Page 6 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“I can smell it on her clothes, too. She spilled some.”
“It looks like they were pulled out of bed. He’s wearing boxers and she has underwear and a sleeping gown on, yet still her clothes smell like alcohol?” I question.
“Now… I know you’re going to think I’m… odd, but they smell a bit like death too.”
“Yes, they’re dead,” I say.
Ezio chuckles. “No… like… decay. There are different levels of decay at play here. They’re in an air-conditioned house, they’ve decayed very little, but they also smell like… older decay.”
“As in they touched something dead recently?” I ask.
Ezio stands near the body before turning to me and smiling. “I dunno!”
“He’s like your very own scent dog but he can talk,” Maeve decides.
“Aww, then will you give me pets?” Ezio asks. “I require a pet for everything I help you with!”
“Maeve, don’t feed into him,” I say pleadingly.
She laughs, knowing better than to ever encourage Ezio.
“Alright… let’s start from the beginning. What smells like decay?” I ask.
Ezio scrutinizes them. “Possibly their hands? They washed them, though, so I can’t tell you much more than that. Have you looked through their trash? Any place they might have chosen to hide gloves?”
“Yeah, we’ve gone through the trash in the house. Nothing incriminating. Then again, at that point we didn’t know that they might have been in contact with something dead,” I tell him.
“I don’t know what kind of body it is, though. I mean, it could have been a dead animal for all I know. Would you like me to sniff around the yard?”
“Sure,” I say, and he bows his head. I’m extremely confused about what this means until Maeve mimes petting it, and I give him a look of disbelief. “I’m not petting your head.”
“Well, that’s no fun,” he whines when he starts for the door. “You might not get my top-tier service, then. Will you at least come with me?”
I sigh and follow him outside. He’s practically skipping as we walk out together, all eyes on us. “You know people would stare at us less if you were more inconspicuous?”
“Are you talking about moi? I am phenomenal at blending in with the humans. Humans adore me. You’re the only one who doesn’t,” he says, trailing off a bit there at the end. But in no time, his smile is back in full force. “Anyway, I will be your scent dog. Would you like me down on all fours?”
“Literally there is nothing I’d want less than that as my coworkers watch us in wonder,” I retort. “Someone made a joke the other day about how odd it was you only worked at night ‘like a vampire,’ and then he laughed and laughed, and then I had to laugh because I felt it would be more suspicious if I didn’t.”
“He should be a detective,” Ezio says before chuckling at his own joke. I quickly stop talking about vampires when I see one of my fellow detectives walking over and smiling at me.
He’s a handsome man named Zach who was transferred to the department earlier this year. “Hey, I wanted to let you know that I found an odd note in the trash can. It’s one of those things where it’s likely nothing, but I did mark it for you to look at.”
“Thank you,” I say, which earns me another smile. “We’re under the impression that the blood on the wall isn’t the woman’s blood. I’d like to test to see if it’s the man’s. But I also want to know if there are any signs of them having disposed of any clothes, gloves, or anything like that.”
“They as in the killer?”
“The man and his wife,” I clarify.
Zach looks confused but nods. “Of course. I’ll keep an eye out. Did you find something out here?”
“Not yet, we’re just looking. There were possible signs that they’d handled something decomposing before they died. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a pet or something of the like.”
His brow furrows. “I’d love to hear how you came to that conclusion.”
I sweep my flashlight and kind of hope he heads off so I don’t have to explain anymore. Meanwhile, Ezio is over here glaring daggers at Zach, who flashes his smile onto him.
“It’s always such a pleasure to see you,” Zach says, having no idea the man is a vampire and vampires are a thing to be afraid of. “What do you do for work again?”
