Chapter 3
A truly terrible sound rent the air from up ahead.
Arthur gripped Salvatore’s hand in his and surged forward.
His mind tripped over itself imagining worst-case scenarios—the cat had bitten Nora, Nora had tripped and stabbed herself in the face with the wrong end of a trowel, or perhaps she’d been lying earlier and she hated waffles and someone had left a plate of them in the garden.
Just as Arthur was beginning to imagine a long and sordid history between Nora and the family of waffles who’d murdered her fishing-loving father, they rounded the corner of the bed-and-breakfast to a sight altogether worse than anything Arthur could have concocted.
Nora was fine. She stood hunched over, eyes wide, with her hands over her mouth as though she might be sick. Next to her, the stray cat stared calmly at the flower bed.
There, crushing the flowers Arthur had painstakingly planted only a few weeks ago, lay Mayor George Roth.
Normally, the mayor’s skin was a robust tan, with plenty of red in his cheeks.
Now he was as white as a sheet, and his chest wasn’t moving.
His eyes were open, already clouded, and he was very much deceased.
As the echo of Nora’s scream faded from the air, it was replaced by Salvatore’s.
“My begonias!” he wailed, loud enough to make the cat startle and shrink behind Nora’s legs.
“Your begonias?” Arthur turned an indignant gaze on Sal. “I’m the one who planted them!”
“No offense to your begonias,” Nora said in a strained, high-pitched voice, “but that’s the mayor, and he’s dead!”
“I mean, he could be napping,” Salvatore hedged, taking a step toward the body, but Arthur held a hand out to stop him.
Arthur didn’t need a better look to know for sure. “He’s definitely dead.”
“So am I, but I don’t see you tiptoeing around my corpse,” Salvatore muttered, but his hazel eyes grew round as he peered at the dead man.
Now was hardly the time for undead jokes, so Arthur ignored him. Instead, he grabbed hold of the back of Salvatore’s shirt as if he were a small child likely to wander off and turned to Nora. “This is a potential crime scene. We’d better not touch anything.”
“Oh, suddenly this is one of your episodes of Law his husband simply needed Arthur by his side.
He could do that. He could quiet the part of his mind that yearned to note the awkward angle of the mayor’s body and the rumpled state of his shirt and the smear of blue ink on his sleeve—
“We need to call the authorities.” Nora took a step back from the body. So did the cat, which was a small mercy. Arthur had read once that cats would eat their dead owners. He silently hoped that didn’t apply to undead temporary caregivers.
“Ms. Anderson, Nora, I’m so sorry about all of this—” Arthur spared a moment to be mortified that her review would now assuredly be one-star, and she’d probably be checked out of here by the time the police arrived.
“Why don’t you come inside with me while I make some calls.
You can help yourself to the food, anything you need. ”
“What am I supposed to do?” Salvatore asked, eyeing the dead body warily. “Don’t leave me alone with it.”
“Him,” Arthur corrected. George Roth was a mayoral pain, and he was dead, but he was still a person, not an object. “Someone has to stand guard while we wait for the authorities.”
“Why must it be me?” Salvatore turned his face toward the sky, as if speaking to a higher power. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Arthur, who had been regaled with enough stories of Salvatore’s life to last him forever, could think of a fair few things, but he didn’t say so.
Nora remained only a few feet away, now cradling the cat in her arms. She’d definitely witnessed their exchange.
What would she think of such unprofessional behavior?
“Why don’t we all wait here?” She didn’t make eye contact with the corpse, staring instead at the cat, which began purring. “I don’t think I can stomach breakfast after this, anyway.”
“I myself am feeling all weak and woozy.” Salvatore swayed on his feet before falling limp into Arthur’s arms in a swoon.
“Is he okay?” Nora asked, a note of alarm in her tone. “I didn’t think vampires could pass out like that.”
“They can’t.” Arthur pinched Salvatore’s nose, eliciting a snort from his husband. “When you’re done being melodramatic, give me your phone so I can call 911.”
Salvatore cracked one eye open and whispered, “I’m never done being melodramatic.”
“No need,” Nora said. “I’ll just call the sheriff. Emergency services will take much longer to get all the way out here.”
“You know the sheriff?” Arthur asked. He had no love for Trident Falls’ law enforcement, but still, Nora hadn’t yet started her job as new city manager, and she already had connections with the local authorities. She must’ve been a savvy networker.
“I don’t,” Nora said to his surprise. “I saved every municipal number to my contacts as soon as I got the job offer.” She set the cat gingerly on the ground once more before retrieving her cell phone.
As she stepped away to make the call, Arthur helped Salvatore to his feet, not that he needed it.
“I bet you twenty dollars she’s a Capricorn sun.”
Arthur didn’t know a lick about astrology except that his husband was a Leo, whatever that meant, so he just shrugged.
Salvatore glanced back at the body and shuddered.
“In our garden…who would have thought? And after he went out of his way to not attend wine and cheese night.” His voice was uncharacteristically soft.
There was something disingenuous about it, too.
Arthur glanced at the late mayor, then at Salvatore, trying not to think about all those stories of Sal’s undead youth.
“Let’s wait a bit farther away,” Arthur said. “We need to keep clear of the scene. Especially that cat.” He nodded at the stray, which sat several yards from the body, watching the corpse with a keen feline gaze, still purring despite the death all around.
“There’s no need to be rude to Rumble.” Salvatore sniffed.
“You named it?”
“She’s obviously a Rumble.”
“She?”
“She has feminine energy.”
“What does that even mean?” Arthur felt something hysterical welling up inside him that probably had much more to do with the dead body in their garden than naming a cat—though the traumatic experience of watching Cats the musical in theaters a few years ago was certainly grounds for it.
Salvatore caught his eye and gazed pleadingly at him.
“Fine, we can keep her,” Arthur promised, against his better judgment. He might have put up more of a fight if not for the distraction of a very real corpse in the shrubbery. “As long as she keeps her paws off the evidence.”
Arthur led Sal a few paces away, eyes lingering on the mayor.
This was the first time he’d seen a dead body in person, outside of funerals and his general day-to-day life living in one himself, of course, but he knew all about solving murders.
“I’ll make some notes, put together thoughts that might be helpful to the police. ”
Pulling the notebook he kept for just such occasions out of his breast pocket, Arthur jotted down details of the scene, but his thoughts kept snagging on why the mayor was here when he hadn’t shown up last evening for the gathering.
Logic led Arthur in a circle. If the mayor was here, in their garden, then he must have come here at some late hour.
But why? To speak with Nora? No, surely the mayor wouldn’t bother her so late at night.
So, then, to spy on Arthur and Sal, perhaps?
Arthur wouldn’t put it past George Roth to use underhanded means to get dirt on the only vampires in town.
The irony, of course, being that it was Mayor Roth who had dirt on him now—harvest supreme potting mix, to be exact.
Arthur sighed heavily. All this stank of foul play. “Don’t suppose he was murdered, do you?” he said quietly into Sal’s ear so Nora wouldn’t hear.
“If he was, the list of possible culprits will be a mile long.” There was an edge to Sal’s voice. “Who wouldn’t want to kill him?”
“Keep your voice down.” Arthur glanced around, but Nora had her phone pressed to her ear and there was no one but the cat to hear for a solid mile on every side.
Still, Arthur couldn’t shake the worry that had sown itself along his shoulder blades.
Someone had been to the Iris Inn uninvited that night, and they could still be lurking nearby.
The alternative was unthinkable. Arthur glanced at Nora, Rumble, and Sal in turn.
Almost unthinkable.
Sheriff McMartin was broad and unnaturally tan, with the bleached-blond hair and chiseled jaw of a Hollywood leading man gone sour. He wore his brown uniform like a costume and brandished his smile like a nightstick.
Arthur eyed the gun at McMartin’s side warily.
He was all for democracy, but the ballot choices in Trident Falls left something to be desired.
McMartin belonged to one of the oldest families in town, so his popularity guaranteed him his position year after year.
His brief stint on the silver screen didn’t hurt either.
Though his role in the nineties action franchise Bullet Point was cut short by an offscreen character death between the first and second installments, the memory of Officer Splice, a copy editor turned policeman, lived on in his everyday performance of the real deal.
“What seems to be the problem here?” Sheriff McMartin said as he approached.