Chapter 13
Nothing in Mai’s house or shop had been disturbed any further, but Liam had insisted they get in, get what they needed, and get out. Something didn’t feel right to him, but he kept that to himself.
They had then driven to Rehoboth Beach, had lunch at a café, and stopped at a local pet store for Prince’s dog food. Liam waited out in the car for Mai and her father, but they were inside so long that he began to worry. He was just crossing the parking lot when Mai exited the store, followed by Corrato and the dog. Mai was carrying two big paper bags.
Liam frowned, taking both bags from her. “Damn. How much food can this dog eat? He’s not as big as a cat.”
“Sorry.” Mai opened the van door for her father. “They decided they needed dog toys and treats. Prince can be very particular.” She looked at Liam over the seat and rolled her eyes.
Liam found himself smiling. He had nothing to smile about: global warming, the worldwide infestation of serial killers, zombies, and pedophiles, this crazy Weasel fuck with his vendetta. Liam didn’t know why he was smiling. Mai just had that effect on him.
“We should probably get back to the apartment.” Liam gazed around the parking lot, that uneasy feeling coming over him again.
“I thought we were going to the costume shop.” Mai climbed into the passenger seat beside Liam and buckled her seat belt. “I was kind of looking forward to it.” She bit down on her lower lip, glancing around the parking lot. “But if you think we should go back . . .”
Liam pulled the minivan onto Route One. He had decided the whole idea of taking them to the parade and block party Saturday night was a bad one. There would be too many humans, too many vampires and other creatures of the night. He couldn’t protect Mai and her father properly. But when he glanced at Mai now, he couldn’t stand the disappointed look on her face.
He exhaled. This was why he tried to stay away from women. This was why HFs were particularly dangerous for a man like him. “Nah, it’ll be okay. But I’ll warn you. It’s not really a costume shop. Just an old five-and-dime that gets all these costumes in for Halloween. They’ll close for the winter after this weekend.”
“I know the whole town shuts down. That’s pretty amazing. It seems like no stores are seasonal anymore. They can’t afford to be. Even though most of my business is in the summer, I know I can’t.”
He shrugged. “Just the way it’s always been done here.”
For the rest of the ride, they talked about other things: what was going on in world politics and the local elections. Corrato filled Liam in on this week’s story line on All My Children.
The funny thing was, he didn’t even mind.
Liam parked on the street just west of the boardwalk and they got out of the van.
“Says NO DOGS ON THE BOARDWALK, EASTER TO THANKSGIVING,” Corrato read from a posted street sign. He tucked the rat terrier under his arm. “We’ll just wait here.”
“Babbo, you can’t stay here. It’s not safe,” Mai whispered.
There were a few people on the street, but not many. Most of them vampires, but of course she didn’t know that.
“I can read, Mai.” Corrato turned stiffly toward his daughter. “I might be crazy, but I can still read, gosh darn it.”
“Babbo, no one said you were crazy.” She glanced at Liam in frustration.
“It’ll be okay to take him with us,” Liam assured him. “Prince is barely big enough to be a real dog.”
“You insulting the Prince of Dogs?” Corrato demanded. He was wearing brown corduroy pants a size too big, pulled up at least four inches too high, and a slouchy blue cardigan sweater, but when he threw back his shoulders, he actually had a certain air of intimidation. Liam wondered if he’d learned it from his brother. He wondered what other secrets the old man held.
“I meant no offense, sir.” Liam studied the old man’s cloudy blue eyes. “And I know everyone on the police force. It’ll be fine. The sign is meant to keep tourists with dogs and no doggy bags off the boardwalk. Keep the place clean,” he explained.
“Prince would never embarrass himself that way.” Corrato pulled a little blue bag from his pocket. “But I carry one, just in case.”
“Come on, Babbo. You can get a Halloween costume, too.”
“I’m too old for a Halloween costume,” Corrato grumbled, following them up the steps to the boardwalk. “Every time I look in the mirror and see this ugly old wrinkled man, I think I’m wearing a Halloween costume.”
Mai cut her eyes at Liam and smiled. Like an idiot who didn’t know about global warming or zombies, he smiled right back.
It was cool on the boardwalk, breezy but sunny. To the east, the waves of the Delaware Bay washed gently onto the shore. All the stores—the candy shop, a burger joint, a pizza place, and even the arcade that Liam’s mother owned—were closed, but most had signs on their doors saying they would be open Friday.
Hilly’s Five-and-Dime was flying a red, white, and blue flag advertising OPEN. A bell over the door jingled when they walked in. Usually, brightly colored blow-up rafts and beach chairs hung from the ceiling overhead, but in honor of the holiday, Fiona Hill had replaced them with paper bats, silky spiderwebs, and big rubber tarantulas that dangled on elastic bands. The smell of candy corn and apple cider dominated the store, instead of the familiar summer scent of suntan lotion.
“Welcome to Hilly’s,” greeted Seamus Hill, aka Hilly, busy stocking a shelf with Halloween candy. He turned around, offering a plastic pumpkin filled with treats. “Care for a sample?”
“Thank you.” Mai reached in and pulled out a mini Tootsie Roll. “Want a piece of candy, Babbo? They’re free.”
“Not before dinner.” The older man wandered down an aisle, the dog tucked under his arm.
“Liam?” Hilly offered the pumpkin. He was a vampire somewhere in his mid-sixties, a distinguished gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair. And a pirate’s bandanna and eye patch.
Liam shook his head.
“Let’s go down this aisle, Babbo.” Mai went after her father and steered him away from the maid miniskirts and toward the mummy and Frankenstein displays.
Liam stood awkwardly with Hilly, unsure if he should follow Mai or just stay put. This was exactly why he avoided social situations. He didn’t know how to act. What to say. Where to put his hands.
Heard you were back in town, Hilly telepathed. Sorry to hear about your trouble in Paris. He adjusted the gold plastic saber he wore tucked into the brown leather belt that held up his chinos.
Liam nodded. Not a big deal. It’ll all get worked out.
“Not what I heard.” His wife, Fiona, didn’t bother to telepath despite the fact that a family of humans had just walked in.
“Welcome to Hilly’s. Care for a sample?” Hilly crossed the aisle to offer the pumpkin to two grade-school children shopping with their parents.
“Good to see you, too, Fiona,” Liam repeated coolly. He kept an eye on Mai as she moved farther toward the back of the store.
Built early in the twentieth century, Hilly’s Five-and-Dime was one of the last of the original buildings on the boardwalk. It was a true historic landmark, with high ceilings, wall-to-wall windows oceanside, and a musty smell of passing time the sickeningly sweet scent of candy corn couldn’t quite cover.
“About time someone reined some of you boys in,” she went on, arms crossed over her saggy bosom. “You think you’re above our laws, but you’re not. We all have to follow them, like it or not.”
It was hard to take the sixty-year-old pillar of the community seriously in her country-girl costume: short, poofy, red skirt over pale, spider-veined legs, a red-and-white checkered shirt, a blond pigtailed wig, and a blacked-out tooth. Not to mention the straw hat.
Liam just nodded. He wasn’t getting into this conversation with her, not here. Not now. Not ever.
“Prime example,” Fiona said, lowering her voice a decibel, “those humans.” She pointed at Mai and her father. “They should
n’t be here and you know it.”
“Fiona, the whole town will be full of humans by Friday. They’re here for the parade.”
“She’s not here for the parade.” Her tone was filled with sexual connotations.
Mai was showing her father a dog sweater that looked like a tuxedo jacket. She held it up for Liam to see.
He nodded, but he didn’t smile. He had known it was a bad idea to bring Mai here. Fiona had never liked him, at least not in the last couple of centuries.
“It’s dangerous,” Fiona hissed, straightening a stack of candy boxes. “There’s a reason why we don’t cohabitate with humans.”
“We’re not cohabitating. They needed a place to stay for a few nights.”
“Why? She in some kind of trouble?” Fiona turned toward Mai, looking her up and down. “She looks like a young woman who could be trouble.”
“It’s a long story, Fiona. None of which is your business.”
Mrs. Hill rested her hand on an ample hip. “Not my business?” She shook her finger at him. “You listen to me, Liam McCathal. That human is my business, and your mother would tell you so if she was here right now. That woman is every Kahill in this town’s business. Having her here jeopardizes your identity; she jeopardizes all of us. Don’t you think you’re in enough trouble as it is without adding fuel to the Council’s fire?”
“Liam,” Mai called from two aisles over, “have a sec?”
“Excuse me.” Liam smiled as he walked away from Fiona.
Mai watched him approach, waiting until he was out of anyone’s earshot. She turned her back, blocking Fiona’s view of them. “Who was that?” she whispered. She had several costumes draped over her arm. “I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was really chewing you out over something.”
“It was nothing.” He leaned on a shelf. The store was overly warm; he was hot in his leather jacket. It was time to move on. Out of this store. Out of the position he’d gotten himself into with Mai. He had to find the Weasel and settle the matter between him and Mai.
“It was about me, wasn’t it?” She searched his face. “I know. Small town. People talk.”
“It’s no one’s business, Mai. So what’d you find?”
She grinned. “You have to help me pick one.” She cut her eyes at him. “You’re not going to believe what my father is insisting on wearing. Oh, and guess what I found for you.” She held up a small cellophane package. “Plastic fangs!”
“This is fun and way beyond your comfort zone, I can tell,” Mai said, looping her arm through Liam’s. “Thanks.”
They were standing on Main Street at sunset, watching the Halloween parade go by. They had a great place, right on the curb, a block off the beach. It was a big event in the area and seemed to get bigger with every passing year. There were local firefighters waving from the top of a fire engine, the nearby high school’s marching band, all dressed in white sheets to look like ghosts, playing “Monster Mash,” a motorcycle club with toy windup keys attached to the backs of their bikes, a pony club riding bareback, dressed like goblins, and a whole host of other entries.
“I mean it,” Mai said when Liam made no response. She wasn’t dressed as a naughty nurse, but the costume came close. She was an Indian maiden in a short, suede, beaded dress and tall moccasins that made her tanned legs look like they went on forever. She wore her long, dark hair in two plaits that made her appear so young that Liam felt like he was an old lech, just holding her hand in public.
“Something to take your mind off things,” Liam muttered with a shrug.
“Yeah, well, we need to talk about that.” She ran her hand over his chest, her hand warm through his T-shirt.
His costume consisted of black jeans, a black T-shirt, his black leather jacket, and his dark hair slicked back. He carried the plastic fangs she had bought him in his pocket.
“I’ve been waiting all week for you to tell me what you found out.”
“I didn’t find out anything.”
She glanced up at him. A juggling pirate walked by, using plastic bones for batons. Corrato laughed and pointed, then held up Prince so the dog could get a better look at the clown / pirate’s antics.
Corrato’s costume was surprisingly good. He had bought a run-of-the-mill zombie outfit from Hilly’s, but then had Mai do his makeup as per his instructions. The old Italian man looked so real that when Liam glanced at him quickly, Corrato gave him a start. He looked just like a zombie Liam had run into one night near the Coliseum in Rome last year. The spook had been a crazy son-of-a-bitch that had chased Liam five blocks before he gave him the slip.
“You’re a lousy liar,” Mai said, glancing back at the parade. “Babbo, you hand Prince over if he gets too heavy, okay?”
“Prince ain’t heavy. He’s my brother,” Corrato the zombie said, chucking the little dog under the chin.
Prince was dressed in the dog sweater/tuxedo Mai had found at Hilly’s.
“You asked my father about the Weasel at the dinner table the first night you came back,” Mai said softly. The street was crowded with people, pushing, jostling, talking, and laughing, and they were close. She didn’t want to risk anyone overhearing her.
“I didn’t find out anything that directly related Donato to him,” Liam argued. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” she asked.
“Let’s talk about it later. The parade is almost over. Look, here comes the Queen of the Crypt and her court.”
“We will talk about it later, very soon later,” Mai said. She glanced out onto the street at the approaching convertibles. “What the hell is the Queen of the Crypt?”
“I don’t know. It’s just something silly we do. This year it’s Peigi Ross.” He waved at Peigi, who sat on the back of his Mercury Montclair. She was dressed in a dingy, shredded bride of Frankenstein dress, her sensible hair spiked so that it stood straight up, her face deathly white with fake blood oozing from the corner of her mouth. “And there’s her court.” He pointed. “Traditionally, the Queen of the Crypt is an older woman, and her court is always teenagers. See, there’s Kaleigh. On the back of the Corvette.” He waved at Kaleigh.
Mai craned her neck. “I see her.” She waved. “Nice girl. Friendly. Smart, too.”
Kaleigh, dressed in some sort of a dress of white rags, her face white with pancake makeup and a rubber hatchet through her skull, spotted Mai and Liam and waved wildly. She elbowed her friend Katy and Katy waved, too. She was wearing what appeared to be an old pink prom gown, covered in fake blood.
“I’m glad you liked her,” Liam remarked, gazing around him. “I thought you might.” It was almost sunset and the crowd was getting livelier. The spiked cider from the local tourist pub, O’Cahall’s, was starting to kick in. Crowds made him nervous. Even crowds of innocent tourists. “Parade ends at the boardwalk. That’s where they have the band. It’s kind of a block party. You want to walk that way, or . . . what?”
He wanted to take them home. What if the Weasel or one of his guys was in the crowd? It made no sense, of course. How could the Weasel find her here in Clare Point?
She looked up at him. “I don’t know how long my dad will feel like staying out, but I’d like to go.” She gave him a sly grin. “I haven’t gotten out much lately, what with taking care of the elderly and a mob boss on my tail.”
“Fine tail that it is.” He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Come on, I know a shortcut. All these people are starting to make me claustrophobic. Corrato.” He clasped the old man’s arm. “We’re going this way, buddy.”
Liam led the way through the crowd of onlookers. Most were humans, but there were some locals. At least half of the people were in some form of a costume, whether it was an outfit, head-to-toe, or just a mask or face paint. “This way.” At an alley that ran between a bookstore and a sandwich shop, he stepped back to let Mai and Corrato pass.
“Liam! Hello, there.”
Liam heard his name called and, not recognizing the vo
ice, he turned toward the street. He scanned the faces in the crowd, not able to match the voice with any of the people he saw.
“I’ll be. You here for the parade?”
An older man dressed like Red Skelton in his famous Clem Kadiddlehopper sketches approached him. For a second, Liam still didn’t know who he was. Then he recognized him.
Impossible.
Red pumped his arm, then leaned closer. “Looking good for the Eagles this weekend.” He winked.
Liam growled, looked both ways, saw no one was paying attention to them, and grabbed the man by the arm and dragged him into the dark alley. “What the hell are you doing, following me?”
Chapter 14
“Liam?” Mai called.
Even in the dark, he could see her. “Keep going,” he called. “I’ll be right there.” He pushed Anthony up against the brick wall of the bookstore. “I said, why are you following me? How the hell did you find me here?”
“I wasn’t following you,” the bookie protested. His voice trembled, but he didn’t fall apart. Being a bookie, he’d probably had his share of getting roughed up over the years. Probably roughed up a few delinquent clients himself, in his younger days. “My sister Alice lives in Bethany Beach. I . . . I come here every Halloween weekend. We haven’t missed a Clare Point parade in fifteen years.”
He was lying. It was too big a coincidence. Wasn’t it?
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Liam ground out.
“I’m telling the truth, I swear on the Virgin Mary.” His breath smelled of whiskey. “A . . . rrived on the 2:25 ferry. You can check the schedule. Alice DeFonso. That’s my little sister’s name. I’m staying with her. She’s in the phone book. Look it up if you don’t believe me. Widowed. Was married to Maury DeFonso from Bethany Beach. Clarkesville, actually. He . . . he had a heating and air conditioning business for thirty years before he stroked out last year.”
“I’m not asking for a medical history of your family,” Liam said, gritting his teeth, fighting the urge to beat the skinny old man to a pulp. The guy was just one more small-time thug.
Ravenous Page 12