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Muriel looked at me as if trying to decide if I was kidding her. I wasn’t, or not much. “I am surprised th
at anyone with your job would recognize Nymphenburg porcelain.”
“Figurines like this, some drawings, paintings are all that’s left of people my friends knew centuries ago. It’s a way of them showing me snapshots of some of the people they talk about.” I didn’t add that Jean-Claude had a figurine of an actress he’d been in love with once. It was in a glass case in a room of treasures that I hadn’t even known he had until recently. The closer we got to the wedding, the more he tried to make sure he had told me everything that I might want to know before we said I do. But since he was over six hundred years old, his backstory was a little longer than mine. It wasn’t that he was keeping things from me; it was literally that there was so much to remember, he forgot things. Scientists were starting to study vampires to try to figure out how they could remember so many centuries as well as they did. They were hoping it might lead to a cure for Alzheimer’s and other brain-deterioration issues.
Duke had Newman take a picture of the statuettes nestled in their case, before shutting it carefully and taking it from Rico. “Let’s go see what’s in your car that you felt needed to be saved from us poor policemen. Sorry, Blake. Police persons.”
“That’s really not necessary, Duke,” Muriel said. Apparently they were back on a first-name basis again.
“Oh, it feels necessary to me, Muriel. I mean, what would the insurance company say if some of these valuable antiques went missing? They might blame the wrong people, like some of the hardworking emergency personnel, and we wouldn’t want them to blame the wrong people, would we, Todd?”
“Um, no, of course not,” Todd stuttered.
“Shut up, Todd!” Muriel snapped.
“Let’s all go down to the garage and take a peek,” Duke said.
Muriel actually touched his arm, her body language changing to something softer. “We don’t need all these other officers, Duke.”
“Oh, I think we do.”
She sidled closer to him so that a lot more of her body touched his than seemed appropriate for the circumstances. “We’re old friends, Duke. We don’t need a crowd.”
He stared at her as if even he couldn’t believe she was trying to seduce her way out of the situation.
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It was just so damn ballsy.
Muriel managed to stay snaked up against Duke and still give me a hard look. “This is none of your business. You’ve got your monster locked up in the jail. This is regular police business, just Duke and me.”
“I don’t think so, Muriel. I think I like the marshals tagging along while we’re securing the scene.”
She traced a perfect fingernail around the edge of his ear underneath his Smokey Bear hat. He jerked back then and stepped away from her, putting a hand on her arm to keep her from cuddling up again. “We don’t need them, Duke.”
“Two United States Marshals make fine witnesses.”
“Witnesses to what, Duke?” Even her voice had gone lower—sultry, like she really thought she had a chance in hell of convincing him. Either this kind of shit had worked on him once upon a time, or she had a very high opinion of herself. Maybe a little of column A and a lot of column B.
“Marshal Blake, I hate to ask, but can you keep an eye on Muriel? She’s less likely to try her womanly wiles with you.”
“Glad to help a fellow officer out.” I stepped up beside the woman. In her heels, she towered over me, but I managed not to be too intimidated.
“Duke, I don’t want to go with her. I want to go with you.”
“Did that vampy baby-girl voice ever really work on me?” he asked.
“It’s just the side of me you bring out,” she nearly purred.
Leduc sighed and called Todd up with him. “Let’s go to the garage.”
Muriel reached out toward both men, though I was pretty sure she was aiming at Duke. I gently blocked her arm and said, “If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, I’ll cuff you—and while we’re at it, we should search them.”
“There’s no need for that,” Rico said, but it was like his heart wasn’t in it, as if he was saying it because he felt he had to say something.
Duke turned on him. “You let them into a house they don’t own. You let them change the security code and not share it with you. You’d have let them drive out with this.” He raised the case in his hand.
“They can’t steal something that already belongs to them,” Rico said.
I wondered if Rico was really that stupid or just . . . Nope, I was going to have to go with stupid, because I couldn’t come up with another explanation.
