Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (22 page)

“Where’s here and how crazy?” I asked.

“ICE, and Henri Renault’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” I repeated. Columbus Circle was spinning. I had to stop before I staggered. A woman in a black pantsuit banged against my shoulder and brushed past, muttering about tourists.

“Oh, believe me, heads are rolling,” said Brendan in a tone that made me suspect he was personally responsible for a few of the decapitations. “But it doesn’t change anything. He’s gone.”

“But…but…how? It’s barely an hour since sunset! How would he have time to break out?”

“Somebody must have stolen his body. According to my buddy here, Rafe Wallace showed up this afternoon with a
writ of habeas corpus all ready to go, but somebody’d beaten him to it.” Considering the term translates to “you can have the body,” that was almost funny.

“Was it those two guys who staged the raid?” I asked. I didn’t ask,
Was it your grandfather or your aunt?

“It’s being checked out,” said Brendan tightly, and I swallowed my other questions. He didn’t know, and all I would do with my prodding was remind him how much he didn’t know. “They keep the nightbloods in a basement lockup until they can be processed. You need to sign in and out, and there’s a bunch of other paperwork, none of which is on file for Renault.” I could hear the explosion building under his voice.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I wish. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” I said, which was fairly true anyhow.

“Be careful, all right, Charlotte?” he said softly. “I’m really not loving the direction this mess is going.”

“I will if you will, Brendan.”

“I will.”

We stood there, not saying good-bye for a very long time.

If it hadn’t meant leaving Reese in the lurch, I might not have gone back to Brooklyn that night. As it was, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.

Fortunately, I came through the side door to find Reese involved in nothing more alarming than going over his own notes and checklists, his phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder while he tried to sweet-talk a friend of a friend into signing on as an extra set of skilled hands for the advance prep work. Also fortunately, his head was so far into logistics space, he was happy to keep the conversation to the wheres and hows of the Big Day, which was fast approaching, and I was happy to let him. We synched his lists to my lists and drew up a set of questions we needed to be sure were answered about the remaining pre-event events. I heard that night’s dinner had been a daybloods-only affair before. Not even Gabriel had put in an appearance.

I thought about the missing body of Henri Renault. It was a daring daylight raid, so Gabriel couldn’t have pulled it off. But he might have paid somebody to do it for him—such as the two agents who had already raided the house.

I didn’t say anything about this. Brendan had most
definitely already thought of that and would be following up on it. I concentrated on wrapping things up and sending Reese home before anything else out of the ordinary could happen. I locked the porch door behind him and turned around, wiping my hands on my trousers.

It was going on midnight. A normal person who kept normal hours would be exhausted, but this was the middle of my normal workday, and I was buzzing with energy. Around me the house had gone still and quiet. Adrienne and Deanna at least would be at a bridal shower that had been arranged by one of Adrienne’s charities. Scott might be with them, or he might not. I pictured him coming out of Karina’s building again, not looking up from his PDA.

I was able to deal with the peace and quiet for all of thirty seconds before I had to start cooking.

Deanna and her bridesmaids were expecting the full, formal English blowout for tea tomorrow—little sandwiches, cakes, the lot. Marie and her people, of course, were handling the cakes. But the sandwiches were my responsibility.

I turned the radio on low for some classic rock background noise, unrolled my knives, and started chopping up cucumbers, watercress, smoked salmon. I got some eggs on the stove to boil for a curried egg salad. Bread for finger sandwiches needs to be a little dry, so I switched knives and started slicing that up too.

My hands moved and my eyes measured and monitored mostly by instinct, leaving plenty of room in my brain to try to sort out the events of the day. I wondered how Gabriel was planning on keeping Deanna from realizing the whole ICE raid was some kind of put-up. I wondered if he knew what had happened to the gun or his sire, and if the two were currently in the same place. He must have known something, because he had tried really hard to keep her out of the way while he dealt with it—unless that was about
something else altogether. Henri was old enough that he could very well be an illegal, or at least an undocumented, vampire. He might even have neglected to get himself on the official nightblood registry. I wondered about Karina and her laboratories, her affair with Oscar, and her assertion that anybody could have killed him.

Around one a.m., I heard the front door open and the sound of footsteps overhead and then on the stairs. The Aldens had returned and were heading up to bed. I wondered about Scott Alden and just how far he’d go to keep the people around him happy. I wondered if his wife knew he had seen Karina today. I thought about how Trudy believed Mrs. Alden capable of arranging a wedding with one hand and sabotaging it with the other. She also called Mrs. Alden by her first name when she wasn’t being careful, had pet names for the girls, and tried to get between the family and federal agents. There was history there, and it wasn’t just attached to the paycheck.

It was all just too damned weird and too damned complicated. To make things even worse, Reese had been right about the Aldens’ kitchen. As I moved around it, I kept seeing what wasn’t there. There was next to nothing in the pantry—no old cans of water chestnuts, or that extra can of cranberry sauce bought for last Thanksgiving. There were none of the sticky, mostly full bottles of liquor found in every house because there’s always somebody who ten years ago thought blueberry schnapps sounded like the latest taste sensation. The separate wine refrigerator was also half-empty. And although Mrs. Alden said she did the cooking, she had no cookbooks, no old aprons or fraying hot pads, no battered utensils or wooden spoons with their handles worn and stained with use. This was a kitchen without a past. Where had it gone?

I couldn’t find an answer for that either.

Finally the eggs finished, and I put them in a pot of water to cool so they could be peeled. While I was waiting,
I pulled a stool up to the kitchen island and spread out my notebooks on the marble. I stared at them without really seeing them. Then I pulled out that scrap of a list I’d retrieved from Oscar’s office, turned the lights up full, and squinted at it.

The handwriting hadn’t gotten any better. The first word could have been “actonin,” “action item,” or “agorium.” The next word looked as though it started with a
CH
, but the next letter could have been the beginnings of a
b
, or the numeral three or a wiggly
p
for all I could tell. The last line was nothing but word salad with a lot of extra vowels sprinkled on for seasoning.

I laid the scrap down beside my notebooks. I should be peeling eggs and gathering seasonings rather than wasting time trying to decipher Oscar’s shopping lists. As illegible as it was, I was sure the scrap was part of a list of some kind. Or, given that it came from a chef’s notebook, a recipe.

But as I stared at the whole mess, a wave of sadness rose up from the depths of nowhere at the bottom of my brain. All those plans, all those great ideas and that enthusiasm, and they were drowning under the weight of somebody else’s screwups. I swept the loose pages into a heap. I had to get away from them. I pulled open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio, breathing the night air in deep to try to clear my head.

The Alden house was a place brimming with luxury, but this was surely the greatest of them all; a private green space in the midst of one of the world’s busiest cities. The night breeze swirled the aromas of herbs and fresh flowers together, completely erasing the smell of the nearby East River and any exhaust that might have been tempted to spill over from the expressway. I inhaled deeply and wandered up the central paved path, heading deeper into those lovely green scents. It would be way too easy to get used to this, although, being me, I wondered if there was enough light back there for tomatoes and zucchini.

Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to create a garden that matched the house. The place was neatly terraced, and the formal beds planted thick with carefully tended plants. Flowering vines and ivy climbed the brick walls. I passed a full-grown rosemary bush and stooped to take in the resiny scent. I wondered if there were chives, or maybe some basil, and I started mentally building compound butters for my tea sandwiches.

That was when I saw the first hole.

It was a black gap in the undergrowth big enough for both my fists. Even in the uncertain light spilling over the privacy wall, it stood out as completely incongruous among all this carefully tended shrubbery. I squatted down to look closer. Maybe somebody’s cat had gotten loose and done a little digging? But no, something here had been ripped out by the roots, but the plant itself was gone. And whoever did it was in too much of a hurry to bother with the little dangly bits left behind. Plus, a couple of feet to the right, there was another hole. I turned around and pushed aside the branches on some ornamental shrub (if it didn’t produce food, how would I know what it was called?), and found two more holes. One was big enough to bury a young watermelon.

Oh joy. New weirdness, fresh from the farm.
I stood up slowly and dusted off my hands.
Just what I need.

I stood there, trying to breathe deep and recover the calm I’d had such a fleeting hold of. It didn’t work, mainly because the back of my neck was starting to curdle. I made myself turn slowly. If that was Henri or one of his boys drifting up behind, I was not going to let him see me freaked.

But there was nobody, just me and this garden full of holes. At least, that was what I thought, until I lifted my gaze to the patio and the French doors. There was somebody in the kitchen. It was a man—Lloyd Maddox.

He stood so the dim light filtering out from the kitchen glimmered in his stark white hair and outlined his torso,
which was still powerful even though he had to be pulling seventy. My hand dove into my pocket and gripped my phone before I had a chance to even think about it. My hand wanted to call Brendan for a rescue. Fortunately, my head was still in charge. I would not retreat behind Brendan this time. Sooner or later, I was going to have to get used to dealing with this man, and, sooner or later, he was going to have to get used to dealing with me.

I strode into the kitchen. Lloyd, with an air of obvious graciousness, stood aside so I could snap on the light. The only thing worse than someone trying to loom at me is that same person trying to loom at me out of the dark.

“Hello, Mr. Maddox,” I said. “Something I can do for you?”
Does your daughter know you’re here? Have you got a key, or did you whammy the door?
I really needed to stop stacking up questions like that. I felt as if I were giving myself mental hives or something.

“Where was he?” Lloyd returned. “The vampire? During the raid?”

I thought about telling him to go flambé himself, but then I shrugged. If I was going to up the hostilities, I wanted there to be some point to it. “Under the sink,” I said.

“Good choice.” Lloyd crouched down in front of the cupboard and pulled open the door. He stared hard at the dark interior, then ran his fingertips around the edge of the door, rubbing them together as if checking for dust.

“I’m slowing down in my old age,” he muttered.

“I know a whole bunch of people who will be happy to hear it.” To prove I was well and truly over being impressed by him, I opened the stainless steel dishwasher and started loading bowls and knives. Thick, cold silence settled in behind me. I kept loading dishes. Lloyd kept being silent. In fact, he stayed there being silent until I closed the dishwasher and turned around. Now, he leaned against the kitchen island, watching me. It was the pose of a much younger man, and I had the sudden impression that this man
very much knew his own strength. My hand suddenly itched for something to hold, preferably something sharp.

“I can see why he’s taken up with you.” Lloyd pushed himself away from the island, very casually putting himself between me and the door to the dining room. “You’re his type.”

“Cheap shot,” I said. “Am I supposed to go all jealous now?”

Maddox shrugged. “Just making an observation.”

“Look, how about a deal? You don’t try to intimidate me, and I will stay in my kitchen, cook the food, and go away as soon as the job’s done.”
The job that currently includes figuring out who killed Oscar and might be trying to incriminate your daughter.

“Except you’re not going away, are you? You’re going to keep dating my grandson.”