La Vida Vampire

My heart stuttered a beat. “It is?”


“Yes, and stop fishing for compliments. You’re milking this Wal-Mart trip to annoy me, aren’t you?”

I stopped the cart, my back to the sporting goods section.

“You know, now I understand why women hate to take men shopping. Sheesh! What are you in such a hurry to do? Is basketball on tonight? ‘March Madness’?”

“I want to review the narrative with you, ” he said, all business. “A woman is dead, and you’re involved, however innocently. You saw something or heard something that might help find the killer.”

“So you don’t think I did it?”

“No.”

“Oh,” I said, biting my lip and feeling ashamed. “And if I didn’t remember to write this particular thing?”

“We’ll go over and over those two days until we find the key. Unless you want March to put your butt in prison.”

“Prison, hell,” a gravelly voice said behind me. “You ought to be executed.”

I whirled to find Stony—Victor Gorman—not five feet away and closing fast. He was dressed like a black ops guy from TV, but with less gear. Worse, he carried a box of gun cartridges in one hand and a bow—as in bow and arrow—in the other.

“You have some goddamn nerve setting me up,” Gorman growled. “I could kill you right now and be glad to die for the cause.”

Saber stepped in front of me, and I let him. “Mr. Gorman, I’ll remind you I’m a state investigator and caution you to watch what you say.”

Gorman gave Saber the evil eye and pointed the tip of the bow at him. “What the hell are you doin’ here with…that. You used ta kill these things, and now you’re shoppin’ with ’em?”

I leaned around Saber. “Hey, I have excellent taste.”

“You’re not helping,” Saber warned me, then turned back to Gorman. “In light of your new threats, if Ms. Marinelli turns up with so much as a stubbed toe, I’ll be sure we haul you in for it. Do you understand me?”

“Ms. Marinelli?” He sneered and raked my sole dressy outfit with a look of disgust. “Dress ’er up any way you want, but she’s a fuckin’ parasite. I got the right to free speech, and you can’t tell me different.” He shifted his cold blue eyes to me. “You’re gonna pay for killin’ that Frenchie, bitch. I know where to find you.”

With a last glare, he spun and stalked back to the sporting goods counter. If Wal-Mart carried missile launchers, he was fired up enough to walk out with a dozen.

Saber faced me and put his hands on his hips, but I was way ahead of him.

I made a NASCAR-worthy one eighty with the shopping cart and headed to checkout.



I changed while Saber put the groceries away. We hadn’t talked much on the way back, but I knew Saber was ticked from the way his hands had clenched the steering wheel. If he’d been using vampire strength, he would’ve crushed it to dust. The confrontation had shaken me, but I was calm by the time I called Maggie again. She took the news of Saber staying at the penthouse in stride when I told her he was protecting me from Gorman. Fine, she said. The linens on her bed were clean because she’d anticipated Janie using her room. All in all, not the ordeal I thought the conversation would be. In my jeans and St. Augustine T-shirt, I walked barefoot into the dining area to join Saber at the table, where he sat reading my notes. His eyes held no warmth, no appraisal now. Nothing to make my tummy flutter, but it did anyway. Maybe it was just his holstered weapon on the table.

“Find the missing links?” I asked, hoping against hope he had. Especially when I noticed a chair set squarely beside his.

“No, but I have a list of questions.”

He turned the page of a white legal pad, headed it Suspects, and wrote Victor Gorman’s name first. I tapped the page as I sat. “I thought you’d cleared him.”

He shrugged. “In light of the threats he made tonight, he’s staying on the list. Let’s start with what he said and did, and how the others reacted.”

I closed my eyes and started from the beginning—from the first time I noticed him until he stormed out of Scarlett’s—while Saber took notes.

“So the French couple indicated that Gorman had been following them even before they all showed up for the tour.”

“Right. Yolette said he was spoiling their honeymoon, and I told her they should report it to the police.”

“Which she didn’t.”

“No. I specifically asked on Tuesday when Yolette threw a fit about Gorman being on the tour again.”

“Cover the time after Gorman left the tour on Monday.”

Again I closed my eyes to picture the scene. “We walked back to the substation chatting. I asked why Yolette and Etienne came to St. Augustine for their wedding trip, then Millie asked if they were staying in a B and B downtown.”

“And that’s when you knew where to find them.”

“No,” I snapped. “I never knew where to find them, and I didn’t want to.”