Skull Creek Stakeout (Caden Chronicles, The) (6 page)

“I wish I could, but …”

“It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

He winked. “If I hear anything from the oral surgeon, I’ll call. I have your number,” he said, thumping my business card against his knuckles.

“Thanks again for your time, Lieutenant.”

I worked my way back through the maze of cubicles in the gymnasium and out the front door. Standing on the front steps in the blinding white sunshine, I realized that nearly twenty-four hours earlier I’d been sitting in the Brown Derby
with my parents, trying to convince them to let me come to Transylvania. Now I stood neck deep in a murder investigation involving a vampire — or at least someone pretending to be a vampire — and I still did not have a solid lead on who had killed Forester and why.

On top of that, the one case I had solved might not even matter because some judge let the killer out on bail. Things definitely weren’t going my way. Just then my phone buzzed.

“Nick, oh my gosh, I can’t believe it. Something’s happened.”

The voice sounded on the edge of panic.

“Meg?” My mind went immediately to Aunt Vivian. “What is it?”

“When I got back from lunch I found the door to the morgue standing wide open and the fridge we use to store blood samples cleaned out! Nick, Forester’s body is gone! I think our dead vampire escaped!”

I
’m a pretty fast runner. I know my parents think all I do is lounge around and watch movies and videos on my computer, but during commercials I do push-ups. Twenty reps if it’s a long one. And at least three times a week I sprint a mile. Not the whole mile, obviously. I mean, that would kill me. But I leg it out pretty good. I have no idea what my time is, but I’m no slouch. I’ve watched too many cop shows where the fat detective can’t catch the bad guy … or escape from him, and I don’t want to be dead like the dude on TV.

Good thing, because as soon as I hung up from talking to Meg, I cut down an alleyway to get over to her street. I’d only
gone a few steps when I heard movement behind me. Whirling, I got my arm up just as someone clubbed me above the ear. The blow sent me sprawling face-first onto the pavement, and before I could fight back, a forearm clamped under my throat and wrenched my neck sideways in a choke hold.

“You think this is a game?” the voice hissed in my left ear. “You think this is one of your television cop shows? I could kill you now, but where is the fun in that?”

Oven-hot breath blew across my neck; fingernails clawed at my windpipe. I tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but squirming only caused the arm to clamp down tighter.

“You’re so smart, so clever with all your questions and poking around where you shouldn’t. Can you guess what comes next? No? Let me give you a hint.” The voice fell to a whisper. “The monster you seek feeds at dusk and preys on the flesh of young women.”

“Please, can’t … breathe.”

“Leave now while you still can.”

I clenched my left fist and brought it up over my shoulder as hard as I could, but the blow only thumped weakly off a muscled shoulder and fell away. The assailant struck back by slamming an elbow into my temple and planting my face into the pavement. As quickly as he’d pounced, he released me and darted back into the shadows, his dark, silky cape fluttering behind the dumpster. I balanced myself on knees and knuckles and, taking a final look behind me, sprinted from the alley like a runner coming out of the blocks.

I was still running, still checking to make sure I wasn’t being followed, when a front bumper clubbed me on the thigh and sent me somersaulting into the air. The impact bounced me off the windshield and over the roof. I landed in the street and heard tires screeching.

“He just came out of nowhere, ran right in front of my car.”

A middle-aged woman bent down, her face contorted with worry as she leaned over me. Next to her, a heavyset man in a blue work shirt knelt on one knee. I tried to sit up, but he put his hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t move, son. An ambulance is on the way.”

The man’s voice reverberated off the walls of my head, booming like a football stadium loudspeaker. The edges of my vision appeared too bright, and voices seemed loud and close.

I levered myself into a sitting position and brushed the man’s hand from my shoulder. I noticed I’d tomahawked skin off three knuckles. I wiped my hand across my jeans and got up, massaging my thigh.

“Hey, kid, you need to sit back down and wait for the ambulance.”

I wobbled back toward the alley, saw it was empty, and limped off toward Meg’s.

With each step the throbbing in my thigh lessened. The thing was, except for skinned knees and knuckles and a dull
ringing in my head, I really was okay. A split second before the car hit me, I’d jumped and turned the collision into an aerial flip, just like I’d done countless times before while snowboarding. Smacking the windshield and falling onto the pavement hadn’t hurt nearly as much as landing on packed snow after missing a half-pipe jump.

So yeah, other than almost getting flattened by a pickup and being mugged in the alley, I was fine.

Meg was still in her blue scrubs and green Crocs when I walked onto the front steps of her house.

“What happened to
you
?”

“Took a fall.”

“I’ll say. Sit while I get something for your hand. I can’t have you bleeding all over Mom’s porch.”

Meg returned moments later with a wad of paper towels. I could tell the missing corpse had left her shaken because when I asked if I could borrow her laptop to write a teaser for my
Cool Ghoul Gazette
article, she numbly agreed. While she went back inside to get bandages and antiseptic for my hand, I banged out a short piece with all the pertinent details, including the fact that our victim — the one with fangs, bite marks, and a gaping hole in his chest — had gone AWOL. I deliberately left out the business of the mugging, because I didn’t want my editor or Aunt Vivian to worry. And I especially didn’t want to alarm Meg.

I hit the send button and said to Meg, “Can’t believe you lost the body.”

“I didn’t lose it. Someone took it — that’s the only explanation.”

She pressed a bandage against my knuckles. Her hands felt soft and warm and I noticed she smelled like oranges. There was something oddly comforting about the way she dressed the wound, a special tenderness that made me think she didn’t really think I was as obnoxious as she’d said.

“You did lock up, right?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed, sending a wave of warm minty breath my direction.

“What do you think? Yes, I locked up, I’m sure of it.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if it turns out this was my fault.”

“Maybe the oral surgeon took the body,” I offered. “Or your boss had it shipped off for an autopsy.”

She pursed her lips and squeezed the bandage onto the last scrape.

“Sure, I thought about that. But why would someone take blood samples? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe Forester needed a snack.”

“That’s not funny.”

“You’re the one who said our vampire had escaped. I’m just going along with the story. Who else knows about this besides us?”

“I left a message on Dr. Edwards’s cell. He only works part-time at the morgue. His real job is keeping the books at a local car dealership. This is awful, just awful.”

“Maybe we should ask the lieutenant to put out a bolo. You know, a ‘be on the lookout’ for a walking corpse.”

“Really, you can stop with the jokes now.” Aunt Vivian pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

“Mercy me, we lost another one.”

“Forester isn’t lost,” Meg shot back. “It’s just that
I
don’t know where he is.”

“Oh? Did something happen to our victim?”

“I thought that’s what we were talking about,” Meg replied.

“Heavens no, child. I’m talking about my neighbor across the hall, Lila May. The retirement center likes for me to check in every couple of hours to make sure nothing’s happened. Like I can’t be trusted to spend a day with my great-nephew. But I suppose it’s understandable. We do seem to get lost a lot. Why, just last week we went to the mall and got lost coming home. Thought they’d never find us. Anyhow, I called to let them know I’d be gone the rest of the day, and they told me Lila May keeled over during that show,
One-Minute Makeup.
Bless her heart. One minute Lila May is watching a segment on belly-blasting supplements and the next she’s standing before her Maker.”

“Anything I can do?” I asked.

“Find a cure for aging.”

I winked at Meg and said, “You need to check with Barnabas Forester on that.”

Vertical lines creased Meg’s brow. “Sure, make fun, go on. This is all your fault.”

“My fault?”

“Yes. If you hadn’t insisted on seeing the body, none of this might have happened.”

“Look at you two. Squabbling like an old married couple.” Aunt Vivian eased over and looked down at my hand. “Goodness me, what happened?”

“It’s nothing.”

“He fell,” Meg said. “Probably because he was jumping to conclusions.”

“Now look who’s making a funny.”

“Aunt Vivian, please don’t mention this to anyone,” Meg said. “My mom helped me get that job at the morgue. If I mess up even a little, it could look bad on my college application.”

“Don’t worry, child. I lose things all the time. Why, last week I was in the checkout line at Ingles. I had two sympathy cards and a picture frame for one of the ladies on our wing. And when I went to pay, I couldn’t find my wallet. I emptied my purse on the counter trying to find it, which was embarrassing. But the kicker was when the woman behind me said, ‘Is that your wallet under your arm?’ ”

Pretending to peek under Meg’s elbow, I said, “Nope, Forester isn’t there.”

“Ha-ha,” Meg replied dryly. “You’re
sooooo
funny.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” said Aunt Vivian. “Let’s pray!”

“For a corpse?” I asked.

“For Meg. Let’s pray she doesn’t get in trouble with her boss.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Meg said. “I’m sure there is a logical
explanation for what happened to the body.” Meg manufactured a smile. “One that
doesn’t
involve a zombie-like body on the loose.”

But I wasn’t 100 percent sure. The scene in the alley still had me spooked, if not downright scared. Not that I would admit it. Mom is always after me to share my feelings, to “open up.” Why moms and girls
feel
it’s important for boys to talk about their raw emotions is as big a mystery as some of the murders I’ve watched on TV. Only thing I can figure is they’re wired differently. “Haywired” is what my buddy Tommy calls it.

I never see Dad act scared, even when I know he probably is. He gets mad, sure. And he’ll laugh at funny television commercials and some of the same movies I watch. That’s emotion, right? Mom and Wendy almost never laugh at the movies we watch. But let a sappy love story come on and it’s tissues and tears all over the place. Only time I ever saw Dad cry was when he watched that baseball movie
Field of Dreams.
I think he missed playing catch with his own dad.

So yeah, I was scared that someone popped me in the alley, but you know what? Boys my age are getting mugged and shot at all the time, so it’s not like what happened to me was anything special.

“Where are you going?” Meg asked me.

“To see the widow. Maybe she can tell me who would want her husband dead.”

L
ucy Forester lived in a bungalow tucked behind a hedge shaped like a dragon. The placard stuck into the ground informed me the bush was wintergreen boxwood. In fact, each plant, bush, and tree carried an identifying placard, all hand painted and tipped with calligraphy. The dragon’s open mouth and fangs formed one half of an archway, its spiked tail the other.

I followed the pebble walkway through a flower garden decorated with brightly colored ceramic gnomes peeping out from behind ferns. Pinwheels whirled with the breeze; flute music played through a speaker near a fountain. It occurred
to me that Lucy might be the inspiration behind the garden design at Dead Lines Books and, if so, may also be connected to the vampire slayer game.

As I started up the front steps, I heard yelling coming from around the side of the house. Moments later a man came backing toward me with his hands up. Chasing him across the yard was a woman wielding a garden hoe and wearing a yellow T-shirt under bib overalls.

“I’ll burn Randolph Manor down before selling to you!” she yelled at the man.

“Crazy broad, have you lost your mind?”

She swung the hoe, almost taking off his head. He stumbled backward, tripped over lawn ornaments, and went hurrying toward a black Escalade parked on the street.

“You’d better run!” she called after him.

Pausing by the driver’s door he yelled back, “Lady, you need help!”

The SUV sped away, and I wheeled back around and lifted my hands in a defensive posture.

“If you’re selling magazine subscriptions or with a church, keep walking.”

I moved sideways to put the water fountain between us. “Mind if I ask you a few questions about your husband’s death?”

“Oh geez. Not another one. Why won’t you people leave me alone?” She lowered the hoe, resting it on her shoulder. Cocking her head, she asked, “Aren’t you a little young to be a reporter?”

I told her about the
Cool Ghoul Gazette
and the sort of stories we ran.

“If you want to talk, we’ll have to do it while I work. I’m in the middle of a project.”

I followed Lucy Forester into the backyard and inside a cedar-plank work shed sitting in the corner of the lot. Empty portrait frames hung on faded gray walls; the smell of paint and cleaning solvents filled the air. Lucy Forester pushed a tabby cat off a three-legged stool and sat, hooking her toes over the bottom rung. Sprigs of blonde hair sprouted from beneath a pink ball cap. Her dimpled cheeks were tanned and smooth and flecked with paint speckles.

At a certain age boys start noticing things. I found myself staring at Forester’s widow and thinking:
She’s really, really pretty.

I leaned against the windowsill and hooked one foot over the other. “Who’s the man who just left?”

“Victor Hamilton. If you’re a reporter, I would think you’ve already interviewed him.”

“Hamilton owns the golf resort, right?”

“Not outright. He’s more like the managing partner with a substantial interest.”

She selected a brush and began moving slender fingers across the canvas of a partially painted landscape.

“I was going to interview him next,” I said.

“If you know about Barry’s purchase of the estate, then you also know why I would never sell the property to Hamilton. Not that it’s mine to sell. Living with Barry in that dreary little
house by the creek was one of the low points in my life. You cannot imagine how depressing it is to run a bed-and-breakfast with a man who loathes people. But our couple’s counselor said we needed to work through our differences and having a common goal and project would help. It did not.”

“What did you mean about the estate not being yours to sell?”

“You ever done mission work?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, sometimes for school I do community service, sure. It’s a graduation requirement now. Why?”

“It’s a cliché, people say it all the time, but it’s true. Seeing how the rest of the world lives really makes you appreciate where you’re from. Americans are spoiled and selfish, and most of us wouldn’t last a day living on what a child in Nicaragua lives on in a month. You want to learn to appreciate what you have, spend some time in La Chureca. That’s the city dump outside Managua. The ‘Churequeros’ make homes out of trash. Every day they search for scraps of plastic and glass to sell for money. That’s their only source of income. There is an elementary school located on the dump, but once kids graduate, most just stay in the dump, scrounging for scraps. Seeing the faces of children when they put on their first new pair of shoes and walk out of that dump into a new life — now that’s priceless.”

She tucked the tip of her tongue in the corner of her mouth and concentrated on the painting. For a few seconds I wasn’t sure if she had forgotten my question or not. Finally, she put the brush aside and studied me with intense blue eyes.

“Barry came from money, lots of it, and he insisted on a prenuptial agreement. He bought the Randolph estate with his money. Obviously, since we’d filed for divorce, he wasn’t going to leave me the estate. But even if the Randolph estate were mine, I’d never sell it to someone like Hamilton. Not after what he did to the other side of the mountain.”

“So you don’t inherit anything?”

“Not even life insurance. Barry didn’t believe in it.” She stopped and looked at me curiously. “I thought you told me you were writing an article for a vampire site.”

“The reporting job is just part of the reason I’m here. Solving murders is sort of a hobby of mine.”

“How cute, a boy your age catching killers.”

She picked up another brush and started in a different corner of the painting.

“I loved my husband. Put that in your story. I know people enjoy talking about things that aren’t any of their business, especially in this town, but the truth is Barry and I had a complicated relationship. One that led to some outlandish rumors.”

I wondered why she wasn’t more upset over her husband’s death. Even if they had filed for divorce, she must’ve loved him at some point. Was she so emotionally unattached she didn’t care anymore? And if so, did that make her a cold-blooded murderer? Or was she just putting up a wall for nosy people like me?

I said, “You don’t seem too upset about his death.”

“Everyone grieves in different ways. I paint.” She switched
to another brush and hitched herself closer to the easel. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I killed my husband?”

“Did you?”

“No. I was home that evening. In fact, I haven’t left the house all week except to walk down to the cooperative to get some fresh vegetables.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

She feigned surprise. “Oh my, do I need an alibi? Should I get a lawyer?” Her mocking smile caught me off guard. “Don’t worry, I’m just giving you a hard time. I’ve been through all this with the lieutenant. My car is in the shop, something to do with the catalytic converter. Been there all week. If they can get it fixed, I plan to sell it. Cars are killing the planet.” She stroked the tabby with her bare foot. “To answer your question, no, I was home alone with my cats the night Barry died. As I am most nights.”

“Any thoughts on the weird circumstances surrounding your husband’s death?”

“You mean why was he dressed like a vampire? I honestly have no idea. Barry suffered from a physical disorder called XP. That’s a disease that prevents him from spending time in the sun. XP is a recessive genetic disorder of DNA that prohibits the body from repairing skin damage caused by ultraviolet light. Those who have it are at a higher risk for developing melanoma.”

“Sort of like porphyria?” I could tell from her reaction she’d never heard of it. “It’s blood-related and leads to rapid skin
deterioration. It leaves the victim with a ghastly pallor and enlarged teeth due to gum damage. Any sunlight, even for a few minutes, causes the skin to blister and burn. Back before people knew better, they thought drinking blood could reverse its effects. It’s part of the mythology surrounding vampires and why they can’t be in the sun.”

“It wasn’t like Barry couldn’t be outside at all. Just between you and me, I think he liked it when people gossiped. But his physical problems were minor compared to the psychological ones.”

“Oh?”

“Barry and I were polar opposites. I’m a California beach girl; Barry grew up in upstate New York. I’m sure you noticed the arrangement of flora when you arrived. Blue sky and sunshine and being around other people: these are my channels of energy. Barry hated crowds. When I wasn’t home, he’d draw the blinds and sit in the dark.”

“Is that why you two split up?”

She readjusted the easel to catch more of the afternoon light coming through the rear window. The portrait was coming along fine — a violent orange sunset behind purple mountains. In the foreground was a gray wolf with hungry yellow eyes.

“Opposites attract, but that doesn’t always make for a good marriage. Funny thing is, we moved here from New York because I thought the change in climate would help.”

“So you two are not long-time residents?”

“Hardly. Took me awhile to convince Barry to move, but
once he found that mansion up on the mountain, he agreed. As I said, he’s set in his ways. I’d hoped he might take up hiking. Or biking. Anything to get him out of the house. I’m a hopeless romantic and a terrible businesswoman. We turned the guesthouse into a B&B, but we never had the first guest, thank goodness. Can you hand me that rag?”

She cleaned paint from her hands and handed it back to me.

“Did you know your husband was involved in a vampire gaming website?”

“Barry?” she said, chuckling. “He could barely turn on a computer, much less navigate the Internet. If I were you, I’d go back and check my source on that one.”

I let the comment pass. Could be she really didn’t know what went on up in the manor. “How about you? Do you have a website for your gallery?”

“There is a man in town, a friend, sort of. He helps me make changes to my blog. I can’t even remember my password.”

“So your husband never mentioned visiting graveyards or poking around crypts? That sort of thing?”

“Barry loved books. He was engrossed in them, all kinds. That was the world he roamed. No, to my knowledge Barry never visited any graveyards.”

She put her brush down, stretched, and worked her neck side to side, releasing the tension.

“Look, my husband was not a monster or freak. Just a very sad man.”

“Who is dead.”

“Please, you needn’t remind me.”

“I’m just saying, he had something someone wanted.”

“I cannot imagine what. As I said, there was no insurance money. The estate goes to a nonprofit. Or at least, I think it does. Barry was in the process of amending his will … again. He did that quite often.”

“Do you happen to know which nonprofit he named in his will?”

“I think he mentioned something about a wildlife preserving group, but I could be wrong about that. Now, then, I have this painting to finish. The gallery is expecting it for this weekend’s showing. We’re doing a private affair for some New York buyers.”

I studied the portrait of the oversized wolf with its hollow cheeks and hungry eyes, and wondered if Lucy Forester had studied the wolf dog and memorized its terrorizing bulk and features. I thanked her for her time and mentioned I might stop back by later.

“Not to chat,” I explained, “but so my aunt can see your work.”

“The gallery in town would be the best place for that.”

I told her I could find my way out and left.

The widow certainly
seemed
pleasant enough. She was amiable and transparent, a California beach girl with a “live and let live” attitude. She expressed none of the nervousness I would have expected from a murderous spouse. Either she was an
excellent liar or completely clueless as to the dangerous game being played at the manor.

It occurred to me that if Forester had planned to leave the estate to Raintree’s nonprofit and then changed his mind, that would give the bookstore owner a possible motive for murder. Or maybe Forester was in the midst of changing the will so Victor Hamilton could buy the estate. Could be Forester had grown tired of the vampire game idea and just wanted to sell the property so he could move back to New York.

Only way to find out is to visit the scene of the crime and ask Hamilton.