Dinosaur Moon (Vampire for Hire #37)

Chapter One

I’m sipping a Starbucks breve latte, my guilty pleasure, when the office door opens.

A woman steps inside and stops just past the threshold, clutching a leather satchel like it’s a Zulu war shield.

She’s cute in a professional-nerd kind of way. Blue blouse buttoned to her throat, smart gray skirt down to her ankles, black flats. Her curly brown hair is half-pinned, half-tumbling over her shoulders. Thick glasses catch the morning light and throw it back with energy.

Tammy, my daughter and intern, looks up from her desk beside mine and offers a warm, polite smile. “You must be Dr. Fenwick.”

“That would be me.” The woman steps farther in. “Thank you for making time on such short notice.”

I rise, set my coffee aside, and offer my hand. “I’m Samantha Moon. Please, have a seat.” I gesture to one of the client chairs across from my desk.

Her handshake is firm, her skin borderline cold.

Hmm.

A vampire? No. She has an aura. And I sense her nerves: tight and restless just beneath the surface.

“I’m Dr. Jill Fenwick,” she says as she smooths her skirt and settles into the chair. “Director of the Craig Regional Paleontology Center.”

I ease back into my own chair. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Fenwick. Can I get you some coffee, tea, or bottled water?”

She shakes her head. “No, thank you. I’ll get straight to the point. I know it’s the end of the day. Well, it is for me.”

“We tend to work the night shift around here.” I smile and gesture for her to continue. “But by all means.”

She exhales, shoulders slacking, then stiffening again. Her eyes flick briefly to Tammy before returning to me. “I was told you have a reputation for… recovering unconventional things.”

Tammy’s typing falters for just a second.

“My reputation precedes me.”

“Well, this is rare and very valuable. At least, to our small museum.”

I rest my elbows on the desk. “I’ve worked plenty of cases involving stolen or missing items. Antique jewelry, rare books, lost art, heirlooms. If you can name it, I’ve probably hunted it down.” I offer a small smile. “You came to the right place.”

She releases a shaky breath, her posture loosening. “That’s a relief. I wasn’t sure where else to turn. Something was stolen from our museum last week, and the Buena Park police are moving… frustratingly slow.”

I lift an eyebrow. “What was stolen?”

She straightens. “A raptor fossil.”

Tammy perks up. “A dinosaur bone?”

Jill gives her a tight smile. “Yes. Deinonychus, to be exact. Rare specimens from a private collection we were preparing to display.” She shakes her head. “They were stored in our secure vault. Now they’re gone.”

“They?” I ask.

“Multiple bones.”

“Got it. You have cameras on the vault, I assume?”

“That’s the worst part.” Jill’s mouth tightens. “The day the fossils went missing, we had a complete system failure. Cameras, alarms, motion detectors. Everything went down for nearly six hours.”

Tammy and I exchange a look.

“That’s awfully convenient,” I say.

“Exactly. Detective Carson suspects an inside job, but her department is stretched thin, and I’m losing patience. Every day that passes lowers the odds of recovery. Once those fossils hit the black market, they’ll disappear forever.”

“Do you have a list of everyone who was on site that day?” I ask. “Staff, contractors, deliveries. Anyone with access.”

Without hesitation, Jill pulls a slim folder from her satchel and slides it across my desk. “I brought everything I could think of. Employee names, security logs, estimated values, the incident report. I highlighted the periods when the system was down.”

I open the folder and scan the neat printouts and notes. She’s thorough. Probably runs an impeccable museum.

I glance up. “And the detective’s name was Carson, you say?”

Jill nods. “Miss Carson. Her number’s in the report. I’ve called her twice this week and left messages, but she hasn’t returned them.”

I close the folder and tap it lightly with my fingernail. “You want me to recover the bones.”

“Yes, if you think this is something you want to take on.”

“I think it is,” I say, and finally dip into her thoughts, reading her mind regarding this case.

By doing it now, all her memories and thoughts on the matter are at the forefront.

I don’t have to go rooting around. That tends to get messy.

Even still, there’s a lot to sift through, lots of names, employees, alarm codes, frustration, and confusion.

I decide to take the easy way out and command her to tell me if she was involved in the theft.

“I was not,” she says dutifully.

“Do you know who might be?”

“I do not.”

“Do you have any suspicions?”

“I don’t. I’m sorry. This comes as a complete shock to me.”

“Under threat of a noogie, could you give me one name of someone who might have something to do with this?”

“I can’t. And what’s a noogie?”

I tell, and she shakes her head distastefully. “Even under a threat of a noogie, I do not have a clue who might want to steal the bones.”

“That is all for now,” I say. “I want you to forget we had this conversation.”

She nods, blinking, then shakes her head. “Oh, hi,” she says, as if she had just woken up.

“Hi.”

“What were we talking about? I apologize. I think I zoned out.”

“We were discussing the fact that I agreed to take your case.”

“Oh, fantastic. When can you start?”

“Immediately. In fact, I already did.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

“Well, that’s more than the detective in Buena Park has done.”

“I suspect she might have worked more on the case than you might think.”

“Well, I doubt it. Will you be needing a retainer?”

“I will be, yes.”

“For how much?”

I tell her.

She nods. “That seems reasonable. Certainly worth it if we can recover our fossils.”

“I imagine so.”

She writes out a check to ‘Moon Investigations’ for the agreed-upon amount. The account name reads Craig Regional Park.

Never been paid by a park before. First time for everything.

As I watch her leave, I consider my options. After all, she didn’t just hire a private detective. She hired a vampire PI with a few extra tricks up her sleeve.

Tammy rises and walks her to the door. “I remember going to Craig Park on school field trips,” she says with a soft laugh. “Still one of the coolest places in the county.”

Jill smiles warmly. “We work hard to keep it that way.”

When Tammy returns to her desk, she pulls her keyboard closer. “Want me to run background checks on the staff list?”

“Yeah,” I say, reopening the folder. “Look for money troubles, prior theft charges, sudden resignations, or terminations. Let’s see who bubbles up.”

Tammy’s fingers fly. “Got it.”

Outside the office window, the late afternoon sun paints downtown Fullerton in gold and shadow. Cars crawl through intersections. College students chatter on the sidewalks. The city hums with ordinary life.

For now.