After I had finished devouring my breakfast, the doorbell rang. Janice hummed as she strolled to the front door to answer it. I heard her voice grow in excitement as she promised somebody a batch of cookies. Heavy footsteps marched down the hallway, passing Haley’s room. I knew whoever it was; they were there for me and would be in my room in seconds. I figured it was Maddie, coming to catch up on what happened the night before.
My door creaked; and I gasped upon seeing Wolfe barge into my room. I shrunk to two-inches tall, searched my room for a hole to crawl into and hide. Humiliated. How could he see me like this? To make it worse; I had a wiped-free breakfast plate on my tray like a gluttonous pig.
“Fiona, you’re going to listen to what I have to say,” he said sternly as he shut my door and locked it, his eyes penetrated my core.
He marched towards me, moved my tray out of the way, grabbed my hands, and pulled me gently to my feet. I stood directly before him in the center of my room, wearing a pajama duo that said light’s out across the cami in bold, pink lettering and good night across the back of the boxer shorts. I bent my head downward, tracing the wooden grooves of the floor with my eyes, realizing my hair resembled Medusa’s snakes.
His warm breath misted the top of my head. Nudging my chin upward with the side of his hand, I locked eyes with him. I turned my head to the side, wishing I could will my hairbrush into my hand and stop time. Uneasy, I despised him seeing me so disheveled.
“Fiona, you have to hear me out. Will you agree to do that? It will be more difficult for you to ignore me, walk away, or leave me since I’m locked in your bedroom,” his voice was serious as he cracked a guarded smile.
Melting inside as he stood before me, I fought to remain a steel façade. I glowered in irritation.
“Yes, I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I can’t guarantee it will change anything that happened in the past," I warned, breaking free from his hold, taking a step backward and folding my arms across my chest.
I nonchalantly finger brushed my long, straight hair.
“Fiona, you look beautiful. In fact, more beautiful than ever,” he said softly, pushing my hand away from my hair.
“This won’t work, Wolfe. You can’t buy my trust back with compliments,” I protested, my voice wasn’t as steady as desired.
“Listen to me, Fiona. Camber asked me a couple of days ago if she could confide in me, and I said yes. She made me swear on my relationship with you I wouldn’t say anything to anybody no matter how I felt about it afterward,” his velvet voice turned brittle.
When he said the words relationship with you, my heart raced with the speed of a thousand horses, sparking flutters in my stomach. We stared into each other’s eyes for a prolonged moment, his brows furrowed in frustration.
“What do you mean, relationship with me? Why was I brought into it?”
Wolfe searched the ground with his eyes for a long moment before gazing at me with an intensity of a speeding train, “Fiona,” he mumbled with a chafed undertone.
My face was frozen, blushing. I had no idea what he was about to say. My breathing became shallow as he squared his shoulders to me, brushing the back of his fingers across my cheek.
“And then what did she tell you, Wolfe?” I blurted, combating the awkwardness that had risen in the room.
He pressed his full lips together, staring at me through narrowed eyes, deciding how he would respond, eyes flashing to the floor and then back at me.
“She admitted the cult was there. They went for a meeting and discovered the victim. Damien thought it was cool, picked up the sword and pretended to stab the victim again. Victoria thought it was hysterical, laughed and encouraged him to continue. Camber said she was scared and made the decision to leave the group. Damien asked Victoria to take a picture of him holding the sword over the victim. That is when Sydney arrived, took one look at the scene, and ran out of there,” he said coldly, his flawless face hard and bitter as it inclined towards me.
Feeling a chill tingle along my spine, I was so appalled, unable to speak. I couldn’t imagine being so callous to find a dead body and mock being the murderer—it was beyond my comprehension. I could see why Wolfe, promising in advance he would say nothing, was caught in a conundrum. I shrank back, settling onto the covers of my bed, jaws tensed as I gazed at him. Janice lightly tried the door handle before gently knocking on my door.
“Cookies, Wolfie!” she sang playfully.
His eyes widened as he sprinted over to my bedroom door, unlocked it and swung the door open.
“Sorry, Miss Parker. I was trying to make sure Fiona couldn’t escape until she heard me out.”
“Well, Wolfie, that is an excellent strategy,” she chuckled, setting down the cookie plate and picking up my breakfast tray. “Can I get you youngsters anything else?”
“No ma’am, these cookies look awesome. Thanks!” he said enthusiastically, picking up a cookie with a wolf face drawn on top in frosting.
Detective Chase’s picture flashed on my phone as it rang, and I answered on speaker.
“Hello, Detective Chase, what’s up?” I said, putting an index finger to my lips for Wolfe to remain quiet.
He nodded accordingly and grabbed a couple of cookies, lunging to sit next to me on my bed.
“Fiona, as discussed, the blood from the staged murder was a living blood donor from the prison, but we might have found a body, nonetheless. Maybe a separate murder altogether or maybe the living blood donor’s blood was a cover for it, who knows? The investigators uncovered a fresh grave not too far from Damien Lee’s trailer at the Lakeside Trailer Park.”
18 UNCOVERED
Deciding to put our differences aside, I asked Wolfe to wait in the living room as I threw myself together. I sent a text message to the team to meet us there. After a rapid shower, blow dry and tooth brushing, I threw my hair into a ponytail and got dressed. Skipping the contacts, I grabbed my black-rimmed glasses. Pausing at the mirror, I threw a touch of color to my cheeks and a thin sheen of glittered lip-gloss, spraying a mist of perfume my aunt had bought me for Christmas. Why not?
Wolfe and Janice were in a deep conversation about puppy rearing and how much effort needs to be put into training a new dog. An unexpected wave of tears was at the ready the moment I thought of Luminal and how terribly I missed him. I fought the tears back into their wells, pushing the case to the forefront of my mind.
“Ready?” I inquired.
“I’m always ready. We riding with B-Fed?” Wolfe said in a soft tone, followed by an enchanting laugh.
“Yes, he’s in the front driveway,” I said with a laugh, “I suppose you are referring to Agent B as B-Fed, right?”
“Figured he needed a nickname,” he shrugged; his dazzling eyes meeting mine as he held the door open.
The sun shined brightly from a cloudless sky, the birds chirped from nests in the trees overhanging my driveway. Spring was around the corner, and this was the first sunny day since winter that broke the sixty-degree threshold. We headed out to the fresh grave, Agent Bronson nattering about racecars along the way. I imagined he was running out of topics to talk to teenagers about, and I hoped, for his sake, they would find Gerald Smith soon. As we pulled behind a string of police cars next to a curb, Wolfe spotted Detective Chase sprinting towards the car.
“I’ll be right here waiting for you guys,” Agent Bronson said, killing the motor and cracking his driver’s side window.
As I climbed out of the passenger side door, the detective approached, gasping for breath, “Fiona, Wolfe. Glad to see you,” he said, hesitating while gasping a few times, “and over there, behind those trees, there is a freshly dug grave. There was a large amount of extraneous vegetation covering the dirt, but during the search for the body in the second, potentially staged murder, the investigators found this,” he said, his face serene.
“How can you tell it’s fresh?” Wolfe stared in blank astonishment as we walked over to the scene.
“The tra
cking dogs found it first. They are specially trained cadaver dogs that look for the scent of fresh decayed flesh.”
I had winced for a half second before I realized how refreshing it was the dogs could be trained to find such a thing. However, I was sad for the dogs having to seek such an odor.
“There’s such a thing as fresh decayed flesh?” Wolfe mused, laughing in a soft, charming manner.
I smacked him on the arm and smirked. His eyes widened, laughing at my reaction.
“Yes, there is,” he chuckled. "The dirt was sunk in a bit as it settled and left a depression in the vegetation pile. Obviously, whoever dug the grave didn’t pack the dirt well and it settled down. We used ground penetrating radar to detect heat and nitrogen which are both byproducts of decay. We passed a metal detector, used to detect jewelry, belt buckles, but nothing was there. Not surprising, not all victims are clothed, and most of the time, their jewelry has been removed by the perpetrator.”
“So, we know that somebody is buried there for sure, huh?” I asked hastily.
“Looks that way.”
We stood in the background of the investigators, watching them carefully dig the dirt from the fresh grave. We took a seat on the curb by the road, settling in to wait—the detective informed us there wouldn’t be much to look at until they got to the body. Within minutes, a news van pulled onto the scene and the reporter and camera crew jumped out, getting ready for their news report.
The detective gave me a long stare to observe how Wolfe and I were interacting as we sat on the curb. I was growing tired of his crusade to keep an eye on us. I didn’t have time to process the fact Wolfe had made a deal to keep quiet on our relationship. That meant a lot to me. That also told me as much as Camber talked to him about Ralph Booner, he must have talked to her about me. I could see his side of things now, even though I had previously convinced myself the night before there was no way for him to talk his way out of it. There I was again, being the irrational person I despised.
After a few minutes of silence, Detective Chase sauntered over towards us.
“As I explained earlier, the lab contacted the blood bank and made a match to the donor,”
“To a prison worker, a frequent blood donor?”
“Correct. Well, to make it more interesting, the blood used in the staged murder is a match to the blood stolen from the blood bank prior to the murder.”
“No way! Victoria!” I exclaimed, shaking my head in wonder.
“Our guys on the case can’t link it to her in any way, it’s just hearsay from Dimitri LeMorte, and who knows what his motive was for telling on her. But we do know it has something to do with him or Victoria. Or who knows, now I think about it.”
“He could have heard about the blood bank burglary on the news and blamed it on Victoria for some weird reason,” Wolfe pondered.
“True. But evidence is evidence,” Detective Chase said, straining to keep a watchful eye on the grave investigation.
“By the way, Detective, how’s your rash from the curse?” Wolfe asked candidly.
“It’s the craziest thing ever. I have these complete circle looking things all over my body now, they don’t bother me physically, but they are odd. I’ve been to the dermatologist twice now, and they say they won’t treat it if they’re not bothering me. They said to watch it, and it will probably go away. They blame it on stress.”
“Weird,” I said as footsteps rushed up behind me.
“Fiona!” a feminine voice shrieked.
I spun around and observed a frantic Sydney Sergeant, tears rushing down her face as she raced towards me.
“Fiona! Fiona Frost!” she shouted.
I looked at Detective Chase, and Wolfe, before turning back to Sydney, her expression peppered with untainted fear.
“Fiona, you don’t know me—”
“I know who you are, Sydney,” I said bluntly, surveying her innocent features, her hair in perfect spiral curls that transformed from brown, to blonde to blue tips.
“I-I imagine you do. I just saw a live news report on television, and you were on it, so I knew where you were and rushed right over here. Can you talk to me? In private. For just a moment?” Sydney asked quietly, darting her eyes between the detective, Wolfe, and myself.
I looked at the detective for approval before nodding and gesturing to move down the road a bit for privacy. We marched out of earshot, and she stared at my face intently.
“Fiona,” she panted before inhaling deeply. “I don’t want to be in that crazy cult anymore. I know you saw me with them in that cave on Friday night, but Dimitri won’t let me quit. He said once you commit, you cannot quit, or they will remove your tongue while you sleep. He said there will be no trace of them coming into my house, and I will wake up unable ever to speak of the Order again,” she spluttered, bursting into a fit of tears.
“Calm down, Sydney,” I sighed, rubbing her scrawny shoulder.
“But I know Damien did it. I saw him! He was holding the knife, laughing, and there’s a picture of it all on Victoria’s phone. I saw them all with the victim!”
“Before or after her death, Sydney. That is what is key here.”
Sydney wiped her tears from her cheeks, staring attentively at the ground for a long moment.
“Well, she was already dead by the time I got to the cave and down into Dracul’s Den. There was blood everywhere. I came down the steps, and Damien grabbed me by the arm and made me look at that lady. There was so much blood,” Sydney said, widened eyes welling up again with tears.
“If the victim was already dead, Sydney, all you can do is place them in the cave after the murder. If you didn’t see them actually commit the murder, we can’t do much other than call them liars for not admitting to being in the cave the night of the murder. At least at this point. Now, if there are any pictures of the victim on Victoria’s phone prior to her death in the cave, well, we’ll have the smoking gun on them,” I said assertively, tapping her on the back.
“One more thing, Fiona.”
“What’s that?”
“That crazy lady, whatever her name is, but she’s the one with the yellow hair and teeth,” she added warily.
“Emily Vance. She lives in the cave and in the park. What about her?”
“Well, I saw the victim and that bag lady have a fight. I wasn’t the only one who saw it, either. At the Stop-Go on Biscane Street, in the parking lot. They screamed at each other.”
“Really? When was this?”
“It was the morning before the murder, on a Tuesday. They were fighting and screaming, then that crazy lady bit her on the shoulder, and she started yelling. I didn’t know what to do, but the clerk broke them up and made them leave.”
This explained the bite marks. We would have to interview the clerk and clear this story soon. I had hoped there was also video surveillance footage to corroborate Sydney’s story.
“Sydney, you’ve been a great help. I will pass this along to the ones in charge. If they need to talk to you further, we’ll be in touch. We know where you live. And don’t worry about Dimitri. He can’t sneak into your room at night without us knowing. You have an alarm in that big house, right?”
Sydney drew ultra-silent, distant, trying to hide from something on the other side of me. I turned around to see what was behind me. Victoria and Damien stood in the middle of the road, eyes on the grave excavation with smiles on their faces. Possibly, they had caught the newscast—we were close to Damien’s residence in the Lakeside Trailer Park. Sydney crouched down, continuing to speak in a quiet tone.
“Yes, my parents set it every night. They don’t trust me anymore. They put even more magnets in my windows, so I can’t sneak out. I don’t want to sneak out, Fiona. I’m good with staying home and not getting into trouble. I only went to the cave with them on Friday because I was scared, but I’ll take your word he can’t get to me in my house.”
“Well, as far as what I’ve seen in vampire movies, they can’t come in unless t
hey’ve been invited,” I giggled.
She smiled.
“Thanks, Fiona,” she said in a whisper as she frantically peered around my shoulder to view their position.
Sydney took off in a full sprint down the street. As I spun around, Victoria and Damien had turned towards me, watching her run away.
I rushed back to the curb as a burgundy Acura pulled in behind Agent Bronson. Lauren, Willow, and Maddie piled out and hurried over to join us. I shook my head and smiled at Willow, suited like a CEO of a Forbes-listed corporation. Her professionalism never ceased to amaze me.
“Good afternoon, Fiona!” she sparked, shooting me a bright smile, pushing up her blazer sleeves to her elbows.
“Hi, Fiona, Wolfe, Detective,” Maddie added. “Sorry, I didn’t return your text, Fiona. My mom needed me to translate for her with a vendor, and it took hours,” she laughed.
“Gotta love Mrs. Christie. Didn’t she learn English as an adult, after marrying your dad?” Wolfe asked.
“Yes, she grew up in Japan, my father met her over there because he was in the Air Force,” she responded, her long black hair glistened in the sunlight like a vivid satin curtain on either side of her face.
“Hey, what’s up, people!” Lauren sounded, gathering her bushy locks and twirling them into a thick bun on the back of her head and repositioning her military-style cap.
“Hey, guys. I just spoke to Sydney Sergeant, so you’ve got excellent timing. And Maddie, I can imagine the translation session was a chore, but I love your mom to death.”
I hastily got everybody up to speed with what Sydney had told me, and everybody agreed that Damien Lee was undoubtedly in the cave, along with Victoria and Camber. We reasoned they were lying about not being there around the time of the murder. At a minimum, they were guilty of lying and of exceedingly poor judgment in playing with a dead body. The pictures were hearsay, so we needed to obtain the pictures from Victoria’s cell phone. We also thought Damien and Victoria should be put back in jail, without bond until we could solve the case. The evidence was mounting against them and their behavior was more than odd.
Fiona Frost: Order of the Black Moon Page 20
