Love Bites (11 page)

She was wearing her black-frame Buddy Holly glasses. Behind them, her eyes started blinking like she was sending Morse code. Her voice, when she spoke, was an octave higher than usual. “Why? What’s he done?”

“Nothing that I know of. What’s wrong with you?” She’d been acting strangely ever since she returned from Louisiana. That morning, after Orson left, I’d gone into Thomas’s bathroom to return the robe, and I’d smelled something coming from her office, something I couldn’t identify. I found a devil pod jammed behind her door—a shiny black seed that looked like a leering, goat-horned devil. She must have brought it back with her from the swamps. It had some viscous liquid all over it, as if it had been dipped in oil. Hoodoo doctors—they called them rootworkers in the South—use devil pods to ward off evil. It’s folk magick. Maybe she thought it was going to help take care of the odoriferous drug dealer. Using one stench to fight off another. Sort of like the models at Bloomingdale’s perfume counter, spraying Liz Taylor and Céline Dion.

I left it where it was.

“Nothing. Nothing. I was just surprised to hear his name, that’s all.” The blinking settled down, but she wouldn’t make eye contact. “I just got off the phone with him.”

“Well, we’re paying for a room for him at the Sportsmen’s and I don’t know who he is. Is he an actor?” I’m supposed to be kept informed if casting wants to fly someone in from New York to audition, but sometimes they’re working so close to a deadline that I don’t hear until after the fact. In this week between Christmas and New Year’s, I had two films in pre-production, but no casting going on. I knew that.

“No . . . no . . . he’s that guy . . . that friend of Jamie’s, my brother . . . the one I told you about. He checked in last night.” More blinking.

Peter butted in. “He’s a friend of your brother’s and Anticipation is paying his hotel bill? Why? What’s his connection to the studio?”

Her eyes were all over the place. She wasn’t looking at me, and she wouldn’t look at Peter. “Ovsanna said I could hire him, maybe to do some P.A. work or something. I never told her his name. He flew in with me from Louisiana. I want to help get him located out here. Ovsanna knows about it.”

“Well, I know a little about it.” I knew about the devil pod, at least. I stepped in front of her, forcing her eyes to settle on me. “Obviously, not enough. I didn’t know you put his room charge on the studio. Will you call the hotel, please, and give them your credit card. Now.” My voice was like ice. This was the third time she’d pissed me off in less than twenty-four hours, and I was definitely losing my patience. She started for her office.

“Wait a minute,” Peter said, stopping her midway out the door. “I need to talk to all five of these people. And as of twenty minutes ago, no one was in his room. You have cell phone numbers for them? Possible locations? I need all the information you’ve got.”

Maral directed her response to me. “Cody Carpenter is laying down orchestra tracks at WhiteBreadSound. He should be there all day. DeWayne Carter is out at the studio now. He’s getting food set up for the mixing session tonight. I’ve got the rest of the information on my computer.”

She walked out. I closed the door behind her and turned to look at Peter. We were alone. Finally.

CHAPTER TWENTY

There was something going on with Maral and Ovsanna that I couldn’t pin down. Maybe Ovsanna was still pissed about last night. God knows it might have ended differently if Maral hadn’t been at the house when we got there. Well, we were alone now.

Ovsanna was staring at me. Her eyes were as big as marbles—shooters, not peewees. And black as obsidian. A lot more appealing than when they turn red. I wanted to kiss them closed and run my tongue over her lashes. I wanted to feel her eyelids flutter beneath my lips.

I read about that on the cover of some romance novel SuzieQ left at the house.
When His Kiss Is Wicked.
Sounded worth a try.

What I did instead was put down the folder I’d been carrying and stand there and stare back at her. She was wearing tight jeans tucked into knee-high black suede boots; their heels brought her forehead up to my nose. She barely had any makeup on. She didn’t need it. Her lashes were thick and black against her pale skin. She ran her tongue over her lips. I didn’t see any fangs.

I stepped toward her and bent down to kiss her.

Maral walked in.

My lips never met their mark. “Well, this isn’t going to work, is it?” I said, straightening up and taking the papers Maral handed me. I was smiling.

“What?” asked Maral.

“He wasn’t talking to you, Maral, he was talking to me,” Ovsanna answered. “And you’re right”—she turned to address me—“this doesn’t seem to be the time or the place.” She wasn’t quite smiling. I think Maral was really getting on her nerves. “Would you like to come out to the beach house this evening? I’m driving out right after work to spend the night there.”

Maral’s eyes flared. “What about the mixing session on
Chupacabra
? Don’t you have to be at the studio?”

“They can live without me for one night, Maral. Just have them upload the reels and I’ll look at them out at the beach.” Her voice had turned cold again. I wasn’t so sure I’d want to be around her on a day she wasn’t happy.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “I’ve got to go back to the office and write up what we’ve got so far, and then I’ve got to get over to the Sportsmen’s and do some interviewing. How about I call you later when I know what’s going on?” I didn’t tell her I hadn’t slept since yesterday morning and I was worried that once we were alone together, I’d get as far as taking her in my arms and then I’d pass out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“King! My office. Now!”

Aw, shit. It wasn’t often the Captain stepped into the corridor to yell out someone’s name. I flashed a look at Del Delaney, seated at his desk across from mine. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He didn’t know what it was, either.

The Captain had gone back to his desk. I walked in his office and closed the door behind me. Whatever it was, I didn’t want anyone else to hear.

The Christmas tree he’d had in the corner was gone, and his TV was back in its place. It was on, but he had the sound turned down. The snowflakes his grandkids had cut out were still taped to the wall. The corner of one had come unstuck and was curling down on itself. I wanted to walk over and retape it, but I didn’t think the Captain would appreciate that. I sat in the chair facing his desk instead.

“What the hell were you doing with Ovsanna Moore at the Coroner’s office?” he barked. He picked up the remote and hit the TiVo button and the sound at the same time. I caught a glimpse of
Judge Judy
in his lineup before he clicked on a news report. He must have hit the record button partway through a broadcast because the anchor was in the middle of a sentence. I recognized her as the reporter from that morning who’d yelled the question about Ovsanna’s involvement in the case. It was the noon news the Captain was watching when the segment came on. Channel 9.

“And with a possible connection to the Cinema Slayer case,” the reporter was saying, “police are investigating the brutal slaying of a young woman that took place in Studio City last night. Film star Ovsanna Moore was seen exiting the Coroner’s office this morning with Beverly Hills detective Peter King. Ms. Moore is the head of Anticipation Studios, where several of the Cinema Slayer’s victims were employed.” The Captain hit the mute button.

“Okay, how much of that is bullshit and what’s the truth? What do we know about this body? What does Ovsanna Moore know? You had her down there for some reason. What was it?”

My mind was going a mile a minute. There was no way I could tell the Captain I asked Ovsanna to touch the body to see if she came up with some psychic vision. No way I could tell him Ovsanna felt what the woman felt right before she died. The Captain was a Methodist. He’d take me off the case and send me to the shrink.

“I saw the body last night, Captain. The NHPD was right to call you. There’s enough similarity to the way the other bodies were torn apart to make me think this could be the Slayer again, even though a lot of the rest of the scene doesn’t match up. Ovsanna Moore knew all the other vics; I asked her to look at what was left of the body, see if she could identify her.”

“We still don’t have a name?”

I shook my head.

“So . . . did she know her?” he asked.

“There wasn’t much left to recognize. No face, no arms, no midsection. But no, she didn’t think she knew her.”

“What’s the evidence at the scene? Anything to give you an angle?”

“Not much. No witnesses. No one heard anything. Well, that’s not quite true. One of the guests heard a loud, ratcheting sound that went on long enough to catch his attention. He said it sounded like a truck stripping gears, but he checked the parking lot outside his room and didn’t see anything. So that doesn’t help. We won’t have the autopsy report for a couple of days. Don’t know if she was attacked first and then drowned or the other way around. Pulled one print off a necklace she was wearing and found a fingernail—could be the perp’s. Take a while to run the DNA, rule it out as being the vic’s. Vic didn’t have any hands or arms left, so we couldn’t check for a match.”

“What do you mean, no hands or arms? They weren’t lying around somewhere? The perp took them with him? In what? The guy shows up to rip someone’s face off and brings his own garbage bags? What was it, a Hefty commercial?”

“We didn’t find anything, Boss.”

“I don’t know, Peter, doesn’t sound like the Cinema Slayer to me. That maniac left body parts all over the place.”

“I know. Well, they’re dragging the pond this afternoon. Maybe we’ll find something in the water. I’m on my way over there now. I want to talk to Tom Atkins, the actor who found the body and had the bartender call it in. He’s staying there, but he was filming on location last night so I didn’t get to him.”

“He’s not working for Anticipation, is he? That could be another connection.”

“I don’t think so. They don’t have anything in production right now. I’ll find out for sure when I talk to him.”

“And what about the print?”

“I should have something tomorrow afternoon, the latest. If he’s in the system, we’ll find him.”

“Well, make it fast. I just got the press settled down and now they’re screaming about a serial killer all over again. I’m glad this vic wasn’t tied in to Anticipation . . . less grist for the mill.”

I was glad, too. I wanted to keep my involvement with Ovsanna—whatever it turned out to be—as far out of the limelight as possible.

________

I drove back to the Sportsmen’s and tracked down Tom Atkins. He’d checked into the hotel Monday afternoon.

“Ah hell, yeah, I saw some jamoke out by the pool last night, musta been ten o’clock or so. I had an eleven
P.M
. call time out in Simi Valley—we were doin’ a car chase on the 118—and I was waitin’ for transpo to pick me up. My room’s on the ground floor, opens right onto the pool. He was a creepy little guy with no neck. Major acne. Made my teenage son’s face look like a baby’s butt in comparison.”

“What was he doing?”

“Nothin’. That’s why I thought he was creepy. Just standin’ there, lookin’ around and wipin’ his face with a towel. Jeez, I hope he threw it in the trash and not the laundry bin. I’d hate to end up with that in my room, I don’t care how many times they washed it.”

We were in the Patio Cafe, which is never called the Patio Cafe, at least not by the regulars who hang out there whenever they’re in town. Years ago, before I bought my place in Beverly Glen and I was still living at my mother’s, I used to stop there in the mornings for coffee and a bear claw. I’d eavesdrop on the actors I recognized—Robert Cummings and Jack Palance, Mike Connors, Pat Buttram, and Monte Hale, and the guy that played Moe Greene in
The Godfather,
Alex Rocco. They just called it the coffee shop. I guess part of it is a patio. There’s a semi-enclosed space between the glassed-in restaurant and the first- and second-story hotel rooms. That’s where all the paintings are. Big portraits of western TV heroes—Jock Mahoney, Dale Robertson, Sam Elliott, Lash La Rue, Tom Selleck, and Ronald Reagan—all painted on tile and framed as a mural across the walls. Inside the restaurant, they’ve got western movie posters and a shelf holding Gene Autry’s boots, spurs, and Stetson. Tom was seated at a booth underneath Gene’s duds. He had two men at the table with him: an overweight, loose-fleshed boozer (from the looks of the veins on his face) and a weaselly little guy in jeans and a T-shirt. The weaselly guy had thinning, Grecian Formula black hair and was missing a couple of teeth. He was seated under a display of Jerry Mahoney, Paul Winchell’s ventriloquist dummy. They looked alike. Except the dummy was wearing a suit and he hadn’t dyed his hair.

I’d met Tom Atkins years ago on the set of
The Rockford Files,
when my mother’s company was doing the catering. I was about sixteen at the time. My mother hoped my hanging around the set would spark an interest in acting, but Tom was playing an LAPD lieutenant and he was so cool, he just firmed up my resolve to follow in my father’s footsteps and join the force. I never told my mother that; she would have burned Tom’s food.

I’d seen him in a lot of films since. He hadn’t changed much. He was wearing khaki pants and a beat-up leather jacket over a black T-shirt with a white caricature of his face on it. He was a handsome man, in good shape. He could still play an Irish cop. Only now, with that great head of white hair, he’d have to be the commander. I didn’t bother to tell him we’d met, but I did tell him I liked his work.

“Aw, thanks, kid. Spent a lot of my life pretendin’ to do what you’re doin’ for real. You want a cup of java?”

I shook my head. Jamoke and java in the same conversation, hadn’t heard that in a long time.

“What about my work? Did you like it? Jimmy Schmidt, Officer, pleased to meet you.” The man on Tom’s left stood up and leaned over the table to shake my hand. No question about the veins on his face; he was a drinker. “I was on
Rockford
once, remember, Tommy? Hell, though, I don’t think we had any scenes together. I played a drunk in a bar, hitting ol’ Jim Garner up for a dime to use the pay phone. It was a good scene. I used it on my reel.”

Jimmy Schmidt didn’t look familiar. He was big. Six feet, about 280 pounds. He was a snappy dresser: salmon-colored sports coat and madras pants, in the middle of winter. Maybe he was on his way to San Pedro to catch a Carnival cruise.

“You’re so fulla shit, Jimmy. That reel musta been forty minutes long, with all the ‘good scenes’ you keep sayin’ you got on there.” It was obvious Tommy and Jimmy went back a long way. “He’s a comedian, Detective. Does the condo circuit and the cruise lines,” Tommy said, chuckling. “Can’t act his way out of a paper bag. He’s funny, though.”

“And this is Ritchie,” Tommy continued. “Ritchie Wollensky.”

Bad teeth gave me a couple of quick nods. No handshake. “How d’ya do, Officer? How d’ya do? Pleased to meetcha. Yessir, yes, I am. Very pleased to meetcha.”

Ritchie was bouncing out of his skin. I was pretty sure if I patted him down, a nicely filled Baggie would fall out, but I wasn’t interested in drugs right then. “Are both you fellas staying at the hotel?” I asked.

“No, Officer. Oh, no, no, no.” Wollensky shook his head so fast, what little hair he had separated in the middle and fell down over his ears. Made him look like a particularly mangy breed of dog. “No, no. Me and Jimmy here just meet up for coffee a couple days a week. And always when Tommy’s in town. Tommy was just tellin’ us about last night. No, no. We wasn’t here for that. Huh-uh.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry I missed it, either,” said Jimmy. “Doesn’t sound like a very pretty sight.”

“Aw, jeez, it was a mess,” said Tommy. “I think I was the first one to see the body. Looked like something out of one of the movies I did—
Night of the Creeps
or
MBV3D
or somethin’. Jeez, that poor girl.”

“What the hell is
MBV3D
?” Ritchie asked. “Sounds like a disease.”

“Aw, it’s the movie I just did.
My Bloody Valentine 3D
. Had a good time on that film. We shot it in the Burg. Director was a great guy.”

“So you called 911?” I asked, trying to get them back on track.

“Oh, hey, yeah . . . I didn’t have a cell phone on me. I was just takin’ a walk back from the bar to get my stuff and go to the set. I hustled back in there and told Robbie, the bartender. He made the call. Then he went outside with me and tossed his cookies in the bushes.”

“Yeah, we found that,” I said. “You’re not working for Ovsanna Moore, are you? Over at Anticipation Studios?”

“Nah. I’m doin’ a TV gig for TNT. Wouldn’t mind workin’ for Anticipation, though. They do some fun stuff. I loved that last one . . .
Return to Bitch Mountain
. That was a hoot.”

The waitress came over to top off the coffee cups. She was a Phyllis Diller look-alike, with Mercurochrome red hair and chartreuse eye shadow. I didn’t think her hair color existed in nature. I was sure of it when I looked toward the patio. The waitress there had the exact same color. Maybe it was part of the job description. They probably had it done in the hotel salon.

“You gonna join these guys, mister? Want some coffee?” The plastic name tag above the Sportsmen’s Lodge logo on her shirt said “Arlene.”

I declined the coffee and showed Arlene my badge. She’d finished work at five the day before and hadn’t seen anyone or anything out of the ordinary. I described the victim as best I could, without having a face to go on.

“About five feet six, dark skin, long black hair, maybe Hispanic. Large-breasted woman and not afraid to show them off. High heels, skintight pants. She might have been a pro, but you don’t get many at this hotel, I’m told. And she might have been Catholic—she had a Saint Andrew medal around her neck.”

“I don’t know, Detective,” Arlene said. “Unless she came in and ordered something, I wouldn’t remember. I got enough on my hands dealing with these jokers.”

“Hey, hey, I gotta go.” Ritchie Wollensky was up and out of the booth, throwing a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Gotta go, gotta go. Sorry, guys, gotta get out to Santa Anita. Gotta meet some people there. Hey, Officer, great meetin’ ya. Great. Hope ya figure out who the gal is. I hope ya do.”

With his fingers he swiped both sides of his hair back up to meet in the middle. They stayed. He bounced toward the exit. He was moving fast, but I caught him midstride with my voice. “Mr. Wollensky,” I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d take my card. Anything comes up you can think of that might help us, give me a call. And good luck at the track.” I stuffed my card in his T-shirt pocket.