Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Harriet
There’s no stopping Granabelle once she gets going about the day Razor Johnny swaggered into our family’s antique store and faced off with my mother.
Granabelle says, “He took this Korean War-era naval officer’s sword down from the wall—a very nice piece—and he told us how much he’d like to have it.
Well! Harriet’s mother, Lorna, told him to check the price tag.
Suddenly he’s hinting around how it might be good if the store had ‘protection’ and how tragic it would be if the front windows ‘accidentally’ shattered, but he could see to it that no such thing happened.
“Well, Lorna was having none of that. She was in the army, you know and she stepped right up to Razor Johnny and asked him to tell her what exactly he meant. She’s a wee one, but fierce as all get-out.
” She gives me a squeeze. “Well, a man like Razor Johnny’s not interested in talking plainly.
He just went on about threats to the store and how important it is to have friends like him.
The man seemed to think he was in The Godfather! ”
A few other people have gathered around by now.
Granabelle is on fire. “Meanwhile, I grabbed this Hungarian hussar cap that hangs behind the register. There was a fuzzy spider pinned to it! I put it on at a jaunty angle, held up my phone and asked him a few questions about the fascinating skull embroidery on the back of his motorcycle jacket. For example, did he ever consider bedazzling it? And he set the sword down right then and there, mumbling something about being back. Well, did he come back? No, he didn’t!
” This last as if she has no earthly idea why he would’ve fled my tough cookie of a mother and my grandmother wearing a military hat with a large spider fixed to it.
Alexandru’s voice drops to something scary and cold. “You will alert me if such a thing ever happens again.”
I look up at him, surprised. I’ve noticed he has a strange protective streak over me, but I didn’t know it extended to my family.
“Why, thank you, Prince Miramonte,” Granabelle declares, “but I do believe we have it under control.”
“Nevertheless,” he says in a grave tone.
I’ve heard that tone before. It was during our last mystery, moments after Alexandru rescued me from a man holding me at knifepoint.
The man was lying in a heap in the corner, and Alexandru touched the tender part of my throat, tracing the scratch the man had given me. “For this he must die,” he’d rumbled.
And then he’d taken my hand, turned it over, and pressed his lips to my palm.
The heat of it had gone through me like a current, and every rational thought I had just...vanished. That had never happened to me before.
Berky appears at my side, jogging me out of my Alexandru fugue state. She nods at the other side of the street where a woman seems to be pleading with the medical examiners and Maverick. “That’s Razor Johnny’s mother.”
“Oh no,” I say.
“He was not a bad sort,” she says in her French accent. “His silly protection racket. He wanted money at first, but I told him he could have a cookie.” She shrugs. “A cookie is no big thing, and I do not want trouble.”
“What was his favorite cookie?” I ask.
“Sprinkle explosion.” She pronounces the words in a very French way. “Those motorcycle boys, they are not so fierce as they wish us to believe.”
“So we could’ve given him a couple pieces of saltwater taffy?” Granabelle says.
I look over at Razor Johnny’s weeping mother.
One of the police officers is putting her in the car, probably for her to go to the morgue to identify the body.
Whatever he became later, Razor Johnny was a little boy once, looking forward to birthday parties and dreaming of dump trucks and fire engines. And that poor mother...
“Not the most effective criminal…” he begins.
“Later!” I say, and I drag Alexandru away from the little group before he can say more obnoxious things.
We stop at a nearby light pole.
Alexandru flexes his gloved hands, causing the leather to loosen and tighten around the contours of his muscular fingers. His knuckles. A large and comely thumb. It’s like a man hand symphony.
His gloves, hat, and charcoal-gray cashmere suit keep the sun at bay, but his dangerous hotness burns at full strength. And I do mean dangerous. Vampire beauty is a trap—an Italian-menswear-model-looking trap designed to catch the unwary.
Best to keep that in mind.
“Ms. Renfield,” he bites out. “Are you listening?”
“What?” I tear my gaze away from his hands and scan the crowd again, taking in the gawkers.
“We must talk to this Dooley.”
“We will. The police probably have him right now, though.” My gaze catches on a young man standing apart from the others with his bicycle propped beside him. Dark hair. Intense gaze. Dressed for serious cycling.
Jerome.
My stomach does an uncomfortable flip.
Alexandru turns to me, because of course he caught my emotional discomfort with his vampire senses. “Ms. Renfield?”
I push up my glasses. “Nothing. Just someone I know.”
Alexandru follows my gaze to Jerome, and his voice goes low and dangerous. “The one with the bike. What did he do to you?”
“Nothing! It’s what I did. He was on the high school newspaper during the blowup where I made us lose our big swim team scoop.”
“Ah yes. I remember. You demanded additional documentation. They felt it was excessive.”
“It was excessive. I was being a jerk, and I blew their big story.”
“You were being a Renfield. Your hereditary obsession with order and your drive to impose structure on chaos is a great strength. You were simply too young at the time to manage the powers that you possess.”
I look at him, surprised. He’s probably the only one in the world who sees my organizational diligence as a power, except maybe my old boss, Serena.
“Anyway, Jerome worked on the paper back then. He wasn’t as mad as Sloane and the rest of the crew. Actually, he’s been nothing but nice in recent years, but I still feel weird around him. I bet you anything he’s gathering information for his Substack.”
“His Substack?”
“It’s a newsletter that people read on their electronic ledgers,” I explain.
“Ah.”
Alexandru has a lot of amazing powers as a centuries-old vampire, but being up on tech is not one of them. At the castle in the Carpathian Mountains where he used to live, they were still in the carrier pigeon communication era.
“Jerome’s Substack is called Silverton Uncovered,” I add. “It’s local news with some gossip mixed in, so this murder is definitely something he’ll cover. I can probably get him to tell me what he knows.”
Alexandru is silent for a moment. “His shining purple garments… he presents himself in public this way? Deliberately?”
“It’s cycling gear. Aerodynamic. Let’s do this.”
We make our way over. Jerome’s expression shifts when he spots us—surprise, then something else. He looks pale, honestly. Shaken. “Harriet,” he says when we reach him. “Long time no see.”
“Too long!” I give him a quick hug and introduce him to Alexandru.
Jerome takes a good long look at Alexandru. “The prince with the mansion everyone wants to get a look into.”
“Not the least of all Granabelle,” I say. “She’d give her favorite flowered hat for a chance to do a livestream in there.”
“Is it true you’re living there, too?” he asks.
“Well, yes!” I say.
“She attends to my affairs,” Alexandru puts in.
I gesture at the crime scene. “Did Maverick take off?”
“Yup,” Jerome says. “I’m guessing he and Officer Wright went to pick up Dooley Brogan for questioning.”
It’s right then that I hear it: the roar of motorcycles rising up from the north.
“Just questioning?” I muse. “No arrest?”
“That’s what I hear.” He squints. “It’s all just such a mess. They found the weapon behind a dumpster next to Gable’s.”
“We heard.”
The three of us watch as ten or so Snag Tooth Riders motorcycle gang guys roar up. They park their bikes on the far side of the taped-off scene. One of the officers left behind goes up to talk to them.
“Here we go,” Jerome says.
Right then, I notice Alexandru studying Jerome with that unsettling intensity he gets sometimes. Something about Jerome has tweaked his senses.
What?
Jerome tears his attention from the gang and nods in the direction of Hardware Sam’s. “Saw you over there. Did Sam and Pilar have anything interesting to say?”
“Well, I didn’t know about the prosecutorial misconduct that got Dooley sprung out of jail.”
“Yup.” Jerome nods. “Withheld that partial print.”
“Hardware Sam says there isn’t any camera coverage in that alley where the shot came from. He thinks it was Dooley, but killing somebody with the weird method that put you away, not the smartest move if it was him.”
“It wouldn’t be smart at all,” Jerome says distantly.
I turn to Jerome right then, remembering something. “Didn’t you and Razor Johnny have some beef? Like he blamed you for that story that helped send him to prison? And he was riding over your grandmother’s tulips or something?”
“A few years back, yeah. Real piece of work. I hear he tried to shake down your mom and Granabelle and she beat him back with a flowered purse and a livestream.”
“So she says. But I think he realized they would be more trouble than they’re worth.”
Jerome checks his phone. “I gotta go and put something out on this. Anyway. Good seeing you, Harriet. Nice to finally meet you, Alexandru.”
Alexandru watches him leave with more than his usual predatory focus. It is only when Jerome turns the corner and disappears out of sight that Alexandru finally speaks. “He is terrified. There is something he is not telling you.”
I turn to him. “Excuse me?”
“Your Jerome. He is fearful. Hiding something.”
“Jerome!? No way. Are you mad that I hugged him?”
“He reeks of guilt and fear and dark secrets.”
“What?”
Alexandru shrugs.
“Are you suggesting he’s the killer?”
Another shrug.
“No! I’ve known Jerome for years. He’s a standup guy who cares about this town and he cares about doing what’s right. You have this one wrong, Alexandru. He’s probably just upset like everyone else. Someone got murdered. Of course he’s frightened.”
“Ms. Renfield,” Alexandru says wearily, adjusting his cufflinks. “Even the newest, greenest vampire knows how to distinguish the terror of the innocent from the terror of the guilty. The terror of the innocent is so much sweeter.”
“Well, isn’t that lovely,” I say. “But maybe Jerome feels guilty because he wishes he’d gotten back to town ten minutes earlier, so he could’ve stopped it or something. You don’t know it’s not that.”
He doesn’t bother to answer.
I turn and we start back toward the car. “He’s a friend.”
Alexandru catches my arm.
I turn.
His grip is firm, unyielding. My pulse jumps beneath his fingers. We’re close enough that I can see the precise line where his collar meets bare skin. I lift my eyes to his. Something tightens low in my stomach, which is incredibly inconvenient right now.
“I have lived many centuries, Ms. Renfield.” The rumble of his voice hits deep. “I may not know your SubStacks and such, but I have an intimate acquaintance with human nature. Your friend Jerome carries a terrible secret. Take heed; he may be the killer.”
His gaze drops to the hollow of my throat where my pulse pounds out of control, showing him everything I’m feeling, which at this point ranges from outrage to “why is this hot?”
“Well...” I stammer, “umm...you’re not a psychic!”
“Do I understand correctly that Jerome had a quarrel with the victim?”
“Razor Johnny blamed Jerome for sending him to prison many years ago. If anything, that would give Razor Johnny cause to kill Jerome, not the other way around.”
“What of the grandmother’s tulips?”
I’m acutely aware of the feel of soft leather against my skin. “A man riding a motorcycle over someone’s tulips doesn’t drive a person to murder. And Jerome is a journalist. If he wanted to fight Razor Johnny, he’d do it with journalism. Words and pictures are Jerome’s weapon.”
“I am telling you what I sensed from this man.”
“You’re letting your vampire instincts run wild.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. The space between us feels charged. “Take heed,” he says quietly. “I will not permit harm to come to what is mine, Ms. Renfield.”
“I’m not a possession.”
“You entered into a contract. You are bound to serve me.” His gaze drops again, and for one reckless second, I think he’s going to kiss me. Or drain me.
The draining would be bad. The kissing would be worse, probably. Or different kinds of bad.
He lets me go.
I suck in a breath. “Well! The villagers shall harm me at their own peril. Now that that’s settled, let’s focus on this Dooley Brogan situation. It sounds like the police have him in for questioning, but I think we should go and talk to his sister.”
We walk back to the car in silence, him brooding and me doing my best to ignore the tingly warmth on my arm where he held me.