“Becca, wait!” I called, though her retreating back didn’t slow down a bit. If anything, she picked up pace, hauling it through the crowd toward the back of the house at lightening speeds.
“I’ve got her,” Dana said, darting after her, pushing her way through the crowd.
I did my best to waddle after them, but the fact was a) I wasn’t nearly the gym devotee that Dana as and b) carrying an extra fifteen pounds around kinda put a damper on my efforts. No way was I going to catch up.
I watched the two black wigs bob toward the back of the house, then out the back doors, where I lost them. I pushed my way through the party-goers, hitting the pair of French doors just in time to see two figures in heels and black dresses sprinting across an expanse of manicured lawn behind the house, before they disappeared into a grove of trees. Crap. The heels on these boots were so not made for tramping across a soggy lawn.
“What’s going on out there?” a voice said, suddenly at my ear.
I jumped, letting out a little Chihuahua-style yip and spun around to find myself nose-to-nose with Sebastian.
I took one giant step backward.
“Uh, nothing. Just, um, getting a little fresh air.”
He cocked his head to the side, his icy eyes pinning me to the spot. “I thought I saw your friend jogging across my lawn just now.”
I bit my lip. “Did you?” I squeaked out.
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Well, that’s Dana. Any excuse for a little exercise.” The second the words left my lips I mentally cringed at the lameness of my lying skills.
Luckily, Sebastian let it go.
Unluckily, he took a step forward, uncomfortably closing the gap between us again.
“You know, I don’t remember inviting the two of you to this party,” he slowly drawled.
I swallowed loudly, my throat suddenly bone dry. “I’ll forgive the oversight.”
“Hmmm.” He narrowed his eyes at me, assessing.
I swallowed again, cleared my throat, and firmly told myself he was just some guy in contacts and a pair of plastic teeth.
“Exactly what are you doing here?” he asked.
“Looking for Becca,” I found myself confessing under his steady gaze.
“And did you find her?”
I nodded. “Dana’s with her right now,” I said, hoping it was the truth. “And,” I added, putting on my bravest face, “we found something that belongs to Becca, too.”
He slowly raised one eyebrow. “Did you, now?”
“Yes. Her dress. The one she was wearing the night Alexa died.”
“Interesting.” If the information unnerved him, he didn’t show it, his face as impassive as always.
“Want to know where we found it?” I asked, my confidence edging higher.
“I’m all ears.”
“Your bedroom.”
His jaw flinched, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly as his shoulders tightened. It was an almost imperceptible physical shift, but his entire demeanor suddenly went from mildly amused to somewhere between menacing and downright dangerous.
“Another place I don’t believe you were invited to,” he responded, his voice an evenly modulated growl.
I licked my lips. “What was the dress doing there?”
But instead of answering me, he wrapped a hand around my upper arm. “I think it’s time for you to go,” he said, steering me out the door.
“Did Becca come here after the club?” I persisted. “Did she tell you what happened? Did she tell you Alexa was dead? Did she need your help cleaning up the murder?”
“You ask a lot of questions, Miss Springer,” he said, leading me around the side of the building, back toward the circular drive.
“You don’t answer very many,” I shot back.
“No. I don’t.”
“And it’s Mrs., by the way,” I corrected him.
I’m married.”
“Lucky man,” he mumbled, though I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I detected a note of sarcasm.
“Look, we’re just trying to find out what happened to Alexa,” I said as the rows of cars came back into view. I could vaguely make out Marco’s form slouched in the passenger seat of Dana’s Mustang. “If you’re innocent, then you have nothing to hide,” I reasoned.
Sebastian stopped walking abruptly, turning me around to face him. His eyes shone eerily in the moonlight, making me involuntarily lean back.
“We all have something to hide, Mrs. Springer,” he said, his voice flat and low.
And with that, he turned and left me standing on the paved drive as he walked back through the mahogany front doors of his Castle of Creepiness.
Despite my disappointment at getting more questions than answers from him, I did a shiver of relief at being out of there, then quickly power-walked over to the car.
“Are you okay?” Marco hissed as soon as I had the doors open. “I saw you talking with the vampire. God, he was leaning so close to you that I was sure he was going to dig right into your neck.”
“I’m fine,” I answered. Even though a teeny tiny part of me might have shared his fear.
“Good. Here,” he said, passing me my tote bag again.
I took it, feeling a distinctly soggy spot at the bottom. “What happened to it?”
“I think your fake baby may have wet itself.”
I peeked inside. Sure enough, there was a wet stain in the front of Baby-So-Lifelike’s yellow onesie. Fab.
I was just drying off the tubes of lipgloss at the bottom of my tote with a fast-food napkin from the glove box when Dana pulled the door open, sliding into the driver’s seat, her breath coming hard.
“Did you catch her?” I asked, hoping at least our entire evening hadn’t been a bust.
She shook her head, panting as she tried to catch her breath. “No. She had too much of a lead.”
I felt my shoulders sag. “Did you see where she went?”
Dana nodded, sucking in big gulps of air. “Into a car. It was waiting at the bottom of the hill.”
“I don’t suppose you got the license plate number?” I asked.
Dana grinned, then reached into her purse and pulled out a slip of paper with seven numbers and letters written on it. “Now what kind of Cagney would I be if I didn’t?”
We agreed to meet the next morning to track down a name to go with the license number, and half an hour later Dana dropped me off in front of my house. Surprisingly, there was already a car parked in my driveway. A big, black SUV with a red police siren plunked on the dash. I raised an eyebrow. Could it be that my husband was actually home? Maybe my luck was turning around this evening.
“Honey, I’m ho-ome,” I sing-songed as I pushed through the front door.
Ramirez was on the sofa, a stack of papers in hand again. He looked up as soon as I walked in, took in my attire, and blinked hard.
“What is that?”
I looked down. “What?”
Ramirez raised an eyebrow at me. “The outfit, doll.”
“Oh. This?” I blinked innocently. It’s the latest-”
“And don’t tell me,” he said, cutting me off, “that this is the latest fashion trend.”
I shut my mouth with a click. Damn, he knew me so well. “Okay, fine. Dana and I were at a costume party tonight.”
The eyebrow didn’t lower. “Costume party, huh? What kind of costume party?”
“The kind where you dress up.”
“As?”
“Vamphrauhs.”
“Did you just mumble on purpose?” he asked, still giving me The Look.
“I did not,” I protested. Okay, honestly? I kinda did.
“Uh huh. What kind of party, Springer?”
I blew out a breath. “Fine. You win. We were at a vampire party.”
“Jesus,” Ramirez mumbled under his breath. “Please don’t tell me this has anything to do with your harebrained theory about Alexa’s death.”
“Okay.” I paused, letting silence settle between us.
“Well?” he finally prompted.
“You told me not to tell you.”
Ramirez clenched his jaw shut, and about ten really dirty words flashed behind his eyes. “Maddie, I love you.”
“I love you, too, honey,” I said, dripping with sweetness.
“But you drive me insane.”
“In a good way?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“In a way that makes we wish I’d married a woman who isn’t fascinated by murder.”
“I am not fascinated,” I protested.
“Just nosey?” he offered.
I swatted him in the arm. “Watch it, buster.”
“Look, just this once could you leave the investigation to the authorities?”
“I would love to,” I promised him. “But the authorities aren’t looking in the right places.”
Ramirez looked down at my outfit again. “And you are?”
“Yes! Look, someone went through a lot of trouble to make it look like Alexa was killed by a vampire. Don’t you think that’s significant?”
“I think the evidence will tell us what’s significant.”
“Well, did you know that Alexa actually worked as a vampire?”
“Yes.”
I shut my mouth with a click. “Oh.” That was not the answer I’d been anticipating. “You did?”
“Maddie, I’m a homicide detective. You think I wouldn’t look into where the victim worked?”
Right. He had a point. “Okay, well, do you know that her friend, the last person to see her alive and the girl who also worked with Alexa as a vampire, is now on the run?”
He paused.
“Ha! Gotcha.” I couldn’t help the triumph in my voice.
Ramirez shook his head, though I could see the faintest hint of smile playing at the corner of his lips. “Okay, Maddie, define ‘on the run.’”
“She took off from the club after Alexa died, and her clothes are all packed, and she’s been missing ever since.”
“So she hasn’t been in to work at her vampire job?”
“Well, yes, she was tonight, but then she took off. Running.”
The corners of his mouth quirked upward. “I see.”
“You’re humoring me, aren’t you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
He held up his thumb and index finger. “Just a little.”
“You know, if I wasn’t aware that our baby already has ears, I’d have a few choice words for you right now, pal.”
“Okay, fine,” he said, holding up his hands in a mock surrender gesture. “I’ll admit the friend might be worth talking to. I promise I’ll look into it, okay?”
“Thank you,” I said, triumph nudging into my voice again.
“But don’t think this means I’m okay with you running around town with a bunch of crazy Moonlight wannabes,” he quickly added.
“Fair enough,” I agreed. Hey, he said he wasn’t okay with it, not that I had to stop. If he wanted to get bent out of shape over it, that was his prerogative.
“Where did you get that crazy outfit anyway?” he asked, that hint of a smile playing at his lips again as he eyed the black stockings peeking out of my Victorian ankle boots.
“The set of Moonlight II.”
That hint broke into the real deal. “I rest my case.”
“Come on,” I said, punching him in the arm again. “Don’t you think the whole vampire thing is just a little bit sexy?”
Ramirez looked down at my fishnets again and grinned. “Maybe. Just a little bit.”
“You know…” I said, taking a step closer. “I don’t have to give the costume back until tomorrow…”
Ramirez paused a moment, looked down at my dress again, going from the low neckline, to the healthy dose of cleavage the empire cut popped upward, to the touchably soft velvet trialing down my torso…
Then his eyes hit The Bump and immediately turned from dark chocolate to a flat brown.
“You know, I’m just not really in the mood tonight, Maddie.”
I blinked. Trying to process the words that had just come out of his mouth. My husband, the testosterone machine, the walking sex drive, was not in the mood. Not in the mood! What the hell was that supposed to mean?!
“What is that supposed to mean?” I blurted out before I could pause to decide if I really wanted to hear the answer to that question.
Ramirez cleared his throat and focused really hard on a non-existent piece of lint on his sleeve. “It just means that I still have a lot of paperwork to do tonight.”
“A lot of work.”
“And I’m kind of tired.”
“Kind of tired.”
“And I have a bit of a headache.”
“A bit of a headache,” I repeated doing a fabulous imitation of a parrot as my mind went nuts trying to read between his lines.
“Look, I’m gonna go call in this info about Alexa’s missing friend,” he said, looking everywhere but at me and my fishnets now.
“Uh huh. Sure. Great.” I watched his retreating back duck into the other room and close the door, not sure if I wanted to scream at him, cry, or just plain give up.