Chapter Four
N ina grunted her appreciation of Ron’s mansion, her eyes wide as she took in the splendor of it all. “This is the shiz, huh?” she asked, looking around at the spacious entryway, with its black-and-white marble floor and not one, but two staircases leading to the second floor. “I don’t know what I expected, but it sure AF wasn’t this.”
There was an enormous round table, housing a gorgeous floral centerpiece in a crystal vase, smack in the middle of the foyer, where Wanda gawked at the arrangement, one almost bigger than her.
“I’ll say,” she muttered, fingering the petals of a peony. “These flowers alone must have cost a fortune. Not to mention the flooring. Italian marble comes at a price. A steep one.”
Tucking my purse under my arm, I nodded. The Ellis household was, indeed, the shiz. As I recalled, Seraphine had decorated it herself, and it appeared as though Eve had left everything the way it was when she arrived.
“You guys have never been here before? This isn’t even the half of it. He has a bowling alley, and a movie screening room the size of our murder basement. I could have sworn you attended a party or two here.”
Nina shook her head, jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I sure as fuck haven’t. I’d remember floors this damn shiny.” She squatted on her haunches, running a finger over the smooth surface. “Must cost a fortune in Mop ’n’ Glo.”
Wanda pulled her phone from her purse. “Nope. I don’t think I have, either. Now, speaking of cleaning, I’ve left a message for Pearl on your behalf, Marty. I told her to call us if she needs anything. I mean, at some point, we’re going to have to talk to her, but it can wait for a bit. According to the text I got from that smarmy heathen, Stan Freemont, the council questioned her and she’s gone to her friend’s house to catch her breath, so at least she’s not alone.”
Nina clucked her tongue. “But she usually lives here, right?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. My heart ached for poor Pearl. “She has her own quarters out back, which, by the way, we need to investigate thoroughly. When Zinnia went off to college, Ron and Seraphine invited Pearl to come live here. It worked for all parties concerned. Pearl was with the people she’s been employed by for almost thirty years, and she wasn’t alone. Ron and Seraphine always valued Pearl, and the way she managed the household for them. They loved her and Zinnia. That’s why I don’t understand…”
How could Ron have killed Zinnia? I was still grappling with the very idea.
Nina held up a finger. “Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about how weird Ron was acting back at council. Was it me, or did he seem fucking erratic? Calm one minute, rambling like an out-of-control babbling brook the next.”
I began walking toward the first room, noting the council hadn’t done much investigating. Nothing appeared out of place. “I definitely noticed how bizarre his behavior was. He was confused one minute, then he was all business until we asked him about Zinnia. Then he was carrying on about how he’d killed her, yet he couldn’t remember why or how he’d done it? Did he black out? Is he faking it?”
Wanda pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her purse when we entered the grand room, with even grander furniture. “I concur, it was very odd. He didn’t even know what was used to kill Zinnia. The times I’ve met him, he’s been so soft-spoken and gentle. And the way he kept repeating the same thing. It felt as though he was trying to convince himself he’d killed her.”
As my eyes followed the floor-to-ceiling windows, I jabbed a finger in the air. “Yes! That’s exactly how to describe it, Wanda. I couldn’t put my finger on what was so strange about his confession, but that puts it into words. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.”
Why would he have to convince himself he’d killed Zinnia? Was he covering for someone else?
Nina began lifting pillows around the plushest sofa I’d ever seen. “Or maybe it was disbelief. He did kill a kid he’s known almost all her life. One the same age as his boy, Rafe. Sometimes, when you say shit out loud, it makes it real.”
I set my purse on a gorgeous oak credenza, picking up a framed picture of Charmaine and Ron that made me smile. It was from the daddy/daughter dance when the girls were in the third grade.
Charmaine wore a princess dress in gauzy silver and pink, while Ron smiled adoringly in a pristine tux. He loved his children, he’d loved Seraphine. He appeared to truly love Eve. How had he gone from a loving father and husband to a murderer?
“Also a good point, Nina, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.” I shook my head to ward off the cobwebs beginning to form. “Anyway, while we’re talking points, let’s make sure we write them all down and take lots of pictures. Tottington learned how to load them to the computer and put them on the big screen TV in the murder basement. I promised him we’d make use of his new skill.”
Nina smiled in pride, her dark eyes twinkling. “My man does like to be useful.”
Rolling my eyes, I chuckled. “Your man is terrified of you. Now, let’s get investigating. This is an enormous house, but we’re better off starting at the actual scene of the crime and working our way out. So, let’s head to the vault, ladies.”
I wandered through room after room of gorgeous sculptures, vases, brocade curtains, paintings, knick-knacks, all beautifully decorated, until we came to the kitchen, where there was a door that led to the vault area.
Nina pushed through the doors, taking us to a wide room with all manner of werewolf history and memorabilia hanging on the walls and secured in glass cases.
I remembered the first time Keegan brought me here after we were married. He’d shown me the artifacts Ron so lovingly kept in pristine condition, while explaining the origins of werewolves and what each scrolled message and fossil meant. It had almost been like going on a class trip to the Museum of Natural History for werewolves.
Except it didn’t have a triceratops.
It did have books on all the mythology surrounding the creation of werewolves in other cultures; Native American and Hindu were only a couple of the multitudes displayed.
There were diaries going as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from explorers, documenting their experiences with weres. In our culture, these were incredibly important pieces of our history, and the person who guarded them, kept them from humans, was lauded for taking on the responsibility of caring for such priceless possessions.
Clearly, the council police hadn’t done much of a search here, either, and I wondered if that wasn’t because they were instructed to be very careful. But that wouldn’t solve a murder.
Most everything was still standing—all the glass cases were intact, nothing was overturned. The huge stuffed werewolf still stood in the corner, its yellow eyes glaring fiercely at us. Rumored to have been the first werewolf ever, it never failed to give me the shivers.
Mostly because, after all these years, I still couldn’t believe I looked like that when I shifted.
The low-pile red carpet was filthy with footprints, likely after the council had traipsed through it during their own investigation, but not much else was amiss. Pearl would never have allowed a mess like this to last longer than was absolutely necessary.
“So Ronald keeps all this werewolf shit in his house?”
I rolled my eyes at my vampire friend. “Where else can we keep artifacts from our history? Should we rent out a loft in Soho?”
“What Marty means to say is, the council provided this enormous setup for Ronald when he became the keeper of all things were, so it would appear to outsiders and humans that he was nothing more than a wealthy man. He’s listed on his taxes as an import-export specialist for that reason.”
To have found all this information out after I’d been turned, to learn that this existed and humans wandered around with zero knowledge of it, had been mind-blowing.
Nina approached the king of all werewolves, her nose wrinkling. “Can you say fucking creepy?” she asked, pointing to the werewolf.
“Hey! That’s my ancestor, and he’s not creepy. He’s…regal.”
“But he’s no Dracula, Blondie.”
“But I bet he could still eat chicken wings,” I teased.
“Children!” Wanda crowed with sharp clap of her hands. “Let’s not get into another ‘my dad can beat up your dad’ argument, okay? We have work to do.”
Nina tapped the space on her chest where her heart would beat. “Why do you always go for the jugular? You hurt me, Ass-Sniffer.”
I drove my arm through Nina’s and pulled her toward the final door, leading to the vault. “I learned from the best, Dark Lord. Now let’s get this done.”
Upon entering the vault room, the hush of the interior struck me instantly. The lack of sound almost eerie.
“I feel like I should whisper in here,” Wanda commented.
The foyer to the vault was devoid of everything but the vault door. A shiny surface with a big spinning wheel on the front like the ones they had in a bank. There was a control panel on the framework around the door that, upon closer inspection, held a spot to place your finger.
Wanda showed me her phone. “Stan texted again. According to the council police and the inventory of the contents of the vault, nothing is missing. So, if Zinnia was trying to get into the vault to steal something, she was unsuccessful. Also, this vault is like Fort Knox. It’s got three codes and needs a fingerprint, and I think we have to dance naked under the light of the moon while we recite the alphabet and Nina does the hokey-pokey in order to open it. There’s also a live security feed with a guard twenty-four-seven. To say it’s complicated is an understatement.”
Nina cocked her head. “And where’s this guard now? Where was the guard when he whacked Zinnia?”
Wanda frowned, the faint lines on her forehead deepening. “I asked Mr. Freemont the same thing, and he said no one can find any of the three guards who pull duty here. Including, most importantly, the person who was supposed to be on duty this morning when Zinnia was killed.”
This just kept getting weirder.
Sighing, I figured this was a bit of a dead end. “Well, if nothing was taken, we don’t need to get in there, right? Though, I do admit to some curiosity about the contents.”
“Also, Stan said the cameras were turned off when the murder occurred, but oddly, Ron doesn’t remember turning them off and no one else was in close proximity to the vault when it happened. Not even Harris, his assistant.”
Wanda whipped out her phone and typed. “What’s Harris’s last name? We need to talk to him, too.”
“Fowler. Harris Fowler. He’s been Ron’s assistant forever.’
Nina planted her hands on her hips. “Jesus. What does Ron remember?” she groused. “He doesn’t remember killing Zinnia, he doesn’t remember what he killed her with, but he’s confessing to murdering her. He seems to remember that . What the hell?”
I turned and looked at the left side of the foyer to the vault. The council police hadn’t bothered to tape things off the way human police do, but it was clear this was where Zinnia was killed.
There were blood stains everywhere, seeping into the red carpet, making it almost black. My stomach turned thinking of pretty Zinnia, her shiny chestnut hair and bright green eyes, her life now extinguished forever.
Wanda toed the area right before the large dark stains of blood. “There’s spatter here. Maybe he hit her here and she tried to get away before he finished the job there?”
Nina knocked shoulders with Wanda. “And that means what to us, Dexter? How does that help us figure out why Ron whacked the poor kid? All that tells us is she tried to get away from him.”
Wanda ignored Nina’s poke. “I was just thinking out loud. She’s a were, too, isn’t she, Marty? But a young one. Probably not nearly as strong as Ron.”
I winced at the thought of Zinnia, fighting for her life—with Ron.
Ron .
The idea nearly immobilized me, left me chilled me to the bone.
I cleared my throat. “So the presumption is, Zinnia was trying to steal something from the vault, Ron caught her, a fight ensued, and he killed her. But how would she even have gotten into the vault without Ron’s fingerprint? Why would she attempt to steal something when she knew it would be pointless, because she couldn’t get to it without Ron anyway? This makes no sense.”
“I doubt we’re going to find anything here that helps us figure this out,” Wanda said. “Let’s head over to Pearl’s cottage and see if we can find anything there to help this make some sense. That’s out back, right?”
I nodded. “Do me a favor and text that misogynistic jackhole Stan and ask him if the council police saw anything on the cameras outside. Maybe someone suspicious?”
Wanda’s eyebrow lifted. “Because?”
I shrugged. “Because I just can’t believe Zinnia would attempt to take anything from the people who loved her like their own. She was a good kid, Wanda. They paid for her tuition to college, for heaven’s sake. Maybe someone talked her into this? Coerced her? Blackmailed her? What’s in the vault is priceless. Maybe someone forced her into doing this.”
Nina made a face. “You know, what the hell’s in there that’s so priceless? Is it another creepy fucking stuffed werewolf?”
“Werewolf DNA,” Wanda muttered.
Nina clucked her tongue. “DNA? Like, who wouldn’t have that on serious lockdown? As in, Fort Knox kinda lockdown. They’ve got one guy and a security guard looking out for your entire species? And why the fuck do you people have werewolf DNA? Aren’t there enough of you?”
“According to Stan, there are lasers inside the vault that would cut you in half if you somehow got in there without the code, and he says the DNA is origin-story sacred. But that’s all he said.”
Flapping my hand, I dismissed the contents of the vault for now. They might mean something later, but for the moment, we were in discovery mode. “Let’s not get into the why’s and the wherefores. I don’t understand the council and their motivations either. We need to go look through Pearl’s cottage for some more clues. We need to be more concerned with figuring out why Ron killed Zinnia than we do about werewolf DNA and its storage. We need to focus.”
Though, I admit, that intrigued me. Why was there werewolf DNA stored in a vault and guarded by a guy who’d challenge Mother Theresa in kindness?
I shook off my questions and backed out of the vault room, away from the vicious blood stains, heading toward the kitchen again. There was a door to the back gardens, leading to Pearl’s cottage. When I stepped outside, I took a deep breath of the cold winter air, the stench of blood still lingering in my nose.
Ron’s gardens were as impressive as everything else here at his estate. Filled with cobblestone pathways and snow-covered hedges, each area, even in winter, carefully tended.
There were stone benches along the way, water fountains, small sitting areas where one could enjoy the flowers in spring and summer.
When we reached Pearl’s cottage, a quaint white structure with a small porch and a blue front door, I sighed with sadness. It felt wrong to rifle through Pearl’s adorable home for the man who’d allegedly murdered her daughter.
Wanda put her arm around me and squeezed hard. “I know what you’re thinking, and we’re doing this for the right reasons, Marty. To find justice for Zinnia.”
“Right. For Zinnia.” I eyed the keypad by the door for the keyless entry. “Do we have the code?”
Wanda nodded as she looked at her phone and punched it in. When the door whooshed open, a little air escaped my lungs as the scent of mint and pear greeted us.
Everything about it was precious. Pearl’s décor, her furniture, the color of her walls. All of it in a cottage core design.
Nina shook her head, pointing to the white, slip-covered couch, adorned with tons of fluffy pillows. “What is it with chicks and pillows? Is it a gene I wasn’t fucking born with?”
I poked her in the ribs. “Show me where the bad throw pillow hurt you, vampire.”
She gave me the finger. “Let’s do this. I’ll take out here and the kitchen. You guys split up and do the bedrooms.”
As I made my way down the small hall, I took note of the pictures hanging on the walls of Zinnia and her mother, all in black frames, gallery style, and my stomach lurched again. I don’t know how police and investigators compartmentalized their emotions.
It was clear I could never do that by the stab of tears at the corners of my eyes. I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath.
Focus, crybaby .
When I rounded the corner to enter what I thought was Pearl’s bedroom, someone barreled into me, knocking me so hard my head snapped back, sending me toward the wall and taking the wind right out of me.
Whoever it was hit me with such force, when I instinctively reached behind me to brace myself, I broke a nail. I’d just had a damn manicure.
And that enraged me.
Listen, it’s silly to most, I know, but I love the time I take to have my mani/pedi. I enjoy being a girl. I don’t have a lot of time to myself. When I do, I bask in it, luxuriate, if you will. And now it was ruined.
That meant someone had to die.
Or at least hurt as much as my finger did.