Undead and Unpopular (23 page)

Alonzo was in two pieces in the elevator. There was also a bloodless hole in the middle of his forehead. Sadly, he wasn't the first dead vampire I'd seen. I was mostly numb—no idea how I felt about Alonzo being dead, how he got that way, or what to do next. Not even taking the elevator up to the fifteenth floor
(WITH THE DEAD VAMPIRE INSIDE)
moved me. Well, moved me much.

Did I feel bad about a killer getting killed?

"Thorough job," Tina said, squatting beside Alonzo's head.

"Yep," I confirmed. So the killer had shot him to, I dunno, distract him, and then cut off his head while Alonzo was still trying to grow back his brain. Obviously, someone had known what he (or she) was dealing with. There was very little blood, which I'd expect, but the other five European vampires were scared shitless, which I didn't expect.

At least it was very late—not much staff to deal with. And we'd jumped in the elevator and taken it up before anyone in the lobby had seen.

Carolina and the others were sort of milling about in the hallway, if shifting back and forth and occasionally murmuring to each other could be called milling. I guess that was milling. What was milling? They weren't back there polishing grain, after all. They sure were taking the news like cool customers.

Wrenching my brain back to current events, I forced myself to look at Alonzo's body. The elevator door had been propped open, so unfortunately it was easy to take in.

The body was dressed up, he had his shoes and socks on. His head was about two feet away. One eye was wide with surprise; the other one was rolled up, looking at the ceiling. Well, he wasn't really looking at the ceiling. It just looked like he was looking at the ceiling. In fact, it looked like one big dead vampire in the elevator.

Alonzo had been killed in the private elevator, which was solely for the use of the guests on the suite floor. Tina had checked; the vampires were the only ones staying in the hotel suites.

Had they heard anything? If they had, they hadn't volunteered anything yet.

Anyway, the elevator had been brought back up to the fifteenth floor, where we all were, but there wasn't any police tape or anything because the vamps wanted to keep this one in-house. I had no idea how they could keep something like this from the cops (it wasn't a vampire hotel, after all) but I kept my mouth shut. Police involvement could only cause complications. Especially if Alonzo was correctly identified: hmm, a hundred-year-old dead guy who doesn't look a day over twenty-five! Now there's a stumper! Say, all you others, would you mind coming in for questioning? For about five-to-ten with time off for good behavior?

"What happened?" I asked.

There was a long silence while the Europeans looked at each other, and I was beginning to repeat my question, louder, when Carolina said, "Well, ah, Majesty, Alonzo called you and he left. And then he died."

So
that's
why they were so twitchy. Funny; I'd imagine ancient vampires didn't much care about imminent death, but I'd found the older they were, the more they thought they were entitled to live. It was amazing, when you sat down and thought about it.

"You guys, relax. I didn't do it. None of us did it." I looked at Sinclair and Tina, who I just remembered had mysteriously disappeared earlier tonight before Alonzo's death.

"None of us did it," Sinclair echoed. Right! Besides, he and Tina were always mysteriously disappearing. If Tina hadn't been gay, I would have had to keep a much closer eye on—

"The monarchy had nothing to do with this," Tina reiterated. I was glad she seemed to know all about it. "We assumed he had been killed in a dispute with one of you."

"Why would one of us kill Alonzo?" Carolina asked. "Why would I kill him?"

"To get in our good graces?" Sinclair suggested.

"Family doesn't always get along," Tina added.

"And for the same reasons humans kill," I said. "For money? To get property? For love? Hate? Jealousy? Revenge?"

Carolina was shaking her head; they were all shaking their heads. "No, no. Alonzo was—any differences we had were worked out decades ago. You were the only cause—that is to say, we had different opinions on what to do."

"Because of the situation with Dr. Trudeau," Sinclair said.

"That was her name? The brunette from your parlor?"

I looked away and counted to five before talking again. "What happened?" I asked, wondering if vampires had a CSI-type team they could send out for to, I dunno, vacuum for fingerprints or whatever.

"We had risen, of course, and were preparing to go out and get something to eat. David—" Carolina, the group's unofficial spokesvampire, nodded to a tall, quiet (but then, they were all quiet) gray-haired vampire who looked like a used car salesman in a good suit. "David was having someone come up; the rest of us were going out in a while. Alonzo was going to wait to dine, though, he wanted to leave right away. He was excited. He said you wanted him to come over. He—he was excited," she said again. "He was looking forward to seeing you again."

I turned to Tina. "For the record, not that I think you'd be so obvious and sloppy, but did you call Alonzo, pretending to be me, to lure him out away from his buddies, ambush him in the elevator on his way down, shoot him in the head, then cut his head off?"

"No, Majesty. I had to go to Best Buy and get a new DVD player for the game room."

"I can verify her story. I went with her." Sinclair sniffed down at Tina. "You are a gem in all things but one: you will insist on buying American."

"Can we focus, please? So after a while, Alonzo went skipping out the door, all happy to come to my house, and then a while later we came up with—blech—his headless body."

"Yes, there he was," used car salesman said. David! His name was David.

"And none of us did it," I clarified, "and none of you guys did it."

"If one of us had a grudge," Carolina pointed out, "we would hardly wait all this time, until we were here under your watchful eye, and kill him in a strange country in a strange hotel room. This draws your attention to us at a time when we have little interest in being noticed."

"Good point," I admitted. That "no attention" thing made sense, too. Getting noticed was a great way to get singled out and, well, just check the elevator for why it was bad to get noticed.

"We will take care of this," Sinclair told them. "We have a small team coming to tend the body. Do you wish to take him back to France?"

"Why?" Carolina asked. "He is dead. What difference does it make where his body is?"

Nice epigraph:
You're dead now, and who cares? Not even your cousin
.

"If you did not kill him," she continued, "then his properties are on the table, so to speak. Speaking for myself, I am most anxious to return and look into disbursement issues."

The three of us looked at each other. These guys didn't know that I had planned to give all Alonzo's stuff to Sophie. But now that he was dead, there was no reason to avenge the good doctor.

"You're not sad he's dead because you want his stuff?"

"His being dead solves a rather large problem for you, too, Majesty."

Larger than you think, honey
. I pushed the thought of Sophie—an obvious suspect—aside for now. "Yeah, but—come on, the guy's dead. A friend of yours—family member—for decades? Perhaps a century? Don't you owe him something? Don't we all? I barely knew him and I sort of liked him, when I wasn't thinking about—" Shooting him, I'd started to say, but probably that wasn't the best way to go. "Look, there's got to be something. I mean, I'm glad you guys aren't in a killing psycho rage because of this, but the poor guy got iced in a hotel elevator, for God's sake."

"What is it you want us to do?" Carolina asked. Her expression made it clear she could not think of a single idea that appealed to her.

It took me a moment, but then I realized what this group needed. What Alonzo needed. What
I
needed. "Okay, let's—okay, everybody bow your heads. Bow your heads! Okay. Uh, dear God, please—"

"You're praying? We can't pray," David said.

"Not to mention, I don't think Alonzo is with… Him," Tina added.

"Shut up, you guys. I'm sure you won't burst into flames if I do all the talking. I see heads are up. They should be bowed. Bowwwww." All the heads dropped like they were on a string, except for one. Sinclair's. He was looking at me and struggling valiantly not to laugh. I glared at him, but he wouldn't bow his head. Typical. I'd let the Big Man handle him another day.

I bowed mine and looked at my clasped fingers. "Heavenly Father, you may have noticed our friend, Alonzo, has run into a spot of misfortune. We're not sure where he is, but regardless, please bless him and look after him, forever and ever, and please let him be happy where he is and not scared or lonely. And, um, thanks again for all the help you've been giving me on the whole fasting-for-my-birthday thing. Amen."

"Okay," Tina said. "Now that the… the royal prayer is out of the way, perhaps we can get back to the business at hand."

"Which is what? We talked to these guys, other guys are coming to take Alonzo's body—we're not cops, we're not forensic scientists, and we're not journalists. We're—"

A phone began to ring. I glared around at them. "You guys! Shut that off. Hotel room phone, cell phone, whatever it is, kill it, just don't get me started on phones. Will you—"

After a few seconds of looking around, everyone looked straight down. The phone continued to ring.

It was coming from Alonzo's body.

"The dead man's pants are ringing," Tina said, somewhat needlessly.