Barbara Monajem - Sunrise in a Garden of Love & Evil

Vampire: a human being with a genetic mutation characterized by, among other things, the appearance of fangs at puberty, an intense craving for human blood, and an irresistible magnetism for the opposite sex. Judging by legend, this particular mutation has existed for millennia, but is still sufficiently rare that most people don't believe such beings exist. D. Tull, Society for the Protection of Not-so-mythical Beings

Ophelia Beliveau jammed her fangs back up where they belonged, puncturing her thumb, so the goddamned things slotted right back down. She sucked on the tiny cut and glared at her devastated garden. Insults? Just words. A dead cat on her doorstep? Disgusting, not to mention creepy, but she should have buried the poor animal earlier when she'd had the chance. But nobody--damn it, nobody --would get away with destroying her garden.

She sealed the wound in her thumb and pushed the fangs back more carefully into their sockets, at the same time running through her options. Smash the guy's garden in return? She couldn't do that to a lot of defenseless plants, although in their current state of neglect they'd soon be candidates for a mercy killing. Maim the bastard? That would just add to the burden for his wife and daughters. Kill him? That had its upside, but where would that leave her own plants while she rotted in jail? Trashed and lonely and unloved. No way. Her garden deserved better.

Ophelia thought and rethought and twisted up inside, and then did what she had sworn never, ever to do. She called the cops.

Gideon O'Toole yanked the cell phone away from his ear. "Artemisia, I can't investigate blackmail unless someone comes forward. Nowhere to start."

The speaker crackled with the force of his sister's voice. "She's scared to!"

"That's why blackmail works," Gideon replied, but Artemisia talked on and on. I am a man of infinite patience, he told himself as he sped down the straight-as-an-arrow Louisiana country road, letting his thoughts wander toward a late lunch at home, toward beer and a steak in the company of his three dogs. "Gotta go, Sis," he said, when she'd had long enough. "Vandalism call. Talk to your neighbor, get her to fess up. There's no other way."

At least his destination was close by: an old trailer on concrete supports with a flower garden, a highly tended lawn, a greenhouse with a row of compost piles stretching behind it toward the woods, and a lot of potted plants. And a shiny green truck with a magnetized sign on the side. All the owner's money must be invested in that truck, Gideon thought, to make the business look prosperous whenever the dude goes to see customers. He'd noted signs advertising Beliveau Landscaping in a few gardens around Bayou Gavotte. Healthy-looking gardens. Well, only an idiot would show off his failures.

Gideon turned his old maroon Mercedes sharply at the Beliveau driveway and pulled in behind the green pickup, startling a gray tabby from underneath to bound rabbitlike across the perfect lawn. Beyond the truck a woman stood in a patch of mud among shattered pots and scattered plants, holding a double-barreled shotgun in her apparently capable hands. She didn't exactly level it at him, but clearly wouldn't hesitate if the occasion arose.

Gideon studied her through the windshield and decided as usual to dispense with proper procedure; she wasn't going to shoot him. He turned off the car and opened the door.

"Who the hell are you?" the woman demanded in a soft, low voice. She glared at him with the coldest eyes he'd ever seen. But that was the only cold thing about her, and as he got out of the car and gaped, his reaction was immediate and overwhelming.

Uncharacteristically disconcerted, he reached awkwardly into his jeans and tried to pull out his ID. He couldn't keep his eyes off her, even while she watched him with patent disgust. "Gideon O'Toole, Bayou Gavotte Police," he said with a fair approximation of poise, and then gave up on that and laughed, bringing the slightest twitch to the woman's lips. Her eyes warmed a fraction, too, though her grip on the shotgun never wavered.

"I suppose you have this effect on all the men you meet, Mrs. Beliveau," Gideon guessed, trying to keep from squirming while he waited for his erection to subside. Ophelia Beliveau--if this was indeed who had called him in--wasn't what he'd call gorgeous. Pretty, with red-brown curls, ripe lovely lips, and a good figure. He liked the look of her, for sure, but she wasn't movie-star material. And she wasn't dressed to attract. She wore a sweat-soaked T-shirt, baggy shorts, and battered work boots, and had dirt on her face and hands, even under her nails. She didn't seem to be smoldering on purpose, unless this was a damn good act. But she gave off such heat, such an air of sexual promise...Jeez, her husband was a lucky man.

"Damn it," she said, interrupting his thoughts, the ice back in her eyes. "I wanted a uniform and a patrol car. Don't you at least have a flashing light to put on your roof?"

He collected himself. "Sure, but what difference does it make?"

"The difference," she said impatiently, gesturing with the shotgun, "is that I want my jerk of a neighbor who made this goddamned mess to see that I called the cops."

"You know for sure who did this?" Reluctantly, Gideon looked away from her to grimace at the chaos, then at the white contractor's truck next door, and finally at the house. A curtain at the window fell immediately into place. "He's watching us. Did you catch him at it?" Gideon reached through the open window of his Mercedes and retrieved a bubble to set on the roof, blue light flashing.