Chapter 18 #2
Quinn stood up. “I won’t sit here and let you accuse me of attacking Brody Young. I had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Then why are you being so cagey about it?”
Arthur was surprised to hear the question come from Nora, who stood as well.
“Seriously, Nora?” Quinn shot her a look sharper than whatever had punctured Brody Young’s jugular.
Arthur held up his hands and motioned for them to sit. “Now, now, we can be civil about this.”
“Civil?” Quinn’s gaze snapped to him. “I think we passed civil when you and your husband accused me of attempted murder! Maybe we let everyone do their jobs—you two should stick to making pancakes and turning down beds, and I’ll stick to government work.
We let the police handle this like they’re supposed to. ”
Sal snorted. “Oh, my dear, there’s so much more to running a bed-and-breakfast than the bed and the breakfast.”
“That’s hardly the point,” Arthur said, gently tugging on the sleeve of Sal’s shirt. He needed everyone to settle down so he could get back to the plan. “Besides, the police aren’t doing their jobs, which is exactly why we’ve had to step up.”
“So you accuse the first person you can think of and call it a day?” Quinn huffed.
“Well, what were we supposed to do? You threatened Brody, and then he was attacked.” Sal picked up a slice of bacon and pointed it at Quinn like a magic wand. “J’accuse!”
“Really, you can’t blame them for thinking the worst,” Nora said. “Arthur and Sal are just following the logic.”
“In what universe is it logical to try to kill someone over a break-in where all they stole was their own bag? I may not be your favorite person in town, Nora, but I’m not a monster.” Quinn glanced at Arthur and Sal before adding, “Sorry…no offense to the monster community.”
“None taken!” Sal flashed her a fangy grin and a thumbs-up.
“We’re just trying to get the facts,” Arthur said with a sigh. “Please.”
“Well, I think you’ve got a lot of your facts wrong, so maybe start there.” Quinn made to step around the table toward the door.
“Like what?” Arthur asked, desperate to keep her talking.
Quinn fixed him with an expression of pity. “You really think Brody didn’t break into my office? It was obviously him.”
“It wasn’t.” Arthur stood as well, meeting her at the head of the table. “Unless Brody Young can be in two places at once.”
“What do you mean?” Nora asked.
“At the time of the break-in, Brody Young was busy moving a dead body.”
Quinn blinked. “But…”
“So, Quinn was wrong,” Nora said with a little edge of satisfaction.
Quinn’s face had lost all its color. “If it wasn’t him, then I—”
Her words were cut off by an awful electronic ringtone. The phone was ringing in the kitchen, a blistering synthesized rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Salvatore had programmed it the day they moved in, and Arthur, not for lack of trying, hadn’t been able to change it.
The song continued for a few bars before anyone moved.
Arthur wanted to ignore it, eyes glued to Quinn, who was breathing like she’d just finished a marathon and looked almost close to fainting (for real, not one of the melodramatic swoons Sal was so fond of).
But eventually decorum won over his curiosity—and it was clear she would say no more—so Arthur went to answer the phone.
Sheriff McMartin’s smug voice blared at maximum volume from the receiver, not at all the embarrassed almost starlet from the night before. “Mr. Miller? I’m going to need you and Mr. Conte to go to Young Family Dental at eleven a.m.”
“Why?” Arthur blinked.
“Because I’m the sheriff and I’m telling you to? Don’t be late.” McMartin hung up.
In a daze, Arthur returned to the dining room.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to cut brunch short.
” He’d barely gotten to interrogate them, and now both Nora and Quinn were tight-lipped, staring daggers at each other.
There was something there, something that might be at the heart of this whole mess, but he couldn’t stay and uncover it because the sheriff was flaunting his power and bossing them around.
“Who was it?” Sal stood, clearly sensing something was wrong.
“McMartin. He wants us downtown by eleven.”
“Why downtown?”
“I don’t know, but he said to meet him at the dentist’s office. I assume it has something to do with Brody.” Arthur glanced at Nora and Quinn, who were staring at him now.
Salvatore poured himself another cup of coffee. “Tell him we can’t go out into sunlight or we’ll burst into flame. We can’t run our guests off now. Brunch has barely begun.”
“He’s seen us out during the day without any signs of spontaneous combustion, remember?”
“I refuse to remember anything while there’s uneaten bacon to be attended to.”
“It’s fine,” Nora said, voice strained. “I can stay to clean up.”
“Well, I can’t.” Without another word, Quinn was gone, practically running for the front door. Nora didn’t hang around either, hurrying for the kitchen with a stack of dishes.
Rumble prowled into the room and leaped onto Sal’s lap, probably after all the uneaten bacon.
“Ouch!” Sal yelped as her claws made contact with his thighs.
“What will the cat think if you stand up the sheriff and he’s forced to come bother us here?” Arthur tried.
Perhaps it was the possibility of being such a bad influence on Rumble that inspired Salvatore to leave the food behind and change into something respectable. More likely it was the threat of further pain, care of her murder mittens.
Brunch was quite over, but Arthur’s stomach had never felt emptier.
They reached Young Family Dental at five minutes before eleven. The dentist’s office was in a tidy brick building, and the parking lot was nearly empty, save for the sheriff’s car and the coroner’s van. Young’s truck was blessedly absent.
Arthur and Salvatore took their time leaning their bike against the back of the office—the building had no bike rack—and languidly dragged themselves up the front steps, not particularly eager to face McMartin again after last night.
Arthur felt the tightness of anxiety creeping into his chest the closer they got, the impending news of Brody’s condition like a storm cloud that had followed them from the Iris Inn, even though it was another fine spring day.
Arthur wasn’t used to feeling so antsy when entering a dentist’s office, a place he usually associated with cleanliness and order, but he doubted he would ever be able to get his teeth cleaned without seeing Brody’s unconscious form or Dr. Young’s face, red and screaming.
Salvatore took his hand before they walked inside, and Arthur felt a little braver.
His apprehension fell away when he saw Lore in the waiting room instead of McMartin. She was hunched over her phone, picking neon nail polish from her fingers with precision. When she saw them, she jumped up and a smile lit her face, but the sunny expression was short-lived.
“Good to see you two,” she said as her eyes flicked from Arthur to Sal and back again. “Sure wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
“Better circumstances?” Arthur quirked a brow, searching her face for answers. “Where’s McMartin?”
“Where’s the dentist?” A dour look crossed Sal’s face.
“Don’t worry. Dr. Young isn’t here.” She patted Sal on the arm. “The sheriff just went to the restroom; he’ll be back in a minute. He wants me to compare your dentals to the wound on Brody’s neck.”
“Weren’t you supposed to compare Sal’s to the bite on Mayor Roth already?” Arthur asked.
“Unfortunately, that one was too torn to be conclusive, but the bite on Brody was quite…precise, for lack of a better word. This should be fairly quick, and then we’ll have a definitive answer.”
“Well, that’s a relief!” Sal’s gloomy demeanor melted away into outright glee. “No way he can pin this on us with such incontrovertible proof.”
“How is Brody?” Arthur asked in a low voice. He wished he could replicate his husband’s easy mood, but the thought of the injured boy lying in the hospital kept him from celebrating just yet.
“Stable, but…” Lore sighed. “The doctor isn’t sure when he’ll wake up, or if he ever will. I expect they’ll move him to another hospital soon. Folks out here don’t have much experience with paranormal-type injuries and he’ll be better off with a specialist if he really did sustain a vampire bite.”
“How dreadful.” Salvatore didn’t sound like he found it dreadful at all. In fact, his next words were far more filled with anticipation. “Well, let’s get this awful business with our teeth over with so I can get my prize.”
“Your prize?” Lore asked.
“Naturally. Whenever Arthur makes me go to the dentist, I get a prize afterward. There’s usually a drawer full of sugar-free gum or action figures and the like—does Dr. Young not do that?
It’s the only good thing about dentistry.
Honestly, more dentists should turn their practices into candy stores. ”
“That would defeat the purpose, Sal,” Arthur said, squeezing his hand. Maybe Salvatore had taken his hand to begin with partially to chase away some of his own fears.
“One of Dr. Young’s hygienists set everything up for me.” Lore gestured toward the exam door, then lowered her voice. “For obvious reasons, he won’t be the one performing the exam.”
“Well, that’s a relief, I suppose,” Arthur said, Dr. Young’s livid expression from the night before not far from his mind.
“What are you all loitering about for?” McMartin asked, stepping into the hallway. He wiped his still-wet hands on his pant leg, leaving damp marks on the fabric. “Get a move on. Some of us have places to be.”