Copyright 2020 by Jim Doran

Some murders are so bizarre or foreign to standard procedures that the regular police refuse to investigate them. When that happens, they call in Victor, private detective and law enforcement consultant. 

One late October night, Victor parked his Versa next to the ivy-covered, gothic mansion that had windows covered by thick shutters. He pressed a button to turn off his tiny, electric car and took a minute to position his broad shoulders to exit the diminutive vehicle.

Four police cars and a SWAT team stood around in front of the house, alternately watching the residence and chatting to each other. Some of the officers laughed as Victor emerged from his small vehicle, and one extinguished her cigarette. As he observed the exterior of the mansion, Victor stretched and his joints cracked. The plainclothes policewoman approached him, but didn’t extend her hand.

At least fifteen inches taller than the woman, Victor looked down on the officer in charge. He nodded his head, rain pouring off the brim of his fedora and dripping onto the woman’s blue-gray slicker. The pattering of the drips mixed with the light pings of the rain on his vehicle as the woman cleared her throat. “Victor,” she greeted him.

He shared his name with his father, though he felt no affection for that man. Victor had risen above his broken family origins, establishing himself in the consulting business. Turned out he was good for something, after all. Helping the police with complex jobs became his business. Certainly, this was a sticky situation.

“Chief, what’s the problem?” A perfunctory question. They had filled him in.

“Murder.” Her eyes flashed. “During a Halloween party of all things.”

Victor scrutinized the building in front of them. The aging but not yet crumbling masonry, the gutters pulling away from the stonework but not so far falling to the ground, the weed-filled garden—the entire structure stared back at him. “Always Halloween here, isn’t it?”

“You would know. We need you to go in and apprehend the most likely suspect.”

“I was right in the middle of my favorite movie.”

“Another old-time classic?”

“You know it.” Victor had prepared everything but one item. “I need a transceiver.”

“Not a problem.”

The chief removed her own and pinned it on his lapel. She patted it to ensure it was in place.

He took a deep breath. “I’ll call you when all is clear.”

She nodded, and without another word, Victor marched to the front door. Unsurprisingly, he found it unlocked and stooped to enter, then he stepped into a dimly lit foyer. To his left, he noticed a parlor lit in candlelight with a body on the floor, and to his right rang the sounds of knives and forks clattering on plates. The sounds of chewing and laughing emanated from that direction, clearly a dining room. But first, the corpse.

Victor hadn’t tried to be quiet when he’d entered; he was certain the party had heard him but paid him no heed. They’d anticipated his arrival and his investigation. What were they playing at? Victor recalled the Eagles’ Hotel California lyrics about coming together for a feast. All this weirdness going on, and all they could do was chow down.

Victor entered the parlor and switched on his flashlight, considering the body. His light spotlighted a supine, middle-aged man lying arched on his back, face twisted in terror and bloodshot eyes fixated on the ceiling. The man was pale, his hair slicked back. He was dressed in formal clothes and ready for this night’s festivities. To the untrained eye, he looked like any other gentleman of European descent, but Victor knew better. His bulky finger reached down and parted the corpse’s lips to reveal twin fangs.

The cause of the victim’s death stuck out of his chest like a miniature golf flag marker. Someone had driven a stake into his heart so that the end of the wooden stick extended a good five inches above the man’s chest. Victor had investigated vampire deaths before and was always amazed at the lack of blood. Blood doesn’t run through vampires’ veins but through their digestive systems and is absorbed quickly, making them perpetually hungry.

Victor sighed, reached out two fingers, and shut the victim’s eyes. “Rest easy, old friend.”

He stood up, bones creaking, and shuffled out of the parlor into the dining room where the smacking of lips and chewing of food continued to resound into the mansion. The immense dining room stretched halfway back into the house and was lit by a dusty chandelier. As Victor entered, he spied a rectangular table taking up less than a quarter of the room. Four people sat around the table, though he only saw three of them. The four men were busy chatting and laughing at the punch line of a joke, something about a skeleton, an undertaker, and a gravedigger going into a bar. 

One of the diners, a man with perfectly coiffed hair, recognized him and called out. “Victor. Come join us. We have plenty.” He gestured to a chair at the head of the table.

Victor eyed the partygoers with a solemn expression. The werewolf who had asked him to join was stuffed in a three-piece suit, his top two buttons wisely undone. A mummy sat at the other end of the table in front of the covered window, his dusty hands squeezing a beetle. A rough-looking man with a shabby top hat turned to look at Victor, his gnarled hands gripping two knives as he cut his meat. Next to the werewolf, a spoon hovered midair, holding soup, steam rising from it. As the utensil tipped, the soup disappeared into nothingness.

Victor spotted an empty chair at the head of the table, intended for the victim. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Three pairs of eyes—actually, four—watched as he settled himself in the unused chair. He tested it first to make sure it would hold his weight. Many chairs couldn’t, but this one stood firm. After he was seated, raindrops still dripping off his coat to the floor, Victor reached for the platter of meat.

“Well, there goes the roast beef,” said the man in the top hat. “Last time I dined with you, you finished off everything. Whose stomach do you have, anyway?”

The other three laughed but Victor thought the joke in poor taste. He placed the brown meat on a dirty plate. “I’ll have you know I’m on a diet.”

“You’ve changed.” This came from the nothingness man to his left.

The dry bones at the other end of the table whispered, “Not surprising. He went the other way.”

Victor took the decanter of aperitif and swished it around. Smelling the alcohol’s bouquet, he placed it down on the table near his left, sewn-on hand. “Why’d you do it?”

The top hat man touched a wart on his chin. “Do what?”

Victor eyed him disapprovingly. “Come on, Hyde. Do you think me a simpleton? I know you all killed Dracula. I only want to know why.”

The werewolf licked his hand and flattened a cowlick on his unruly hair. “You have no proof any of us killed our long-time friend, the distinguished gentleman.”

Victor stabbed the meat. “Must I?”

Six eyes and one pair of invisible peepers stared back.

Victor poured himself a drink. “Right. I must. Wolf, I spotted wood chips in your fur as I entered. Mummy, a roque mallet is sitting against the wall behind your chair, a piece of wrapping still on the handle. Doctor, or maybe I should call you Mister in your present form, you have bite marks on the back of your left hand. And Inney? A strand of lime-green thread is under the victim’s fingernails. Everyone else is wearing black, and I know you color-coordinate your clothes with your food.

The empty man looked down at his lime-green soup.

“Circumstantial at best,” growled the doctor while chewing his beef.

Victor eyed them. “Enough to call you down to the station for questioning.”

The three of them (and possibly the fourth) examined each other and broke out laughing. “The station? You’re kidding!” growled the werewolf.

Victor lifted his drink and swallowed a mouthful. Lowering his goblet, he asked, “Now, why did you do it?”

“No one here is admitting to anything,” said the voice to his left, a nasally tone. “But I applaud whoever did it. His incessant bragging was the last straw.”

The whispery voice with the Egyptian accent chimed in. “He claimed they sold more of his merchandise than any of ours. He called us has-beens, forgotten. Said he lives on in books and movies while we rot in our past-career graves.”

“He must have asked us if we’ve seen Twilight at least a hundred times, reminding us how much it made,” snapped the werewolf. “I told him I saw the Fright Night remake. That shut him up for a bit, but he continued on and on.”

Victor set down his glass. For the first time this night, he was stunned. When he recovered, he said, “Are you telling me you killed the count over Twilight?”

A timber in his voice as he spoke, the furry man gripped his knives. “Not just that! You should’ve heard him, Victor. ‘Vich vone of you has a breakfast cereal? Vich vone of you has a muppet?’ I simply couldn’t take it anymore.”

Victor raised his eyebrows.

The doctor (or mister) adjusted his top hat. “That was not an admission of guilt.”

Victor leaned back and suddenly his corpse-like lips stretched thinly over his yellow teeth. “I can only say that I wish I had been here when you did it. You’re right. He was insufferable.”

The tension in the room vanished with the detective’s approbation. Their eyes met each other’s and from thin air, Inney whispered, “He understands.”

The doctor nodded to the window. “You’ll get rid of the officers outside? Not like they care about the old goat anyway.”

Ignoring Hyde, Victor took the decanter and lifted it. “How about a toast? To death, especially to rich men who should be silenced. He was definitely a one-percenter!”

“Yeah. Yeah,” they murmured.

The detective meted out drinks and passed them down. He poured a portion into his own goblet, and after everyone had received their libations, he lifted his own. “To you!”

“To us!” they agreed and downed their cordials in celebration.

They then quickly lowered their drinks. The werewolf smacked his lips. “That didn’t taste right.”

The air shimmered next to Victor and the form of a man started to appear. Hair retracted into the werewolf’s skin. Bandages started to unwind from the mummy, revealing smooth skin and black hair. The doctor’s face stretched and remolded itself.

The werewolf jumped to his feet. “What have you done?”

“The question is what have you done?” answered Victor. “But to answer your query, I came prepared. A little concoction I’ve been cooking up in case one of you came for me. While you were looking at each other, I slipped a bit of it into the wine.”

The man to his left in a lime-green suit frowned as the doctor covered his face. The mummy, now a man who could have emigrated from any Middle Eastern country, leaped to his feet. “We need to leave immediately.”

“Don’t bother.” Victor touched the transceiver. “Clear.”

The front door crashed in and the SWAT team entered, weapons trained on the dinner party. The four altered suspects were so surprised they didn’t move until they were told to raise their hands. The police charged forward and began reading Miranda rights while they handcuffed the four party guests.

As the men in shackles were on their way out, the werewolf glared at Victor. “You have changed!”

“Indeed.”

The police officers marched the four from the house, leaving the chief and the investigator behind. The chief asked, “How long before the drug wears off?”

“Four hours. Think you can hold them?”

“We’ve built cells for each.”

Victor crossed his arms. “For me as well, I suppose?”

The chief didn’t respond. Instead, she shone her flashlight into the parlor on the corpse. “Three years ago, you might have been a guest at this party. Now you’re this. The wolf’s right. What changed you?”

Victor replied, “Family.” He tipped his hat. “I’ll drop by in a bit. I left in the middle of You Can’t Take It With You, and Jean Arthur is about to slide down the banister in front of Jimmy Stewart’s family, my favorite part.”

“Sure you can’t come down to the station? You could watch it later.”

Victor shook his head. “It’s date night, and you know how angry my bride can get.”