Sitting in his chair gave me a pretty good view of the city. He wasn’t high up so no postcard photo of LA. If he’d taken the trouble to look down, he’d see my car, but I doubted he ever did. It took me all of ten minutes to find the piece of paper where he wrote his passwords down and log into his computer. Unfortunately, his computer did not yield a treasure trove of dates and photos. As I searched, someone outside the room clicked out the lights, one set at a time. First, his office went dark and then underneath a crack in the wall, another light blinked out.
There was a seam in the wall, showing not exactly a secret door to a secret room but one hidden enough that most people wouldn’t find it. I stepped inside, feeling around for a light switch. There was another window in here, but it was covered by tightly shut blinds. From the ground, I’d assumed it was a separate office but when I switched on the light, I saw otherwise.
In front of me was a fairly nice bedroom. The furniture looked like a hotel room—clean and put together without much personalization. The bed skipped a headboard and instead went with half a dozen very large pillows, all dressed in a swirl of navy blue paisleys. Everywhere else, the room had touches of bright, fruity orange. Toward the back, I saw a bathroom with a small shower and orange bath towels. A bedroom and a shower… Whatever could Dan be doing in here?
The answer showed up in the bedside table—an array of personal lubricants, next to a few discreet plastic devices I wasn’t about to touch without gloves. Sure, they looked clean, but…
This was where he did it. No seedy hotel rooms, no trashy back of the car moments, just a well-appointed room for cheating on your wife. I stopped myself. Maybe not—maybe the room was older than the wife was. Nothing in here felt dirty, more private. Guilt welled inside me; being in the room was more than a little unfair. His wife should talk to him, work it out, ask him. Damn it, she shouldn’t have married him without knowing.
I kicked a cushion that had fallen on the floor and it smashed into the blinds with a loud rattle.
I hated destroying someone’s life. Fuming for a bit, I got back to work retrieving the cushion and returning it to the side of the bed where it had been when I walked in, looking at the room from a new angle. How was I going to get camera equipment in here? Now the bland décor became a problem—no plants to hide something in, no bookcase with a spot to wedge a camera. The room was hiding-place free.
The only option was the blinds. I walked over and checked. I could go to the building across the way and look in almost directly. Unfortunately, breaking into that building wasn’t going to work. Then I noticed the angle of the blinds, angled up so no one from the street could see. I looked up instead. The roof of the building next door was open. I could open the blinds, climb up there, and with a long lens, digital zoom…in any other town, it wouldn’t work but this was LA. I’d be just another paparazzi.
I opened the blinds just enough, hoping Dan wouldn’t notice, and left, satisfied with my plan if not with my work.
Traffic made the drive that much longer and more boring. Thankfully, Garcia’s number flashed on my phone when I was halfway home.
“What do you have for me?” I asked instead of saying hello.
“I got nothing.”
“Nothing on which one?”
“Jeremy Steel, nothing.”
“I thought I could just check out the cover of People magazine?”
“Go for it and you’ll get the same bullshit I started with. Born in a small town, but which small town? He’s a Gemini, but when exactly was he born in June? I got five dates, no two line up.”
“So false ID?”
“False is a compliment. His story has so many holes in it, it’s barely a story. I did some digging, checked his tax records. Social security number checks out, issued on June 17, which matches one of the birthdates. Figured I’d go from there, but the social was issued in LA and he was supposedly born in farm country—maybe Iowa, Kansas, no one’s real sure about that. I can tell you all about his credit history, but him, where he grew to up, if he went to college, I got nothing.”
“Huh. What does that mean?”
“He’s a ghost,” she said with a laugh. “And I think I still owe you a favor since this sure doesn’t count. I promise to get on your plates tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Sounds good.” I hung up, perplexed. Maybe Jeremy’s dark past was about to catch up with him and that’s why my car had been crunched. Then again, maybe he didn’t have a dark past, he just liked his privacy; Hollywood people could be like that. Of course, Hollywood people like that didn’t get to date my sister.
Whoever he really was, Jeremy Steel just lost whatever shred of approval I’d given him.
10
The guy on the sidewalk who’d benefited from mom’s home cooking gave me a look when I walked by. He didn’t say a word but the look put me on edge. Seconds later, my hunch was confirmed—Douglas and Calvin were waiting at my front door.
“LaRue wants to see you.” Douglas stood from leaning on my wall.
“People in hell want ice water.” I was doing my best to unlock the door without letting them in.
“This is serious,” Calvin took over. “Samuel’s been missing since Saturday.”
“Refresh my memory. Who’s Samuel again?”
“The guy you usually see him with.” Douglas indicated Calvin with a jerk of his skull. “The one who went to check out the threat against Josephine.”
“Shit.”
“That about sums it up. Now, are you coming along nicely or do we have to be annoying about it?”
I didn’t want to ask Douglas what he meant by that last bit. Was he trying to pull some strong-arm vampire stunt on me?
“I’m going, but don’t think this means LaRue can just snap his fingers and I’ll be there.”
“Of course not,” Calvin agreed. “He never snaps his fingers.”
They drove. I’d been in this situation before, Douglas in the back seat with me, Calvin and Samuel in the front. I hadn’t known their names then and I’d liked them a whole lot less but that didn’t make this car ride fun.
“Gonna tell me about it?” I struggled to maintain my indifference. Neither of them knew about the Jeremy Steel connection or that Jeremy led to my sister. I wanted to keep it that way. Gina had an entirely too romantic view of vampires. If Jeremy was a bad apple and someone rushed in to save her, I wanted it to be someone with a pulse.
“Not really,” Calvin admitted.
I looked at Douglas. He’d had my back more than once in the war. That had to count for something, right?
“Nothing more we can tell you. Samuel left on Thursday, called in on Friday morning before sunrise. Nothing since.”
“Can’t LaRue call you boys back with some supernatural leash or something?” I was vague on how the whole vampire-who-made-you thing worked but that sounded right.
Calvin’s eyes flicked to me in the rearview mirror. “He can. He tried. Still no Samuel. That’s why you’re here.”
“Great.” I let my sarcasm come through my word and then went quiet. A few minutes passed as I watched out the window. The sides of the highway looked empty, and my mind drifted back to the last highway I’d taken, the one that led to a dead body hung up like a hunting trophy.
“What’s up?” Douglas asked.
“Huh?”
“Your heart rate just shot up. What’s wrong?”
“Uh, nothing. Just remembering a case. It spooked me a little.”
“Not a vampire, though?” Douglas knew all about how much I hated most vampires.
“No, not really.”
“Try again, huh, honey?” Calvin sang with a smile.
“You can tell when I’m lying?” I swallowed hard at the thought.
“I’m good at that little trick. So, who’s the guy? Any new major players in town that we ought to check out?” His hand flexed on the wheel, letting me know that wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for Ted’s friend. I debated for a long sec
ond about giving him up, but Ted wasn’t having him stay for fun. William was protection. I might not like him but he kept my boyfriend safe so I’d keep William safe.
“No one important, no one local,” I waffled, not really lying.
Calvin didn’t call me on it. Instead, he pulled into the circular driveway, turning the car around the giant water fountain that looked like Jo.
“What’s the deal with that?”
“He got it made in Italy, like a hundred years ago.” Calvin swung the car door open, then opened mine. “Whenever we get her back for a while, he has it shipped in. Same as everything else, really. We don’t set up house until she’s found. Then the minute her mother snatches her back, we pack it all up.”
“Lovely life,” I mused, opening the front door.
Douglas was quiet as we walked inside the house while Calvin didn’t seem to care about the constant servitude. “It beats the alternative.”
“A fact you would do well to remember.” LaRue’s voice oozed false concern from inside the parlor. Reclining on the chaise lounge, wearing only black leather pants, he was going for seductive but missed it. His tone wouldn’t interest even the most desperate. And, at that angle, he looked gaunt. It made me wonder how hard his life must have been, how close to starvation he must have come.
“What are you thinking of, dear Elisabeth?”
“How you look naked,” I admitted, glad I didn’t have to lie.
“But I am not completely naked,” he whispered, his lips close to my ear. His voice caressed me, reminding myself that if he wasn’t a dangerous vampire and married to my best friend a fling might be fun. Then again, I wasn’t a big fan of meaningless flings, and he’d crossed the room faster than I could see him with a predator’s grace.
“Close enough.” I smiled at what might have been but stepped back from what was. “Why did you need me?”
“Samuel is missing. Calvin can only search during the night. I need someone for the day.”
“I’m on a case, maybe when it wraps it?”
“Dear Elisabeth, you know better.” He moved again, coming in front of me, leaning one arm on the marble fireplace mantle, face stern. “This man, the one that keeps Samuel from retuning, he threatened my Josephine. Nothing else matters until he dies.”
“Where is Jo?” The minute he mentioned her I started worrying.
“At the club, singing. She promises me no one could ever reach her there.”
“And you let her go?”
“I am not her mother. I will not keep her caged. But now that you have arrived, Douglas will watch over her.”
“Why wasn’t he there before?”
“I doubted you would come if I sent Calvin for you alone.” He nodded at Douglas, who left the room without another word.
My blood started to boil. I’d been manipulated. Worse, I was being treated like any other lackey. “I am not one of your servants.”
“No, Elisabeth, you are so much more to me,” he whispered again, behind me, hands on my shoulders. I jerked them off, walking forward.
“Don’t. This isn’t flirting. You don’t get to demand I drop my life just because you need me. Don’t act like I’m a thing you use to accomplish an end.”
“I am crushed you think I do,” he said from the chair, draped over it like a blanket. His leg dangled over one chair arm, the other brushed the floor, an arrangement that showed off every muscle in his hard stomach. His blond hair drifted over his naked shoulder in a soft wave, leading down to one dark pink nipple. I tore my eyes from his body, determined to have this conversation like a civilized adult. His eyes met mine with a soft smile. “You’re not the only one who knows what it means to be treated like a thing.”
His soft confession made him vulnerable in a way I hadn’t seen. I walked over to him, but stepped past his beautiful body to look out at the dark velvet night, giving him privacy in case he wanted to start talking again. After a few seconds he did.
“I was used badly once, when I was young, taught that my only value came from the pleasure my body could give. And I believed it, for a very long time. I thought the world was an ugly place where people took what they wanted and you could only survive if you did the same. Josephine saved me from that, and now she’s threatened. Will you help me protect her?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Underneath all the flirting we were friends, and I helped my friends, vampire or not. “Calvin searches at night and I find him in the morning and take over?”
He nodded.
“Do we know anything about what happened to Samuel—who he talked to or where he was?”
“Nothing.”
I turned back and sat across from him. “Are you sure he’s still alive? I mean, dead, but not dead. You know, like you.”
My ham-fisted phrase earned me a frown. LaRue didn’t seem to like being reminded of the difference between us. “He is alive but he does not come when I call.”
“All right, I’ll look into it with Calvin.” I nodded, mentally working through how I could juggle both investigations. “I need to be in the city anyway. But the case that’s paying me gets priority.”
“But of course, you will do your best to end it as quickly as you can.”
“Jesus, you are annoying.” I walked toward the doorway where Calvin was waiting, ever the silent sentinel.
“What else could I be when you deny me the chance to show you my better nature?”
He whispered the words again, but did it without moving. This time the seduction felt like a defense mechanism. If he ever stopped seducing and showed me his real self, he’d have a better chance at something between us. Good thing he’d never try that. Instead he draped over the chair like it was a throne, long blond hair and hard muscles on a lean frame, posed to make me forget the history he’d shared.
“You okay?” Calvin asked when we’d gone a little way from the house.
“He, uh, he bugs me, I guess.”
“I know what he does to you. I’ve seen him do it to other women. If it makes you feel any better, you’ve lasted longer than most.”
“Yeah? It does make me feel better. How twisted is that?” I relaxed in the front seat of the sedan. The bench seat cradled me, long and wide like a couch, with the seatbelts put in as an afterthought. “What happens to most of them when he’s done?”
“Exactly what you think—they get discarded. Doesn’t matter how they show up—the older ones who are trying to seduce him when she’s not around, the younger ones he takes when she is. It’s always the same. She leaves and he chases her. Whoever he happened to be doing at the time gets dropped like she didn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. Don’t any of them get a better ending?” LaRue was gorgeous and skilled, but the idea of being tossed aside, completely ignored whenever Josephine showed up, wasn’t worth all the skillful pretty in the word.
“Actually, that is the better ending.”
I wondered if I should ask for details. Probably not. Calvin was driving near town now, the street lights letting me watch his features in profile. He wore a thin mustache, two long skinny triangles of hair, the short sides not touching at all, the hair dark against his pale face. I’d never seen him fiddle with it or touch it, but then I didn’t even know what color his eyes were. He was just now becoming a person to me.
It was stupid, but I asked anyway. “What’s the worse ending?”
“She gets jealous.”
“You mean Jo? She doesn’t have a jealous bone in her body.”
We pulled up to my place and he gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “I know you two are friends, but she’s not always sweetness and light. I’m sure you noticed none of us ever use her name.”
“I figured LaRue had some edict.” I had my hand on the door but this felt important.
“Some of his affairs start out casual but it could lead to something, or maybe it is leading to something… They don’t last long after that.”
&nbs
p; “What are you saying?” I should have asked what are you not saying, but my heart was pounding too hard for me to hear sense.
He looked ahead at the road; hands tight on the steering wheel. “You’re her first friend. The others were rivals or playthings. It’s like LaRue says, she breaks her toys. I’ve seen some hard things in my life.” He swallowed, no doubt remembering them. My palms itched to touch him, to see what he saw. “But I’ve never seen someone turn pleasure into a weapon the way that woman can. He’s not the one you should be afraid of.”
A pause, a heartbeat, while I felt the fear come off of him in a wave. I started to ask him what it had been like when he’d first met Josephine, if he’d ever gotten the invitation I had to join the two of them in bed. Was he just talking or had he learned from experience? But I was too afraid. I gave him a card with my phone number and told him to call me when he was in LA. He nodded and wished me a good night.
Upstairs, ready to go to sleep in the bed Jo had given me, I wondered about her and LaRue. About all of their household. A year ago, I couldn’t be in a room with a vampire—now I only hated them in principle. Jo was my friend. I cared for her and I trusted her. Would it bother me if people saw her as dangerous? No. But it still shook me up to hear about it. Then again, her whole world shook me up. I liked the world where people only had sex with people they cared about better. Sure, it was a fairytale world but it was a happy one.
I was beating up my pillow when my cell phone went off, startling me.
“Hicks.” My voice was tight, unhappy. I didn’t need whatever trouble the call would bring.
“Aw, tough day, sweetheart?” Ted asked.
“You have no idea.” He never called me sweetheart. Something was up.
“Why don’t I come over? I could bring some massage oil or—”
“Pizza.”
“What?”
“Or dinner. Whatever you want..”
“It’s almost ten.”
“It was a long day. Bring dinner, and when you get here I want to know everything, sweetheart.”
Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective Page 12