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I think that’s one reason I got interested in history, especially diplomacy and military history. At our Lavender Cottage Books website, we have WW2 Short stories and historical nonfiction. One book is even FREE!
Last week, we took down our post and need to put Chapter 3 back up…so this week is a little bit of a repeat. However, we appreciate you reading along, and we’ll post Chapter 4 next week!
And now, here’s the third chapter of Moonlight, Roses & Murder.
Chapter 3
Damian walked down the stairs into the club. He’d discovered the back door was unlocked after looking around the crime scene. Not much to see in his opinion. Hopefully, talking to the people who had found the body would clear up some of the details.
“You can’t come in this way,” said a young man, walking over to him. He was tall, had blond hair, and walked with a casual stride. His brown slacks, white shirt, and brown vest with antique brass buttons made it obvious he was an employee.
“Relax,” Damian said, pulling out his identification. “I’m with Interpol, and I have some questions about the murder last night.”
“You’ll need to talk to Selina,” the young man said. “I’ll see if she’s available.”
Damian walked over to the bar and sat down. He looked around at the fireplace and cozy seating, nodding approvingly. Turning back to the bar, a short, very cute girl was pouring drinks. She had red hair, a great smile, and wore the same kind of outfit as the other employee. “What can I get you?” she asked.
“I’ll take a whiskey, neat,” he said. “Irish if you have it.”
Genevieve nodded. “Brandon will be right back,” she said as she slid the drink over to him. The girl didn’t miss much, Damian thought to himself.
He looked around the bar while he waited to see this Selina. He assumed she was the owner, although the club was named Luna’s. Damian glanced at his watch, wondering what was taking so long when he heard someone say, “May I help you?”
He turned to see a beautiful woman in a dark blue dress. She had long brown hair with bits of fire shimmering through it. Her eyes were golden brown and seemed to sparkle in the vintage lighting of the bar.
“Damian Salvadori, Interpol,” Damian said. “You must be the owner?”
She smiled but her eyes stayed serious. “Selina Bellerose,” she replied, “and yes, I am the owner. We’re about to open, so if you have any questions, perhaps we should speak in my office.” He looked over and saw some customers walking down the front stairs.
“That would be fine,” Damian said. “Nice place,” he added as they walked through the door into her office.
“Thank you,” she replied, indicating the sofa, but he sat in one of the chairs. Selina decided to take the sofa and looked over at him. He was very handsome, but there was something about him that put her on edge. “Would you like any coffee…or just the whiskey?” she asked with a touch of sarcasm.
“Whiskey is fine,” Damian said. “You really are a beautiful woman, but you know that don’t you?” He paused. “I don’t trust beautiful women.”
“That’s all right, because I don’t trust men who tell me I’m beautiful,” Selina replied. “Did you have any other questions for me? It’s going to be a very busy night.”
“Murder is good for business, is it?” Damian asked, not sure why he was being so confrontational. She had him feeling slightly off center, and he didn’t like it.
“All publicity, good or bad, seems to bring in more business,” Selina replied, “at first. That doesn’t mean I enjoy the type of media circus that is going on outside my club.” She looked at him more closely. “Why are you here, Mr. Salvadori? Surely, one murder in Seattle is hardly enough to interest Interpol?”
He noticed she had a very slight, French accent. “You’ve lived in Seattle for a long time?” he asked.
“Three years,” she replied. “And again, why does this case interest Interpol if I may ask?”
Damian stared into her eyes for a moment, then looked down at the table. “We’ve had three other cases in the past six months, which were similar to this one. Someone murdered those young women, then tried to make it look as though a vampire had done it.”
Selina shook her head. “There is no such thing as a vampire, so why would someone do that?”
“There are many things that exist all around us, whether we realize it or not,” Damian replied.
Selina wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she looked at her watch. “If there’s nothing else, I really do need to get back to work.”
Damian looked around her office. “Your entire club has no windows. At least, none that I’ve seen, which seems rather odd.”
“We are in a basement,” Selina said, looking at him as if he were a bit dense. “We don’t have windows, but we do have emergency access areas and two sets of stairs into the main club.”
“And where are the emergency access areas?” Damian asked innocently.
Selina had finally run out of patience. “Get a warrant, and I’ll show you. Otherwise, I need to get to work. Good night, Mr. Salvadori.”
Damian smiled and walked out of the office. She followed him to the front stairs and watched him walk up, then went back to the bar. It was going to be a long night.
As Damian walked out of the club, he stopped and looked back at the bouncer. A woman in her twenties, with shoulder-length black hair, was telling three men they could not go in without paying the cover charge. She was maybe 5’5” and as things began to get heated, Damian walked back to help her. He smiled as she grabbed one of the men and pushed his head down onto the desk, twisting his arm behind his back.
A young African American man, another bouncer by the look of it, walked up laughing and shaking his head at the other two. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” Marcus said. “Mike is not in a good mood tonight. You got this, Michela?”
She nodded. “These gentlemen were just leaving,” she said, releasing the man’s arm. “Right, boys?”
The man rubbed his arm and followed his friends down the block towards one of the other clubs. Damian smiled. “Pretty strong,” he said, walking up.
“You mean for a girl?” Michela asked, smirking. “You want to give it a try?”
Damian held up his hands in surrender. “No, I’ve got a full evening planned. You do martial arts or something?”
Michela started to reply when a young woman walked up and smiled at him. She had dark blonde hair, tied up with a green ribbon that matched her dress. “Michela, this is Mr. Salvadori from Interpol,” Isabella said. “Selina told me to let all the staff know that he might be asking questions.”
“Interpol,” Michela repeated, sizing Damian up. “Interesting,” she added as he shrugged and smiled, turning back towards the alley and his car.
Smart, Damian had to admit, sending the girl around to notify the staff. It made Selina Bellerose look clever, guilty, or maybe both. He didn’t know what exactly bothered him. She didn’t have any of the telltale signs of a vampire, but there was something about her….as well as the other people working at the club that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There’s something odd going on here, he thought to himself. Whether it was tied to the murder, the supernatural, or something else entirely he didn’t know, but he planned to find out.
As he drove down the street to his hotel, Damian thought about Selina. He’d been a vampire hunter for a lot of years, and he’d developed a sixth sense about these things. She basically had a business in a dungeon even if it was a nightclub. She was beautiful, but so were a lot of women in Seattle. And except for the murder scene, he had detected no trace of blood anywhere in the club. Still, he knew this would bother him until he figured it out. He changed his mind and headed for the Seattle police station, deciding he needed to see those reports. The hotel would have to wait.
Selina walked over to the bar and sat down on one of the stools. It was almost one thirty and the place was finally starting to slow down. “We’ll need to get some more supplies if this keeps up,” she said, looking over at Genevieve.
The bartender nodded. “David said he’s low on fruit juices, especially tomato, as well as vodka and whiskey.”
Selina shook her head. “I don’t know if we should offer Bloody Mary on the menu tomorrow night. It seems to be in such poor taste.”
“Yes, but it was almost ten percent of our sales tonight,” Isabella stated, walking up to the other two women.
“Fine, we’ll leave it on the menu,” Selina said, “but let’s offer a discount on the rum drinks. We’ve got plenty of that and it doesn’t mix well with tomato juice.”
Genevieve smiled at Isabella. “Another half hour and then we close up. Are you staying here tonight?”
Isabella nodded. “I think Annalise and Michela plan to stay, too.” She looked over at Selina. “What about you?”
“With all the work to do tomorrow, it doesn’t make sense to take the ferry and drive all the way up to Port Townsend,” Selina replied. “Let’s stay and have a big brunch tomorrow.”
“Sounds good!” Isabella smiled and winked at Genevieve. “Should we invite the guys?”
Genevieve rolled her eyes. She knew Isabella was referring to Marcus, who Genevieve thought was pretty wonderful.
“How about just the girls tomorrow,” Selina said, growing more serious. “We have some issues to discuss that we won’t want the others to hear.”
Isabella nodded. “I’ll let Annalise and Michela know.”
Damian rubbed his hand over his face. His eyes felt like they were seeing double, but he’d been looking through these reports for hours. Not that there was much in them as far as helpful information. The girl had been killed between 10 pm and midnight and the body had been moved to the alley. Why? That was the question that bothered him the most. Okay, second most since the punctures were the biggest problem.
Damian had seen this type of thing before, but these punctures were different. They could have been made by a vampire or carefully staged to look like one. He’d been hunting vampires and other supernatural threats for a long time and at least half turned out to be amateurs staging deaths to blame the supernatural.
What surprised him about all this was Selina. What was her story? And why place the body behind her club? He looked through the report again. A few other clubs that might or might not benefit from her closing. These types of clubs brought in a lot of college kids and tourists, who traveled from one to another. Sometimes, three or four clubs in one area did a better business than one or two on their own.
He looked at the blues club owner’s background but didn’t see any red flags. Same with the neighbors, who had complained about the noise and weirdos in the funny costumes. He smiled. Steampunk costumes were not that weird and some of those short skirts weren’t half bad. He stopped smiling. The murder victim had been wearing a somewhat short skirt, but no sexual assault. Something to be thankful for.
As he flipped through the paperwork, he came across the victim’s friends again. The young woman, Sonya, had said their friend Andy had been with her all night. But the bartenders the police interviewed said she’d been dancing, and the young man had wandered out towards the back. After that, they got too busy to notice much else.
Damian wrote down all the names and decided to check them out the next day. If he didn’t get a sense of anything out of the ordinary, he’d let the police tie up the case and head back to Italy. As he pushed up from the chair, he decided to add Selina to his list of visits the following day. Looking at his watch, he realized it was almost 2 am. Good thing he’d slept on the plane.
Nicole was laughing and flirting with Rob, who had bought her three margaritas and been trying to reel her in all night. Okay, not a good term for a woman he actually found very interesting. She was wearing this sexy brown and black Steampunk outfit, which made her legs looks amazing, and the corset was doing wonderful things for the rest of her. He smiled as she teased him about his terrible costume. He’d decided at the last minute to go to the club with friends and looked more like a chimney sweep than a Victorian gentleman.
As they crossed Pioneer Square, he thought this was the place to make his move. It was kind of romantic and fit the mood of the evening. Victorian London with a bit of mist from the water giving the illusion of fog. He took her arm and leaned over to kiss her.
Suddenly, all he saw were stars as someone hit him from behind. The last thing he heard was Nicole saying his name and then a cut off scream.
Nate looked at Maria and shook his head. All deaths were bad, but with these young women it was such a waste.
Maria glanced over at the young man in his early twenties, who was with the paramedics. “He’ll be okay,” one of them said. “Looks like he’s starting to come around.”
She focused on the girl, who was carefully laid out on the stones with a red rose by her body. She had those same puncture marks on her neck in almost the same place. This one had lost less blood, but she’d also been killed on the spot.
“This is going to be hell on tourism,” Maria said, trying to cover up the fact that the deaths of these young women bothered her more than she cared to admit. She focused on the crime and not the thought of having to notify the parents in the next few hours.
“You think it’s a copycat or the same guy?” Nate asked.
“What makes you so sure that it’s a man?” Maria replied. “There’s been no assault. At least, there doesn’t seem to be. And anyone can murder young women and get off on puncture marks and vampire stories.”
Nate nodded. “Good point. Never assume, right?” It was one of Maria’s favorite sayings.
Maria looked over her shoulder at the sound of someone trying to push his way through a police line. “Here comes Mr. Interpol,” she said under her breath.
Nate turned around and stood up. “Damian,” he said, walking over. “You got here quickly.” Nate was starting to wonder about the coincidence of these murders and some guy showing up from Interpol. He decided to run a check on him if Maria hadn’t already.
“I was looking through the police report when the call came in,” Damian replied. “Thought I’d see if it matches our first victim.”
“Yes and no,” Maria said, looking over at Damian. “We have a red rose with this one, but someone could have taken the last one…or the killer is getting more dramatic.”
“Or it’s a copycat, who thinks he can improve on the original,” Damian said, looking around. “Anyone in the crowd look familiar?”
“We have officers getting everyone’s name and information,” Nate said, looking over his shoulder, then adding, “The blues club owner is back there.”
Maria nodded as Damian glanced over then focused on the victim. “Forensics been here yet?” he asked.
“They made good time tonight,” Maria said, looking at Nate. “Go ahead and show him.”
Nate turned the body over, and Damian saw the two puncture marks. There was no doubt this was the work of a vampire. The first had been more tentative but this was definitely a puncture.
“Seems similar to the first case but not exact. So, do we have two murderers or one?” Damian asked, getting up and heading towards the young man, who was now sitting up.
“I told her I’d walk her back to her apartment. Even made a joke about the vampire and how I would protect her,” said Rob. “Not much protection, was I?” he added, shaking his head.
Damian walked up to Rob. “The killer came up to you from behind by the look of it. Did you see or hear anything before you were hit?”
“Just Nicole saying my name and then she started to scream…” Rob looked at the ground. “I just met her tonight, but she was really cool. She didn’t deserve this.”
Damian nodded and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You’re lucky to be alive. If you’d seen him coming, you might both be dead.”
“Or she might be alive,” Rob replied. He turned back to the paramedics, who were still trying to determine if he had a concussion.
Damian wandered over to the old storefronts and started looking around, trying to get a sense of the murderer. Where had he or she hidden? Why attack in such a public place? And did this mean Selina was not involved, or had someone done this to draw suspicion away from her? No, that didn’t fit, but he needed to consider all the possibilities.
Finally, Damian got into his car and drove to the hotel. Maybe some sleep would help. He had too many questions and very few answers. One thing he did know was that more women were going to die if he couldn’t find the murderer. This latest victim had definitely been killed by a vampire.
Read Chapter 4 in our next post!
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