with her? A pang of jealousy shot through her, sharp and unpleasant. Get over it, she told herself. Because his list of intimate “acquaintances” is a long one. She flipped a page in her notebook. “The first two victims, our celebrities, Charlotte Messenger and Gina Santoro...aside from the usual PR blather, here’s what I found. They both got around. Lots of ex-lovers. Of course, that means nothing if the sex with their killer was nonconsensual.”
“Well, which was it? Consensual or non?” There was a challenge in his voice.
Sailor sighed. “All right, I’ll try Brodie.” She took out her cell and a moment later was talking to her soon-to-be cousin-by-marriage. Thirty seconds later she ended the call. “Yes, they were murdered. No, they weren’t raped. Yes, they both had sex with the same man before they were killed. The case was just reassigned to Robbery/Homicide, as we expected.”
“Looks like Brodie trusts you with confidential information,” he said. “And no one’s calling him a blabbermouth.”
“All right, point taken. But Brodie said not to make a habit of asking.” She looked at her notes. “As for their recent boyfriends, Gina had just been dumped by Alexander Cavendish, last year’s Sexiest Man Alive. Charlotte is—was—dating Giancarlo Ferro up until her death.”
“Your sources?” Declan asked.
“Who’sDatingWhom dot-com. But both of those men are mortals, as far as my cousins and I can tell, although either one could be a shifter. Barrie’s never met either in person.” Shifters were notoriously difficult to spot if they didn’t want to be spotted.
“I have,” he said. “They’re not shifters.”
“Okay, so we cross them off the list,” she said. “What this tells us is that whatever common lover the two women had, it was secret. Which suggests he’s the murderer.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Sure it does.”
Declan shook his head. “Plenty of men have could have slept with Charlotte and Gina without ending up on some website run by fans in Iowa. Your reasoning is flawed.”
“No, though my research is limited. But I had only fifty-five minutes to devote to it. Anyway, never mind. It seems reasonable to me that Gina and Charlotte’s mutual secret lover infected them with the Scarlet Pathogen, then went on to seduce and murder the other two victims.”
“Huge leap in logic,” Declan said. “First, we have no idea whether the other two victims had sex before dying, let alone a common sexual partner. Second—”
“Hey, it’s a theory,” Sailor responded. “How else do you solve crime?”
“Go on.”
“Okay. First, Gina Santoro. Very talented actress—in my opinion underrated. Just back from Romania, where she was shooting Technical Black, a big action-adventure popcorn movie, which explains the theory reported in Variety that the Scarlet Pathogen was picked up overseas. Technical Black is back in town shooting in a mansion in Malibu Canyon, where Gina died last week in her trailer. They’re finishing the film without her, and I want to get onto that set.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” Sailor said. “Charlotte Messenger, she’d been filming a romantic comedy at Metropole Studios as well as on location around town, but she’d just wrapped before she died, lucky for them. The film’s got another week of shooting, so I want to get onto that set, as well. As for Charlotte herself, what can you say? A-list. A-plus, even. Gorgeous, but overrated.”
“In your opinion.”
“Of course my opinion. No range whatsoever and dreadful at accents—did you see that Restoration swordfight thing she did two years ago? No. Because it was unwatchable. I looked at some scenes this morning, but it hasn’t improved with age. Okay, now as to tribes, Charlotte’s Déithe, trying to look Cyffarwydd with the nose job and the cheek implants. Like I said, the true Cyffarwydd is Ariel MacAdam, the acting student. Her school’s up north somewhere. Fresno, Bakersfield, someplace. Her Facebook page is heartbreaking.” Sailor’s throat tightened.
“What?” Declan said.
“Nothing. The girl was a knockout. There was a YouTube thing, she was doing Cordelia in King Lear, and—” Sailor stopped again.
“It’s okay to get upset about the deaths,” he said. “Cry if you want.”
“I don’t cry.”
“Ever?”
“They made me work on it in acting school so I can if I have to, but it’s very difficult. Something about my tear ducts. The Elven never cry. Ever see an Elven cry?”
Declan had pulled into a gas station. “I can’t say I ever noticed,” he said, getting out of the car.
Sailor got out, too, and kept talking. “You haven’t and you won’t. If Gina or Charlotte cried in a movie, the ‘tears’ were glycerin, artfully applied by their makeup artists