Chapter 5
Only after the last guest had gone to bed did Arthur allow his mind to return to murder.
It wasn’t any of his business, he tried to convince himself.
Stephanie was exonerated, and even Sheriff McMartin would be able to follow the clues.
Potion very clearly said “witch” and not “vampire.” He and Sal were in the clear.
It was time to turn to other pressing matters, of which Arthur had several.
“She’s out there all alone,” Salvatore whined, face pressed up against the glass kitchen window like he was waiting for his lover to return from the war.
“She’s an adult woman, Sal. I’m sure Stephanie is just fine.”
“Stephanie?! How can you think of another at a time like this!” he wailed, throwing his body into Arthur’s arms. “Our baby is out there—and in the dark, no less!”
Arthur didn’t bother to remind Sal that cats actually quite liked nighttime and could see in the dark.
Arthur had delved into the subject after developing the ability to speak to creatures of the night.
Though he could converse with bats, raccoons, possums, and the like, he’d yet to have a coherent conversation with their cat.
His research led him to discover that cats were not, in fact, nocturnal, but rather crepuscular, active most at dawn and dusk.
That explained her dinnertime zoomies, as Sal called her energetic rampages, but it did not explain why he couldn’t converse with her.
Other vampires reported that while cats didn’t fall into the scientific category, they were still considered creatures of the night by the vampiric curse and most vampires with the power to communicate with animals counted cats among them.
Perhaps Arthur’s deficiency was owed to his relatively new grasp of the power.
Or maybe Rumble was simply an unwilling conversation partner.
Arthur sensed that a long-winded explanation of the term crepuscular wouldn’t be well received by Salvatore in this moment, so instead, he held his husband tight and stroked his hair. “There, there,” he said in an approximation of how he recalled being comforted as a child.
It was one of Arthur’s weaknesses when it came to being married to Sal.
He didn’t ever quite know how to help when his husband was in one of his emotionally charged states.
His instinct was always to fix the problem, which Sal often resented, but even so, he couldn’t fix this.
He could no more summon Rumble from the night than Sal could resist an opportunity to insult the French.
“Let’s go put up your posters,” Arthur suggested.
Sal sniffled, but took back his own body weight—a minor victory, indeed. “Do you mean it?”
“We’ll be much faster at night, and besides, the guests are asleep by now.
No one will miss us for an hour or two.” It was the logical thing to do, though that had never been a great motivator for Sal.
He added some flattery to the mix for good measure.
“These posters are truly works of art. It would be wrong to hide them for a moment longer.”
Sal’s grin was worth all the trouble Arthur would suffer later to clean the glitter off his suit and from under his fingernails. “I’ll get something to hang them with. Meet you by the bike.” With a quick peck on the cheek, Sal was off.
After collecting the posters and doing one last sweep of the kitchen to make sure everything was tidied up, Arthur went to the garage to retrieve their bike and helmets.
He was just snapping his on as Sal joined him, floating over the ground so he and Arthur were the same height.
Flight was a common enough vampire ability, but as with all their powers, the potency varied from vampire to vampire.
Age was, of course, a factor—the older the vampire the more heightened their powers would be—but it also mattered who one’s sire was.
Sal may have been hundreds of years older than Arthur, but based on Arthur’s relatively quick development of his powers, he suspected he had been turned by a far more powerful vampire than Sal.
Arthur hadn’t spent much time practicing most of his abilities.
He was content to reap the benefits of immortality alone.
Things like mind control, transformation, and even flight didn’t much appeal to him.
Flying hardly seemed safer than strapping oneself into a car, something Arthur decidedly did not do as a rule.
He preferred to keep his feet on the ground, if he could help it.
To date, the only power Arthur had bothered to use to any real end was communicating with animals.
When they’d been investigating the mayor’s murder, Arthur had managed to procure the assistance of the local raccoon population, as well as a particularly helpful mouse.
Since then, he’d made a point to keep up with local nightlife of Trident Falls.
It was always good practice to be friendly to one’s neighbors, even if those neighbors lived in a dumpster.
Sal floated across the garage to perch on the bike sidesaddle.
“Show-off,” Arthur muttered under his breath, hiding a small smile. It was for the best, he thought, to let Sal carry on being the powerful one among them. Arthur didn’t want to create any grounds for jealousy.
Together they pedaled into town. The streets were deserted now, but come morning, downtown would be crawling with Trident Falls residents and visitors alike.
He hoped people would see the posters and stay on the lookout for Rumble, though he doubted Rumble would prove easy to catch if she was spotted.
That was a problem they’d solve when they got to it.
Approaching the first telephone pole, Arthur placed a poster at the optimal height, then glanced at Sal. “Pass me the stapler.”
“The what?”
“The stapler, to hang the posters.” Surely Sal hadn’t forgotten to bring the one item he said he’d retrieve. None of the stores were open at this hour, so they’d need to pedal all the way back up the hill to fetch it. “You do have the stapler, don’t you?” Arthur asked wearily.
“Of course not!” Sal exclaimed, mischief biting into his grin.
“I’ve got something much better.” He pulled two rolls of duct tape out of the pocket of his leather jacket (tonight, he’d donned an outfit best suited to a stage production of Grease).
Instead of the standard silver color, one roll was bright orange with black bats and coffins on it, and the other was pink with unicorns and rainbows.
“We can cover more ground if we split up.”
Arthur took the unicorn tape. “Excellent idea. But don’t go too far.” He could only imagine what Sal might get up to on his own with a roll of novelty duct tape at this hour.
“I would never stray, darling.” Sal plucked half the posters from Arthur’s stack and floated across the street.
In the cooling night air, with invigorating stars above, it was a simple matter for Arthur to move more quickly than he could during the day.
Once the sun set, the powers granted to him by the curse of vampirism flourished.
He sped down the street, taping posters at regular intervals.
Glitter dusted his hands, but he wiped them on his handkerchief before pulling more strips of tape.
At the end of the street, Arthur paused to check on Sal’s progress.
He was floating far behind, moving at a much slower pace than walking would’ve afforded.
Under normal circumstances, Arthur might have hurried his husband along, but he thought better of it.
Instead, he looped around back of the Big Bad Brew and leaned casually against the large dumpster.
“Hello…creatures of the night?” He rapped his knuckles softly on the metal siding.
Three familiar raccoon faces popped up over the side, staring expectantly at him with wide eyes. One had a banana peel perched atop its head.
“Ah, good to see you’re well. Fine weather we’re having,” Arthur began. He had no idea if animals cared for pleasantries, but he thought it best to cover his bases all the same.
The raccoons all just stared at him, unblinking.
“Right, well, I was wondering if any of you have seen a cat wandering around town.”
For a moment, Arthur thought they weren’t going to respond. Perhaps his powers had suddenly stopped working. That would be just his luck. But then the raccoons shook their heads in unison.
“No, you haven’t seen a cat?” Arthur asked.
The raccoons nodded.
“Are you certain?” He held up the last of the Missing posters and pointed at the photo of Rumble—it was one of many nearly identical photos of the cat Sal had taken during the past few months, showing her perched on the kitchen windowsill, basking in her favorite sunbeam.
The raccoons all cocked their heads. The banana peel fell off, punctuating the interaction with a soft plop. Then, they slowly began to nod one by one.
“So you have seen a cat?”
The raccoons switched to shaking their heads again.
“Arthur! I never!” Salvatore gasped as he came around the corner. “When I wanted to go skydiving, you were all ‘it isn’t safe,’ but now you’re dumpster diving? Without me?”
“I wasn’t—”
“When you know I love all things diving!”
“I was just asking our nocturnal friends if they’d seen Rumble.”
The raccoons bobbed their heads in a confusing pattern.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Sal asked.
“Indeterminate, alas. I might be losing my touch.”
“Why don’t I give it a try?” Sal got to his hands and knees and began crawling along the alley, making exaggerated meowing sounds and pretending to lick the back of his hand in a manner that was clearly meant to imitate a cat.
One of the raccoons threw a piece of trash at him.
“Hey!” Sal collapsed dramatically on the pavement. “What was that for?”
“Perhaps they were offended by your performance.” Arthur turned to the raccoons, quietly muttering an apology. He hoped they wouldn’t hold it against them the next time they needed help, though if their help continued to be as unclear as it had been tonight, perhaps it wasn’t worth much anyway.
“Or, maybe they were trying to give me a tip!” Sal reached for the trash greedily as if it were a stack of bills. He unfolded it to reveal a flyer for the Celestine Coven, just like the one the festival worker had practically forced on Arthur.
A tip, indeed—albeit, of the other sort.
“Thank you, raccoons. Enjoy your evening.” Arthur waved before helping Salvatore to his feet.
“Yes, thank you! I shall return with a more prepared performance next time.” Sal swept into a half bow, half curtsy. “Good garbage hunting!”
Together, they exited the alley onto a backstreet that led toward the fairgrounds. In the distance, Arthur spotted flickering lights.
“Looks like they’re still at it,” Arthur said, pointing toward the glow.
“Oh! The evening bonfire!”
“Bonfire? How do you know that?”
Sal shoved the flyer—wrinkled and stained from its short residency in the dumpster—under Arthur’s nose.
“It’s listed among the coven’s activities. They also have workshops on tea leaf reading, gem healing, and moonlight dancing! Oh, Arthur, how romantic!”
Arthur didn’t think it sounded romantic at all. “Remember, one of them is probably a killer.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Sal shivered. “Do you suppose the murderer is there, dancing around the flames, everyone none the wiser?”
“Almost certainly.” That didn’t narrow the suspect pool much. With the festival lasting through the weekend—to the night of the summer solstice itself on Sunday—witches abounded. Any one of them would be capable of mixing up a deadly potion. But who could’ve gotten Lola Lataurelle to drink it?
Arthur pulled out his notebook, flipping to the page where he’d written his assessment of the crime scene.
Open cabinet. Hot plate with kettle (fat pug). Teacup, half full.
“The killer probably slipped the potion into the tea,” Arthur said.
“Oh, how horrible!” Sal clutched at his neck where his string of pearls would be if he’d gone in the poodle-skirt direction he’d contemplated as they’d dressed for the outing.
“Murder always is.”
“No, I meant the poor tea! To be defiled with some witch’s brew.” Sal shuddered. “Imagine being an innocent cup of tea, and someone you trust goes and mixes a death potion into you—”
“Someone you trust,” Arthur said, interrupting Sal’s antics. “It had to have been someone Lola Lataurelle trusted. I doubt she’d let a random customer make her a cup of tea.”
“True.” Sal sniffed. “She was rude, you know. Not just about Rumble. She didn’t even offer me a drink!”
“So, the killer could be someone she knew.” That might have helped them narrow down the suspects if they had any. Their impression of Lola was based on Sal’s interaction with her alone, which Arthur felt confident was not a full picture of who the psychic had been in life.
“Darling, you sound like you’re still on the case.” Sal wiggled his eyebrows. “Not content to leave this one to the proper authorities?”
“No,” Arthur said, surprised to find how strongly he felt about it.
He didn’t trust McMartin to solve a sudoku, much less a murder.
A killer going free would lead to bad press and fewer tourists, and more false arrests would hurt innocents.
All these things pushed Arthur toward action, but most of all, he wanted to know the truth.
Someone had killed Lola Lataurelle, and the answers were just out of reach, taunting him.
“I’m going to solve this. We’ll need to find out who was in her circle, who she kept in her confidence. ”
“Do you think McMartin figured this out yet?” Sal asked.
“Hard to say.” The sheriff had copied off of Arthur’s notes like a schoolboy cheating on a math test, but even if he had the same clues Arthur had, there was no telling what McMartin would make of them.
He considered for a moment approaching the coven revelers at the bonfire for questioning, but thought better of it.
He didn’t know how they would react to being approached by vampires in the middle of the night.
“We can’t do much about it now, I suppose. ”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Arthur said as he glanced toward the distant festival and its rowdy crowd of witches, “we infiltrate the coven.”
“That was so dramatic, darling!” Sal clapped his hands with glee. “We’ll need disguises!”
“Oh, Sal, I’m not so sure…I just meant that we should go in prepared with a good reason to be lurking about, asking questions. We need to spend our time working on a cover story, ensuring we have background information…”
“Sounds boring.” Sal smirked. “Let’s divide and conquer! You do all your little research, and I shall undertake the designing of our costumes!”
Arthur tried to argue, but Sal was not to be reasoned with. They retraced their steps to the bike and cycled home. All the while Sal hummed the theme song from The Pink Panther.