Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

B renda has some splainin’ to do…

I took a picture of the fingernail, cursing the cops for missing it. I don’t know what good it was going to do me, but you can bet your ass I’m gonna wanna know why one of the same nails Brenda wore was stuck on Owen’s nightstand.

When I looked behind it, I noted there was an outlet for the lamp sitting on the surface, and the torn remnant of the cord sticking out the back—like someone had yanked it out of the lamp. Maybe that’s what he’d been strangled with, and she’d broken a nail in the middle of ripping it from the lamp?

My phone rang again with “She’s a Lady,” Wanda’s ringtone. I dug it back out of my stupidly uncomfortable blazer and barked, “ What ?”

“Don’t you dare take that tone with me after you abandoned us! Where are you, Dark Lord?”

I paused, holding the phone away from my ear and listening. Shit. Someone was unlocking the damn door. I clicked my phone off and put it on silent, ceasing all movement.

“Yeah. You heard me,” a gruff male voice growled. “Those knuckleheads in forensics screw shit up all the time and you know it, Dunst. I’m gonna give the place a once-over just in case that dingbat Sharna missed something. The only suspect we have is the broad who met him on Facebook, but the wife claims this guy Owen said his profile was cloned and he had proof like a day or so before he was knocked off. Doesn’t make a shit’s worth a sense. But this Brenda Bronkowski had motive.”

There was a pause and some heavy breathing, and then the male voice said, “Yeah. She was probably pissed about findin’ out he had a wife and kids and she whacked him. I’m betting she didn’t even know she was catfished. It’s pretty cut and dried, dummy. Now we just need somethin’ to connect her to him. Ya know, the physical evidence the DA’s always bitchin’ about? And we need to find that Brenda Bronkowski and bring her in for questioning… At least it’s a place to start. Don’t call me up and cry about how you can’t find her—look harder!”

His heavy footsteps moved toward the small hall leading to the bedrooms—which meant I had to split, and fast.

I cracked the fingerprint-smudged window open and looked out to see the parking lot below. Crap. I was gonna have to jump.

Crawling out of the window, I clung to the ledge in my stupid heels while I cursed my BFFs for making me wear them, closing the window as gently as I could. I didn’t think about where I’d land, I was just thinking about getting the hell out of there before I got caught.

Unfortunately, I landed in a dumpster and a cloud of stench.

“Fuuuck!”

I was rustled around in the junk, ungluing my feet from the debris, when I heard Wanda call out, “Found her!”

Marty’s exquisitely highlighted blonde head peered over the top of the dumpster, a light dusting of snow icing her coat. “It’s nothing less than you deserve, you deserter.” She held out her hand to me, her lips thin.

I grabbed it, letting her yank me up. “Listen, if I had to stick around and listen to you two yahoo’s kvetch about eyeshadow colors, I was gonna yak.”

“Why are you in the garbage, for heaven’s sake?” Wanda asked, hands on her hips.

Straightening my shoulders, I yanked my gloves off and threw them over my shoulder. “I put my time to good use, that’s why, and if you don’t get off my hump, I’m not gonna tell you what I found out.”

Hauling myself out of the dumpster, I jumped to the ground, brushing someone’s leftover pieces of pizza off my skirt in disgust.

We began to walk toward Marty’s SUV, Wanda looping her arm through mine, cozying up to me. “You show us yours, we’ll show you ours,” she cooed, as we sloshed through the parking lot, my ankles wobbly.

“I’ll show you mine when we get back to the castle. I can’t think with all this shit on my face. Though it does explain why Marty’s head’s so empty.”

Wanda giggled, playfully swatting my arm. “Be nice, vampire. Marty just pulled off the makeover of a lifetime and we got ourselves a clue.”

Marty came up on the other side of me, hooking her arm through mine. “Yeah,” she crooned. “Be nice to the empty head or she’s not going to give you the wipes to remove the adhesive from your fake eyelashes.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “You wouldn’t fucking dare…”

She winked before she ran toward the SUV and called out, “My head is so empty, I might not remember where they are!”

Back at the castle in the murder basement, I’d changed back into my jeans and a hoodie after Wanda coaxed Marty into giving me the damn wipes to get the gunk off my lashes.

Plopping down in my office chair, I caught Bertrand making a beeline for me, camera in hand, but I stopped him with a withering glance. “Back away. I just crawled out of a garbage dump to get away from a cop. I’m not ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.”

Bertrand frowned, rocking back and forth on his feet. “ Who ?”

“Never mind. Just beat it.” I pointed to the other end of the room.

He sighed his discontent, long and forlorn, but he went to the farthest corner of our office and plunked himself down in one of the puffy chairs.

“Where’s Brenda?” I hadn’t seen her since we’d been back from our Bobbie-Sue escapade.

Marty hitched her jaw toward the spiral stairs leading to the first floor of my castle. “She’s in the kitchen charming the pants off Arch. She really is delightful.”

I chuckled, dropping my phone on my desk. “Arch is fine, but my Tater Tot better keep his pants on. He knows I’m the only girl for him.”

“Tater Tot is terrified of you. If you’re his girl, it’s only by force,” Wanda teased. “Tottington is, as we speak, getting her pets.”

“You let him go alone ?” I crowed. “What if he gets caught? The cops are probably crawling all over her place, waiting for her to come home. They want to talk to her because they have no other leads.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Wanda scoffed. “I sent Darnell with him. He’ll make sure no harm comes to your side piece. Plus, he’s going to take a peek around her place and see if there’s anything that can help us solve this.”

Darnell would indeed keep my Tater Tot safe. He’s my big teddy bear of a demon who loves animals as much as I do. According to Brenda, she’d been away from home, in hiding, for two days. I couldn’t stand the idea that her dogs and her iguana, Doug, hadn’t had anyone to look out for ’em.

I didn’t know what having an iguana around was gonna be like with my dog Waffles, but I love all animals. We’d figure it out.

Wanda tapped her pen on her desk. “So, let’s get down to business. Can you think, now that all that junk’s off your face?”

I wiggled my feet, encased in my bunny head slippers with the floppy ears. “Much better. So what did you torture out of Sonja? Did you trash her bank account with a bunch of useless moisturizing undereye cream?”

Marty tsked, giving me a sour expression. “Hush. We didn’t torture her. We made her over and she looked beautiful. We also gifted her the makeup because she gave us so much help. So there, smarty. No torture required.”

Wanda blew at the hair in her face. “Yikes on a bike, that woman has the gift of gab. Once she got going, we couldn’t stop her. It was exhausting but worth it.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Because?”

“Because she’s got eyes and ears on every single person in that apartment building, and seeing as Owen only lives a couple doors down, she knew an awful lot about him and his children and the troubles in his marriage.”

“She also knew an awful lot about that horrible Coraline Brown,” Marty said on a mock scowl. “If I heard one more time about what a cheap jezebel she is, a new man in and out of her apartment every other day, I was going to scream. But in the midst of her hate-fest for Coraline Brown, she yapped about Owen. She actually heard him arguing with someone on the phone the day before he was killed.”

“Does she know who he argued with?”

Marty’s pretty face fell, a frown forming on her forehead. “That’s part of our problem.”

Wanda nodded, gnawing on her lower lip as she looked at her notes. “She thinks it was his wife, because he called the other person on the line ‘babe’…but he also said Brenda’s name, Nina. This phone call was a day before Owen was killed. Granted, Sonja didn’t hear the whole conversation, so who knows what it might mean in context, but he said, and I quote, ‘I don’t know who the hell Brenda Bronkowski is!’”

Oh, hell. I sat up straight, shoving my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “So he knew about Brenda? I guess he found out about the catfish?”

Marty sucked in her cheeks. “She also heard him arguing with his wife one day in the parking lot, when she was dropping off their children for a visit. Sonja says he was so angry, his face looked like a ripe tomato, and they were arguing about him stepping out on their marriage once before.”

“Something else to consider. He was a software engineer . He could very well have discovered the fake profile and the messages with Brenda. Maybe he hacked into it? But Sonja didn’t have any idea how his wife found out about his alleged cheating because she, of course, didn’t want to pry.” Wanda rolled her eyes at her words. “Maybe Owen’s wife meant someone else entirely. He could have a history of cheating.”

Crap. “We need to talk to this dude’s wife. She should definitely be considered a suspect. I found her Facebook page. Her name’s Astrid.”

“Yes! She should definitely be considered a suspect.” Marty hopped up from her chair and clapped her hands with glee, making her way to a whiteboard that had appeared almost out of nowhere. “Speaking of suspects…”

“Is that what I think it is, Blondie?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“If you mean a murder board…” She flipped it over with a wide grin. “Uh-huh! Surprise!”

Headshots of Brenda and Owen were on the board, with a blank black square labeled “Owen’s wife”. There were red strings, and question marks, numbers, and a whole bunch of arrows that made my head hurt.

I groaned. I don’t know what it is about these two and the opportunity to make everything a GD production, but if it involved sticky notes and colored Sharpies, they were all over it like flies on strawberry pie.

God, I miss pie.

I shook my finger at her. “You promised no flippin’ murder board, Marty. We established boundaries before we started this nutty gig, remember? I promised not to be insensitive and you promised not to do stupid, cliché stuff. JFC, does a murder board get any more cliché?”

She wrinkled her nose at me, sticking her tongue out. “Oh, hush, sourpuss. It’s a great way to keep track of all our clues and suspects.”

My lips went thin with distaste. “We don’t have enough clues or suspects to warrant a murder board, Fibonacci.”

“Are you guys gonna fight?” Bertrand asked from behind his camera with a hesitant glance. “Because if ya are, I don’t wanna miss it. Conflict is good for ratings. It adds texture, too. All good directors say so.” He tapped the camera.

“If you keep hassling me, little cub, I’m gonna introduce you to fights. You’ll become so familiar, they’ll put your pic in the dictionary right beside the word,” I growled at him, snapping my teeth.

Marty planted her hands on her hips, her bangle bracelets clinking together. “We are absolutely not going to fight, Bertrand. We’re going to investigate. Now, tell us what you found, Detective Statleon?”

I told them about the cop and what he said to whoever the hell Dunst was, and about the fake fingernail on the backside of the nightstand, showing them the picture I’d taken.

Wanda gasped, hopping up from her chair. “Oh, dear. Brenda has those nails on right now.”

That made me wonder. My nature is suspicious from the jump, but this made no sense. “Are we fucking being played here? Maybe she did kill the dude, and she’s using us as…”

“As what?” Marty asked, tapping the whiteboard. “That makes no sense either. What would be the purpose of hiring us then?”

Wanda clucked her tongue. “Deflection? Maybe she’s using us as a distraction so she can plan her getaway? Buy herself some time?”

Marty crossed her arms over her chest. “But they haven’t even accused her of anything yet. So far, she’s just a person of interest, according to the news. Even the cop Nina heard in the apartment said they had nothing to connect her to the crime. No physical evidence.”

“But he did say he thought Brenda whacked Owen. Maybe she fucking panicked? Put the cart before the horse?” I pointed out, throwing my feet up on my desk. “When you hear shit on the news connecting you to a murder, I think it’s fair to say it can make you panic, right? Maybe we’re a panic hire? Maybe she knew the clan would shit a yak, hearing her name mentioned in an investigation for the murder of a human, and she’s headin’ shit off at the pass?”

“Or she’s guilty and she’s covering her tracks,” Wanda murmured, tapping her pen against her desk.

Rolling my tongue along my cheek, I gave what I’d heard the cop say some thought. “You know, that fingernail… The cop said he was gonna go over the place because some chick in forensics named Sharna sucked at her job. What if he finds that damn fingernail? What if he takes it to wherever the frick they take stuff to check for DNA, and find Brenda’s DNA on it? That the same kind of nail she’s wearing turned up there can’t be random. But here’s another question for the wonderful fucking whacky world of the paranormal. As vampires, do we even still have DNA?”

Marty rubbed her temples before taking another sip of tea. “That’s not something I’ve ever even thought about, but it sure would help if we had someone on the inside to help us navigate.” She pointed to Wanda. “Put that on your list of things to look into, would you?

Shit. We really could use a connection or two. “We could always tap Mara. Maybe she can help?” Mara, Marty’s sister-in-law, was a scientist.

Wanda pushed herself away from her desk and began to pace. “Let’s do that, but in the meantime, it stands to reason that if a vampire is dead, so is their hair, nails, etcetera, right? And don’t they have to have something of hers to prove it’s her DNA on the fingernail?”

“But think of all the archeologists who dig shit up and use DNA to figure out who they’re digging up. It’s called ancient DNA analysis. I saw it on National Geographic. But beyond that, we don’t even know if it’s hers, Wanda. It’s one of those press-on doohickeys you two divas use all the time. I mean, can they even get DNA from a press-on nail?”

“They can get DNA from a rock. I saw it on Investigation ID ,” Marty said with a cluck of her tongue. “But it must be hers, Nina. It’s too much of a coincidence not to be Brenda’s. It’s the same color, same length.”

I shifted in my chair. That didn’t sit right with me, and it wasn’t just because I liked Brenda. It just didn’t fucking feel right.

“So here’s what we’re lookin’ at. Either someone wants to frame Brenda for murder, or she whacked Owen.”

Wanda stopped pacing. “But what’s her motive?”

I shrugged. I wanted to be on Brenda’s side, but she was making shit difficult. “Maybe she really didn’t know she’d been catfished, found out he was married and wanted revenge. You know, whack him first, ask questions later? I mean, those messages got a little hot. I’d be pissed if the dude I was making the verbal sexy-sexy with was married and had kids.”

Marty rolled her eyes, straightening some string on the whiteboard. “That’s a Nina move if I ever heard one and it makes no sense. You smelled the fear on her as well as I did. She can’t fake that.”

“Yeah, but what was she afraid of? Maybe she was just afraid she’d be caught by the clan. We can’t smell specifics, Blondie. We just smell fear.”

“While that’s true?—”

“Boss!” Darnell yelled as he came down the stairs, the thump of his high-top sneakers music to my ears.

I loved my big squishy demon. That he’d decided to join us in this frickin’ crazy warmed my nonexistent heart. He’s helped us with more accidental turnings than I can count on my fingers and toes. He’s always willing to back us up, no matter what. You had to love that kind of loyalty.

He came into view, a dog under each arm.

“Buddy!” I hopped up to give him a hug and thank him for helping Tater Tot—but the frown on his round face worried me.

I squeezed him and took a dog, one that looked just like Benji. “Who are you, snookums?”

He licked my face in response, pressing his wet nose to my cheek.

“That’s Linus, and this lil’ lady here,” Darnell held up a tiny little thing that couldn’t weigh more than a coupla pounds, with a tuft of hair on top of its head, “is Peppermint Patty. She’s a nice girl, ain’t ya, sugar?”

As though to seal her nice girl label, she wagged her scruffy tail and bonked her head against Darnell’s chest.

Marty wiggled her fingers in Darnell’s direction. “Gimme that baby,” she demanded, scooping up Peppermint Patty and snuggling the dog under her chin. She sighed contentedly. “Ahh, puppies.”

“Wait. Where’s Doug the iguana?” I asked, cradling Linus under my own chin.

“He’s with me, Miss Statleon,” Tottington called out, sounding oddly shaky, his footsteps awkward as he came down the stairs.

When he came into view, I cackled out loud. “Hah! Looks like someone’s found a new buddy.” Doug was wrapped around Tottington’s stiff neck, his tongue darting in and out, slashing Tater’s cheek.

Poor Tots looked a little green around the gills. “Indeed, Dark Lord. When Doug saw us, he scurried up my leg as though he’d seen a ghost and now it doesn’t appear he wants to let go. If I’m not being too forward, from the feel of him and his hot breath on my neck. I’d venture to guess he’s no worse for the wear after missing a few meals.”

Chuckling, I scratched Doug under the chin. “Are you tryin’ to steal my man, Doug? How rude.” He curled his floppy feet around my finger, his round eyes staring intently at me as he attempted to climb from Tottington’s shoulder to mine.

Wanda chuckled as she relieved me of Linus. “I swear, there isn’t an animal on the planet you can’t charm.”

I stood closer to Tottington, letting Doug transfer to me. He slithered over, wrapping himself across my shoulders, letting his long tail drape across my arm.

Tottington cleared his throat, brushing the arms of his formal suit jacket. “Thank you, Miss.”

“Anything for you, Tater Tot.” I gave him a wink, turning to Darnell. “So why the frown, buddy? Bad news?”

Darnell drove his beefy fists into the pockets of his jeans. “Well, if the cops showin’ up at Brenda’s with a search warrant, and findin’ a lamp cord hidden in her closet they think is the murder weapon qualifies as bad, then yeah. It’s bad.”

Tottington swallowed hard, his gray eyes meeting mine. “So awfully bad, Miss.

I stomped over to the spiral staircase and hollered up, “Brenda! Get your vampire ass down here right now. You’ve got some explaining to do!”