Underdead (12 page)

I set the pot of water and milk on the stove with a clang. “Don’t ask me that.”

“All right.” He shifted the chair a little bit so he could stretch his long legs out toward the center of the kitchen, and helped himself to a chocolate chip cookie from the plate I slapped down in the middle of the table.

I busied myself with unnecessary kitchen chores until the cocoa was ready, then brought the mugs to the table and sat across from him.

“So,” I prompted, stirring my cocoa with the spoon and sipping from it.

“So.” He sighed wearily and stirred his own cocoa in unconscious mimicry. He took a meditative sip, wincing slightly as the boiling hot liquid scalded his mouth. As he put the cup down, he glanced at me, and something in my face must have communicated my mounting impatience for he dropped the kid gloves treatment and began to talk in what I thought of as his cop voice. “The EMTs noticed the odd wound on Bob’s neck. When the captain learned of it, he arranged for an immediate autopsy and then sent for me.”

I reached for a cookie and broke off a piece, scattering crumbs across the sunflower print tablecloth. “Will says he didn’t do it.”

Gavin’s face froze for a split second but quickly—so quickly, I thought I must have imagined that look—his features resumed their usual appearance of benign professional curiosity. “Oh?” he said.

I told him about Natasha’s visit and, leaving out the kissing part, how Will had cornered me in the parking lot when I was leaving. As I spoke, a dark flush of anger began to spread over Gavin’s face, and I hurried through the rest of my story. “He said he wouldn’t have—’recruited’ is how he put it, I think—any man, much less Bob. Apparently the female vampires recruit males.”

“How quaint.”

I ignored the comment as if he hadn’t spoken. Gavin had a nasty habit of baiting me and this time I was going to make sure he heard me out. I pulled the cookie plate away from him to get his attention. “I think Natasha killed Bob. He saw her as she was leaving my classroom, and thought she was gorgeous. And I promise you, she’s not one to miss that look in a man’s eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if she came back after I left and cornered him in my classroom.”

“Sexual attraction is how they reel in their victims,” Gavin said. His attention shifted from his cocoa mug to my face.

I flushed.

His eyes rested curiously on my neck. He said thoughtfully, almost to himself, “You Will said found you alone in the parking lot tonight. Why didn’t he bite you again?”

“I—I don’t know,” I admitted. I was rather curious about that myself. “I think he was being considerate, nice.” I stared at the tablecloth and corralled my cookie crumbs into a neat pile.

“Nice? A vampire? Are you sure he didn’t bite you again?” His hand reached for my bandage. I slapped it away.

“Stop doing that! It hurts!”

“Sorry.” The apology was automatic, mechanical. His thoughts had already moved elsewhere. We sat there for a moment, sipping our cocoa in silence until he spoke again. “Where was the security guard while you were having your little chat with the vampires in the parking lot?”

Fred!
A horrifying image rose before me clear as day—sweet, portly, old Fred lying on the quad, navy uniform rumpled, thick glasses askew, one wrinkled hand clutching ineffectually at his neck as blood seeped through and drained away. “Oh my God. I forgot to make sure he was okay!” I stood up. “We have to go back and check! Will said he didn’t hurt him but—”

Gavin motioned me to sit back down and reached into his jacket pocket for his phone. He contacted one of the officers who was still at the school and instructed him to look for the guard. I stared intently at Gavin’s phone until the officer reported back that Fred was fine if a little confused that the police were asking after him.

I sank down into my seat and put my head in my hands. I was the lowliest of worms. What was wrong with me these days? I had the attention span of a gnat! If anything had happened to Fred…

“Jo? Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not.” I let out a breath of air in a long sigh and moved my hands away from my face. “At least Will was telling the truth about Fred. I guess that’s something.”

“Will was telling the truth about Bob, too. He didn’t do it. No vampire did.” Gavin spoke reluctantly, as if hating to give Will credit for anything decent. “The teeth marks were faked. No one actually bit Bob’s neck—no saliva.”

“What? Why?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Gavin said sharply.

“You think I know something about this?”

“No. As I understand it, you had an alibi—unless a parent and the middle school principal were in it with you, which I’m inclined to doubt.”

Thank you, Gavin, for that vote of confidence.

“As I was saying, the ‘teeth marks’ seem to have been made with something sharp, like glass.”

I thought back to my ruin of a classroom. “There was a lot of broken glass around, you know. Maybe some of the glass shards nicked his neck.”

Gavin shook his head. “No. Someone deliberately made those marks, Jo. Someone tried to make Bob’s death look like it had been done by a vampire. One in particular, I’d guess—you.”

“But I’m not a vampire! You said so yourself. Besides, no one knows.”

“Are you sure about that? Someone could have seen or overheard us at the bar the other night. We weren’t exactly keeping our voices down.”

“Surely we would have noticed…” My voice petered out uncertainly as I realized the fallacy of this statement. Godzilla could have been behind me roaring and spewing fire and I wouldn’t have noticed. “The place was so empty, I guess I assumed we were alone—except of course for the dead people coming back to life, and all the vampires popping in and out.”

“If someone
had
overheard us, they would know that I would suspect you when I found the bite marks on Bob’s neck.” Gavin’s voice grew harsh. “That we would assume Bob was your first victim.”

“But you don’t think that.”

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. “You have an alibi.”

I scowled at him. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Bob’s.”

“Sometimes you’re just a big jerk, you know that?” I snatched the cookie plate away from him and brought it to the sink. I didn’t feed jerks.

Gavin watched me rinse the plate. “Bob was murdered at 8:40. According to the schedule posted outside your door, you had another conference at 8:45.” He held up a hand as I began to correct him. “Yes, I’m aware it had been canceled, but someone looking at your schedule wouldn’t have known that.
You
were supposed to have been found hovering over Bob’s body.”

I waited for the rest of the explanation, but Gavin had finished. “
That
‘s your theory? That someone—a teacher or a Bayshore parent—snuck unseen to my classroom, killed Bob and arranged things so I would get the blame? Shouldn’t they have at least planned for contingencies, like the fact that I was in Maxine’s office when the glass broke?”

“Even so, you would have gotten there first had, er—” he glanced down at his notebook, “Alan not happened to have been on his way there, purely by chance. And if you
had
been the one to find the body, how could the police have been sure that Bob was really dead when you got there? That he hadn’t merely slipped, knocking the glassware as he fell? That you had discovered him unconscious and bleeding, and had taken advantage of his weakened state to get your first kill.”

My mouth hung open for a moment in pure outrage and I shut it with a snap. “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard! Not to mention insulting. I don’t even know why you’re spending time devising such a crazy scenario when it’s so obvious Natasha did it.”

“No, she didn’t—I told you, the teeth marks were faked.”

I dismissed his theory with a curt wave of my hand. “Don’t you see? It must have been her. No one else could have done it. Every teacher in my department had an alibi, and the only parents in our wing of the building were in conferences.”

“All the logical suspects have an alibi so
of course
it
must have
been a vampire.” He rolled his eyes. “A vampire who killed Bob the traditional way. It’s brilliant, really. No one would suspect her. But does she leave behind a perfect murder? No, she makes fake bite marks on his neck to draw attention to herself and all others of her kind, despite their collective efforts to remain hidden. Have I got that right?”

I glared at him.

“Let me ask you, how did she get by everyone without being seen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she turned into a bat.”

“I see. And why, may I ask, did she go to all this trouble?”

I shifted uncomfortably against the counter. “I don’t know. She hates me for some reason.”

“I thought you’d never met her before tonight.”

“I haven’t!” I shivered. “You should have seen the way she looked at me.”

“Well then. If she
looked
at you…”

I went back to glaring at him in silence.

Gavin could mock me all he wanted about my sensitivity to atmosphere, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t right. He’d never met her. I had. And faking the teeth marks clearly wasn’t as stupid as Gavin had suggested—hadn’t he summarily ruled out vampire involvement because of it? She was plenty devious to have planned it that way.

No, I was not so ready to rule Natasha out, even if I couldn’t explain how she’d gotten up to my room and back down again unseen. If Gavin wasn’t letting that technicality hinder his theories, I didn’t see why I had to let it interfere with mine.

Of course, if I could allow that Natasha could get around undetected, I really should put Will back in the suspect pool. But he was another story. He could’ve had his way with me in the parking lot tonight (take that any way you wish and you’re probably right, drat it). There was really no reason for him to have thought up such a convoluted way of getting at me. Besides, as much as I hated to admit it and as screwy as it may seem, I believed he had more integrity than that.

Gavin interrupted my thoughts. “If we can put aside Natasha for the moment… Can you tell me anyone else who may have had a problem with Bob? I don’t mean murderous intent, necessarily. It’s quite possible his death was unplanned, an argument that got out of control-“

“An argument with silent yelling?”

His eyes narrowed. “Not silent, but surely you can believe they would have made an effort to keep their voices down.”

He had a point. I gave it some thought but didn’t come up with much. “As far as I know, Bob was pretty universally liked. The only person I know of who has—” I gulped, “had—an issue with Bob is one of the middle school parents, Mrs. Farryll. She was upset that Bob wouldn’t let her son play on the high school soccer team. But I have a hard time imagining her killing him over it, especially since Bob was just following school rules and the season’s almost over. Besides, she was booked solid in conferences on the other side of campus. I saw her schedule.”

Gavin didn’t seem very interested in Mrs. Farryll. “What about the other teachers?”

“What does it matter? They all have alibis.”

“All the same, any issues there?”

I shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I’m still pretty new there—I’m usually too busy trying to keep my head above water to keep track of all the gossip. I do know that Roger, our department head, would have been happy if Bob had decided to leave so he could teach biology, but that is not the sort of thing people get killed over or we wouldn’t have a teacher left standing. Anyway, Roger never would have talked to Bob about it or even argued with Bob about it. Roger’s more of the ‘stab you in the back’ type.”

“What about Alan?”

“Because he found the body? I haven’t heard anything, and besides, I can’t believe he had anything to do with it. The man looked like a ghost and I don’t know that you can fake shock like that.”

Thinking about Alan brought back images of Bob’s body. I saw myself bend down to check for a pulse, finding his torn and bloody neck instead. “You didn’t tell Maxine or the headmaster or anyone about me—”

“No, you needn’t worry about that. No one at Bayshore even knows about the teeth marks, except the person who made them and you. We don’t plan to broadcast the alleged vampire angle. Only a couple people at the station are aware of that situation anyway, and they won’t say anything—most of my colleagues think I’m with Internal Affairs. As for the paramedics, they think it was nothing more than a mildly humorous coincidence, a view we’ve taken pains to encourage. With all the weird stuff they see, it probably won’t even rate a casual mention.”

“What now?” I said, suppressing a yawn. “I suppose you want me to see if I can dig up a little more gossip on Bob?”

“No. You do nothing. You let the police handle this.” Gavin stood, collected the mugs and brought them to the sink.

I felt like he had slapped me. “It’s a little late to begin patronizing me now.”

He put the mugs down with a clatter and turned to loom over me. “What do you want to do, play amateur sleuth at school tomorrow? Your friend is dead, Jo. Someone at Bayshore—one of the teachers, parents, or students—murdered him. Do you get that?”

I got to my feet and closed the distance between us. “Yes! But I also get that they killed him in my room and they tried to implicate me.”

“Exactly. Someone capable of murder has you on their radar for some reason, and we don’t know who it is, or why they did it, or what they’ll do next.” He clenched his fists and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m trying to protect you and you want to go flush murderers out of the bushes.”

I poked him in the chest. “Well in case you haven’t noticed, I’m just this side of being dead as it is. Frankly I’d rather be pushed over the edge trying to clear my name and avenge Bob’s death than hang around wringing my hands on the sidelines and waiting for Will to come finish me off.”

Gavin’s eyes were dark with barely suppressed anger. “No one’s going to kill you as long as you take some basic safety precautions. Stick to public places, even at work, don’t go out by yourself at night, and don’t play chicken with a killer.”