We were going to have to find out who the photographer was, to make sure there was nothing about him that wouldn’t fit with our story. Peter had to go back to his office to write up the report. He didn’t want me to stay at the beach alone, and I didn’t argue. I sort of liked having him think he was the boss.
We’d just been through our second battle with beasties and he didn’t seem to be running for cover. I decided it was safe to tell him about the earlier attack.
He didn’t run for cover, but he sure got pissed. “You fought off one of these things an hour before I picked you up and you never told me?! Why not?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly one of these things. These things are boxenwolves. The thing that attacked me Saturday night was a true were.”
“It was a werewolf, Ovsanna, a fucking preternatural monster that was trying to kill you! I don’t care what breed it was! You should have told me!”
“Well, I didn’t know how you’d react. And there wasn’t anything you could do about it, the thing took off. I haven’t seen any sign of him since.”
“Yeah? Maybe I have. There was animal hair all over my walkway this afternoon. I thought it was a dog or a coyote, but it could have been one of these freaks. If I’d known you were being tracked, I would have paid more attention. Jesus, Ovsanna, you’ve got to keep me in the loop. I’m on your side here. I told you on the phone—take advantage of me. This may not be what I had in mind when I said it, but it’s what I do. I want to keep you safe.”
Isn’t that sweet? In 450 years, no one’s ever said that to me. Of course, they’ve never had to. I wasn’t about to disabuse Peter of the thought. It was fun having a knight in shining armor. Just like I said—Doc Ford and Jack Reacher, only in real life.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I changed into dry clothes, left Peter waiting for the Coroner’s van, and drove back to Bel Air. The fog never let up until I got inland, and by the time I got home, it was almost one o’clock.
Maral was awake and waiting. She looked luscious in her long-sleeved nightshirt, but I was too distracted by the boxenwolves’ attack to do more than notice. Besides, she was loaded, which didn’t help my mood any.
Driving home, I’d gone over and over the story Peter and I had concocted to see if it was believable. The surprising part to me was that it was Peter’s idea to begin with. I didn’t think there was anything too morally wrong with it, but it was definitely outside the law. I knew it went against his nature, but really, what was the alternative? Blaming the murder on werewolves and vampyres was a stretch, even in a town that buys Anne Heche as Jesus’s half-sister Celestia.
“It’s late, Maral, why aren’t you asleep?”
“I had a nightmare. You and Peter were at the beach, and you were eating real food. He kept feeding you lemon Stilton and you were rubbing your face in a crystal bowl of rice pudding. It was all over you. When I tried to pull you away to offer you my wrist, you laughed at me and poured Kool-Aid on my head. Then you handed me a box of Band-Aids. And then Peter grabbed my MacBook Air and he was scheduling appointments for you in my calendar. I tried to get it away from him, but he threw it at me, and it was so thin it sliced through my neck and cut my jugular. Blood poured out all over the screen. I woke up crying.”
“Jesus. And then you smoked a joint?”
“Well, I had to do something, Ovsanna, and you weren’t here. What happened? Why did you come home? Didn’t lover boy show up?”
“Maral, I know you’re upset, but you’re acting your age and it’s not attractive. Yes, Detective King showed up. Just in time to stop a pack of werewolves from tearing me to pieces.”
“Werewolves? Why? Who were they?” She started backing up, her voice rising. “Were they those creatures we fought in Palm Springs?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know.” I followed her, putting my hands on her to try to calm her down. A vision came, of her at a grave site. She had something red in her hand, a flannel cloth or bag or something. I was too distracted to ask her about it. “They weren’t werecreatures. Not like Lilith’s kindred. Although the one that attacked me on Christmas Eve was. But these tonight were boxenwolves—humans, using magic to shape-shift.”
“A werewolf attacked you on Christmas Eve? Where?”
“It was here. He came onto the property and the geese went nuts. I got rid of him.”
“Oh God, Ovsanna, why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was shrill.
“I didn’t want to frighten you. You didn’t need to know. There was nothing you could have done.”
“But you told him, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You think he can do something for you and I can’t? Did you tell the mighty detective and he came out and saved you? Is that what this is all about?” She was shaking now and yelling at me.
I slapped her. Not hard. Just enough to stop her escalating hysteria. She’s uncontrollable when she smokes. I slapped her and she started to cry.
I took her in my arms. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you need to calm down. That’s the dope talking.” I pulled away and wiped the tears from her face. “Now look, I want you to go upstairs and go to bed. I don’t want to talk about this when you’re stoned.”
“Come with me, Ovsanna. Please, come and sleep with me. I’m frightened. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Maral, you’ve got to believe me. And you know I can’t sleep in your bed. I’ll be right next door and you’ll be safe. Just go to sleep. Peter and I are going out tomorrow morning to track down these wolves, and I need you in the office, taking care of business, while we do.” I kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, Maral.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
She didn’t go to bed. I could hear her from my room, mumbling to herself. She struck a match and I smelled something foul, like burning motor oil. And then she started that same praying again. In the ten years we’ve been together, I’d never heard her pray before last night. This sounded like an incantation. Maybe more hoodoo she’d picked up when she was home.
I never sleep with Maral, even after we’ve made love. She’s used to that. I explained early on that I can’t always control my transformations. There’s a constant danger that I might awaken in the middle of a change and need to feed. I’ve known too many vampyres who’ve awakened to find they’d drained their lover dead in their sleep.
She finished chanting and ran a bath. Whatever it was continued to burn; probably a candle. It was three o’clock before I heard her get in bed.
Two and a half hours later, she was up again. This time she was trying to be quiet. Whatever she was doing, she didn’t want me to know.
I slipped out of bed just as quietly and waited while she dressed and let herself out the kitchen door. From my window, I watched her unlock the Lexus hybrid. She was wearing black sweats and black running shoes, and she obviously didn’t want me to know she was leaving the house. She put the car in gear and coasted down the driveway before she started the engine.
I had a feeling she was going to the Sportsmen’s Lodge. She was hell-bent on getting rid of her brother’s friend, and I hadn’t been any help. What she thought she could do on her own I had no idea, but I couldn’t let her get into trouble. I was going to have to follow her.
I used a transformation I hadn’t used in years. It wasn’t easy. The older I get, the less I enjoy shape-shifting. It takes a real toll on my body. When I was younger, in the 1700s and 1800s, I loved using wings to get around Paris or Prague. I’d shift to a hawk or a falcon, anything but a bat. In those days, I thought bats were so clichéd. Theda Bara, one of my Vampyres of Hollywood, is Azeman, and they shift into bats every night. I couldn’t do it. Not then and not now. Especially not now, when every time I come back to my “human” form, something is slightly out of whack. Like fur hanging from my ears. Waxing is a real pain in the ass.
The original form of Clan Dakhanavar is the dragul, the dragon. That’s what I’d chosen in Palm Springs to go up against Lilith in h
er serpent outfit. God, she was hideous. A yellow-veined body with a scabrous scalp and a black forked tongue. It’s a good thing she didn’t survive. Once changed into a serpent, a vampyre can never change back. She would have hated giving up her Baby Jane makeup for good.
I couldn’t follow Maral as a dragon. Even in L.A. that’s asking a lot. And I didn’t know for sure where she was going; I didn’t feel like chasing the car as a dog.
I transformed into mist. It’s not quite as dramatic as smoke, but I wouldn’t be noticeable in the early morning cold. It was harder evaporating than it should have been, though. I’m really out of practice.
Maral turned left on Sunset, but instead of continuing to Coldwater and over the hill to the Sportsmen’s, she made a right on Hilgard and drove past UCLA into Westwood Village. Then she went left on Glendon and crossed Wilshire and made a left behind the high-rise office building and up the driveway to the Avco Cinema parking lot. She turned right at the top of the drive and drove through the open iron gates into the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. If I hadn’t been mist, my jaw would have dropped.
Last night, holding her to calm her down, I’d had a vision of her at a grave site. Now, here she was again. Why?
The two of us had been here together before. I have friends buried here. Dean Martin, John Boles, Fanny Brice. Cassavetes and Capote and James Wong Howe. Swifty Lazar. Eva Gabor and Eve Arden. Maral came with me when Rodney Dangerfield died. It was the first time she’d seen a headstone with a joke on it. Rodney’s reads, “There Goes the Neighborhood.”
I’ve always loved Billy Wilder’s: “I’m a writer, but then nobody’s perfect.”
The last time we were here was for a service for Merv Griffin. I miss him. He always made me laugh. Doing his talk show was great fun because he just loved to gossip, especially during the commercials. His gravestone reads, “I will not be right back after this message.”
There was a single light on in the office. Maral parked down the lane from it, closer to Marvin Davis’s mausoleum. An old pickup truck with Montana license plates followed her in. It parked on the opposite side of the cemetery, closer to the Farsi-engraved headstones. Three men got out, dressed in plaid flannel shirts, jeans, and lug boots. Two down parkas and an orange hunter’s vest. Gardeners, maybe.
Whatever she was there for, Maral didn’t want to be noticed. She had opened her car door and was starting to get out when she saw the three men. Immediately she slid back down in her seat and quietly pulled the door shut. She sat staring at them, watching their every move.
They weren’t gardeners. All three of them took their Peet’s coffee containers and their Maps to the Stars and spread out to read the markers on the graves. It was six thirty in the morning and these guys were fans. I’ll bet they drove all the way from Montana just to see Marilyn’s final resting place.
One of them went to the Sanctuary of Remembrance, and sure enough, the other two carried a potted poinsettia over to Marilyn Monroe. They took turns taking pictures of each other kissing her crypt.
Maral waited until they joined their buddy in the Sanctuary of Tenderness on the other side of the park. The sky was dark with rain clouds, and I wasn’t helping visibility much. That seemed to be what she wanted. She stole silently over to the enclosed garden where Carroll O’Connor and Jack Lemmon were interred. She had a gardener’s trowel in one hand. She looked up at the windows of the high-rise—probably to make sure no one was watching—waited until the men in the sanctuary had their backs to her, and then reached inside her sweatshirt and withdrew a black candle stub from her bra. It gave off the same rank odor I’d smelled coming from Maral’s bedroom earlier. Motor oil. And it looked like it had been rolled in red pepper flakes.
Quickly she dug in the space behind the stone that read, “Jack Lemmon in . . .” She deposited the remains of the candle in the hole and patted it over with the trowel. She was moving her lips as she dug. When I could have heard her clearly, back at the house, I hadn’t wanted to intrude. Now that I needed to hear her, I couldn’t. Mist is good for getting into places without being seen, but it’s not so good for eavesdropping.
I hung in the air while she got back in the car and then followed her through Westwood until I was sure she was heading back to the house. She was using hoodoo, all right. That red bag I’d seen when I’d held her could have been a mojo bag. She must have been to a cemetery before. I didn’t know enough about it to know exactly what she was trying to accomplish, but between the devil pod and the middle-of-the-night baths and the reeking candles, I wondered if her maw-maw hadn’t told her some spell to get rid of DeWayne Carter, the guy she’d brought back from the swamps. Fine with me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I waited until seven A.M. to call the Captain. I must have caught him in the shower; I could hear water splashing in the background. Telling the story over the phone was a little easier than doing it in person.
“It’s all over, Chief. You can call the media.”
“Hold on a minute.” The water stopped. “What are you talking about? The Cinema Slayer? You got him?”
“Yep. The Cinema Slayer took a run at Ovsanna Moore last night. He didn’t make it. He’s through running.”
“You’ve got him booked?”
“Nope. Not booked. Dead.”
“Dead? Jesus! What happened? You’re sure it’s him?”
“Sure as I can be at this point. He left a note in her mailbox announcing she was his target all along. Then he bragged about it when he grabbed her.” Ovsanna had insisted the two of us act out the story we were devising. That was making it easier to fabricate what I knew she’d be saying, too.
“What happened? Give me details.”
“She called me as soon as she found the note. She was out at her beach house in Malibu. I got there in time to stop him.”
“You shot him?”
“I shot him, yeah. Hell, yeah, I shot him. I didn’t have any choice. It was a righteous killing, Captain. There won’t be any trouble, believe me.”
“Are you all right? You need to talk to somebody?”
“I’m fine. I’m just glad it’s over. Hey, this town can get back to normal—whatever that is. And maybe the media will lighten up. I left my gun and my report on your desk. I’ll use my backup until the investigation’s over. He didn’t have ID, but Ovsanna thinks she recognized him—he was a paparazzo—so until the prints come back I’m going to do some digging. I’ll be around when Internal Affairs wants to talk.”
I was still slightly pissed that Ovsanna hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me she’d been attacked, even though it was before we’d spent any time together. Okay, so she didn’t know me that well to know if I’d stick around, but I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake. First and foremost, she should have known I’d protect her. I wondered if she’d told Maral.
I went out to check the trash cans, but they were empty, tossed on their sides like they always were after pickup. No animal hair left from under the gate. Too bad. I wanted to take a look at it again, show it to Ovsanna. Maybe it wasn’t coyote at all. Maybe it was wolf. Werewolf. If those fucking things had come anywhere near my house . . .
I needed to get an ID on the dead photographer. That much of what I’d told the Captain was the truth.
Ovsanna had gone online to some entertainment Web site and had printed a list of celebrity events happening that morning. I picked her up at her office and we drove down Wilshire to a fashion designer’s showroom/warehouse. Dennis Hopper was scheduled to appear; his artwork was being displayed along with pieces by Tony Curtis and Peter Falk. There were bound to be paparazzi there.
I parked in a lot on a side street and gave the attendant an extra five to keep an eye on the Jag. It wasn’t the greatest neighborhood. Once we got closer to the showroom, Ovsanna and I split up. She headed for the front entrance, where they actually had a red carpet and TV crew waiting at ten in the morning, and I badged myself into a side door of the warehouse. I m
ade my way to the front of the showroom and watched her through the window. She was wearing a red dress that looked like it was made out of wide strips of Ace bandage. It hugged every curve of her body, and believe me, that was a lot of hugging. “Yes,” I heard her tell the on-camera reporter, she’d worked with all three men at some time during her career, and she loved their artistry, on camera and on canvas. She waved at the photographers and came inside. None of the paps were the freelancers I was looking for; they must have been hired by the event planner to cover the show.
The showroom was pretty large. All along one wall there were mannequins posed like hookers, with their butts sticking out and tits exposed, wearing what I guessed were the designer’s clothes. They looked as though they’d been through a shredder. My mother could have designed something better, and she doesn’t sew. Live models, in the same shreds but without the flashing tits, stood like statues around the room. Occasionally they changed poses. That didn’t do anything to make the clothes more attractive. Who wears this stuff? I wondered. Waiters walked through the crowd, offering mimosas. Maybe that would help.
Each wall had one piece of art displayed. All Tony Curtis. All very colorful and fun. Peter Falk’s charcoal nudes lined a large hallway leading to doors that opened onto a loading dock. Dennis Hopper’s work hung on the exterior walls of the loading dock, which was where most of the activity was taking place. That’s where the bar and the DJ were. There were 150 people milling around, listening to hip-hop, eating miniature quiches and smoked salmon, and trying not to trip over a huge pile of garbage that had been left in the center of the dock. I’m serious. Right next to the bar was a heap of trash—a busted sofa, broken TV, empty paint cans, children’s toys, a cable box. Some maintenance man hadn’t done his job.
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