Chapter 10 #2
It wasn’t all so perfect, though. Arthur noticed a couple of storefronts were empty, a sign in the window declaring them available for rent.
Trident Falls didn’t see enough tourism throughout the year to keep every business afloat, he well knew.
As much as Salvatore might think it was poetic for vampires to be in the red, Arthur shuddered to imagine a similar sign hanging over the Iris Inn.
“Oh, let’s get some saltwater taffy!” Salvatore scooped Arthur’s hand into both of his as he made eyes at a nearby candy shop.
“You won’t go to the dentist, and now you want sweets?” Arthur tutted. “You’ll only get your teeth stuck together.”
Salvatore didn’t seem to hear him, or perhaps he was choosing to ignore the implied threat of further torture via dentistry. “Or how about a malt shake? Oh, I love that jacket. What about a sweater for Rumble?”
Arthur couldn’t keep up as Salvatore’s attention hopped from shop to shop. Instead, he looked out toward the river, where verdant trees swayed over slow-moving water.
Lore sat atop the guardrail, perched as lightly as a bird, wearing a delicate lavender silk scarf and loose bangles that jangled together as she waved them over.
“Good to see you out and about.” Lore hopped down and smiled wide at Salvatore. “And you, too, pretty kitty.”
Rumble poked her head from Sal’s backpack to receive Lore’s boop. A passing child let out a squeal and made to approach before their mother hauled them away with a suspicious look at Lore’s pointed ears.
Arthur turned away, forcing himself not to frown, in case Lore thought his consternation was directed at her. “You’ve got something for us?”
“Arthur, darling,” Salvatore admonished him. “At least say hello before you go diving into all the depressing you-know-what business.”
Lore gave Arthur a crooked grin. “I get it. And I’m eager to get to work, too.
” She glanced around. No one was close enough to overhear, but she lowered her voice anyway.
“I found two things you’ll wanna hear about.
First, the body was moved. They tried to be subtle, because whoever moved him put him in almost the same position, but there was a little blood pooling that didn’t make sense with how we found him.
And second, I pulled this from his head wound. ”
She held out her phone. Arthur and Salvatore crowded close to get a look, nearly knocking their temples together.
On the screen was a photo of a very unassuming splinter of wood.
One side was painted an unattractive gray-blue.
It reminded Arthur of the smudge of blue ink on the mayor’s sleeve, but that had been a far more vibrant shade.
“I’m not sure where it came from, but look around us.” Lore gestured to the riverfront. After a moment, Arthur understood. The boardwalk was a dark blue, the street lamps a sky blue, the tourist information signs, the benches. Trident Falls had a theme, and by god they stuck to it.
“He could’ve been killed on city property,” Arthur whispered, nodding. “Not terribly surprising considering who he was.” The mayor likely spent most of his workday surrounded by shades of blue. “And I recognize the color. A bench, maybe?”
There were a few scattered along the boardwalk, though these were of a darker, more oceanic blue. Most of the benches in town were the gray-blue on Lore’s phone, however. He and Lore had sat on one just yesterday.
“Do you think he was killed at city hall?” Lore asked, eyebrows rising.
“How ghastly.” Salvatore shivered. “To spend so much time working in a place only to be killed there as well. I was lucky enough to be killed in the most thrilling of locales.”
“So…what, like, Greece?” Lore asked.
“No, my dear, at a party.” Salvatore threw his arms wide as if conducting an opera of his own triumphant demise. “It was at a luxurious chateau—on a velvet fainting couch, if you’ll believe me.”
“Wait a minute,” Arthur interjected against his better judgment, reticent though he was to allow Salvatore’s change of subject to derail the conversation. “I thought you were turned in Italy, not France.”
“Oooh, Paris?” Lore guessed again.
“A fart of a city, if you ask me.” Salvatore stuck out his tongue. Rumble mimicked him from her backpack.
Lore waggled her eyebrows. “I sense a story.”
“Stories, plural,” Arthur muttered. “For someone who purportedly hates France, you do talk about it a lot.”
“Yes, well, just because I spent a great deal of time there doesn’t mean I liked it—not the art, not the architecture, not the language—”
“Hang on.” Arthur held up a finger, eyes narrowed. For once, he thought he might have actually caught Salvatore in a lie. “You told me you taught William Shakespeare French.”
“My dear, I taught him how to French.” Sal winked at Lore. “The one solidly good export of theirs.”
Arthur might have mentioned the many bottles of French wine they currently had in their pantry or the gusto with which Salvatore consumed croissants, but it would only take them farther from the task at hand. “Anyway,” he said pointedly.
“Yes, anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had the grace to be killed somewhere interesting, unlike the mayor.”
“It’s an awfully public place for no one to have noticed.” Arthur jumped on the opportunity to steer the conversation back to their real purpose. “Even if he was killed at night without any witnesses, surely there would be some evidence of a fight.”
“Or the gallon or so of blood he lost,” Salvatore added.
“There are benches all over town.” Lore glanced at her phone and frowned. “I wish I could help search, but I have to get back to work. Sheriff wants my full report done as soon as possible.”
“But it’s the weekend!” Salvatore clutched his hands to his chest.
“That’s the gig. Dead bodies don’t care if it’s a Tuesday or a Saturday.” Lore shrugged. “I’m sending you a list of all the places around town that have this color bench. If you find the crime scene…be sure to report it, okay? Otherwise it might look like you’re trying to hide something.”
“Of course.” Arthur appreciated her warning. He didn’t need the sheriff suspecting Salvatore any more than he already did.
“Do text again, Lore, my dear. I grow lonelier by the second!” Salvatore waved like a war-weary lover as Lore retreated back toward downtown.
“Where do you suppose we should start?” Arthur asked, less because he thought Salvatore might have a reasonable answer and more to fill the silence. His mind was liable to run in terribly inconvenient directions if left unattended for too long.
Salvatore took out his phone. “Rest assured,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.
“What?”
“It’s the color of the benches, according to Lore’s information. At least someone here has a sense of humor.” Sal scrolled, eyes flicking over the list. “Remember how I tried to convince you to let me paint the bathrooms with Sulking Room Pink? But you’re allergic to wordplay.”
Arthur frowned. “I painted the kitchen with Simmer Down.”
“I stand corrected. That is terribly droll, my dear.”
“The locations?” Arthur prompted.
“City hall, the waterfront, the park, and downtown by the fountain.” Sal looked up. “What do you think? Are any of those good places for a spot of murder?”
“Keep it down,” Arthur hissed, glancing around for any eavesdroppers, but no one was paying them much attention.
“All right.” Salvatore spoke in his deepest voice, then tried again. “Any clandestine spots where one might not be seen by passersby or surveillance cameras?”
“Not sure that’s any better,” Arthur grumbled.
“What? Maybe I’m just looking for a good place to make out.”
“The park.”
“Yes, very romantic. Good thinking.” Salvatore took Arthur’s hand in his and headed up the street.
“I meant for…the other thing.” But Arthur followed him anyway.
The park was rather romantic, and he supposed Salvatore would want to take advantage of the weather, and the freedom, to stroll through it.
After all, it might be their last chance to do such a thing for a while.
The park wasn’t far—though nothing in Trident Falls was really far from anything else.
On the south side of town, near the Iris Inn, it was as busy as the riverfront.
The playground was crawling with toddlers, and a crowd had formed around the baseball diamond, where a Little League game appeared to be ongoing.
Lore’s intel turned out to be very correct—there were indeed a lot of benches here, and, surrounded by large pine trees and unruly hedges, the park was full of dark corners in which someone might kiss or kill, depending on their mood.
Salvatore paused by the entrance and rummaged around in his backpack, then withdrew both Rumble and what appeared to be a cat harness and leash.
“Where did you get that?” Arthur asked.
“Went out this morning while you were sleeping and got her some necessities.”
“I don’t know if you should be wandering off on your own.” Arthur tried not to sound like a worrywart, but, well, he was. “If the sheriff decides to arrest you for real this time—”
“Then we’ll deal with it. I’m not going to stop living my life simply because some haircut with a badge threatens me.
” Salvatore gave him a soft smile as he wrestled Rumble into the harness.
She wasn’t pleased with the development, but Sal was a vampire, after all, and easily fifteen times her mass, so he prevailed in the end.
When he put her on the ground, she collapsed onto her side.
“Come on, now, no one likes a drama queen,” Salvatore said, with apparently no sense of self-awareness.
After a moment, Rumble stood, though she stared up at Salvatore as if he’d murdered her entire family.
“That’s the spirit, darling. A nice walk will do us all good.”
In the end, Salvatore was right about the walk.
The bright sunshine lifted Arthur’s cloudy mood, and because of his trusty umbrella, he wasn’t worried about the UV radiation exposure.
It had been a long time since Arthur and Salvatore had strolled out in the open like this, during the day, no less.
A cool breeze tempered the warmth, the air smelled of freshly cut grass and spring flowers, and fuzzy bumblebees droned pleasantly among the blooms. Arthur had a special fondness for bees.
Sometimes insects got a bad reputation, but many of them promoted pollination and a healthy ecosystem.
Seeing so many flitting from flower to flower made Arthur smile.
Even Rumble stopped moping around after a while.
Before long, she was the one walking Salvatore rather than the other way around, tugging her lead with a strength Arthur would never have guessed she possessed.
“No, we’re going this way,” Salvatore grunted, pulling the lead in the direction of a cluster of benches. “Your other daddy needs to make believe he’s Scooby Don’t.”
Rumble meowed indignantly—Arthur liked to think it was at the use of the word daddy—and doubled her efforts to lead them in the opposite direction.
In a battle of wills, Salvatore and Rumble might have been an even match, but Rumble was still a cat.
“Just put her back in the bag,” Arthur said.
Salvatore turned wide eyes on Arthur. “She is a wild beast, Arthur! She needs to roam free—she was not made for captivity. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be put in a cage.”
Arthur sighed heavily, biting back a remark about compulsory heteronormativity, and instead turned his attention to the reason they’d come to the park in the first place.
The benches were entirely ordinary, though some needed a paint job and others suffered from issues of structural integrity.
None of them had a chip that matched the fragment Lore had found.
They’d inspected a dozen benches when the wind shifted and Arthur froze.
Salvatore did the same beside him. The unmistakable scent of old blood was on the air.
A lot of it. Humans—and most paranormals, with the possible exception of werewolves—wouldn’t have been able to smell it, but vampires had a vested interest in blood, so their noses were attuned to the rich smell of iron.
Arthur glanced at Salvatore, his good humor gone.
Without discussion, they followed the scent to the edge of the park, which wasn’t nearly as populated as the rest. There was a group of four benches there, and one of them sported a dark red stain.
The earth had soaked up more, but Arthur was certain now: someone had lost a lot of blood here.
“A pity.” Salvatore tutted under his breath. “Such a loss.”
“I thought you didn’t like the mayor.”
“I don’t—didn’t. I was talking about all that blood. Why waste it like that?”
Rumble hovered behind Salvatore’s legs, as if afraid to approach. They stayed a few yards away.
“Well, Sal,” Arthur said. “Thank god you’ve got that fancy phone. I suppose you won’t mind calling the sheriff’s office with it?”
Salvatore pouted. “Can’t believe I’m being betrayed both by my own husband and by the very technology I hold dear.”
Arthur shoved away his discomfort at the knowledge that the sheriff would soon arrive with all his pointed questions and his prejudice. If it was indeed the mayor’s blood, this was quite the break in the case, because it would prove the mayor wasn’t killed at the Iris Inn at all.