oh, Sam! I was just about to hang up.”

“
That was valuable information to have. Thank you for sharing.”

“
Don’t be this way, Sam.”

“
What way?” I asked. “Hurt? Betrayed? How would you suggest I be instead, Kingsley? Ecstatic that a man I was falling in love with fucked another woman?”

“
Sam, we need to talk.”

“
Then talk.”

“
Not like this. Not over the phone.”

“
Perhaps in your bed where you fucked her?”

“
Sam...”

I waited. I had broken out in a sweat. Many of my human functions had stopped altogether, but sweating was not one of them. I sweated with the best of them, especially in a warm minivan on a long drive to L.A., and dealing with
this
.

Again.

I shook my head, swearing silently. Kingsley and I had been dating over eight months now. I had just started feeling the love again. Had just started letting him in, had just started getting over the pain of my cheating ex.

“
Sam,” he tried again. “How did you know?”

“
Does it matter?”

He must have thought hard about that because he paused good and long. “No. I guess not.”

But I knew it was eating at him. Good.

We were silent some more. Traffic on the 5 Freeway was sick. It was midday and I had already made plans for Mary Lou to pick up the kids. I had made special plans to be with Tammy tonight. So had Mary Lou. We were going to have a girl’s night out, so to speak. No boys allowed.

“Who was she?” I asked.

“
I don’t honestly know.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
She just...appeared in the office. Wanted to make an appointment. Flirted with me endlessly. Caught me as I was leaving work for the day. Walked with me out to my car. Laughed at everything I said. Touched me, asked me questions. Then asked if I wanted to get a drink with her.”

“
And you said yes.”

“
Yes,” said Kingsley. “I did.”

“
You didn’t have to say yes.”

“
I know, Sam.”

“
But you did.”

“
Yes.”

“
Why?”

There was a lot of silence on his end. I could hear him breathing, each breath pouring over the receiver as if he were in a sporadic windstorm.

“I don’t know why, Sam.”

“
Yes you do. Why?”

“
She gave me a lot of attention.”

“
Lots of women give you attention.”

“
She was different.”

“
Prettier.”

“
Yeah, maybe.”

“
Prettier than me.”

“
I didn’t say that.”

“
You didn’t have to. So at what point did you fuck her?”

“
Sam, how do you know this? Did you plant her?”

And that’s when I hung up on him, nearly crushing my cell phone in the process. He cheats on me...and turns it around? The fucker. The piece of shit.

And as I drove into the afternoon sun, feeling eternally exhausted and too hurt for tears, I realized that Kingsley had been partially right.

He
had
been set up. Just not by me.

Chapter Twenty-one

Caesar Marquez was trained by his brother at the family gym in downtown Los Angeles, which is where I found myself now.

His brother’s name was Romero and he and I were walking through the gym together. The gym was not unlike Jacky’s gym in Fullerton. The difference, though, was that Jacky catered to teaching women to defend themselves. The Marquez Gym catered to extremely muscular young men who seemed to take delight in punching the crap out of each other.

“
We’ve produced eleven number-one fighters,” said Romero. Sounding remarkably like Jacky, he paused to tell a young Hispanic kid, who was working a heavy bag, to keep his gloves up. I thought trainers everywhere were entirely too concerned about gloves being up. Then again, what did I know?

I said, “Must be good for business.”

He nodded and we continued on, weaving slowly through the gym. I was, I noted, the only female here. Once or twice I spotted a set of eyes watching me, but mostly, the young fighters kept their heads down and their gloves up.

As we circled a ring where a black guy and a white guy, both wearing head gear, were trading jabs, Romero said, “Caesar would have been the twelfth.”

I said, “I’m sorry to hear about Caesar.”

Romero nodded again and we watched the two fighters above us. Both fighters were slugging it out. Fists flew, sweat slung. Some of the sweat landed on my forearm.
Eew.

“
My family,” began Romero, as I discreetly wiped the sweat off on my jeans, “are all fighters. I was good, but it turns out, I’m a better trainer than a fighter. Caesar, well, he was something else. He was on his way up. Moving fast, too. He was already ranked in the top ten in his weight class. Top ten and moving up.”

“
How many brothers do you have?”

“
Three living, now one dead.”

I blinked, astonished. “There were five of you?”

“Yes. Four now. All boxers. Caesar was the youngest and probably the best. Our father started things off by boxing in a few amateur fights back in the day. He was okay but didn’t love it enough to pursue it. My oldest brother, Eduard, loved it. Passionately. He was good. That’s him over there.” He pointed to a stockier version of himself, a guy who was maybe in his mid-forties and was working closely with a young black guy. They were practicing bobbing and weaving drills. I’d done a few of those with Jacky. “Anyway, his passion drove all of us. Especially Caesar.”