Dead Man's Hand

by Tegan Maher

  "Everybody loves a good murder, and right now, you're the best one to dish with." I scowled, irritated that folks had acted like that. They knew better, and I'd call them out on it when I gave a statement. I'd found a little public shaming went a long way toward reminding folks to mind their manners, and I wasn't above using it to get the poor girl some peace.

  It wasn’t like she was going to have much; finding a dead body in an alley wasn’t quite the fodder for fairy-tale dreams. I pushed the door shut and took a breath before I turned to question a teenager about a dead body. I added that to the list of sins I was holding the killer accountable for.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE BOOKSTORE WAS ONE of those that sold a variety of books—everything from the latest mysteries to ancient tomes on werewolf history, though those were kept in the fiction section right alongside the fairy tales and science fiction books. I'd always been a bookworm, so the smell of old paper combined with new added a layer of comforting warmth to the place.

  Jenna led us to one of several arrangements of comfortable armchairs meant to encourage a customer to sit and read, and we took a seat.

  I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. "I know this has to be tough, sweetie, so we'll be quick. What time was it when you found the body?"

  She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, then smoothed her plaid miniskirt just to have something to do with her hands.

  "About eight, right before closing time. I was taking the trash out and saw him layin' there. I thought maybe he'd gotten a snoot-full at Sully's and passed out, so I went over to try to wake him up."

  She cringed, her eyes staring somewhere over my shoulder. "Then I saw the hole in his vest and felt for a pulse. When I didn't find one, I called 911."

  The poor girl was almost as pale as the guy in the alley, and I felt horrible for her. "And what time was it when you went out to have a smoke?"

  "Oh, it wasn't really a smoke. It was just a clove cigarette," she rushed to say. "Real cigarettes'll kill you."

  "Okay," I said, trying not to roll my eyes. "What time was that, then?"

  "Around seven thirty. I know because I was countin' down to closin' time. It's been a slow day and the time felt like it was draggin'."

  I imagined she'd have been much happier if it had ended that way, too.

  "And you're positive he wasn't there then?" Sam asked.

  "Positive," she said, nodding. "I was on the phone with my friend Tara, and I pace when I talk. I walked over that spot half a dozen times." Her eyes darted between us. "If you could leave the phone part out when you talk to Ms. Clancy, I'd appreciate it. I'm not supposed to do that, but I was so bored."

  "I can't imagine it'll come up when we talk to her," I said. I'd known Darlene Clancy my whole life—before she'd bought the bookstore, she'd been a substitute teacher when I was in school and was a real ball-breaker. No need to put the kid through any more hell than she'd already been through.

  "Did you touch anything?" Sam asked. "Other than just his neck when you felt for a pulse?"

  "Nope," she said, shaking her head. "As soon as I realized he was dead, I ran back into the store and locked the door." She frowned. "Bein' that close to a dead body freaked me out, and I was scared whoever'd done it was still around."

  "But they weren't?" I watched her face for any sign of lying or hesitation, but she didn't miss a beat.

  "Nope. The alley was empty. I was payin' close attention because I didn't want to get busted smoking, even if I might only be workin' here for another couple weeks, seein' as how it's been sold and they might tear it down, which Mama says—."

  She realized she was starting to babble and snapped her mouth shut. The poor kid ran a hand through her bubblegum hair, causing it to stand on end, and plucked at the hem of her shorts, eyes downcast. "I feel like I should have tried CPR or somethin'."

  I leaned toward her and caught her gaze. "Sweetie, there was nothing you could have done to help. He was way past that, so don't go feeling guilty."

  "You're sure?" She blinked several times, fighting back tears. I was a little surprised it had taken her that long to get to that point; she'd held it together well until then.

  "Positive," I told her, nodding. I glanced askance at Sam to see if he had any other questions, but he shook his head and stood.

  "Do you want me to call your mama to come get you?" he asked.

  "Nah. She's already at work, and I'm fine, really," Jenna said, drawing in a deep breath as she stood to see us out. "Do I like, need to stay in town or anything?"

  I gave her a half-smile. "You're not a suspect, but are you planning to go somewhere?"

  "No, except maybe out to the lake. They just always say that on TV, so I wanted to make sure I was good. You know, just in case."

  "You're good," Sam said, giving her pat on the shoulder as we stepped out the back. "We'll call if we have any more questions. C'mon. We'll walk you to your car."

  "That'd be awesome," she said, casting another cranky glare toward the crowd. "I feel like I'm jumpin' into a piranha tank out there."

  She stepped back inside, grabbed her purse from a cubby, shut off the lights, and locked the back door before squaring her shoulders and turning around. She made it a point to look anywhere but toward the body as we walked away from the scene and around my Jeep to where her car was parked.

  As expected, the crowd went wild when they saw her, and Jenna cringed. I turned and shot them a blistering glare, making eye contact with several of the ones I knew were high on the gossip and social food chains. Most of them had the good grace to look away, and the ones that didn't got an elbow to the ribs.

  They were good folks whipped into a frenzy by what—in our town—was a big deal. Once the initial shine wore off, they'd realize she was just a kid and leave her alone. She'd probably enjoy celebrity status with her peers for a while, but that was different.

  Once we saw her off, we headed back toward the body, squeezing between the fence and the county van to get back to the crime scene. Colleen pushed to her feet and pulled off one glove, then snapped the other one down around it, inside out, and brushed off her hands.

  Her grey eyes were shrewd as she looked at the scene as a whole, taking in every detail. "I can’t tell whether or not he was killed here," she said. "And it's hard to tell how long he's been dead considering he's a vamp and I can't go by body temp."

  I snapped my gaze away from the body toward her, and furrowed my brow. "How can he be a vamp? Bullets don't kill vamps."

  She shrugged. "I won't be able to answer that until I get him back to the morgue, but I checked his canines. Definitely a vampire."

  I huffed a breath out between my cheeks. Great. That meant I had a whole other level of crazy to deal with. Not to be callous, but from a legal standpoint, a murdered shifter or human would have been easier. The investigation would have been completely within my department with no outside involvement. With vamps, I'd have to deal with the archaic vampire council.

  In this case, the regional director was a great guy, but great was a subjective term when you were dealing with a vampire who was hundreds of years old. That many years of immortality tended to warp a person's perspective of the here and now, sometimes for the better, but not always.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose because I knew this situation was going to fall into the latter category, given that the regional leader was also the town's founding father. Sean Castle was not going to be pleased, and since he happened to be in residence, I couldn't even put off telling him until I knew more.

  Good thing it was already night; otherwise I'd have considered taking up day drinkin'.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BEFORE I’D LEFT, I'd remembered to ask Colleen what the fifth card was. It had me stymied because it was a joker. I'd expected it to be a Jack of diamonds because even though the facts were fuzzy, the most common belief was that it was the fifth card in the dead man's hand—so named because it was the poker hand Wild Bill Hickok was holdi
ng when he was murdered from behind.

  It wouldn't have stood out as much if they'd chosen another random card, but I had to believe the joker was a deliberate choice. I tapped my finger on the steering wheel of the Jeep on my way to Sean's, mulling over what it may mean.

  In a regular deck of cards, it was a wild card. When used, it was the highest trump card, turning a crappy hand into one that can take a pot. In that case, it could have meant anything from nanny, nanny, boo, boo, I win because you're dead, to you were too dumb to live.

  There was the tarot angle to consider, too. My aunt Carole was precognitive and used cards as one of the tools to target her thoughts when she was shooting for something specific. The problem with tarot, though, was that the cards could be fickle, and they were almost always open to interpretation. Typically, though, the joker—or fool as it was called—implied a situation in flux. Change, unrealized potential, mystery, or even bluffing. Beginnings, endings ... it all depended on the cards around it. Or, in this case, what it meant to the murderer.

  Whether the killer meant the card literally or figuratively was another point to consider. Or—and it was just as plausible—the murderer just wanted to leave a cool, mysterious calling card, pun intended, or was a delusional Batman fan.

  Long story short: for the time being, the only function the card was serving was in its most base interpretation—it was fooling with me.

  When I pulled up in front of Sean's antebellum mansion, the place was lit up like a Christmas tree. Expensive cars lined the brick drive and Vivaldi's Spring Concerto was floating on the breeze. He'd hosted a Fourth of July party a few weeks back, and he'd had a classic-rock cover band. He was complex and eclectic—you never knew what you were going to get with him.

  I took the porch steps two at a time and shook my head when I saw people in fancy dress waltzing around the grand front parlor. I picked up the lion-head knocker and rapped it against the brass plate, and Sean's butler answered the door. The guy looked like he had chronic constipation, and for whatever reason, I wasn't one of his favorite people.

  "Sheriff Sloane," he said in a tone that most people used when they smelled dog poop.

  "Jeeves," I replied with a cheeky grin. He ground his teeth at the nickname, but I waved it off as if I didn’t know I was tap-dancing on a nerve. "Good to see you as always. Your bow tie's a bit askew; I'd never accept that from my own butler, but Sean has a good heart. Speaking of, I need to speak with him."

  I'd tried on numerous occasions to get the stick in the mud to warm up to me, but he never would and always wore that air of stodgy condescension that frankly irritated me. So, I’d given up and started giving as good as I got.

  "Master Castle is entertaining."

  "Huh," I said, looking around at the fancy cars and twinkle lights and doing my best to hang onto my patience. "You don't say. I thought maybe he'd started a high-end used car lot."

  My nerves were frayed and I wasn't in the mood to deal with his high-hattedness. I gave up the pretense and cut to the chase. "Look. I'm not playing the little bullshit dance we usually go through tonight. Go get him, or I'm going in."

  His eyes flashed silver, and I let my wolf send him a glimmer of green right back.

  "Cordelia? What's going on?" I cringed at the use of my given name. Only my mother—and sometimes this guy—called me that. Sean Castle stepped into the foyer toward us as the last strains of the concerto drifted away. He was wearing a tailored black tux with a scarlet pocket square, and the expression on his handsome, late-thirtyish face was a combination of confusion and consternation. He knew he'd walked in on a pissing match.

  "I'm here to see you on official business," I said, maintaining eye contact with the butler, "but as usual, Jeeves here seems to think what I have to say doesn't merit dragging you away from your party."

  Sean lowered his brows at the butler, and the amiable expression shifted seamlessly to one of ruthlessness. "We've discussed this, have we not?"

  "It was a simple miscommunication, I assure you," the pompous jerk answered, bowing his head and averting his eyes. "I was about to announce her when you appeared."

  I snorted. He'd been about to introduce me to his fangs, more like. Despite my age and sex, that would have been a miscalculation on his part.

  I pushed past him, mentally over the whole thing. "Is there somewhere we can talk?" I asked Sean.

  "Of course," he said, concern lining his face. "Follow me."

  He led me around a fancy curved staircase and down a hallway into a private study, sliding the pocket doors shut behind us. He poured two glasses of scotch from a crystal decanter and handed me one. I wasn't about to turn that down after the day I'd had.

  Though he was quite modern for a man nearly a thousand years old, he was still an old-school gentleman, and offered me a chair in front of a fireplace before taking one himself.

  I took a sip from my glass and savored the smoky richness as I watched the flames flicker over the logs. You could say a lot about the ancient vampire, but never let it be said he served inferior booze.

  "So," he said, swirling the amber liquid in his own glass. "What brings you by?"

  "Not pleasure, I'm sorry to say. We had a murder tonight. Or rather, we found a body tonight. We're not sure yet how long he's been dead. We’re not sure he was killed there."

  He went stiff and asked for more details. I told him what I knew, then pulled up a picture of the victim on my phone. He took it and his jaw clenched when he saw it. I had no idea who the guy was to him, but he was obviously somebody important. His handed the phone back to me, then with the preternatural speed of his species, he was staring out a window several feet away.

  "His name is—was—Charles Vanderveer," he said, his expression brooding. I could feel the tension rolling off of him. "He was a dear friend of mine from way back, and he was staying here."

  "On a longer vacation, or just for the ball?" I asked, surprised at his reaction. He tended to be uber laid back. My mom called him irreverent and cavalier, but I'd known him long enough to learn that underneath that veneer was a complex man who could go from generous to murderous in a heartbeat.

  He had an overdeveloped sense of fair play, though, so we got along well even though we didn't always agree on paranormal politics. I was afraid those differences in opinion were going to cause some rough sailing for us in the days ahead.

  "I'm hosting a high-stakes poker tournament this weekend. The ball was one of the events leading up to it. Charles arrived last week, and was going to stay for a month or so before heading back to Seattle." A haunted smile tipped the corner of his mouth. "He liked to come and play the role of a Southern rake. It was all in good fun."

  Until it wasn't, anyway.

  "When was the last time you saw him?" I asked.

  He thought for a few seconds. "We went riding this afternoon and then had tea, so perhaps four. He said he was going to town for a bit to soak up some of the local ambiance. That usually meant going to Sully's or the Hook."

  The Hook was our local dive bar and often had poker games going in the back, but since we’d found him behind Sully's, I'd start there.

  "Do you know if he carried a wallet? Because he wasn't when we found him."

  Sean's brow furrowed. "Yes, he did. He never had less than a few thousand dollars on him; he said you never knew when an opportunity would pop up."

  What an odd expression. "What sort of opportunity?"

  The corners of his mouth tipped up in a ghost of a smile. "Charles would bet on quite literally anything. Cards, sports, drag races, ponies, behavior, even the exact height or weight of a person. It didn't matter to him, but he rarely bet on something he couldn't win."

  "Was that due to luck or because he was in the habit of putting his finger on his side of the scale?" If he was a cheat, that made for one hell of a motive.

  Sean rubbed his chin, his forehead crinkled in thought. "To be honest, I've asked myself the same question dozens of times over the years. I'v
e never caught him cheating nor has anybody else, but he did have exceptional luck. Whether he was just a masterful cheat, a shrewd thinker, or simply lucky—or a combination of the three—is anyone's guess."

  The only question I had left was the obvious one. "Can you think of anybody who'd want him dead?"

  He huffed a derisive breath out through his nose. "Though Charles was one of my nearest and dearest friends, he was an acquired taste and had some habits that tended to land him on the wrong side of people, namely husbands. And jilted women. And fellow poker players."

  A real stand-up guy, then. It would have been easier to ask who wouldn't want to kill him. I ran my tongue over my teeth. "Can you narrow that down a little? Anybody recent or maybe someone who's here for the tournament?"

  He turned away from the window and reclaimed his seat in the chair near me, staring into his glass. "Can you give me until tomorrow to reconcile myself with his death and to gain some clarity? Maybe then I'll have some ideas for you. I need to collect myself and organize my thoughts and speak to my guests. Coffee at Joe's tomorrow morning at eight? I'd rather not talk here; what we discuss needs to be private."

  I wasn't a fan of him speaking to his guests without me, but from the look of things, he probably had fifty people in the house. He was shrewd and not much got past him. I'd do it his way ... for now. I dipped my head and finished my scotch. "Joe's, tomorrow at eight. I'll see you then. And I may have more answers for you by then, too."

  Standing, I studied him for a second. He was lost in thought, swirling his scotch and watching it as if it held the answers to life's greatest questions. "I'll show myself out."

  I hadn't made it two steps after I closed the doors before crystal crashed against the wall from inside the study. Whoever killed Charles Vanderveer had better hope they didn't get caught, because I wasn't sure I could protect them, or that I'd even want to.