Blood in the Batter Page 11

  “That’s why you married so quickly,” Jamie realized. “I never understood why you married Cameron. It didn’t make much sense. He was a drunk from a family of drunks, and I thought you had more sense than that.”

  Luna flinched, but didn’t deny the blunt statement. Priscilla could only assume it was true. She hadn’t gotten involved in the community until about five years ago, and Andrew’s birth had predated that.

  “I knew his grandma would force the issue if she found out I was pregnant,” Luna said. “And I just let everyone assume it was his.”

  “Except Holly,” Priscilla noted. “How did that revelation come about?”

  Luna slumped in her chair. “He must have told her. I told Aaron about Andrew a month ago, after Cameron left me. That’s when the trouble started.”

  “What did Aaron say?”

  “He said he didn’t believe me. I told him I was willing to get a DNA test to prove it, but Holly shut that down quickly.” Luna shook her head in disgust. “I got so mad at the pair of them. It wasn’t like I was asking for much. I just needed help until I could get back on my feet again. I might have … defaced the house at some point,” she admitted the last part sheepishly.

  “I’ll have to report the vandalism, you know that right?” Jamie said solemnly. He didn’t look pleased about doing it. Priscilla remembered that Anna had said that Holly and Aaron had been friendly with Jamie. He’d probably known Luna as well.

  Luna shrugged. “At this point I hope she presses charges for it. If I’m in prison, at least I get three square meals a day. Andrew will end up with a foster family who can take care of him better than I can.”

  “We’re going to find you a job,” Priscilla said. Even if she had to create an arbitrary position for Luna, she’d get her a job until something better could be found. “Could you tell us where you were on the morning of the fourteenth?”

  “I was on the square, just like everyone else. I noticed that Aaron’s spectacles were missing, and I went over to talk to him. I was always trying to push him to get Lasik but his insurance at the dentist’s office never covered it. I came by to say hello and we fought.”

  “What about?”

  Luna shook her head. “I can’t talk about that. It’s private. I’ve said too much already.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I’m not talking. Come back with a warrant if you want to search this place or bring me in. But for now, I’d like you both to leave.”

  Priscilla felt it when the invitation lifted. She got up stiffly and began walking toward the door. Jamie could have stayed for longer and forced the issue, but she wasn’t going to be around to see it. Instead, he got up and followed after her.

  “I hope you have a good day, ma’am,” he said respectfully. Then he followed Priscilla out.

  Priscilla swore when she was finally out of earshot of the house and any listening little boys.

  “What’s that for?” Jamie asked with a small smile. “You don’t usually swear.”

  “We were close to something. I could feel it,” she said, clenching her hands into fists. “But this stupid invitation business means I have to leave when someone says so. Just once, I’d like to be able to ignore that particular compulsion.”

  “We got enough. She had motive, and she was in the right place at the right time. She spoke to the victim minutes before his death. It’s probably enough circumstantial evidence to bring her in.”

  “What happens to the kid if she turns out to be the killer?” Priscilla asked in an undertone as they approached the car.

  “Andrew would go to any other living relative that can take him. Normally we’d search for the father but …”

  But the father Andrew had always known wasn’t his real father, and was probably off in a ditch somewhere. Certainly not a suitable parent. And his biological father was currently moldering in the coroner’s office. It painted a bleak picture for the kid.

  “Let’s hope we’re wrong.”

  But Priscilla wasn’t entirely sure she was. Maddison had said that she’d heard arguing, and Luna had lashed out at Aaron once already because he refused to take care of his son. She could imagine it would only take a little push to send Luna over the edge. And with the way things had been going? Holly could be the next target.

  Chapter Ten

  “I’ve got news,” Arthur told her later that night.

  “Funny you should say that. So do I.”

  Priscilla had elected not to return to Arthur’s house or the bed and breakfast and instead slept in the back of her van for the remainder of the day. She didn’t feel like waking Arthur by coming in while he slept, and didn’t want to face Noah Brown’s energetic children if she went back to the bed and breakfast during the daytime. It was dark enough in the van when she pulled the window shades, and she kept a blanket in the back with her emergency kit, for times such as this. It wasn’t the most comfortable day’s sleep, but at least she’d gotten some rest.

  She’d clambered out of the car only five minutes ago, shirt rumpled and hair a mess and stumbled into the precinct, hoping she could wet her hair and comb through it.

  “Good news or bad news?” Arthur asked.

  “I guess it depends on how you look at it. Jamie and I went over to Luna Sheppard’s house this morning—”

  “This morning?” he said in surprise. “I just thought you got up a little earlier than Anna and I. Do you mean to tell me you’ve been up since then? Why on earth were you up that early?”

  “Ava woke me up, and no, I haven’t been up all day. I don’t look that rough, do I?”

  He gave her a critical once over. “You don’t look that composed, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m working with what I can. You don’t happen to have a hairbrush on your person, do you?”

  He reached into his desk drawer and held out a comb to her. It wasn’t ideal, as thick as her hair was, but she’d take it. It was still a lot better than running her fingers through her hair to undo the knots.

  “Spill, Pratt. What did you learn? Jamie and Jack left a report on my desk, but I’d rather hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. What did she say?”

  “Andrew Sheppard isn’t Cameron’s son. He was Aaron’s.”

  Arthur’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Quite a feat, as it had begun to recede dramatically in the last year. She wondered if it was due to genetics, or if the last year had really caused him enough stress he’d begun to lose hair.

  “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what she said, anyway. And it’s apparently why she can’t get a job. Holly Burke has been sabotaging her at the temp agency. The only quick route to work is not an option for Luna anymore.”

  “Sounds like motive,” he muttered. “And they argued about that, I assume?”

  “More than once. Maybe even on the day he was killed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t procure a blood sample for you. Have you gotten Simon Grant’s sample back yet?”

  “Not yet. The lab up in Westwend gets all the surrounding homicide cases. They were a little too busy to check in on our ‘maybe’ until now. I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “All right. So what’s your news?”

  “We’ve got a new lead, and you’ll be happy to know that I want you to come along.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Jack was flipping through Aaron’s photo album and looking into the circles he ran in. Did he tell you about the LARPers?”

  Priscilla made a face. “Yes, though I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Or why they were wearing that ridiculous clothing, to be honest.”

  To her surprise, Arthur gave a full-bellied laugh and clapped her on the shoulder. “Oh, you’ll see. Anna’s coming with. She knows these people far better than I do.”

  “How?”

  “She went to high school with a lot of them. And she was going to join at one point but backed out because it conflicted with basketball practice.”

  There wa
s something behind Arthur’s smile that made her instantly wary. She couldn’t say what for certain, but she got the distinct impression he was laughing at her. Anything that made Arthur this amused in regards to her was sure to make her cringe.

  “Why are we questioning the LARPers?”

  “Because Aaron was one of them. And he mixed it up with Garrett McKnight a few months ago. Broke his arm. Aaron’s insurance wasn’t going to pay out, and McKnight was pissed. It cost him a lot of time at work, but he couldn’t get workman’s comp because it didn’t happen at Dillman’s Construction company.”

  Priscilla recalled the picture that Jack had shown her this morning. Even captured on a photograph, he looked like an angry man. She could imagine that it wouldn’t take much to set him off. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Luna had been involved somehow in Aaron’s death. Still, it made a little more sense for a man as massive as Garrett McKnight to have been the one to kill him.

  She couldn’t be sure though. It didn’t take much blood loss to go from frisky to fatally wounded. If Luna had gotten in one good slash, that’s all it would have taken.

  “From what angle was his throat cut?” Priscilla asked.

  Arthur’s good humor evaporated. “From what we can tell? It was cut from behind.”

  “At an upward or downward angle?”

  “Dead even. The killer was around the same height as the victim. I’m sorry, Priscilla, it doesn’t help us eliminate very many subjects.”

  Priscilla frowned. That cast doubt on both Garrett and Luna. It was hard to tell by just looking at a picture, but Garrett looked like he was over six feet tall. In order to be dead even with Aaron’s throat, he would have had to struck in a crouch. Luna, on the other hand, would have had to reach up to kill Aaron. The only way she could have achieved that cut was by wearing high- heeled shoes. And somehow Priscilla thought that would make escaping from a second-story window a bit more difficult if it had to be done in fancy footwear. Priscilla had inhuman reflexes, and wasn’t sure she’d be able to stick a landing in heels. She’d probably break an ankle.

  She shook her head, trying to clear it. This speculation was getting her nowhere. She yanked the brush through her hair, grimacing as it caught snags. It took her a few minutes to get it all straightened out.

  “That wasn’t my only news though,” Arthur said brightly. He fished around in his pocket and produced a familiar key. It took Priscilla’s brain a second to figure out what it was, then another few to figure it out what it meant.

  “The bakery! You’re done in there?” It came out as an uncharacteristically girlish squeal.

  “The crime scene cleanup crew finished around ten this morning. I would have had the boys tell you sooner if I thought you were going to be up so early.”

  Priscilla took the key from him and kissed it. Dramatic? Maybe. Satisfying? Yes.

  “I can go home tonight,” she crooned. “Oh, thank you, Arthur. That means a lot to me.”

  Arthur cleared his throat and looked away. “Don’t get too excited, Pratt. The window on the second floor needs fixing before your room is habitable again.”

  “I’ve got plywood in the basement,” Priscilla said. “That will have to do for now.”

  “You know, I didn’t expect your room to be so girly,” Arthur commented, putting a gentle hand on her back, guiding her out of the office.

  Priscilla bristled. “I am a girl, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Yeah but there was so much … purple. I thought you liked practical stuff, being a Puritan and all.”

  “We did wear other colors besides black, you know,” she said dryly. “There was also gray, brown, green, blue, and occasionally yellow.”

  “But no purple?”

  “No purple,” she confirmed. “It was inordinately expensive to produce until modern days. No one but the elite could afford it, and even then, you had to have to be something close to royalty to be able to afford something entirely purple. Most well-to-do people could only afford patches of it on their clothes.”

  “So you like purple because it’s expensive?”

  “It’s a reminder, really,” she said, letting him guide her out the door. Through the glass, she could see Anna in the parking lot waiting for them. She looked just as somber as Jamie had. Maybe if Arthur wasn’t here, she could talk some sense into her assistant.

  “A reminder of what?”

  “That time is the great equalizer. Nothing stays the same,” she said.

  He gave her a quizzical look. “I think just being alive for so long would give you that perspective.”

  She smiled tightly. “You’d be surprised the number of immortals who don’t notice. They go about living their lives as if nothing’s changing. My sire, for example. He’s been stuck in his ways for over five centuries. I doubt he’ll be making a change anytime soon.”

  “Your sire?” he asked, pausing with his hand on the push bar. “I’ve never heard you mention him before.”

  “We all have to come from somewhere. He was my husband for a while.”

  “And now?”

  “He’s who knows where womanizing, as usual.”

  “How do you know that? He could have turned over a new leaf,” Arthur said.

  “Because, every couple of decades, I get a new sister,” Priscilla said with a sigh. “I can sense when he makes a new companion. He’ll never change. Let’s go. I don’t want to leave Anna in the cold for too much longer. She’ll catch her death.”

  Anna forced a smile as they stepped out of the precinct. She noticed the key clutched tightly in Priscilla’s hand and it became slightly more genuine.

  “You’re open again? Does this mean I have work tomorrow?”

  “Bright and early tomorrow evening,” Priscilla confirmed.

  “Right. Tonight we have a LARP to attend.” And just like her father, Anna lit up like a Christmas tree, beaming at her. She couldn’t escape the sensation she was missing something crucial.

  “All right, what’s the joke? What am I missing, you two?” Priscilla asked.

  Anna exchanged a glance with her father then shook her head. “You’ll have to see this in person. I want to get a picture of your face.”

  “That bad?” Priscilla asked, glancing between the pair of them. “Should I be concerned?”

  Arthur chuckled again. “It’s going to be priceless.”

  “I know,” Anna said, and tried to stifle a giggle behind a gloved hand.

  “You two are infuriating,” Priscilla said. “Just once, could someone give me a straight answer?”

  “Nope,” Anna said. At least the troubled look was gone from her face. Priscilla supposed she could set aside her frustration for now, if this was really going to be as much fun for Anna as it appeared.

  “I suppose I’ll see when we reach Blackthorn Field, won’t I?” she said with a sigh.

  “You will,” Anna said gleefully. “And it’s gonna be awesome.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Priscilla stared. And stared some more. She couldn’t wrap her head around what she was seeing.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Anna said with a smirk.

  “Bizarre,” Priscilla corrected her. “Absolutely bizarre. Can you explain to me what’s going on here?”

  There were two dozen people milling around in cloaks, puffy shirts, and horrible makeup. She hadn’t seen so many B-movie vampire lookalikes since Halloween.

  “I present to you the Blood Legion Coven,” Anna said happily.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Priscilla said, gesturing at group of fake vampires milling about. “Covens are usually named after the founding vampire, if they’re formed at all. It’s not as common a phenomenon as people think. You only have a coven if you have more than ten members from the same maker.”

  Which, depressingly, meant she was a part of a coven, whether she liked it or not. She’d be damned if she was going to call herself a member of the Amaury Coven, though.

  “It’s part of th
e game,” Anna said with a shrug. “I didn’t come up with the name. That would be Aaron Burke, the founding member. The Burke Coven just doesn’t sound the same, does it?”

  It sounded a bit more distinguished, if Priscilla was being honest. “What game is this? It looks like a terrible version of a Renaissance fair.”

  “It’s Fangs, Fur, and Fury. It’s a popular LARP from the 90s.”

  “Fangs and what?” Priscilla asked. “You can’t mean that the object of the game is to—”

  “Defeat a rival pack of werewolves.” Anna grinned broadly. “I hear they’ve been getting their butts kicked by the Witch’s Bane pack now that Aaron’s not leading them anymore.”

  “The what?”

  “Witch’s Bane pack. Someone got the bright idea to use a little bit of actual history in the naming of the werewolf faction. Blackthorn Field used to be home to a witch, did you know? Someone burned the house down with her inside of it.”

  Priscilla did know. She’d been alive when that tragedy had occurred. She didn’t find much about this situation amusing. If these people wanted to be vampires so badly, they could probably find some mook to sire them. This playacting was just … sad. Was this what people really thought vampires looked like? Had any of these people ever met a vampire? Priscilla liked to think that it was hard to tell what she was at first glance. No one in the assembled crowd of faux-vampires had given her a second glance. Anna, however, was getting a few looks from the younger “vampires.”

  “And what exactly is the purpose of all of this?” Priscilla asked. “Is there an end goal?”

  “Well, the goal is to wipe the other clan out and take their prey,” Anna explained, the smile dropping from her face. “And you don’t like this at all, do you? What’s the matter? I thought you’d find it funny.”

  “It’s … complicated, Anna.”

  “Try me,” Anna said, crossing her arms over her chest stubbornly. “I’m a big girl; I can handle it. I don’t get why you look so upset. You and I watch vampire films every Halloween. You laugh at them.”