Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Alexandru
Dooley Brogan has the overwrought look of a man fresh from battle. He closes the door behind him but does not step into the room. “Are you… friends of Tilly’s?”
“We have a mutual interest in recent events,” I say.
The female rushes in from the kitchen and hugs her brother. “They let you out. Thank goodness. How did it go?”
“We have visitors?” Dooley says.
“This is Granabelle’s granddaughter. From that antique store down on Commerce, and this is Alexandru. He just moved here. Don’t worry, they’re friends.”
“Okay, well, I guess I’ll take all the friends I can get.” Dooley collapses on the couch. “So yeah, they let me out. I don’t know why; I don’t have much of an alibi. I was out for a walk, which is exactly what guilty people say.”
“All you can do is tell them the truth,” the sister says.
“Didn’t work so well the first time around,” Dooley says bitterly.
Carefully, Ms. Renfield asks, “Did anybody see you taking this walk?”
Dooley frowns. “I don’t understand. Are you guys investigating this?”
“We are. We don’t want to see anybody wrongfully convicted.
” Ms. Renfield tries for a smile, emotions unfolding like a symphony.
Guilt at the half-truths she’s laying out for him.
Compassion and dread, too—she doesn’t want Dooley to be guilty, but she knows that he might be.
And beneath it all, her drive for answers, for order, to make sense of the world in her charts.
Dooley gazes at the ceiling. “People saw me on my walk, but would they remember me? I guess the cops are checking it out right now. I can tell you they are suspicious. Why go on a long walk to nowhere, right? But if you’ve been inside for fifteen years, you know why.
Rambling aimlessly around is very underrated,” he says with a lopsided smile.
“I can imagine,” Ms. Renfield says. “Did they ask about a specific timeframe?”
“Yes, 1:20. That’s when the murder happened.”
She nods, enjoying the specificity of this detail. She marks it down. “And where were you at that time?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. And no, I didn’t bring a phone.
Who would I call? I took off from here at around eleven and wandered up Kempton and then all the way down Old Bluff Road, down through Gazebo Park and down to the river.
I watched them cleaning the big paddle boat.
” He stares off in the direction of the river.
“They didn’t have paddle boat dinner cruises and a floating lantern festival and flower baskets hanging from old-fashioned lamps and all that when I went in.
Anyway, at some point I was up on Commerce Street.
I went into Berky’s to look at those cookies she makes, though that’s not something we’re spending our funds on right now,” he adds with a look at the sister.
“I used to dream of those peanut butter sprinkle ones, though. The kid there asked me if I wanted a sample, but it seemed like a dick move to get a bunch of samples and then walk out.”
“So you wandered into a patisserie and denied yourself even a morsel,” I say.
Dooley appears startled by my question. “Yeah. And then I looked in the windows of that new paper shop. And then I went and checked out the new park benches. Those weren’t there when I went inside, either. Ashwood got a glow-up, I guess you could say.”
The sister smiles. The two of them are quite close.
“After that I hit Gable’s Grocery, again, not buying anything.
No morsels, but it’s nice to look at all that food after you’ve been eating prison slop.
My lawyer says that the cops will probably try to pull security footage, but I don’t know how much of that there is.
After that, I cut through the alley and headed up Greentree and on up back home. ”
“Did you do it?” I ask. “Did you kill Razor Johnny?”
Three pairs of eyes rivet to me.
“Alexandru!” Ms. Renfield says.
I keep my gaze fixed on Dooley. “It’s a simple question.”
“No, I’m glad you asked. I’d rather have people ask than just suspect me. The answer is no, I didn’t do it,” he says. “Why would I do it?”
I say, “We have been told that the shot came from the alley near Gable’s.”
“Well, I don’t know where I would’ve gotten a crossbow.
Was I carrying one around? I think people would’ve remembered that.
Did I know this guy who got killed? No! Did I murder my business partner fifteen years ago?
No!” He shoots a glance at the sister. “Tilly’s always telling me to try and have compunction and show the parole board compunction for that murder, but I won’t show compunction for something that I didn’t do.
Suddenly, I get this second chance at life, and I feel like somebody’s trying to frame me or something. A crossbow? Do I look like a moron?”
Ms. Renfield watches my expression, trying, perhaps, to gauge my assessment of his truthfulness. This Dooley seems truthful enough, though some murderers believe their own lies. And sociopaths lie without effort. And there’s something more there with Dooley. A secret.
The sister sees something out the window and her alarm spikes. “Some guy’s been sitting out there in a parked car this whole time since you got home, Dooley.”
Dooley’s up out of the couch like a shot. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised they put a tail on me. I wish they had one on me all day and they would know I didn’t do it.” He sits back down with a huff.
“Why did the female think you would have a particular passion for solving crime?” I ask Ms. Renfield as we settle into her car.
She turns the key and the engine rumbles to life. “That’s the question on your mind? To delve into my passion for solving crime when we’re racing the clock to figure out whether Dooley did this murder?”
“I am able to entertain several lines of inquiry at once. You have a secret. You will tell me.”
“Oh, now I have a secret?”
“Indeed you do. You will divulge it to me.”
She maneuvers onto the road. “You’re entitled to my secrets? I must have missed that clause.” Her eyes stay fixed ahead. “Are you requesting to amend the contract?”
“I am not. You are my underling, my servant. Thus your secrets are my property, and I am requesting access to what is already mine.”
“Whatever happened to a certain vampire saying that the inner lives of Renfields are no concern of his?”
I am annoyed that she would remind me of this. Yes, I said that once. Indeed, I have come to regret it.
In truth, I never cared a whit about the interior lives of Renfields, despicable creatures that they are, but I must know this secret that she keeps.
I have sensed its presence before; I can sometimes feel it lurking inside her, dark and shameful.
And there was no mistaking the surge of painful emotion within Ms. Renfield’s breast when the sister commented that of course she would be interested in justice.
Why?
We pass through a neighborhood of modest homes with tidy squares of lawn.
The villagers have attempted to distinguish their plots with small statues: a ceramic frog here, a woman frozen in prayer there, or most preposterous of all, a white goose.
Many have enshrined a white goose. A goose is a vile, ill-tempered creature with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and these people have chosen to immortalize them on their lawns as though such hostility were a virtue.
Between the geese and Ms. Renfield’s obstinance, my patience is wearing dangerously thin.
“Your inner life is yours to maintain. Your secrets are another matter entirely. They could affect your management of my business affairs.”
She turns down another prettily arranged street, heading up to Bluff Road. “Number one, secrets and inner lives are the same thing. Number two, Ms. Renfield is not my name. Number three, did you think Dooley was lying or not?”
I glower at her. Never has a Renfield maddened me more!
No matter. I will know all in the end. In the game of cat and mouse, the cat wins eventually.
“The male was full of nerves and fear. Bewildered. I did not detect deception, but it is always possible that he believes his own lies. There is something he is not telling.”
“Like what?”
I shrug. “If I could talk to him when he was in a calmer state, I might sense more.”
Ms. Renfield makes a small sound of assent. “He really did seem a bit freaked out. The man just got out of jail and endured an interrogation.”
“What does all this matter?” I ask. “The man would be convicted of murder but for the blunder of a civil servant. Even the shopkeepers are convinced of his guilt. You will call Dooley and tell him that we have found evidence. You will suggest we meet secretly by the river, and I will take him as my meal.”
“Wait, what?” Ms. Renfield twists in her seat, nearly careening off the road. “We can’t do that!”
“I will simply drain his blood. It’s not as if I’m breaking him on a wheel.”
“But he said he wasn’t guilty of the original crime, and you just said yourself, you didn’t sense deception. What if he’s innocent of both crimes?”
I sigh, frustrated. “He is seen by many of your kind as a murderer. I sense a secret. What more do you require?”
“A lot more!” Ms. Renfield jerks the vehicle to a halt before Berky’s Patisserie. “I’m thinking we should follow his footsteps and construct a timeline. We know that the murder occurred at 1:20 in the afternoon.”
“But the police would have already done this.”
“Yes, but they don’t have your empathic abilities, do they? Or your powerful hunter’s senses. And it’s my belief that their goal is to gather enough evidence to put him back in jail. We’ll be approaching this with an open mind, working off hard facts and hard facts alone.”