Free [Bayou Gavotte 00.0] Back to Bite You by Barbara Monajem

cell phone, punched in a number, and walked through the gate and down the alley. Even with vampire hearing, she couldn’t eavesdrop on someone that far away. Not that he didn’t have every right to talk to his aunts.
    A chill inched its way into her heart. Sure, he didn’t get on well with April and June, but they had brought him up. They were his family—the ones he’d spent years trying to keep happy. Maybe he felt obliged to tell them about the items she had found. Maybe he believed the dress and parure should have gone to Arthur’s family, not to her. Even if he didn’t think so, April and June probably would.
    To hell with that. She had known Arthur for only a short time, but he had trusted that she would find the dress and parure and donate them to the museum—never, ever give them to April and June.
    She had a responsibility to discharge, too, and she would damn well do it
now
. She looked longingly at Dorinda’s jewelry and gown. Duty could wait ten minutes.
    * * *
    Nosy old Mrs. Dodge was watching Gerry from her upstairs window. He’d waved at her and she’d moved out of view, but even though he couldn’t see her, he still felt her eyes on him, just like when he was a kid. She had never run out of ways to get Gerry in trouble, even when he hadn’t done anything wrong.
    By the time he’d made his second phone call and finished his beer, he was more or less composed. Slowly, he returned to the house. Mirabel’s guess hadn’t been far off—the whole business made him feel a bit sick. He would explain it all to her later, once he knew for sure. Once he had his still-raw emotions under control. Tonight, with her arms around him and her warmth enveloping him . . .
    As he reached the back steps, the doorbell rang. Before he got indoors, it rang again. And again.
    “Don’t answer that!” Mirabel cried from upstairs. “It might be Sergio!”
    “It’s not Sergio.” He recognized that persistent ring as if it were a voice. Mrs. Dodge had been tattling again; there was no way April and June could have arrived in Bayou Gavotte so soon after his phone call unless they’d already been most of the way here. “Stay upstairs.”
Please
. He didn’t want his aunts anywhere near Mirabel. “I’ll handle it.”
    He opened the front door, but before he could get a word out, his aunts charged into the house. First came April. “Where is the gold-digging little bitch?”
    Then came June, trembling all over. “Gerry, darling, are you all right?” June’s soft, moist hand patted his arm, while her bleary blue eyes peered at his neck.
    As if he needed any more proof.
    “Mrs. Dodge saw you sneaking in the back door last night,” June lamented. “Then she saw you kissing Mirabel this morning. Did you stay here? With that . . . that . . . ?”
    “Vampire?” He nodded. “Sure I did. What red-blooded man wouldn’t?”
    June whimpered. “Gerry, how could you?”
    “Stop staring at me, Auntie June. There’s nothing to see. Vampire bites heal right away.” With monumental restraint, he didn’t add,
That’s not the only place she bit me
.
    June shrieked, swaying perilously, but he ignored her.
    “Stop fussing, June!” rapped April. “I thought better of him, but he’s a tomfool man like any other, so of course he succumbed. But he loved Daddy, and he’ll do his duty.” Ominous pause. “Won’t you, Gerry?”
    “No doubt about that,” Gerry said grimly.
    “Well? Did you find any proof?”
    The fury he’d been so firmly tamping down welled up again. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
    “Of
murder
?” April gloated. June clasped her hands together beseechingly.
    “I believe so,” he said, and then Mirabel came downstairs.
    * * *
    If she hadn’t felt so betrayed, Mirabel would have enjoyed making her entrance in that marvelous jewelry and gown. If not for the hurt and chagrin at what she’d justoverheard, she might have reveled in the way her roiling allure made Gerry stagger, the way it