Page 66 of Bad Luck Vampire

“So, no one from the street would have seen Andrew’s accident, only someone actually inside the building. Another skateboarder,” Tybo said thoughtfully.

Sophie nodded. “But I’m guessing there weren’t any skateboarders there when he had his accident or someone would have gone for help,” she reasoned. “There was no one there when we found him.”

“Then there was no one to tell if it wasn’t an accident,” Connor said solemnly.

Her gaze shot to the man with surprise. “You don’t believe it was an accident?”

He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “It’s hard to say now all these years later.”

“We might be able to tell from the incident report the police would have made at the time. It should have the medical report in it,” Tybo pointed out. “Or if someone went to the hospital now and read his mi—”

“Medical report,” Alasdair interrupted quickly. “You should have someone read his medical report.”

Tybo had paused with his mouth open, but now closed it, chagrin on his face as he glanced to Sophie. “Right. Medical report. I’ll call Mortimer and suggest he send someone over to read him—I mean, his medical report.” He withdrew his phone and stood up, only to pause and ask, “What is Andrew’s last name?”

“Hillbrook,” she answered quietly.

Nodding, Tybo started punching numbers into his phone as he headed for the door.

“Who in your life died next?” Connor asked abruptly, drawing Sophie’s attention away from the departing Tybo.

Sophie scowled at their insistence on acting as if Andrew were dead, but answered, “Beverly. She was Andrew’s sister and my best friend. She died two weeks after his accident.”

“What happened to her?”

Sophie quickly explained about her peanut allergy, and ended with the point that had bothered her for seventeen years. “I still don’t understand how it happened. She was always careful and hadn’t even eaten anything.”

“Ye mean she didn’y eat anything ye thought would have nuts?” Connor asked, his gaze narrowing on her, somewhere in the vicinity of her forehead. Although, he appeared to be staring there a lot. But then all the men were except for Alasdair. It kind of made her uncomfortable.

“No. I mean, I don’t think she ate anything at all. We were at our lockers, putting our coats away and collecting our books and stuff. I doubt she’d stopped for a snack. We were running a bit late that morning because we’d had to drop off our project to the history class.” Sophie paused, her lips briefly pursing as she recalled it. “Megan and I had lockers side by side, but Beverly’s was a little way down the hall, so I didn’t realize she was in trouble right away. It wasn’t until people started exclaiming and freaking out that I realized something was up.

“I ran down and pushed my way through the group of kids gathering around her to see that she was on the floor, gasping for air and clawing at her neck. Her backpack was open on the floor beside her like she’d been searching it. I knew right away what the problem was. I dropped to my knees beside her and started searching for her EpiPen, but it wasn’t in the inner pocket that she normally kept it in. It was at the bottom of her bag. By the time I found it and gave her an injection...” Sophie sighed. “I guess it was too late. The ambulance attendants arrived shortly after I gave her the injection, but she was gone. They tried CPR but...” She shook her head.

A moment of silence passed, and then Inan said, “She must have eaten something with nuts in it. Maybe someone gave her a candy or cookie or—”

“No,” Sophie said firmly. “While the ambulance guys tried to resuscitate her, I asked everyone what she’d eaten. Everyone said she hadn’t eaten anything, she’d undone her lock, took off her coat and gloves, tucked them into her locker, and then started to gasp for air.”

After a brief pause, she added, “Besides, they did an autopsy on Beverly to find out what had caused the allergic reaction. I heard a couple members of our staff talking about it. They said that while they found traces of peanut oil on her lips, the only thing in her stomach was the banana she’d eaten that morning.” She frowned, and then told them, “They swabbed her lock and locker door to see if peanut oils had somehow got on one of them, but there was nothing. They couldn’t figure out how she’d come in contact with peanuts.”

They were all silent for a minute. Sophie didn’t know what the men were thinking, but she was wondering if Beverly, like her parents, had been murdered. She’d never even considered that before this. She’d always thought it had just been bad luck or a fluke. But now that she knew her parents had been murdered, she was examining Beverly’s death from a different perspective.

“Who died next?” Connor asked abruptly, interrupting her pondering.

Sophie shook off her thoughts and said without having to think about it. “John. My first actual fiancé.”

“First actual fiancé?” Inan asked.

“Well, Andrew was sort of—” she started, and then said, “A week before he died, Andrew gave me a ring. But he called it a promise ring. He said he’d get me a real ring once he had a job and could buy a proper engagement ring. He said we were engaged to be engaged,” she added with a faint smile.

“Right,” Connor said on a weary sounding sigh, and then cleared his throat and said, “Tell us about John, then.”

“John,” she murmured, shifting gears in her mind. “We met first year of university and were engaged near the end of second year. A few weeks later, during exams, he was hit by a car on his way back to his dorm from my place. It was late, one or two a.m., I think. It was a hit and run. He was just left there to die by the side of the road. The police figured it was a drunk driver because of the hour. He wasn’t found until the next morning.”

“John’s last name?” Tybo asked, drawing her attention to the fact that he now stood in the doorway, his phone still pressed to his ear.

“Houghton,” she answered.

“Who was next?” Ludan asked, and Tybo, who had started to turn away, talking into the phone, paused and swung back and waited.

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