La Vida Vampire

“Take the boards and call 911 while I drag her in to shore.”


I just might’ve moved at vampire speed to haul the boards above the waterline, drop them on the sand, and sprint to my truck in the parking lot. My hands shook so badly, it took four tries to punch the right three digits. Cell service can be spotty at best on the beach, so I mentally crossed my fingers as I watched early walkers and joggers help Neil.

“A body on the beach,” I blurted when the operator answered. “It was in the water, but now it’s on the beach. Crescent Beach.”

The operator must’ve calmed me enough to get the information she needed, because I was off the phone and standing with Neil, the onlookers, and the other surfers when the first of the sheriff’s cars arrived ten minutes later. Believe me, I wasn’t checking out surfer butt anymore.

Faceup in the sand lay Yolette, the French bride, with two punctures on her inner thigh that looked a lot like fang wounds. Neil’s an anthropologist for the state of Florida with forensic pathology training, which I haven’t mentioned because it didn’t matter. Now it did, because he wasn’t as grossed out as the rest of us who stood around the body. He didn’t hands-on examine the dead woman before the cops arrived, but he looked long and carefully enough to memorize every pore. I was majorly grossed, but I looked, too. The bride’s neck was obviously broken. Even I could see that by the way her head lolled on the sand. Her belly was bloated some, but my gaze kept returning to her right thigh. Though I wouldn’t call myself an expert on death by fang, I’d seen my share of bites in the old days. Not one so intimately placed, but still, if these were fang wounds, she hadn’t been drained.

Lividity, I thought, mentally snapping my fingers. That was the word for the bruising on her back caused by blood pooling, but it wasn’t on her front.

Neil confirmed that and more when the deputies shooed us away from the body. They dispersed the onlookers and told the witnesses to wait for the detectives. The other surfers were allowed to stow their gear, but the deputies insisted Neil ’s and mine stay put. Guess they’d look for trace evidence. I had braced the body against my board. Maybe I’d buy a new one to replace the garage-sale learner. The county cops could keep it.

The deputies didn’t separate us to keep us from talking, but the other surfers clustered at the base of the boardwalk steps—pointedly away from me. Gee, and they were so friendly before. At least Neil didn ’t abandon me. We huddled on the boardwalk as he dried his hair with an extra beach towel I’d grabbed from my truck.

“Are those vampire marks?” he asked, his back to the beach.

I tucked my dolphin beach towel tighter into the straps of my coral one-piece suit and cocked my head. “You think they aren’t?”

He shrugged. “Not even a vampire would shoot a body then try to drink from it.”

I gaped. “Yolette was shot?”

“Yolette? You know the victim?”

I nodded. “She’s the bride who took my tour Monday and Tuesday night. The one who hit on me.”

“Shit. That won’t look good.”

No, it wouldn’t, and my stomach knotted with worry. I took my hair out of its ponytail, scraped it back with my fingers, and tied it up again. “Neil, go back to the shot part. I didn’t see another wound.”

“It’s in the back of her head, just above her hairline. I felt the entry wound when I turned her over, but I didn’t find an exit wound.”

“Which means what?”

“Small-caliber weapon. Maybe a .22.”

Gun calibers were a mystery to me, but I shuddered. “Did she look like she’d been in the water long? I mean, she’s puffy, but she’s not as swollen as I thought she’d be from the movies I’ve seen.”

“Hollywood distorts forensics.”

“But mystery novelists are obsessive about details. From what I’ve read, bodies aren’t supposed to float for days and days after they’re dumped—sometimes weeks—depending on water temperatures and a bunch of other stuff. Neil, that woman was alive on Tuesday night. This is Thursday morning.”

I don’t know if he was thinking it, but I had to wonder if she ’d been dumped so the morning surfers or beachcombers would find her. Tricky, considering the tides, the storm, and the rip currents. Possible? Heck if I knew. Two things were becoming eerily clear to me. Yolette had not died by accident, and I would be answering questions about the fang marks.

Fifteen minutes later, two plainclothesmen—one youngish, one middle-aged and slightly overweight with bags under his eyes—headed toward the boardwalk. The young one stopped where the other surfers stood, the older one trudged up the boardwalk stairs to us.

“Neil Benson and Francesca Marinelli?”

“Not Chess-ka, ” I corrected. “Cess-ka. ”

The man blinked, and Neil rolled his eyes.