“Of course.”
I waited while he got his emotions under control. His chest heaved with deep breaths he didn’t need. Whatever else he might be LaRue was deeply in love with his wife. It took him a few minutes before he waved a hand at me to go on.
“My sister isn’t part of this. Whatever you do to Jeremy Steel, to the men who follow him, leave her be. Let her grow up the way Josephine didn’t.”
“Young women are precious things, to be guarded and kept safe until their beauty blooms.” His eyes shifted from the fire to my own. . “Marie enjoys your sister’s company. They do some meaningless female thing together. I make a point of not knowing.”
Marie was Josephine’s mother, the scariest vampire I’d ever met. She was cool power, ready to kill without a second thought. I’d only been in the same room with her twice and I wasn’t itching to repeat it. My sister loved doing her hair.
“If this man bothers you, if you feel it best that your sister have her heart broken now, in some small way, rather than be devastated later, you might mention it to Marie. She tends to be rather protective of young women.”
I nodded. Marie had arranged Josephine’s disastrous first marriage. She’d been there when Jo had been kidnapped and held against her will by a succubus. That probably left her with an axe to grind when it came to people threatening young women.
“If I mention Jo was threatened,” I wondered out loud.
“Then everyone involved may well die. How much blood would you spill to keep your sister safe?”
I didn’t answer. I hoped the question was rhetorical, because really what were we talking about here? A broken heart? A pregnancy she didn’t want? What was the worst Jeremy Steel would do to my sister, the girl he said he’d take care of? The word sacrifice came up in my head, big and bold, said in Samuel’s bitter voice. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Thank you again for all your help.” I stood up to go. “I didn’t think you’d take Gina being involved so well.”
“I am delighted to surprise you.” Finally, he turned from the fire and a second later he was in front of me, his hands on my cheek again. “Do you remember the night you chided me for forgetting your eyes were gray?”
I’d never forget it. I’d been high on blue. High and wanton, ready to take him. It was before I’d loved Ted, back when my life hadn’t been so complicated.
“I can tell from your heartbeat you do.” He smiled slowly, tracing the side of my face with those cool fingertips. “Did I offer you any other surprises tonight?”
“The magic was pretty stunning. I’m definitely impressed.” I stepped to the side, away from his touch. I wanted the evening to end on a high note, some place where we were friends who comforted each other not just partners in some endless flirtation or whatever we’d been before tonight. “Have a good night.” I did my best to finish with a smile as I walked toward the door.
“Elisabeth,” LaRue called my name, stopping me. “You could feel my magic again.”
I knew what he meant; I knew how I would feel it. For a while there it had been different, but now he was back to the seduction. I sighed, more amused than annoyed this time.
“You do realize I’m in love with someone? Someone nice, with a pulse?” I asked LaRue.
“I would very much like to meet him, the torturer.” He smiled. “But I suspect he and I would have much different ends in such a meeting.”
With that cryptic line I walked out, too exasperated to ask.
I drove thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more screwed up it seemed. By the time I was drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I knew if I wanted to get the calm back I’d had earlier in the night I was going to need to talk it over with someone. And, honestly, there was only one someone I wanted to talk to.
Ted didn’t pick up until the third ring, but his hello was wide awake.
“What time is it?”
“Late,” he admitted.
“Were you sleeping?”
“Ahh, good question, let’s go with if I was, I’m glad you woke me. If I wasn’t, I need serious psychological help.”
“Nightmares that bad, huh?”
“That bad.” He took a deep breath, pausing for a second. “I should just go talk to William, but it’s not something we ever talked about. Assuming he’s around, anyway. He could be out doing something constructive.”
“I thought his something constructive was keeping you safe?”
“We’ve sort of moved past that.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I drove in silence, the phone held up to my ear.
“Come stay at my place,” I offered.
“For what, four hours? Maybe five? Hardly seems worth it.”
“Bullshit,” I called him on it. “You’ll sleep better at my place, and I’ve been a pretty rotten girlfriend lately.”
“You were pretty sweet this afternoon.” His smile came through in his voice.
“Uh-huh, are you getting dressed enough to drive over or am I picking you up?”
“I don’t suppose I could walk over?”
“With a psycho killer staking out your house?”
“I’ll take that as a no, and wait patiently for you to get here.”
“Good plan.”
“This isn’t why you called. You almost never wake me up after midnight just so you won’t have to sleep alone.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“What that?”
“Vampires. Vampire bullshit, vampire politics. I hate all of it. Also, I’m turning into your driveway.”
“It was LaRue, wasn’t it? He pisses you off more than all the others.” Ted laughed. I hated being predictable, but loved that he knew me so well. “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
By the time we got to my place, he’d heard all about it. He had no advice for me. He dealt with vampires like William, controlled, stiff, formal, not the overly sexy, unpredictable kind like LaRue. For the first time, I saw the appeal in William—dependable and dangerous but still boring.
We climbed into the sea of peach bedding talking it over. A tiny part of my mind compared us to old married couples talking about the kids or some suburban problem before bed. I’d wondered once if people like Ted and I would ever be the house-and-two-kids-with-a-dog kind of a people. Maybe this was as close as I would ever get, going to bed in the early hours of the morning, worrying about psycho killers and the undead.
“So LaRue came on to you.” Ted happily returned to the part I’d tried to gloss over.
“Like he always does. And when I reminded him that I’m in love with you, he mentioned he’d like to meet you but that you two would have different ends for that meeting. Weird, huh?”
“Uh, not really.” He kissed me chastely and clicked out the light. “Good night.”
“Wait, what, good night? How is that not really weird?” I clicked the light back on.
“You mentioned ages ago LaRue is bisexual. He’s got Josephine and you, but it doesn’t look like there are any men in town to his liking.”
“Huh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Let’s hope I’m wrong and he hasn’t either.” Ted clicked out the light again. “Unlike you, I’m no good at deflecting seductive vampires.”
By the time I decided to hit him with the pillow, he was already asleep.
21
Sleep stuck with me until nearly nine in the morning when Ted kissed me goodbye. My eyes dipped closed as soon as he locked the door, and despite my best intentions I lost a couple more hours. After that, it didn’t matter how much I wanted to spend a day thinking through everything that had happened. There were things to do, starting with contacting the car dealership that sold the car that was stalking Ted’s place. They put me on hold a few times before finally transferring me to the salesman whose name was on the paperwork.
“Chris Craven, what can I do ya for?” I didn’t know any car salesman but he sure sounded like one.
“I’m trying
to track down a car, Chris. I’ve got the plates and I’ve got the forms but I need the name of the woman in it.” I hadn’t thought of a line to feed him yet, so I went with the truth.
“I’m not sure we give out information that way. Maybe if I knew why you wanted it, like if it was a hit or run. But I’m guessing it’s not, ’cause if it was you’d have called the cops.”
“I called the cops. In fact, I’m looking at their report right now. It says the permanent plates haven’t been issued yet. So I guess the cop shop is behind a bit, but I know your dealership has the records.”
“Yeah, we do. We most assuredly do, but those records are in the back, with the gals who handle the title stuff. I can’t put my hands on them, even if I thought I should. You still haven’t given me a reason.”
I sighed, it would have gone better in person. Magic would have helped me decide between sticking with the truth or offering a bribe.
“Here’s the thing, Chris. This car and this woman, I keep seeing them outside my boyfriend’s place,” I leveled with him. “Now I called the cops, but they only got me to you. If I really wanted to, I could take my car keys and scratch up the paint job. Then leave my name so she’d have to call me for the insurance information. But it’s a pretty car and you just sold it. Maybe you’ll give me the name instead?”
He whistled softly. “Your boyfriend’s house, huh? And he doesn’t know her?”
“Uh-huh.” He was a talker, and I settled into my chair, dreading the rest of the conversation.
“Sounds like he’s lying to you.”
“I don’t think so, but there’s one easy way to find out—you give me that name.”
“That’s not really the kind of thing I’d give a person over the phone.” He paused, probably considering it. If we were face to face this was where I’d take the money out. “Look here, I don’t know you. This could all be some story.”
“Why would I lie?” I asked, knowing I had planned to just a few seconds ago.
The line was quiet for a long minute while he decided how much he was going to trust me.
“We make calls to check up on the sales. It occurs to me that maybe I haven’t made that call yet. If you gave me the plates I could write the name down here on my notepad, so I could call her later.”
“Okay,” I prompted, confused.
“Well, then if you happened to come in, say when I take lunch around 1:30, and look down at my pad, I wouldn’t have gotten between you and this woman. Wouldn’t have told you anything.”
I stifled a groan. “You’re right. You’d be completely in the clear.”
“Good enough. What’s the plate?”
I gave it to him, then I did a search on the dealership. It was an hour and a half up north, halfway to San Francisco. I thanked him before I hung up, even though I didn’t look forward to the drive.
Halfway to the dealership, I got bored enough to check my voicemail. There was only one message, from Randall. I was glad I’d missed him. I clicked the button to listen, prepared for a string of movie quotes. I got something much different.
“Uh, hey, it’s Randall. Um, I, ah, I found something, and it…it could be serious, so uh, call me, okay? Yeah, call me.”
I deleted the message, perplexed. I’d never heard Randall not talk in movie quotes. What was so serious? Unfortunately, the answer wasn’t going to come without a phone call I didn’t want to have just yet. Instead, I handled business—calling my client to set up the appointment that would finish my case with the producer. This time when I asked if she could see me, she gave me Monday morning. That time suited me. Putting off telling her she was just a beard sounded like a great idea. I spent most of the call thinking about that phrase, beard. Jeremy had used it, then Calvin. The two men were nearly eighty years apart in age. Maybe it was Hollywood slang they tossed around all the time but I’d never heard it. It made me wonder…
I dialed Randall. As annoying as he was, this might be important.
“Go,” he said instead of hello, the sound of TV loud in the background.
“Is that even from a movie?”
“Uh, Hicks, shit, I uh, I mean,” he stuttered for a few minutes before the TV went silent. “It’s from the movie Go. Have you seen it? Great film, golden.”
“Nope, sorry. You said you found something?”
“Oh, I found something. Your boy Steel is dirty.”
“Dirty?”
“I wouldn't go so far as to call him filthy but definitely dirty.”
I thought that might be a quote but I didn’t recognize it, so I ignored it. “Dirty how, Randall? What’s he done?”
“He makes movies. Lots of movies.”
“That’s not illegal or immoral. It hardly counts as dirty.”
“Okay, the facts are these. Early in his career, he did an interview for this obscure little Hollywood rag. He tells them his biggest influence is Johnny Chandler, who had all the beautiful babes drooling in the 80s. So I look up Johnny, and your guy, Jeremy could be his twin.”
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Long lost twins didn’t help. “Who is this guy?
“‘Who? Who is but the form following the function of what—’”
I cut him off, “Fine, what is this guy? He’s not a vampire.”
“Nope, and not an incubus either. Someone would have found that. And nobody’s got anything except maybe that he’s you know, ridiculously good looking.”
“Ridiculously good looking?” That was taking it a bit far. Jeremy was cute if you were into the muscles kind of thing.
“From Zoolander?”
Ah, it had been another quote. I ignored it to sum up what he’d found, “Jeremy Steel goes back to Johnny Chandler and both of them are good looking actors.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet! Because Johnny Chandler had a hate on for this actress, he refused to work with her. Called her a tired has been. So I look her up, and she’s done tons of stuff, including this no-budget thing from way back. Nobody saw it, total bomb. But in that movie there’s a guy with a walk on part, barely a role and his name is Edgar Carlye. Guess who Edgar Carlye looks exactly like?”
“Jeremy Steel.”
“Yup. Steel, Chandler, and Carlye could be triplets, if you could somehow have triplets that are born thirty years apart.”
“Tell me the years?”
“Caryle was the fifties, though I found some uncredited stuff in the late forties, then Chandler in mid-seventies through the eighties. Chandler fades out, barely gets a word in the paper when he dies just before the century changes. Steel’s on the scene a decade later, with his first big summer action flick. The director said he took a chance on someone new, but that’s not how Hollywood does things. Numbers that big, the star had to be someone you could trust.”
“Or someone you had complete control over.” My fingers tapped on the steering wheel, and soon I was muttering under my breath, Randall forgotten. “Which one is the real you, Jeremy?”
“‘What is real? How do you define real?’" Randall quoted and that one I recognized.
“‘Real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see,’” I quoted back. “And I’ve felt Jeremy Steel’s skin. It’s not cold, it’s human. Any chance you’ve got something else? Some other trick?”
“Nope, just these three headshots that are identical if you don’t look at the name on the bottom. Three headshots and two obituary notices.” He stopped for a second. “I look at Jeremy Steel and it’s like ‘I see dead people.’”
I rolled my eyes, glad for the information but annoyed with Randall, as always. “I need those headshots. In fact, send everything you got.”
“All-righty, then! I’ll get them scanned today, in your hands ASAP. But you have to admit it, Hicks…”
“Admit what?” I was being set up for another quote but after the favor he’d done for me, I didn’t mind as much.
“‘You ain’t never had a friend like me,’” he practically sang.<
br />
I thanked him for the information and hung up. Then turned up the radio as loud as I could, hoping to drown out the song he’d put in my head. I had just about done it when I pulled up to the dealership around one.
It was earlier than I’d hoped but probably not a problem. I parked and looked around a bit, trying to act like someone buying a car. I’d gotten my car from a guy in my squad who’d decided to go career. He hadn’t needed a car he couldn’t drive until after his tour was over and I didn’t need something brand spanking new. The whole car lot experience made me nervous.
I ducked inside before any of the circling dealers could get to me.
The wide-open windows showed off three hot new cars. I spent some time scoping the place out, literally kicking the tires just in case that was a requirement. When I had the desk system figured out, I checked my watch and, seeing I was pretty close to lunch time, went over. The desks were arranged in an open space, with lots of room between them to make myself inconspicuous as I picked up the phone. Next to it was a piece of paper with the license number I’d provided but no name.
“Glad I caught’cha,” a voice boomed from behind me.
I put the phone down before I turned. Chris Craven was bald, fat, and wearing a polka dot tie.
“You’re in my spot.” He pointed to the side of the desk. His mouth held at least four gold capped teeth and from his looks, I’d put him on the far side of sixty. I shifted from behind the desk to in front of it. “If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, you don’t look like the kinda woman who has boyfriend trouble.”
I smiled back at him. “It’s more like trouble found my boyfriend and I want to take care of it. You didn’t write down the name.”
“No, ma’am, I did not. That’s because when I got the paperwork I realized I sold that car to a man, not a woman. Man who sat in that chair where you’re sitting now. Strange fellow, standoffish but not a woman. Not by far.”
“Really?”
Hollywood Dead: Elisabeth Hicks, Witch Detective Page 21