Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alexandru
“Ms. Renfield seems to think you’ve taken a dislike to her,” I say.
Gregor lifts his head slowly, as if the motion costs him. His expression doesn’t change—still that flat, gray blankness—but his eyes are cautious. “I have no opinion on the human world.”
It comes to me here that I’ve been ignoring Gregor.
Neglecting my duties to Gregor.
I take a step closer, voice low. “And yet you’ve managed to give her the impression that you do. That you have an opinion on her. Tell me, Gregor—who are you to have opinions?”
His gaze drops to the inlaid marble floor. “I am no one, my lord.”
“Precisely.” In truth, I don’t know if he has any opinion on Ms. Renfield or anything at all. He’s one of the few beings I cannot read. Not because he’s shielded, but because there’s simply nothing left to read. He’s a muttering, gray shadow of what was once a man.
“She’s just another Renfield, no different than the ones before,” I say.
“I understand, my lord.”
“Did you clean the dungeon?”
“Of course, overlord.”
The dungeon spans the entire footprint of the mansion, deep in the ground. We had a tunnel dug to the side of the cliff, all the better to throw body parts into the river. The perfect automatic waste disposal system.
“You will clean it again,” I say. “This time you’ll use a toothbrush from the guest bath on the east wing.”
He blinks.
“On your hands and knees. No gloves. No light. You will not eat until it is done. And if I find so much as a speck of filth clinging to the mortar, I will hang you by your ankles and let the rats decide how much of you they want to keep.”
“I hear,” he says, voice soft and toneless. “And I obey.”
He turns, dragging his ruined soul behind him, just the slightest tremor in his step.
Good. Let him fear. Let him remember what he is.
I don’t see any more of Gregor until the next evening when he emerges from the dungeon, knees bloody, face drawn. “Don’t tell me you’re done already.” The last cleaning took at least three days, and he had a mop to use.
“No, overlord.” He holds out my phone in a shaking hand. “Ms. Renfield for you. You were not answering, so I took the liberty—”
“Very well.” I snatch the phone from him. “Proceed.” I point at the dungeon door, cleverly disguised as part of the wall.
“Alexandru,” Ms. Renfield says breathlessly.
“I just got home from work, and Roy LaRue is here in our store. You know, the photographer who works with Bo Richardson? I really want to question him about the archives and maybe get the sparkler picture since Sloane probably isn’t gonna help us. Can you get Gregor to drive you here?”
“Gregor is busy. You will come and get me.”
“I can’t trust Mom or Granabelle to stall him. Can’t you make Gregor tear himself away from whatever he’s doing?”
I clench my jaw. “I’ll drive myself.”
“What? You know how to drive?”
“Of course, I know how to drive. I am not a child.”
“Then why were you making me drive you everywhere?”
“Because it is your place to serve me.” I hang up without further explanation.
I probably shouldn’t be driving, considering my present state, but I descend into the garage and select my black Alfa Romeo Spider—a gift from a Baltic heiress in the 1960s.
She was a wild redhead with a passion for diamonds and danger.
Even then, sex with women had become as routine as the hunts. Just a simple means to an end.
When I arrive, Roy is wearing a pinstriped gangster cap and hoisting an oversized jug labeled XXX, while Granabelle lounges beside him in a flapper dress, a string of pearls nearly to her knees, pretending to sip from a silver martini glass.
Ms. Renfield is taking pictures. So this is how they’ve kept Roy here.
He regards me nervously as I stroll in.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Renfield says. “Thank you, Roy.” She slides her gaze to me, red lips pursed, still annoyed at the news I can drive, I suppose.
Granabelle clasps Roy’s arm with both hands, eyes twinkling. “You make an old lady’s heart pitter-patter like a flock of butterflies.”
“My pleasure,” Roy replies, visibly calculating the fastest route of escape.
“Prince Miramonte!” Granabelle turns to me, beaming. “I have a derby hat that will be perfect for you for this shoot!”
“Not happening,” Ms. Renfield cuts in.
“Oh, you can’t blame an old woman for wanting a bit of fun,” Granabelle says, fluttering her hands a bit.
Ms. Renfield’s mother, Lorna, grabs a phone and some papers. “Harriet, could you ring Roy up? Your grandmother and I have business upstairs.” She takes the silver martini glass from Granabelle’s fingers, whispering, “A deal is a deal, now come on.”
Whatever deal they made is certainly powerful, being that Granabelle is not one to leave me alone. What’s more, Ms. Renfield’s mother is not one to refrain from cutting remarks. The women in this family possess a good deal of bravery. Though sometimes bravery is foolishness.
“You were an amazing sport,” Harriet says to Roy.
“Bringing joy to elderly women everywhere,” Roy jokes, again glancing nervously in my direction.
I nod my acknowledgement as Ms. Renfield goes around the counter. “Let me give you a little discount on the armoire.”
“Not necessary,” Roy says.
“Granabelle would insist, and so do I!” She rings him up and hands him a wrapped candy from a bowl. “Saltwater taffy. Not an antique, I promise. But I do have a favor to ask.”
“Lemme guess,” Roy says with another glance in my direction. “You’re hoping for pictures from the Bamberg–Greyhorse wedding, aka the exploding sparklers.”
He already knows. I tilt my head. “Did Bo tell you?”
“Yeah. Bo said I didn’t upload, but that’s not true—I did. But our server’s been glitchy, and sometimes the files don’t show up on his end. That’s why I stopped in, to let you know we’re figuring it out. I know you wanted to see them. We’ll get it worked out eventually.”
Ms. Renfield offers him a smile. “No, that’s fine, I appreciate the effort.”
The smile lies. She’s disappointed and suspicious.
It is suspicious. Good god, are we going to get another suspect?
Breezily, she says, “I’m surprised you all don’t keep your images on backup devices.”
“We generally send our photos to a central server,” Roy says, “but Bo’s converting systems, and it’s a whole thing. I know. It’s bad timing. He thought it might even be a hacker.”
“A hacker right when you’re doing a systems overhaul really is bad timing,” she says.
“A hacker?” I say.
Harriet turns to me. “It’s when somebody compromises your system. They hack past the firewalls, like breaching the gate that protects a village.”
“Ah,” I say. “And then these hackers are inside. They string the nobles from the trees and crown the young survivors with bloody entrails. Like the Mongols.”
Roy laughs nervously. “Let’s hope not!”
“They may well plunder your archives,” I point out to him.
Roy blinks, fear and nervousness emanating from him. “Bo told me that you have a theory that somebody’s been deliberately arranging accidents at these weddings. Do you think that’s who could’ve hacked us?”
“Possibly,” I say.
Dark emotions roll through Roy. “I was there when Boyd Halverson fell to his death. It was awful. And fireworks suddenly exploding during a ceremony...” He shakes his head.
“We’re lucky nobody had a heart attack. If there’s anything I can do to help you identify this culprit, count me in.
And as soon as we get access back, I’ll get you the image sets. ”
Ms. Renfield looks Roy in the eye. “We heard about some kind of action shot you took where the fireworks had just gone off and people were freaking out…”
“Yeah, that shot was wild. Nothing you’d expect to take at a wedding.”
“We heard that the bride displayed it as her Facebook header for a while.”
“She loved it,” Roy says.
Ms. Renfield slides a glance my way. “We also heard that Whitney the wedding planner recently asked her to take it down. Apparently, it was bad for her business?”
“Whitney? No way.” Roy is genuinely astonished. “It was great for her business. She’d joke about how many referrals she got from it. You’re telling me she personally requested—”
“She called the bride herself,” I say.
“Well, that’s bizarre,” Roy says.
Ms. Renfield adjusts her glasses. “Can you recall anything in the photo that might have made her look suspicious somehow?”
“Hold on a moment. You’re not thinking Whitney would be causing these accidents, are you? No. She would never.”
“No?” Ms. Renfield says.
“Not Whitney! Look, we were also both there when Boyd fell off that balcony, and I can tell you she was as horrified as anyone. That lady doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body. She loves people. She loves weddings. She’s into it.”
I say, “We understand she sabotaged some chairs last year.”
Roy shakes his head vigorously. “I know that’s the talk out there, and I can’t speak to it, but what I can tell you is that she’d be the last person to do any of this.”
“Was Kip Kidderson at the firecracker wedding?” I ask. “Was he the barkeep for that wedding?”
“I don’t know. Weddings kind of all blend together.”
Ms. Renfield taps her white pen to her red lips. “Do you remember anybody behaving oddly at that wedding?”
“Oddly? It was mayhem. People crying. Manny up front, crouching and shooting like a battlefield photographer. It was a lot of odd.”
“Manny got a different angle? Are Manny’s shots in the hacked archives as well?” I ask.
“Yeah, they were in a group with mine. People were miffed that we kept shooting, but we were hired to document the day and document it we did.”
Ms. Renfield examines her electronic ledger. “You were also a photographer for the wedding where the champagne glass tower collapsed. Do you recall anyone behaving oddly around that table beforehand? Bo says you were shooting B-roll.”
“It was such a long time ago. I can’t say anything sticks out. I guess Whitney was at that one, too.”
Ms. Renfield presses him on other weddings he was present at: when the confetti cannon blasted off inappropriately and when Berky’s cake collapsed. He is of very little help.
She slips her ledger into her satchel. “Do you think Manny would be willing to talk to us?”
“Manny? That’s doubtful. Manny doesn’t have much in the way of social skills,” Roy says. “By which I mean, he lives in his family’s basement and rarely talks.”
“He returned our call the other day and seemed normal enough,” she says.
Roy lifts his brows in surprise. “Manny returned a call?”
Ms. Renfield straightens, sensing something interesting. “Is that weird?”
“Yeah. Usually, you can barely get a mumble out of Manny. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a decent photographer and all.
He’s actually quite gifted, just like his uncle, but he’s antisocial.
Hair covering his face, always wearing that feed cap and shaded glasses.
Bo would never put Manny in a customer-facing situation.
He doesn’t even seem to like him, honestly. ”
“How so?” Ms. Renfield asks.
“I don’t know. Bo’s just weird about the guy. Like I said, Manny does good work, but Bo will never use him as his own assistant. It’s always us. He avoids him like the plague and pays him off the books. Some strange family dynamics, I guess. I’m sure Bo wouldn’t mind if I gave you his info.”