Night Feast (11 page)

“Good morning.  A teenage girl has been missing for over twenty four hours after leaving the Claremont college dance, to celebrate the anniversary of its opening sixty years ago.  The girl Amberlee Robinson has not been seen since she left the college on last Friday evening.  The police are questioning all the students who attended the dance, and are treating this disappearance as suspicious.

Cora felt the blood drain from her face, as she grabbed the phone and tapped in the numbers of Jay’s cell.  He had switched his phone off, which only added to her frustration.  She wondered if he was in Westport with Amberlee, and although she did not approve of the girl she hoped that this was the case.  Portland had not yet recovered from Elena Hudson’ tragic death. Suddenly the doorbell rang and she rushed to open the door, thinking it was her son, and he had mislaid his key.  There had to be a perfectly good explanation for Amberlee’s disappearance.  Cora was sure that there was no real need for alarm.  She opened the front door.

“Good morning ma’am, we have some questions to ask  your son, Jay Patterson, regarding the disappearance of Amberlee Robinson.”

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It was six o’ clock on Sunday evening.  Jay switched on his cell and called his Mother, to tell her that he was on his way home.  He had been in Lia’s rented Westport house the whole time.  They had talked into the early hours of the morning, and sat on the leather sofa, holding hands and exploring each other’s faces, with their eyes and their lips.  Jay had never minded the cold, and his concern for her welfare was misplaced but touching.  He gallantly offered her his fleece coat, and said that he could turn the central heating on.  Both of which she refused.  There was a coffee machine in the kitchen, and the real estate woman had provided coffee powder as a welcome gift for her client.  Jay had made them both a cup of coffee each, which Lia pretended to drink for appearances sake.  This was too early a time to reveal who and what she really was.  Nevertheless she had surprised herself  by her intention to one day let him know the truth.  She was however, honest with him when he asked her for her full name.  He had inquired if she had Russian origins, when she said that her name was Lia, Henrietta Beauchamp-Malenkov.  She told him that he father was Russian and her mother was English, and that they had met in Maine about two years before she was born.  She did not go into detail, or give him specific dates and times because she could not.  However she told him that her parents and sister had gone to the United Kingdom to visit her mother’s relatives, and take a six month vacation.  As Jay fell asleep in her arms, he told her that he was glad that she had decided not to go with them.

Lia and Jay had spent their time  together walking around the nearby woodland, at the rear of the house.  They had stood by the river,  comfortable with each other’s silence, and watched the boats sail while listening to sweet birdsong.   Jay had driven her to the shops, and brought some bread and some eggs and milk.  When he asked Lia why she didn’t have any food in the house she had lied, and told him that she had just moved in on  Friday, and  had not yet got herself settled.  He accepted  her excuse without further question, and cooked them both scrambled eggs and toast.  The diet of human beings held no appeal at all for vampires.  So when Jay was momentarily distracted, she had grabbed the food from her plate and thrown it away. 

Jay had not thought about Amberlee, and had no idea that she was missing.  He couldn’t have been more unprepared when his mother answered his call.

“Jay, where the hell are you? The police are looking for you everywhere!”

“What, what are you talking about, why, why are they looking for me?”

“Amberlee Robinson has gone missing, the police want to ask you some questions.”

Jay felt that the already cold temperature of the room had suddenly dropped another hundred degrees.  He immediately thought about Elena Hudson, and how he had been with her also, on the night of her disappearance.

“Jay are you still there?”

“Yes Mom I’m still here.”

“Is Amberlee with you Jay?  Tell me she is with you please” begged Cora, she didn’t want this to be the beginning of another nightmare.

“Mom she’s not here, she’s not with me.  I met someone else at the dance and Amberlee must have left.  I don’t know where she is.”

“What? Oh son, you mean you dumped her, at the dance and you didn’t see that she got home safely?”

“Yeah I know Mom, you don’t have to tell me, I did the wrong thing, but I didn’t know she was going to go off on her own.”

“Jay you know the type of girl she is for God’s sake!  Don’t you remember how she behaved towards that nice boy Tom Harrison when he wouldn't have anything to do with her?”

Jay had forgotten all about that.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can Mom, it should take me just over an hour” and then he hung up.

‘So, the vulgar looking girl has gone missing’ thought Lia, after Jay had filled her in and made a sudden exit.  She had been with Jay in the dance hall, so if the girl is dead it can’t be blamed on another ‘wolf’ killing.  Jay couldn’t be held responsible either, he had been with her at the dance, in front of witnesses.  Lia decided that there was nothing to be concerned about.

She changed back into her nineteenth century dress, and went back through the portal to her own time frame.  Jay was going to be busy for the next few days, so she decided to take this opportunity to go and see her family.  She went into her house and saw, once again that nothing had changed.  The oak cased grandfather clock still displayed the time twelve o’clock.  Lia went into the drawing room and sat on the window seat and waited.  About two hours later her family returned.

****************************************

“My Mom said that you came round to our house looking for me?”

“Yes, we want to ask you a few questions Jay, about Amberlee Robinson.”

He had gone straight to the police station on his arrival back in Portland.  He was desperate to clear things up, before they really got out of hand.  Jay hoped that they didn’t think that he had directly had something to do with Amberlee’s disappearance, but paranoia was beginning to take hold of him.  He knew that the cops had a habit of putting two and two together, and coming up with ten.  He imagined that the angle that they would take, it would be that he was also with Elena Hudson, on the night that she had disappeared.  This would be deemed as too much of a coincidence for them.  If Amberlee’s body turns up there would be no forensic evidence to link him with the homicide, but a mean prosecution could say that he had an accomplice for both murders.  He sat down in interview room one, trying not to look too nervous, but feeling a sense of impending doom.  He had called his mother when he’d stopped at a gas station on his way back to Portland.  She had offered to go with him to see the police, but he had persuaded her to stay at home and wait for him there.  After about five minutes two police officers, a man and a slightly younger woman, had come to question him.

“Okay, what do you want to know?” said Jay, after they informed him that his statement was being recorded.

“We are investigating the disappearance of Amberlee Robinson.  Her Mother tells me that you were on a date with her on the night of the disappearance.  Is that correct?”

Jay nodded to the female police officer who was now sitting opposite to him.  She sensed his rising anxiety.

“You’re not in any trouble Jay, we just want you to tell us about what happened that night okay?”

Jay proceeded to tell them how he had borrowed his mother’s new car, and how he and his buddy Kevin Philby had gone to pick up Libby and Amberlee to take them to the college dance.  The police officer then asked him if he had been having a good time with Miss Robinson.

“Yeah, it was okay you know, we weren’t going out or anything like that, I was just doing Kevin a favour.”

He explained how they had gone together as a foursome so that Kevin could get together with Libby.

“But Miss Robinson had other ideas right?”  The male police officer spoke for the first time.

Jay suddenly felt his skin tingle with embarrassment.  He also felt more than a little self conscious, talking about this stuff with two strangers.  The last thing that he wanted to do was beat the drum of how much of a crush Amberlee Robinson had on him.

“No I don’t think so, well not really I think we both knew pretty much where we stood.”

“Would you take a look at this please Mr Patterson.”

At that very moment another female police officer came into interview room one, and place a sealed, clear plastic bag on the table in front of her colleague.  She removed a small book item, with a bright pink cover from the bag.  There was a huge heart drawn on the front of it in blue pen, with an arrow through the middle.  Inside of the heart were written just two names-Amberlee and Jay.  He stared at the diary in disbelief, before the police officer opened it to a certain page, and told him to read what was written there.

‘Jay told me that he loved me today, it was wonderful, he says that he always wants to be with me.’

And there was more.

‘Jay never stops telling me how beautiful I am, he really wants everyone to know that we are together.  We have kept our relationship a secret for so long now because all the other girls at college will be so jealous.’

Jay was starting to feel the bile build up in his throat now, but he continued to read what she had written about him ten days ago.

“Today Jay totally pretended to beg me to be his date for the dance, it was just for his friend Kevin’s benefit.  I love how he wants everyone to know how much he wants to be with me.  We intend to tell everyone that we are together on that night.  I just can’t wait to see the look on everybody’s faces!”

Then, the last entry of the diary had been written on the day that the dance was being held.

‘Jay and I are going to get married.  He got down on one knee and proposed to me last night, I said yes of course, it was so totally romantic.  We know that our Moms’ will say that we’re too young, and if and when they do we are going to run away and elope.’

The rest of the diary was filled with loose pictures of wedding dresses and white roses, that she had cut out of one of her mother’s magazines.  Amberlee had also been practising her signature.  The one that she would use after her up and coming wedding.

Jay’s face had turned very pale while reading her diary, and he was speechless.  His mouth felt suddenly very dry, and he readily accepted the glass of water that was offered to him.  He emphatically told the two police offers that he knew nothing about this diary, and that Amberlee’s relationship with him was a figment of her own imagination.  He explained what had happened at the dance, this time mentioning that he had met someone else, and had stayed with her throughout the whole evening.  The police finally let him go, but before his departure they did say that if Miss Robinson didn’t turn up, they would probably bring him in for further questioning.  Jay was well aware that they didn’t really buy his story, and that they thought that he was somehow connected to Amberlee’s disappearance.

****************************************

At one thirty in the morning Valentin, Arabella and Kathrin returned home.  Lia forgot herself for a moment and greeted them with great warmth and enthusiasm.

“We’ve only been gone less than a couple of hours darling” said Arabella, but she beamed with pleasure at such an affectionate welcome from her usually self contained daughter.

“I know Mommy but I’ve missed you.”

Valentin kissed her tenderly on the cheek, and she could smell human blood on his breath.  Kathrin told her sister about their fantastic hunt, and how between them they had snared two women and a man.  As Lia listened to Kathrin’s excited chatter, she started to feel her resolve wearing a little bit thin.  So it didn’t really surprise her when she suddenly felt temptation strike like a flash of lightening.

“Kat you’ve given me an appetite now, with all your talk of the hunt!” she said good naturedly, and made her way to the door.

Then Lia left the house and she did not return until dawn had broken.......

****************************************

“Dude that sucks, that's total bullshit, the cops don’t really think that you had anything to do with it?”

Kevin had picked Jay up from his house to take him for a ride and give him some moral support .

“Well they sure we’re acting like they thought I was guilty” said Jay feeling very disillusioned.

“And you should have seen what was in that diary, that girl is nuts.”

“Do the cops think that you’re some kind of serial killer now?  I mean you, in the slammer sharing a cell with some big guy, man it doesn’t bear thinking about” said Kevin insensitively.

“Dude you’re not helping.”

Kevin apologised, the last thing that he wanted to do was make his buddy feel worse.  Now was the optimum time to remind Jay about some of Amberlee Robinson’s past antics.

“ You did remember to tell the cops about the thing with Tom Harrison didn’t you?”

Tom Harrison had attended Claremont college last year.  He had been new in town, his parents had relocated from New York for work reasons.  Amberlee Robinson had developed romantic notions about him too, but he would never pay her any attention, and had rejected all her advances.  However this didn’t stop her, because Amberlee believed that you could wear anyone down with persistence.  Tom started to date a really nice girl from Richmond called Amy.  She didn’t attend Claremont college, but she would come into Portland every weekend to see her boyfriend.  Amy and Amberlee were as different as fire and water, and it was obvious to everyone that Amberlee wanted to break them up.  She did everything that she could to distract Tom from his relationship with the other girl, but it was all to no avail.  Amy was from a very wealthy family, who could afford anything that they wanted. She herself had a passion for the designer clothes of the Ralph Lauren collections, and she would wear her outfits with pride, on her weekend dates with Tom.  Amberlee decided to try another tactic to get his attention.  She stole her mother’s credit card and bought herself a complete wardrobe of clothes, which were identical to the ones that Amy wore.  She had her hair styled in exactly the same way as her rival, and she would turn up whenever she could to the places where they had arranged to meet.  Everyone knew what was going on, and Amy finally broke up with Tom because the whole single white female thing disturbed her.  Amberlee continued to sport  her copied state of dress, when she saw that half the battle had been won.  Tom had finally had enough of Amberlee’s stalking, he had come to the end of the road.  Amberlee had become like a noose around his neck, which had been getting tighter and tighter.  So  he told his parents, who immediately contacted Alexis Robinson.  She discovered that Amberlee had spent thousands of dollars on her credit card, but went into a pathological state of denial and turned it all around on poor, harassed Tom Harrison, accusing him of being a bad influence on her sweet, young impressionable daughter.  When Amberlee saw her mother’s reaction, she endorsed it by saying that Tom had made her do all the things that she had done.  She even produced a diary of the false dates and times of when they had allegedly met in secret, and how he had told her that he felt nothing for Amy, and he wanted to be with her.  Tom and his family moved back to New York soon after, and have never returned to Maine.  This had all happened six months ago and had been the main topic of hot gossip, but had been quickly forgotten when Elena Hudson had disappeared.