Page 6 of The Accidental Detectives

While they doled out tea and sympathy, I decided to do some poking around online where Brenda was concerned. As paranormals, we have all the same social media platforms humans do, buried deep on the web by some gargoyle tech guru so only the supernatural have access. We have human profiles, too, to keep our covers and blend in the human world.

If Brenda’s Facebook page was accurate, she was a sixty-two-year-old (in human years) vampire (turned over one hundred and sixty years ago), single, had an iguana named Doug and two dogs named Peppermint Patty and Linus. She loved needlepoint—there were plenty of pictures of her creations to prove it—swimming, astronomy, and ’70s music.

Damn. She’d been turned at a time when vampires were the new Salem witches. People had gone from creating hysteria about witches and moved on to a fear of vampires in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I had a tapestry depicting some of that mad-cow shit that went on back then and the battles that ensued, but MarthaStewart one and two had decided it was too gory for clients to see, so they’d taken them down—as if a good history lesson didn’t cure what ailed ya.

Anyway, she wasn’t on Insta or TikTok, so the deets about her were slim, but it was enough to give me some insight into who Brenda was.

Brenda was lonely. Cripplingly lonely. Even though her relationship status said “complicated”.

That she’d been accused of killing some guy she’d met on an online dating site wasn’t a surprise after scrolling her Facebook page. Her memes were all about clicking like if you (fill in the blank). Name any insecurity, and she had it. Her page screamed needy.

But if I’m being fair, when you’ve been hangin’ around as long as Brenda has, outlived almost everyone around you, whowouldn’tbe needy? I don’t know what the hell I’d do if my mate and kids weren’t immortal, too, not to mention my two kooky friends and their families.

Scrolling Brenda’s friends list, I noted she didn’t lack for ’em. She had a shit ton, but just like human Facebook, were these people herfriends-friends, or just some online acquaintances you’re forced tolabelfriends?

I didn’t see any family members, which could mean Brenda’s family was long gone. She was also on a zillion paranormal dating sites. E-Mortal.Com, to name one.

I set my phone down and settled into my office chair, ready to ask the harder questions my friends would only tiptoe around. When I glanced up, Brenda looked like she’d mostly gotten her shizz together enough to tell us the deets about what happened.

“So, you’re in deep shit with the law, Brenda. How’d that happen?”

“Nina!” Marty yelped, slapping her hand against the surface of her desk. “Could you use some tact here, please?”

See? Tiptoe. Tiptoe…

I rolled my eyes at her. “Piss on tact, Marty. She’s got the cops breathing down her neck, both human and fucking otherwise. You got the email alert just like I did. We’re harboring a potential fugitive. I don’t know about pack law, but clan law says they’ll have our damn heads if they find even a whiff of her here. We have to move fast.”

Brenda shook her stylishly coiffed blonde head, clenching her ringed fingers together into a fist. “It’s times like this when I wish I could still cry. I didn’t do anything wrong! I never even met him. How can I be a person of interest if I never met the man in person?”

“Well, he’s kinda dead. Sosomebodymet him,” I pointed out. “Any thoughts about why they think you did this and who’d wanna whack him? Especially this way?” I held up the newspaper article on my phone about Owen’s death.

Someone had strangled him. There were few details about the actual crime, and no explanation as to why Brenda was a person of interest, but that was bound to be the case. The human cops were playing this close to their vest, not leaking any more intel than they had to in order to keep the killer out of the loop.

I’ve watched someRizzoli & Isles. I know how this shit goes down.

Brenda buried her head in her hands with a cringe, her rounded shoulders shaking. “I’m sure it didn’t take the police long to find his fake account and connect it with mine. We shared a lot of private messages on Facebook. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

Marty wrote that bit of info down while Brenda continued.

“Still, I can’t believe anyone would thinkIkilled Owen. I loved him. He reminded me so much of…” She looked wistfully over my shoulder before she said, “Anyway, that much wasobvious from our private messages. I know it sounds silly, falling in love with someone over the Internet, but Ididlove him.”

“Even though you never met the dude. Who’s married and has kids…” I reminded her.

“Nina!” Marty hissed. “It happens all the time. You’ve watched90 Day Fiancéwith me. You know how it works.”

“I know that shitdoesn’twork. Name one couple still married on that fiasco of a dumbass show,” I dared her.

Wanda cleared her throat and gave us both her famously stern Sister Lucretia from St. Ignacious of the Hills warning look to shut up, before she turned to Brenda. “Let’s start at the beginning,” she soothed. “How did you meet Owen? Who’s ahuman, FYI.”

Aw, hell. Owen was a human? That shit would not go over well with the clan. But ofcoursehe was a human. I felt like a dipshit for not realizing that. Had Owen been a vamp, the clan would have swooped in and erased everyone’s memories before the human police could blink. Then they’d mete out justice the clan way.

Licking her dry lips, Brenda looked at Wanda, her blue eyes intense. “I met him on a dating site.”

I cocked my head. “Ahumandating site? He wasn’t on a paranormal one, was he?” Every once in a while, a human found our sites and it turned into DEFCON.

She shook her head, like maybe she was ashamed of dating outside her species. “No. He wasn’t. Judge if you will, but you ladies must know the dating pool in our world is pretty limited. Most who’ve been turned like I was are stuck in the ways of the past or have already mated. I may have been around for well over a hundred years, but I’ve progressed with the times. Who wants to date a vampire who still believes anyone other than another vampire is our enemy? This is 2024, not 1824.”

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