Dates From Hell by Kelley Armstrong Page A

less?
    Three years. That was a long time to plan your wife’s murder. Especially when they had been married only eight months, according to Mr. Demere’s file. Long-term planning.
    Ivy leaned forward in a spike of adrenaline and fingered the bag. Vampires planned that long. Jacqueline had a record. Only a vampire who worked for the I.S. would be in a position to know she was dead, unable to clear her name. And only an I.S. employee would have access to a tear swiped from the old-evidence vault. A tear no one would miss.
    “Holy shit,” Ivy softly swore. This went to the top.
    Dropping the tear, Ivy reached for the phone. Art would crap his coffin when he found out. But then a thought struck her, and she hesitated, the buzz of the open line a harsh whine.
    The apartment had been full of fear—anger and fear that should have been soaked up by the tear but wasn’t—fear that Art had covered up with her own emotions.
    The buzz of the phone line turned to beeping, and she set the phone back in the cradle, the acidic taste of betrayal filling her thoughts. Art had used her to muddle the psychic levels in the room. The guy from the collection van had commented on it when he had come in, blaming it on her after he saw the banshee tear, not knowing she had only added to what was already there. No one documented psychic levels unless a banshee was involved, and they hadn’t known until after she contaminated the scene. “After Art stole and planted the tear,” she muttered aloud. Art, who was so dense he couldn’t find his pretty fangs in someone’s ass.
    Plucking a pen from her pencil cup, she tapped it on the desk, wanting to write everything down but resisting lest it come back to bite her. Maybe not so dense after all. “Motive…” she breathed, enjoying the adrenaline rush and feeling as if it cleansed her somehow. Why would Art help plan and cover up a murder? What would he get out of it? Being undead, Art was moved only by survival and his need for blood.
    Blood? she thought. Had the suspect promised to be Art’s blood shadow in exchange for the opportunity to murder his wife? Didn’t sound right.
    Her lips curled upward and she smiled. Money. Art’s rise in the I.S. had stopped when he died and was no longer a potential source of blood. Without the currency of blood for bribes, he couldn’t rise in the vampiric hierarchy. He was existing on the interest from his postdeath funds, but by law he couldn’t touch the principal. If the suspect gave Art a portion of his wife’s insurance money, it might be enough to move Art up a step. That the undead vampire had openly admitted he wasn’t adverse to using Ivy to pull him up in the ranks only solidified her belief that he was having money problems. Undead vampires didn’t work harder than they had to. That Art was working at all said something.
    Pen clicking open and shut so fast it almost hummed, Ivy tried to remember if she had ever heard that Art had died untimely. He’d been working the same desk over thirty years.
    Jerking in sudden decision, she dropped the pen and pulled out the Yellow Pages, looking for the biggest insurance ad that wasn’t connected to one of Cincinnati’s older vamp families. She would call them all if she had to. Pulse quickening, she dialed, using the suspect’s social security number to find out his next payment wouldn’t be due until the fifteenth. It was for a hefty amount, and she impatiently kept hitting the star button until the machine had a cyber coronary and dumped her into a real person’s phone.
    “Were Insurance,” a polite voice answered.
    Ivy sat straighter. “This is Officer Tamwood,” she said, “and I’m checking on the records of a Mr. and Mrs. Demere? Could you tell me if they upped their life insurance recently?”
    There was a moment of silence. “You’re from the I.S.?” Before Ivy could answer, the woman continued primly. “I’m sorry, Officer Tamwood. We can’t give out information without a