Liz Jasper - Underdead 02

by Underdead in Denial

  I had no idea where they were going, or why. I gave myself a congratulatory pat on the back for staying out of the whole thing and pulled a stack of papers and a red pen from my bag. The last thing I needed was to get sucked into another thankless, time-sucking activity. Given the time/pay trade-off of teaching, I felt I was doing enough charity work.

  I was on my second pile of density labs when Becky returned.

  “I volunteered us!”

  “Mmm-hmmm. Mass divided by volume, Tyler. Sheesh. The stinking formula’s right there.” I took off three points and looked up at Becky, who was radiating excitement. “Sorry…what?”

  “I volunteered us to help out with the haunted house.”

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t think you’d want to put in rehearsal time, so I signed you up to collect tickets inside the door.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her what she could do with her sign-up sheets and realized our discussion was drawing the interest of departing volunteers, including a couple I recognized as Bayshore parents. Later, I promised myself.

  Becky thrust a brown paper bag into my lap.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your costume.”

  I reached into the bag and tugged. The costume kept coming. Yard after yard of black material inlaid with occasional flashes of red. Despite my best intentions to remain indifferent, the idea of dressing up in a real theater costume was making the volunteer job sound kind of fun.

  “What did you get for me?” I tried to make sense of the heap of black cloth. “A witch’s dress? A bat’s wings? A Harlequin?”

  A pair of false, pointy incisors tumbled onto my lap.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said weakly.

  “You’re to collect tickets dressed as a blood-sucking vampire.” Becky rubbed her thumbs against her forefingers in the universal sign for money and greed. “Get it?”

  She grinned conspiratorially. “With your sun allergy, I bet we can get some of the more gullible students to believe you’re the real thing. Ooh! I bet we can rig some sort of trick mirror so you don’t have a reflection. Won’t that be a hoot?”

  “Yeah. Hilarious.”

  She plunked herself down next to me, dug into her own brown paper bag and held up her costume. There was definitely less of it than mine.

  “I’m going to be a sexy Frankenstein’s monster and guess who’s Frankenstein?” She leaned close and whispered, “Dan!”

  I stuffed the vampire costume back in the paper grocery bag, neatly folded the top shut and dumped it on Becky’s lap. “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’? The whole point in coming here is to help out.”

  “Sorry, Becky. I’m just too busy.”

  All at once, she dropped the bravado. “Please?” Her eyes were pleading. “I can’t do this without you. I’ll feel like a fool.”

  This insecure, Dan-smitten person was so unlike the Becky I knew, I couldn’t help myself. The words tumbled from my mouth as if pulled by an invisible string. “Oh, all right.”

  “Great!” She grabbed my wrist and yanked me to my feet. “I’ll tell you the details over dinner. My treat.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was five thirty. Sundown. Time to go home like a good little almost vampire and call Gavin to let him know I was safe. Not that he’d answer his phone and actually talk to me. I would leave a message on his voicemail like I’d done the night before and would continue doing until, what? I grew old and died cowering in my closet?

  I turned off my phone and consigned it to the bowels of my bag. “Dinner sounds good.”

  “Dinner” somehow became a double date at the diner next to the theater. Becky and Dan quickly became completely engrossed in each other, leaving me to make conversation with the Dan copy who’d been on stage flipping pages on the easel.

  He was just as forgettable closer up. Our conversation dwindled and died shortly after I learned his name was Tom and he was indeed another member of the Long Beach Players, the acting company that performed at the Milverne Theater.

  I ate slower than a snail crawls on dry pavement just for something to do. After what seemed as if days had passed, the waiter finally came by to take our plates.

  “Hey guys, how about dessert?”

  The look I gave him sent him back a pace.

  “I’ll have the, um…apple pie,” Becky said, tearing her attention from Dan long enough to glance at the laminated dessert menu on the table next to the catsup.

  I knew for a fact that Becky hated apple pie. I jabbed her sharply under the table.

  “Ow!” She rubbed her side and scowled at me.

  “I’m sorry. Did I get you?”

  “Decaf for me,” said Dan.

  Tom frowned slightly and ordered bottled water. “It’s important for actors to keep their vocal cords moist. Most people eat far too much sugar and don’t take proper care of their vocal cords. For instance, a teacher like you should drink at least eleven glasses a day. I’ll bet you—”

  “One Death by Chocolate, please,” I told the waiter. I didn’t need to look at the dessert menu. I’d memorized it an hour ago.

  “Sorry, we’re out.”

  “Of course you are. Got any Murder by Ice Cream? Hari Kari Killer Cake? Fudge Oblivion?”

  The waiter shook his head. “I’m sorry, you must be thinking of another diner. Maybe you’d like a Chocolate Avalanche sundae? It’s pretty popular. It has brownie crumbles on top.”

  “Milk products are bad for vocal cords,” Tom said.

  I ordered the Chocolate Avalanche with extra brownie crumbles and hot fudge sauce.

  I wondered if anyone would notice if I disappeared under the table and escaped. Probably not. Becky and Dan were so absorbed in one another that Martians could beam down inside the diner, waving anal probes, and they wouldn’t notice. And Tom was so enthralled by his own conversation that, by the time he realized no one was punctuating his pauses with an occasional “Really?”, “You don’t say” or “How interesting”, I could be halfway home.

  I shifted experimentally in my seat and realized the glory of crawling to freedom through limp and dusty French fries, straw wrapper curls and Coke spills would be denied me. I’d sat in something sticky and the booth’s cheap red pleather trapped me like flypaper.

  “And that’s when I joined my high school drama club,” Tom said.

  “Really? How very interesting.”

  Our waiter reappeared with our dessert orders. In front of me he placed a giant glass packed full of chocolate ice cream and oozing hot fudge. The brownie bits were packed so high atop the mound of whipped cream I couldn’t see over the top. Picking up my sundae spoon, I took a small, tentative bite of Chocolate Avalanche.

  “Oh my God.” I immediately shoveled in a larger spoonful. As the heat of my mouth fused the rich hot fudge sauce with the sweeter chocolate of the ice cream, I passed Tom my unused dinner spoon. “Best dessert ever. You have got to try this.”

  “I’m fine with water,” he said with a quick glance at Dan’s decaf. “My vocal chords…”

  I realized Tom had stopped talking and was looking at the sundae the way my mother looked at jewelry store windows.

  “So, Tom, do you have any hobbies?” I asked.

  He was so absorbed in watching me dig through the whipped cream to the hot fudge that his mouth parted a little as I took another bite.

  Tom picked up his water bottle, took a sip and tried to collect himself. He lost the battle as soon as my spoon dipped back into my sundae glass.

  “Actually I do.” His voice was soft and conspiratorial. “On the weekends, I like to get up early, really early and…”

  “Yes?” I prompted, looking up from arranging the perfect Chocolate Avalanche bite on my spoon. I realized I actually wanted to know what this boring man did, really early, on Saturday mornings that was so secret he hesitated to tell me about it.

  Tom forcibly shifted his gaze from the sun
dae to me. And then he leaned closer, unaware his sleeve was resting in a pool of fudge sauce.

  “I go to garage sales,” he told me. “And last weekend I found—”

  I took another bite of Chocolate Avalanche. His mouth clamped suddenly shut. He was so close I could see a pale pink flush spread across his face. His eyes glittered with deeply buried excitement.

  “What did you find?” I asked, putting my spoon down. This rapt attention as I ate my dessert was a little unnerving. I didn’t know why he didn’t just order one of his own and be done with it. His lean frame could easily handle a few more pounds.

  As if I’d spoken the criticism aloud, his attention shifted firmly away from my sundae. His eyes met mine. His voice was low, a hum of excitement strung into words.

  “An unfinished script. Some guy inherited his late father’s house and dumped all the junk his family had collected over the years onto the lawn for sale. Crates and crates of National Geographic. Newspapers from the 1960s. And then I found a box of junk, like someone had pulled out a desk drawer and dumped in the contents without looking. There were scraps of paper and leaky pens and a couple of half-full boxes of envelopes…and then, the script! I haven’t had time to read more than a few pages, but it could be a lost masterpiece. People find them all the time at garage sales. The poor dumb fool didn’t even realize what he was selling.”

  “Really? What’s the playwright’s name? Anyone I might have heard of?”

  “Solaire. I doubt you’d have heard of him. He didn’t actually publish any plays…” Tom’s upper lip curled in a sneer, as if publishing one’s work was selling out.

  My enthusiasm waned. I was pretty sure there was a poor dumb fool in the scenario, and it wasn’t the garage sale guy who’d made a cool ten dollars off the contents of his grandfather’s junk drawer. But it was better than listening to more sleep-defying stories about Tom’s serpentine path to becoming a professional actor.

  I opened my mouth to ask him more about garage-sale treasure hunting when a hand clamped down on my shoulder, pinning me to the bench. My stomach clenched and my lungs stopped working. Every thought left my head except for one—the sun had set two hours ago. And I was outside the safety of my apartment. I twisted slowly around and came eye-to-stomach with Gavin.

  Chapter Three

  “Jo Gartner. What a delight running into you here, just as I’ve been trying to get you on your cell.”

  I shrugged Gavin’s heavy hand off my shoulder and struggled to my feet.

  My voice matched his in fake charm. “Gavin. How lovely to see you. And on a Saturday night. What a surprise.” I swept a smile over the table. “If you’ll excuse me a minute. Let’s go chat at your table, Gavin. You’re in the wait staff’s way.”

  I grabbed Gavin by the sleeve and pulled him away before Becky came out of her Dan trance enough to invite the detective to join us. I didn’t slow until we were out of hearing range. “Where is your table?” I asked, looking around.

  Gavin put a hand to my back and steered me out of the dining area and into the waiting area at the front of the restaurant. The early bird diners had finished and gone home and the next dinner shift was in its infancy so we were the only occupants besides a couple of high schoolers, who were using the wait time to get a jump on the after dinner make-out session. I gave them an automatic once-over, but I didn’t know them.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gavin positioned himself with his back to the wall and managed to glare down at me even though he was only a couple of inches taller.

  “Me? What about you?” I looked him up and down. He was wearing comfortably broken-in jeans and a Long Beach Marathon t-shirt with a long-sleeved tee underneath. The slight jog in his nose from an old break that hadn’t healed quite right kept him from being strictly handsome. But he looked…good. Very good, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t help thinking bitter thoughts about the way my life was going. The only thing my “date” wanted to be alone with tonight was my sundae and Gavin had never thought of me as anything more than an annoying chore on the order of filling out tax forms.

  “You’re not on duty.” I stepped around him to go back to my booth before my sundae melted and all joy was taken out of the evening. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  Gavin put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. “I’m always on duty.”

  The hostess returned to her station and regarded us curiously. Gavin ignored her and shifted closer so we couldn’t be overheard. “I thought you were scared to be back on Will’s radar.” His voice drummed low and tight in my ear. “And yet I find you out after sundown eschewing safety precautions and I have to wonder—”

  He bit off the rest of the sentence and studied me carefully. I felt as if I were being pulled apart and evaluated piece by piece. And found lacking.

  “Wonder what?” I demanded.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “No. Wonder what?”

  “It’s eight o’clock. You were supposed to call me over an hour ago to check in, remember?” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Gavin kept his brown hair cut short and I could hear the soft scratchy noise as the little hairs rubbed against each other. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s a decent system. It works.”

  Little fingers of guilt let the air out of my sails. As Gavin was leaving my apartment on Thursday night, we had agreed to reinstate the system we had set up last winter when it seemed I had half the population of Long Beach gunning for my hide. And Gavin was right. It was annoying to the point of insult to have to check in with him each night, as if I were a little kid instead of an adult. But it had saved my life.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “That isn’t the point. Shit, Jo. Get some common sense, here. It’s not safe for you to be out alone at night. Not anymore. And before you tell me you’re fine because you’re with a group, isn’t that your car parked right out front? Why not just stick a ‘Come get me, I’m in here’ sign on it?”

  I whipped around, half expecting to see a half dozen vampires waiting by my car, ready to take me out.

  Right. As if I had the slightest chance of distinguishing a vampire from anyone else who happened to be in the parking lot. From my experience, vampires looked just like everyone else, until the pointy fangs popped out. And when that happened, it was already too late to run.

  Gavin was right. I’d let my frustration get the better of my common sense. Will wasn’t just a vampire, he was the local leader. If he’d retaken an interest in me, I was on all his minion’s radars. And, as had been made abundantly clear to me last spring, not all the interest was positive. A motivated vampire could run me over with a car or pull the trigger on a gun just as well as anyone else.

  I needed to be more careful. I wouldn’t get the advantage of a warning. Unless the vampire coming after me was Will. I always knew when he was nearby by my hormone fluctuations. And besides, Will didn’t skulk. If he wanted something, he took it. Me, for example? Is that what he wanted? To finally finish the job he’d started?

  I shoved my dark thoughts away. Gavin was just being melodramatic to make a point. I was perfectly safe. No one would think to look for me in a restaurant I’d never been to before.

  “How did you find me?” I asked.

  “Your car. Parked right out front. Under,” he pointed with a tanned finger, “a street light.”

  There went that theory. My teeth started to chatter. I bit down hard so he wouldn’t notice and then my hands began to shake.

  Gavin’s gaze dropped to my hands. He took a half step closer.

  “Gavin!”

  I turned to see a pretty brunette heading our way and realized with a start that Gavin was on a date.

  “Brady’s on shift all night,” Gavin said quickly. “Give him a call at the switchboard when you’re on your way home and he’ll send a patrol out to walk you to your door.” It wasn’t a request, but
an order. I bristled, but didn’t want to argue in front of his…girlfriend?

  I didn’t wait to be introduced (I was business, after all, not a social acquaintance.) but headed back into the seating area. I almost looked forward to the mind-numbing boredom of trying to have a conversation with Tom again.

  Dropping back into my sticky booth seat, I picked up my spoon and blindly plunged it into my sundae glass. The Chocolate Avalanche would go a long way toward soothing my nerves. My spoon came up empty.

  “It was melting and I didn’t want it to go to waste,” Tom said, looking happy and relaxed for the first time that evening.

  I gave him a look so dirty he didn’t say a word for the next ten minutes.

  By the time Becky was ready to go, a long joyless hour later, Gavin and his date were gone.

  Tom made me pay for the sundae.

  Chapter Four

  “Help me!” Becky entered my classroom at a jog and shoved a plate of orange-brown blobs under my nose.

  “What are these?” I picked one up. It was remarkably heavy for something a little wider than a quarter. “A density experiment?”

  “I made ginger cookies last night. What do you think?”

  I raised the cookie and opened my mouth to take a bite.

  Carol, following in behind Becky, opened her eyes wide in horror at the sight of the cookie on its way to my mouth and violently shook her head in warning.

  I lowered the cookie and looked at it more closely. It resembled a soft hunk of sandstone. I rapped it sharply against my demo table. And there the sandstone resemblance ended.

  “I think it dented the table,” I said incredulously, rubbing a finger over the spot where the table and cookie had collided. “What possessed you to do this to a cookie?”

  Becky put her hands over her face and peered at us through her fingers. “I don’t know,” she moaned.

  Carol and I exchanged a glance over her head. This behavior—the attempt at domesticity and the self-doubt—was so unlike Becky that neither of us knew what to say. Carol put a motherly arm around Becky’s shoulders.