Love Bites (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Del Delaney was sitting at my desk, dipping jalapeño-flavored pita chips into a quart-size container of cucumber-dill hummus. He does that whenever he doesn’t want to get his own desk dirty.

“Where the hell are you getting this stuff, Del? Yesterday it was ramen and Tapatío.” I had to lean across him to fire up my computer.

“I made a trip to Costco. Besides, you don’t know what I ate yesterday. You haven’t been around this place long enough to fart. I hope you’re making some headway on this Sportsmen’s Lodge thing, buddy; the divers came up with bupkes.”

“Hey, I’m keeping the Sarge in the loop. Now, if you’ll move your ‘gourmet to go’ and let me get to my computer, I just might be able to tell you about our vic. And clean up the crumbs, would you?”

Del brushed crushed pita chips into his hand and dropped them on the floor. He moved back to his own desk. I typed in “Graciella de la Garza” and hit the jackpot. She was in the system, photo and everything.

Ritchie was right: She’d been a beautiful woman. Even in the booking shot you could see it. Almond-shaped black eyes, wide-set over high cheekbones. A straight nose and full lips. How the hell had this woman gotten into dealing? She could have been a model. Instead, she had a sheet dating back six years.

Del looked at her last known and corraled Jake Long to go with him to check out the address. I went in to update the Captain.

I don’t like to lie. Ever. Unless I’m on the job, and then I don’t give a rat’s ass. If lying to a perp gets me a confession, I’ll make up a story faster than Stephen King. “Oh, you didn’t know your girlfriend is screwing your partner and they’re both ready to talk if you don’t beat ’em to it?” or “You’re a lot better off talking to me than the feds.” Whatever works. But lying to the Captain, even if I’m just changing the names of the players a bit (because there’s no way I want to tell him these Syfy network wet dreams really do exist), makes it hard to live with myself. My stomach was playing havoc with the sausage and peppers.

The Captain was taking the last of his Christmas decorations off the wall, carefully pressing his grandkids’ snowflakes into a manila envelope.

“You got the warrant?” he asked as he filed the snowflakes under “X” in his filing cabinet. For Xmas. I’ll bet you anything he doesn’t remember where they are when he wants them next year.

“I got the warrant and I searched the guy’s place. He’s the Slayer, no question about it. He kept a souvenir from the Thomas DeWitte killing. A sterling silver cock ring with DeWitte’s initials on it.”

“Ah man, I don’t even want to hear that. Who are these people; how were they raised?” The Captain is a staunch churchgoer. Made my fabrication all the more difficult. The sausages were roiling.

“Well, this guy was a real nutcase. Obsessed with werewolves. From the looks of what he was reading, maybe he thought he was one. Remember, he tore all the bodies apart like an animal. I wish Ms. Moore hadn’t lost the note he put in her mailbox, but she remembers it, almost word for word. Pays to be an actress, I guess. Unless you don’t hire the right photographer.”

“He killed all those people because he was pissed at her for not using him to shoot her eight-by-ten glossies? I don’t know, Peter . . . it’s this town. Everyone loses touch with reality. My daughter just spent six hundred and twenty-five bucks on a pair of shoes. A pair of shoes, for Christ’s sake! That’s about eight inches of leather. I tell you, I’m counting the days till I can retire and move to Vermont.”

“Right. Where Ted Bundy came from.”

“Okay, okay. What about the Sportsmen’s Lodge? Can you tie this guy to that, too? That poor woman looked like she was eviscerated by the same kind of animal.”

“I don’t think so, Captain. I’ve got an ID on the girl. And I’ve got her cell phone number. She was dealing. Del and Jake are on their way to her house now, and I’m waiting for the lab report on the print we found on her necklace. But there’s nothing to connect her to Ovsanna Moore, and Moore says she doesn’t know her.”

“Unless Moore was buying from her. That’s about a hundred percent possibility. Moore’s a movie star; you want to convince me she’s an angel?”

No, I wanted to convince him she’s a vampyre, but I wasn’t going to try anytime soon. “I’ve checked her out pretty thoroughly, Captain. I don’t see it. I’m going to put together a timeline on the Slayer, this Cyril Sinclair, see if I can find out where he was Tuesday night when the girl was killed. These paparazzi show up in packs; if there was something going on that night, they’ll be able to alibi him. But I think we’ve got two separate killers here. And one of them is dead.”

I left the Captain reading my report, preparing his announcement for the media. I felt shitty about lying to him, but I was convinced it was the best way to handle the whole thing.

I just needed digestive enzymes to do it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

My employees know me. They know I rarely close my office door, but when I do, you’d better knock and wait for me to say “Come in” before you open it. You don’t want to deal with the consequences.

Which is why when Maral pushed open the door and took three more steps into my office before she stopped and stood in front of my desk, I knew something was terribly wrong. She was shaking. She stared at me, her mouth working but no words coming out, and then her face scrunched up in tears. I was finishing a conference call with my soon-to-be partners, and I hung up as graciously as I could, which was probably not so gracious by Japanese standards.

“What is it? What’s happened?” I moved to embrace her and let the images come. She’d been attacked by something. “Something came after you?” I felt her fear in my body. Is this what happens when she messes around with magick?

I could barely understand her through the tears. “I’m sorry, Ovsanna. I held myself together until I got here, but . . . but . . .”

“It’s all right, sweetheart. You’re safe. Just tell me what happened. You were attacked, weren’t you?” I guided her to the sofa and sat next to her.

“It was a wolf, Ovsanna, a werewolf. It had to be. It wasn’t any fucking dog. I was alone in the parking lot at the mall, and then it was there, trying to kill me. It’s the same thing that attacked you, it’s got to be!”

Okay, not some hoodoo retribution. Werewolves, I can handle. “Slow down, sweetheart, and start from the beginning. Tell me everything. What were you doing at the mall? It’s the middle of the day, I thought you were at the studio dealing with your brother’s friend.”

Her tears began to subside. “No. I talked to him on the phone. He said he was selling corn dogs at the production meeting and I went nuts. He was supposed to be picking up a deli platter—bagels and lox—not corn dogs. Who do you know in California who eats corn dogs? After I read him out, he tells me corn dogs are big fat doobies dusted in cocaine. That pus-faced redneck was dealing drugs to the crew! I hung up on him. We’ve got to do something about him, Ovsanna. We’ve got to.”

“Aren’t you doing something already?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I know about the hoodoo, Maral.” She cowered back into the corner of the sofa, looking like a guilty child afraid of getting smacked. I softened my voice. I didn’t think she’d done anything wrong, I just didn’t want her getting hurt. “I found your devil pod and the candle in Thomas’s office.” I wasn’t about to tell her I’d followed her to the cemetery. “I don’t think you should be fooling around with that stuff to get rid of him, but we can talk about that later. What happened at the mall? Why were you there?”

“I wanted to surprise you. Because you’ve been mad at me and I feel like I’m losing you and I just wanted to do something to make it right again. So I bought an outfit I thought you’d like, a black satin bustier trimmed in red leather and a pair of black lace crotchless panties. I was going to be wearing them when you came home tonight.”

“Oh, Maral.” She just doesn’t get it. “And you’re sure it was a werewolf?”

“Yes! It was huge! A huge wolf, with a thick collar around its neck like it belonged to someone. It leapt on my back and smashed me down, and then landed on the roof of the car. When it turned around to slash at me, I fell backward and hit my head against one of those cement pillars. I ended up on the ground where it couldn’t reach me; there wasn’t enough room to jump. I got my pepper spray out of my purse and shot him in the face, and then I passed out.” She dropped to the edge of the chair. “When I came to, there was a security guard there prattling about my blood pressure and how my dog must not have been very well trained or he wouldn’t have run away. He was worried about what the poor thing was going to do for food. That thing would have torn me apart, Ovsanna! It’s the same thing that attacked you at the house. It’s got to be!”

“No, Maral. The wolf that attacked me at the house was a werebeast. Like Lilith’s minions in Palm Springs. If this thing had a collar around its neck, it wasn’t a were. It was a boxenwolf. Like the pack in Malibu. It doesn’t
belong
to someone, it
is
someone. A human . . . well, he’s probably a paparazzo, if that qualifies as human—a human who’s using a talisman to shape-shift into wolf form. That collar is the talisman. Did you see anyone with a scarf wrapped around his neck? Anyone following you in the mall? Anyone taking pictures?” I rose from the couch and walked to the corner window. From there, I could see east and west on Wilshire and north on Rodeo Drive. A group of tourists were using their cell phones to snap pictures in front of Tiffany’s, but no one else had a camera. Or a collar.

“Oh God, yes. There was a young guy who came up the escalator right after I did. I noticed him because he bumped into me with his long-lens camera. Then when I stopped at the map display, I saw his reflection in the glass and he was taking pictures of me. I freaked. He saw me looking at him and blew me a kiss. I didn’t know what to do. He disappeared before I could yell at him. And he had a bandanna around his neck, just like the wolf.” She started for the door. “We’ve got to lock the door, Ovsanna. And warn the girls downstairs!”

I stepped in front of her. “Calm down, Maral. Are you forgetting what I am? I can take care of you.”

“Can you?” Her voice got louder and more desperate. “Maybe you’re the reason I’m in danger! Aren’t you the one they want? They attacked you on the beach. And one of those werebeasts attacked you at the house. Maybe they’re after me just to get at you, for the same reason they killed Thomas, and Eva Casale.”

“Lilith killed Thomas and Eva. She sent Ghul after them. And Lilith is dead. Ghul is dead. So Lilith and Ghul aren’t after either one of us. Peter and I will find out who these boxenwolves are and we’ll deal with them, one way or another. I promise you, I’ll protect you.”

“Peter and you!? So now it’s all Peter and you? There’s just one problem with that promise.” She was yelling, out of control. “You’ve gotta be around to protect me! And you’re not, are you? You haven’t been around since the great Detective King showed up—”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I heard Maral spit out my name just as I opened the door to Ovsanna’s office. There was something oily spilled all over the door handle. I grabbed a Kleenex from the coffee table to wipe my hand. Both women stared at me in stunned silence, and then Maral turned her back on me and flopped down on the sofa. The look she gave me could have cut meat.

“Did I interrupt something?” I asked.

Maral didn’t answer. Ovsanna said, “Maral was stalked at the mall by a guy with a camera and a collar around his neck.”

“I wasn’t stalked, Ovsanna!” Maral screamed. “I was attacked! A huge fucking wolf came at me, and I’d be dead right now if I didn’t have that pepper spray! I thought you were out tracking these things down. You and the great detective!”

“She was stalked in the mall,” Ovsanna said deliberately, “and attacked in the parking lot. It’s got to be one of the pack that came at me on the beach.”

I stepped farther into the room. “Well, we’ve got one photographer who doesn’t remember anything, one who’s already dead, and a girlfriend who just might be a boxenwolf herself. I think we’ll know a lot more tonight. In the meantime, Maral, I don’t want you by yourself unless you’re at the house with the alarm on. You’ve got my card, right? With my cell phone on it.”

She wouldn’t look at me. “I . . . I lost it.”

“Well, all right, here, take another one. And give these to the girls downstairs, just in case. But you should be safe inside the house. They can’t walk through walls or anything, can they, Ovsanna? They’re just like . . . real wolves, right?”

“They’re bigger,” she said. “And more powerful. But yes, they’re just like real wolves, with human intelligence. The magic stops with their shape-shifting. And if you can get their collars away from them, that’s the end of the magic. All the more reason for me to go with you to that club tonight. Maral will be safe here in the office as long as I’m around, and I’ll ask Jesus to follow her home at the end of the day.” She addressed Maral as if she were talking to a child: “Once you get in the house, you arm the system and stay there. No, these things can’t walk through walls.”

“Oh? And will you be coming home
eventually
—to take care of me? What . . . will it be you and Detective King? After you’ve tracked them down like you did so well this morning?”

Man, I hate sarcasm. If my mother had been there, she’d have bopped her. Ovsanna’s lips curled back and I thought for sure something vampyre-y was going to take place, which I really didn’t want to deal with right then. So I waved the folder I was carrying in front of them and pulled out the photo the crime lab had left on my desk.

“This is a low-level drug dealer named Vernon Cage,” I said as neutrally as possible, to lower the tension between the two women—uh, between the vampyre and the woman. “He’s done time in Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana: aggravated assault, armed robbery, possession with intent. His fingerprint was on the necklace Graciella de la Garza was wearing when she was torn apart. Turns out she was probably dealing, too. You recognize him?” I asked Ovsanna. “There’s a good chance he’s our killer at the Sportsmen’s.”

“No. I’ve never seen him before.” She shoved the photo at Maral, whose eyes widened when she saw it. From her reaction I expected her to say she knew him, but she stared at it for a few seconds and then shook her head.

I pressed her. “I’m on my way to the hotel to see if he rings a bell with anyone. I’ve got his prints at the scene and an inch-long fingernail I’m looking to match up when I find him. You sure he doesn’t look familiar, Maral? You seemed to react when you saw him.”

“He’s just ugly, that’s all, with all those zits on his face. I’ve gotta get back to work, where I’ll be
safe
—at least until tonight.” She walked into her office and slammed the door.

I looked at Ovsanna. “I don’t blame her for being frightened. It was a fucking werewolf, Ovsanna. It doesn’t matter what kind.”

“It has nothing to do with fear,” Ovsanna replied. “She’s pissed because you and I are . . .”

“Are what?” I took the photo from her and slipped it back into the folder, set it down. “I haven’t even told you about my conversation with the Captain. He bought it. I think it’s safe to say the Cinema Slayer has been caught. So you’re not part of my job anymore.”

Ovsanna stepped closer to me, with her hands at her sides and her face raised up to mine. “So what are we, then, Detective King?” I couldn’t swear to it, but she seemed to be offering her lips in a challenge.

I met it. With my hands at my sides and my face bent to hers, I kissed her as deeply as I could. No electricity burn this time. Her lips were cool and pliant, and as she returned my kiss, I felt them warm just slightly. I felt them drawing me in, and I sucked on them as though I were the one lusting for blood and not her. Her breath was sweet. I don’t know what I expected, but when you’re dealing with vampyres . . . well . . . I read those books. Her breath could have been rancid. I wouldn’t have cared.

“I think what we are,” I said when we finally ended the kiss, “is getting to know each other.”

It was hard to leave Ovsanna, hard to leave those lips and that mouth, especially when she shoved me up against the wall and pressed every inch of herself against me. No fangs, no claws, nothing to worry about. But it was almost five o’clock and I had to track down this Vernon Cage, and I couldn’t do that if we were tearing each other’s clothes off in her office. I told her I’d call her around eight and drove over the hill to the Sportsmen’s.

Traffic was at a standstill on Coldwater. I used the time to check in with my mother. She answered on the seventh ring.

“I’m sorry, honey, I was up on the roof helping your father take down the reindeer. Have you eaten? I’ve got eggplant Parm on the stove.”

“Yeah, Ma. I had lunch at the track.”

“Not the sausage and peppers, I hope. That stuff will kill you. Did you win?” My mom loves the horses. And the casinos. If she’s not cooking, cleaning, taking care of the grandkids, or selling her movie memorabilia on eBay, she’s at Hollywood Park, gambling with the celebrities she used to cook for. Hanging out with Jack Klugman and Telly Savalas, when he was alive. She’s good at it, too, although I’ve always wondered about her system. She keeps an eye on the horses until the last second and whichever one pees last before the window closes, that’s the one she bets. “They’re lighter,” she says, “so they’re faster.” I’ll tell you this: She never loses. Between her business and her winnings, she cleared over a half mil last year. Bought herself a red Corvette.

“Naw, I was talking to a witness on a case.”

“
MSNBC.com
had a headline saying the Cinema Slayer is dead, but they didn’t give any details. What happened? Were you involved?”

“Yeah, Ma, I think you could say that.” My mother’s been married to a cop for nearly fifty years; she knows not to ask too many questions.

“Well, I’m glad you caught him and I’m glad you’re safe. Now, what’s happening with Ovsanna Moore? Are you spending New Year’s Eve with her?”

“I don’t know, Ma. I haven’t even thought about it.”

“They had a picture of the two of you on CNN last night. On that
Show Biz Tonight
show—the one where they spend twenty minutes out of the hour announcing what’s coming up next. Makes me crazy. I waited through two commercials ’cause they said her name, and then it was just a shot of you outside the Coroner’s office. I don’t think anyone knows you’re dating.”

“
I
don’t know we’re dating, Ma. And I sure don’t want the family talking about it to anyone. All I did was invite her to Christmas Eve dinner.” Here come the sausage and peppers again.

“Well, you be careful. I heard Kathy Griffith interviewing the paparazzi on
Larry King Live
and you’d be amazed at what some of them do to get a shot. Did you know some of those celebrities—well, the ones with no talent who only have careers because they’re in the magazines—did you know they get paid to show up at those places? Then they tell the photographers they’re going to be there, and they get a kickback from the photographers who sell their pictures. I don’t know, Peter, it’s not like it was before
People
magazine came along.”

“Right. When all you had was
Photoplay
and
Confidential
. Ma, you were the first in line at the newsstand.”

“Well . . . it’s still not the same. I saw a Bible the other day with pictures of Angelina Jolie and Bill Gates in it.”

“A Bible? Did you buy it?”

“Hell, no. They left out Charlton Heston.”

There was a wedding taking place in the gazebo at the Sportsmen’s; the parking lot was jammed. I parked on the side and entered the hotel through the coffee shop. Lots of people taking advantage of the early-bird specials. Arlene was behind the counter, making a fresh pot of coffee. She’d replaced the chartreuse eye shadow with hot pink. It was eye-catching, that’s for sure. I ordered a chocolate milkshake to fight the lunch mistake and pulled out the photo of Vernon Cage.

“That’s not a face you forget in a hurry,” she said as she dumped the old grounds into the trash beneath the counter, “even though I woulda liked to. Gave me the creepy-crawlies with that skin of his. And what’s with his neck?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you can’t tell from the picture, but he doesn’t really have one. His head just sits on his shoulders. Not very Christian of me, but, man, he was weird. I made Raoul bus his tables; didn’t want to get near him.”

“So he’s been in more than once?”

“Yeah, I think he’s staying here.”

I tried to pay for the shake, but she wouldn’t give me a bill. I left five dollars on the counter and took the glass and the straw with me to the reception desk in the lobby. The place was lively with wedding guests. Lots of powder blue tuxes.

The kid behind the desk recognized Vernon Cage right away.

“Yes, sir, that’s Mr. Carter. Staying in room 105. I checked him in myself Tuesday night. Anticipation Studios arranged for his room.” He turned the computer so I could read the registration information.

So Vernon Cage was DeWayne Carter. And DeWayne Carter was the guy Maral McKenzie had brought back from Louisiana to “help him get located out here.” Which meant Maral had lied to me when she saw the picture of Vernon Cage. I knew it.

DeWayne Carter, aka Vernon Cage, was working for Ovsanna at Anticipation Studios in Santa Clarita. And he’d just become my prime suspect in the murder of Graciella de la Garza.

And what part, I wondered, was Maral McKenzie playing in all of this?