“Well, right now it’s Annie who needs taking care of. Cyphers may have been willing to get her statement in Sam Koh’s office, but she’s going to need a lawyer, Ovsanna. How many times has she threatened to kill Derek? She’s got to be Cyphers’ prime suspect; she’d be mine if I were lead on this. The next time he talks to her will be at the station, I guarantee you.”
I needed to talk to Orson before I did anything else. He’d taken over Thomas’s job as Head of Development at Anticipation. He’d bought a girdle, shaved his head, pitched his voice higher, and added a South Dakota accent. Then he picked a new name and had papers forged to prove it. He did most of his business on the phone, rarely appeared in public, and had managed to recreate himself as my second in command without anyone questioning his resemblance to the great Orson Welles. Peter knows who he is, of course, and we’re both careful to never call him by his real name in public, but I’ll never get used to thinking of him as Oliver Wyatt.
I needed to talk to him because the media was going to be on me in minutes and I had a shit-storm of studio business for him to handle before they got to me.
I asked Peter to call Ernst Solgar, my attorney. Ernst is Obour, and the oldest member of my clan. I didn’t need him for Annie, he’s an entertainment lawyer, but I needed him to give Peter the name of a top criminal lawyer in the area— preferably one of our species. It’s Louisiana— they shouldn’t be hard to find. Most of those vampyres Joshua York introduced his blood supply to in 1857 must still be around. And I’m sure a couple of them took the bar.
“And while you’re calling Ernst,” I asked, “would you search for Constance, please? It would be good if we can break the news to her before anyone else does. I don’t know if she was in love with Derek, but she left her boyfriend to start sleeping with him. That was last year, according to Annie, and they’ve been together ever since. The gossip rags only picked up on it a few months ago.”
Peter went looking and I called Orson.
He answered on the first ring. “Don’t worry, my dear, I have everything under control.”
“They just found his body an hour ago, Orson. This is the first moment I’ve had to call. How did you hear about it?”
“Annie’s histrionics have already garnered 27,000 hits on YouTube. Would that she could act that well on Mid-Evil. What were you thinking when you cast her, Ovsanna? As I told you then— she’s no Jeanette Nolan. And what about Constance? How’s she dealing with it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got Peter trying to find her. We’re going to need to shut down production, at least for next week. Will you start making the calls? And we’ll need to conference with Dan Knauf as soon as possible. It’s his baby, we need his ideas on how to proceed. Do we write the role out? Do we re-cast? Can we finish this episode with a body double? Dan can tell us all that. Or are we going to have to scrap this episode completely? Does Dan even know Derek’s dead?” My phone buzzed and I pulled it away from my ear long enough to read the text.
“I’ll call him as soon as we hang up,” Orson responded. “And then I’ll deal with the media. At least it’s a Saturday. If they’re calling the studio, they’re not getting through.”
“Peter just texted me. He has Constance in my suite. You make the calls and let’s talk again in an hour or so. I want to get to Constance before the cameras get to me. Oh, and Orson, I asked Peter to get the name of a NOLA criminal lawyer from Ernst, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. He’s got his hands full with Connie, I’m sure. Would you make the call? Tell Ernst I’d prefer a real bloodsucker.”
18. PETER
It didn’t take long to find Constance. She was sitting in her room in the dark. She opened the door when I knocked and I followed her back to her spot on the floor at the end of the bed, using the light from the bathroom and the reflection of the TV to make my way. She had a glass bottle of Voss water in her hand and a goldfish bowl beside her. Not the swimming kind. The marijuana-laced edibles kind.
The TV was turned to CNN with the sound muted. Every two minutes a chyron reporting Derek’s murder scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
I convinced her to return with me to Ovsanna’s suite. It’s the size of an airplane hangar and we’d be a lot more comfortable there. Plus, I told her, she shouldn’t be alone. She barely said a word, but she carried the water and the goldfish with her.
Once we got there, she started to let go. She hardly knew me. We’d met once on the set when I’d had business with Ovsanna and then again yesterday during the convention. She knew I was a detective and she knew Ovsanna trusted me. I guess that was enough.
Again she sat on the floor, her back resting against the sofa this time. “I really cared for him, you know?” she said, putting three goldfish into her mouth, one at a time. She chewed each one carefully with her front teeth, sort of mincing them into pieces like a rabbit, and then washed them down with the water and went silent again.
I waited. I couldn’t tell if she was stoned or in grief. Both, I guess. I wondered if edibles had to be mashed to a paste before being swallowed to be effective. Didn’t seem likely. Probably just an idiosyncrasy of hers.
She finally continued, her eyes almost closed. “The press crucified us. Between him being married to Annie and my being old enough to play his mother on the show, they had a field day. I wouldn’t have gone through all that if I didn’t care about him.” She lifted her head and looked at me standing above her. “Who killed him? Do you know?”
“No clue, so far. The police will want to interview you, I’m sure. You were at the convention all day, weren’t you? And you went directly to the Q & A?”
She nodded. “I should have sent someone to check on him when he didn’t come to his table. We didn’t get much sleep last night and I just figured he went back to bed and blew off the signing. He wasn’t in the best of moods. Annie’s been making him crazy with her threats. But when he didn’t show up at the Q & A, I didn’t know what to think. And I couldn’t go look for him.” She started crying.
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted him dead?”
“Yes. Of course. Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s Annie. She’s been ranting about it ever since we got here. It’s all so clear. With him dead before they divorced? She gets everything. Not just community property or whatever they had in their pre-nup. Everything. Plus the publicity— the tragic widow. That’s worth killing for just for that. Like one of those credit card ads— ‘Raking it in when your spouse dies? Priceless.’ She walked in late to the Q & A, did you notice? For a split second I thought maybe they’d been together.”
“I saw her. I noticed she’d changed her clothes, so maybe that’s what made her late. The police are questioning her now. But is there anyone else you can think of who had it out for Derek? What about your ex? Was he carrying a grudge?”
“Ah, you heard about that, did you? Oh, I’m sure he’s still pissed. Derek sued him for assault, you know, and the case is still pending. I wonder what happens to the lawsuit now that Derek’s dead.”
“Well, even if your boyfriend’s not carrying a grudge, getting out of the charges could be motive enough.” I was getting tired of looking down at her. I sat on the armchair facing the sofa.
“Don’t call him my boyfriend. His name’s Kurt. Kurt Wentworth. He’s my ex-boyfriend. He was Derek’s stunt double on the show. Looked enough like him that they can probably finish the season by using him— if they shoot him in low light and don’t give him scenes that require any acting chops. And if they’re willing to hire him back again after what went down. We met on the show, started sleeping together midway through the first season. I never let him think it was anymore than hot sex and someone to hang out with on location.”
“When did Derek come into the picture?”
“Toward the end of last season. The higher the ratings went, the more he and Annie got into it with each other. She was jealous of the attention he got; he was pissed that she was playing the diva and hold
ing up production for every fucking hair she had out of place. She was on a soap before Mid-Evil, a soap, for God’s sake— as long as she can cry on cue, she thinks she’s acting. Never learned her lines. Made up her own dialogue. We’re doing an historical drama with Mid-Evil and she’s saying things like, “What the fuck just happened to the guy on the horse?” And she never delivered a cue as written, so you’re standing there staring at her, waiting for something recognizable to come out of her mouth so you can respond with your lines, and then your lines don’t make any sense because nothing she said was in the script to begin with. She’s a spoiled brat, I’ll tell you that. And she can be a real bitch.” She took a long swallow of water.
“And Derek reacted?” I asked.
She snorted. “Working with Annie Ross is a nightmare, and both our performances suffered because of it. So Derek and I gravitated toward each other. Started running lines alone together. Progressed to commiserating about having to work with her. Even though she was his wife, he was an actor first and husband second. And then, one lunch hour on location at the ranch in Simi Valley, Kurt walked into my dressing room and found us together. Really together. He pulled Derek off me and threw him across the room. Derek hit his head on the counter, bit through his tongue, and blacked out for ten minutes. It was a little scary. When he came to, he needed stitches. His head and his tongue. He couldn’t talk for a week, so he couldn’t film. The company lost money, the tabloids made money, and Derek had Kurt fired. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect he probably blackballed him, too. Made it known around town that he was trouble on the set and not worth hiring. Kurt hasn’t had a job since.”
“Well, that sounds like plenty of reasons for Mr. Wentworth to put an obelisk through Derek’s shoulder blades.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Annie’s got just as many. But Kurt’s got a temper, that’s for sure. And he wasn’t happy when I saw him yesterday. Especially when I told him Derek was filing for divorce. I think he was hoping we’d get back together.”
“You saw him yesterday? He’s here, at the con?” I’d pretty much scoured the two ballrooms yesterday, hadn’t seen a Derek Connors look-alike, but then again, with everybody in costume, Kurt Wentworth could have been one of my Ferengi buddies, for all I knew. Or the guy in the bacon suit.
“He’s at a table in the vendors’ room on the second floor. All the stunt men from the show are there, signing autographs and doing demonstrations. He may have been fired, but those guys stick together. And Derek’s at the top of their shit-list these days.”
Great. The pool of suspects just got wider.
19. MARAL
Maybe Maw-Maw knows what she’s talking about. Maybe Miz Foret can help me. Mais, not ’cause there’s a cunja on me, ’cause I know there’s not. There’s no spell for her to lift. And she sure as shit can’t make me human again, for true. I don’t know everything there is to know yet about being a vampyre, but I know I can’t come undone from being Undead. Pic kee toi, Ovsanna, fuck you again. You’re gonna pay. But maybe, just maybe, Miz Foret’s got something— some tea or herbs or ground up oyster shells or something— to make me feel like I used to. I just want to feel something, some human emotion. Something more than just blood-thirst.
I’d have to lie to her about what made me this way. God bless Maw-Maw, she gave me the perfect explanation.
The sculpture garden was as creepy as I remembered it from when I was little. Being vampyre didn’t change that. Momma used to bring us out here whenever friends came to visit and she wanted to show them the baya. First we’d stop at Aunt Mae Mae’s stand for snowballs and Momma would remind everyone how we hadn’t been there for at least a year, but that she knew Aunt Mae Mae would remember exactly what flavor Jamie and I wanted. And Aunt Mae Mae always did. She’d start making me a nectar cream as soon as she saw me get down from the car. I always thought it was because she was our aunt and she did that for all the cousins. I was twelve years old before I found out we weren’t related. That’s just what everyone calls her— Aunt Mae Mae. And she remembers everyone’s favorite flavor, no matter how long it’s been since they bought one.
After the snowballs, we’d drive on down Highway 56 to the sculpture garden, with all its weird concrete statues. I used to beg to stay in the car. Those things scared me to death. Momma explained, every time we went, that they were supposed to represent the story of salvation— at least in the tortured mind of the man who sculpted them, a bricklayer named Kenny Hill. I didn’t know what that meant. I just knew they were creepy and I didn’t want to get out of the car.
The story was that Kenny Hill got fed up one day because the parish that owned the land wanted him to cut the grass. He knocked the head off of the Jesus statue he’d made and headed down the road, never to be heard from again. He left more than a hundred statues in the garden. Eventually Nicholls State University took ownership of the property and opened it to the public.
Sometime in the years I’d been away, Miz Foret had started living next door. How could a traiteur live next door to this? There’s nothing healing about it, for true. There’s a forty-five-foot-tall lighthouse with all these surreal cement angels and cowboys and soldiers hanging onto it. More angels with distorted faces are carved into pillars in front of it. There’s a red-skinned Jesus— maybe that’s the one they put the head back on— in turquoise jeans, riding a horse, with a cross in his arms. And cement statues of winged beings doing handstands and fighting with swords, wearing lightbulbs for crowns. It was like looking at an exorcism in the nine circles of hell.
I probably don’t have a soul now and I guess hell isn’t a pressing issue anymore, but these sculptures are so tortured and so bizarre, I’ll never forget them, no matter how long I live.
And this is where Miz Foret has coffee every morning?
* * *
I threaded my way past the artist’s self-sculpture, thinking how much it looked like that director Ovsanna liked, John Carpenter. Except that Kenny Hill’s statue had blond hair and blood pouring out of his heart.
I saw a sign I remembered from when we used to visit. I think Kenny Hill used to keep it above his kitchen sink. Now it was propped against the fence separating the sculpture garden from Miz Foret’s trailer. It read HELL IS HERE, WELCOME.
Miz Foret opened the door before I could knock. I had to back halfway down the stairs to make room for her on the landing. She was wearing a cream-colored apron with the Eiffel Tower printed on it. She had faded pink plaid pajamas underneath.
“Maral, sha, entrez, entrez, your mamère told me you were comin’.” She held the door open wide, leaving me barely enough room to get past her ample frame. All I could think was, “Well, if the Thirst comes on me while I’m here…”
Miz Foret was a nun when she was younger. I remember, before Jamie was born, she used to come to visit in her nun’s habit. Momma called her Sister Agnes. Then she left the convent and started doing healing work— reiki and folk medicine, folk magic, conjuring, even. That’s why Maw-Maw thought she could help.
I’d tried using Hoodoo to get Peter King away from Ovsanna, back in L.A. before Ovsanna turned me. It didn’t do shit. If that’s all Miz Foret was doing, I might as well not bother. But maybe she knew something else.
“What’s troublin’ you, Maral? What can I help wit’? Your mamère said someone used a gris gris on you. Is dat true?” There were two pictures of Christ on one wall of the trailer, hanging above two burgundy Naugahyde chairs in what passed for a living room. Across from them was the picture of Martin Luther King, JFK, and Bobby they sell in the conjure shops in The Quarter. The whole trailer was pretty much one long room, with a partial wall on one end separating a sleeping alcove from the kitchen area and dining table and the burgundy chairs. She motioned me to sit in one and she sat in the other, close enough to reach her hands out to me. I didn’t know how intuitive she was— if she could sense what I am by holding my hands. I figured if Maw-Maw didn’t know from her visions, for sure the traiteur wouldn’t
. Still, I clutched the basket of eggs on my lap instead. I sat down facing her and Jesus.
Jesus? I haven’t even begun to figure out what that all means now that I’m turned. God? Everlasting life? Mais, for true— I’ve got everlasting life. Doesn’t have anything to do with God though. Where does the rest come in? Oh, fuck you all over again, Ovsanna. You put the gris gris on me.
“I don’t know if you can help, Miz Foret. Maybe. Maybe someone used a spell on me. It would explain why I’m feeling so empty inside. I feel like I’m never gonna love someone again. I’m never gonna feel anything. Maybe it’s a spell, or maybe it’s just my momma dying, but I hate it. I don’t care about anybody right now, and I don’t like being like this. I just want to not feel dead inside. Is there something you can do? Something you can give me to make me feel love again?”
“I might be able to lift de cunja, sha, if dat’s what’s makin’ you act dis way. But if it’s not a spell, if it’s grief at your momma’s passin’ dat’s made you stop feelin’, or if it’s a broken heart or somethin’ else, well, dat’s not somethin’ I do.”
“But is there something that can be done? If it’s not a cunja? What is it that you know about that you don’t do? Why don’t you do it?”
“Oh, sha, let’s try liftin’ a cunja first. Let’s pray dat’s what it is. For true, you don’t wanna be messin’ wit’ de other things I’ve heard about. Things to help bring love into a heart. Dat’s black magic, sha, and it’s not somethin’ I’d ever wanna do.”
“But why not? What is it?” I wanted to scream at her. I don’t have a fucking spell on me, old lady! I’m a vampyre! If black magic will work, that’s what I need!
“It’s a rootworker’s remedy, and some of de ingredients are beyond my ken. Like blood from a beating heart and de eyelashes from a pair of dark eyes. Dat’s black magic, sha. I’d never harm an animal like dat. I’ve only heard rumors of it, and who knows if it would work, but it’s not somethin’ I’m ever gonna do.” She reached for my hands again and this time I let her hold them. “Now,” she said, “let’s see if I can make treatment some other way. Let’s get rid of dat spell.”
Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery Page 8