Vamparazzi (13 page)

“Yeah. I'd rather they didn't find out I was here, so don't volunteer anything about me.”

“The
cops?
” I repeated.

“But I don't want you to
lie
to them when they question you. Do you understand? If they
ask
you about me, tell the truth. Just don't talk about me in front of the other people being questioned. I'll deal with—”

“Whoa! Back up a step. Why are the cops going to question me?”

“It's all right,” he said. “You're not under suspicion.”

“Of what?”

“Murder.”

“Murder?” I bleated. “Someone's been
murdered?
”

Lopez blinked. “Oh. I didn't tell you that part yet, did I?”

“No,” I snapped. “You left that part out while giving me first aid advice.”

“I'm sorry. I meant to explain this to you in an orderly, unalarming way.”

“Why am I going to be alarmed?” I asked suspiciously.

“But I'm a little tired, and this has been kind of a confusing conversation so far, what with Licenoodle—”

“—the Vampire Ravel, your earring, your neckline. Er, I mean, your neck.” He repeated with emphasis, “Your neck.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lopez sighed and ran a dirty hand over his beardshadowed face. “This is not going the way I intended.” He glared at me. “Which is par for the course when I'm with you.”

“Who's been murdered?” Fear seized me. “Oh, my God! Not Max?”

“
No.
Not Max,” he said firmly. “This has nothing to do with Max.”

“Oh, thank God.” I took a steadying breath. “No, I suppose not. I mean, I just spoke to him tonight.”

“So you still see him regularly?”

“Yes, of course. But I haven't stopped by his place lately, even though it's near here. The show's been kind of exhausting.”

“I'll bet.”

“He's coming to see it tomorrow night.”

“Oh? Good.”

I looked at him in surprise. Lopez had always disapproved of my friendship with Max.

In response to my expression, he said, “It might not be a . . . a
completely
terrible idea if . . .” He took a breath and concluded with obvious difficulty, “If Max kept an eye on you for a while.”

“Really?” I blurted. “Wow. That's a sea change.” When he didn't respond, I prodded, “I was ... surprised when he told me that you went to him for help when I was missing during the blackout this summer.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What changed your mind about him?”

“Nothing. But when I suspected you might be trapped with a killer, I was desperate.” Lopez avoided my gaze. “I'd have gone to Satan for help, let alone Max.”

“That's an absurd compar—”

“And when he and I talked, I realized that, whatever else I may think about him, I could count on him to step in front of a moving train to protect you.”

“Well, yes.” Actually, although Max and I had become close friends, I knew he would risk his life for
most
people, not just me. That was his calling—protecting people from Evil.

Realizing the weight of what Lopez had just acknowledged, though, I smiled and said warmly, “So you finally approve of him?”

“No, of course not,” he said, spoiling the mood. “I think he probably leads you into trouble a lot more often than he protects you from it.”

“That's not tr . . .” Well, there might be a
little
truth in that. So I changed the subject by pointing out, “He saved your life that night in Harlem.”

“I have a lot of questions about what happened.”

“You sound so ungrateful!” I said critically.

“Of course I was grateful. I thanked Max very nicely,
and
I overlooked a bunch of things I could have arrested him for.”

“Arrested? But—”

“I also bent over backward to keep both of your names out of what happened that night.”

“Oh?” I had suspected as much, since no cops ever contacted me about it. “Thank you.”

“That doesn't mean I don't have questions about whatever
did
happen. A
lot
of questions.”

“You wouldn't like the answers,” I said morosely. Lopez and I had waded through that kind of discussion before. Multiple times. It never went well.

“You're probably right.” His shoulders slumped, and he suddenly looked exhausted.

I recalled that it was the middle of the night, I'd just done two shows, and he was so tired he'd dozed off while waiting here for me.

And he'd mentioned
murder
.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “What's going on?”

“We got off track again, didn't we?” he said wryly. “Sorry. Look, there's something you need to know, and I wanted to . . . to . . .” He paused and frowned in distraction as the stentorian echo of Mad Rachel's voice penetrated the closed door of the dressing room.

“You didn't call me after the first show, Eric!” she shrieked. “How can I
trust someone who doesn't even call me WHEN HE SAYS HE WILL?”

Lopez stared at the door with a bemused expression as Rachel's voice approached this room. He asked me, “What is
that?
”

“Mad Rachel,” I said wearily. “The other actress in the play.”

The door opened and Rachel entered the room, still in makeup and costume, bellowing into her cell phone, “Fuck you, Eric! That is
not
what you said today!”

“This is unbelievable.” Lopez flung himself into a chair, crossed his arms over his chest again, and said to me, “Don't you have
any
privacy in this place?”

“It's a public theater,” I pointed out. “What were you expecting?”

Rachel paused momentarily in her tirade when she saw Lopez, then said into the phone, “A strange man is in my dressing room. Yes! Right now! Where am
I?
In my dressing room,
Eric.
”

“I
thought,
” Lopez said to me, “that the ‘public' nature of the place would stop at the door of your dressing room. A room where you—you know—
undress
.”

It was a reasonable assumption in the normal world. But in the theatrical world, dressing rooms tend to be pretty public places, and actors lose most of our modesty pretty early in our training. I had worked on any number of shows where actors and actresses all shared a large communal dressing room and had very few physical secrets left after the first few days. I had also worked various venues and gigs where I changed clothes in public rest rooms or utilities closets. When doing Shakespeare in the rain one summer, I had made my changes behind a curtain, so that the audience couldn't see me, but where I was nonetheless in plain view of anyone who happened to be spying on us from the woods behind our set.

“I don't
know
who he is,
Eric
.” Mad Rachel gestured to Lopez and said to me, “Do you know this guy?”

“Yes. It's fine. He's an old friend of mine.” After a pregnant pause, I said to Lopez, “I can't remember your name.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Hector Sousa.”

“Well, this is
my
dressing room, too, Esther, and I don't appreciate finding a strange man hanging around in here,” Rachel said. “We
share
this space, you know. You need to be more considerate.”

“What?”

“You shouldn't always be thinking about just yourself,” she said primly.

“What?” I'd had
enough
for one night. This was a bridge too far! “
What
did you say to me?”

Lopez muttered, “Fire in the hole.”

“You have the
nerve
—the utter unmitigated
gall
—to lecture
me
about being considerate?” I snarled. “You shrieking, whiny, loud—”

Lopez slid off his chair, seized my elbow, and started dragging me toward the door. “We're getting sidetracked again.”

“You
shrill,
nagging, noisy—”

“I don't know,” Rachel said into her cell phone. “Esther's having a cow about something. Esther Diamond. You know, that actress who they put in my dressing room.”

“
Your
dressing room?
Yours?
Why you little b—”

Lopez clapped a dirty hand over my mouth, hauled me forcibly out of the dressing room, and dragged me some distance down the hallway. He didn't let go of me until after I stopped struggling.

I was panting hard, my blood heated with rage. He kept his hands on my arms, as if afraid I might bolt.

“Take a deep breath,” he said. “And another. That's good. Keep breathing.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry. I guess I snapped. It was just one thing too many, you know?”

“I get it.” After a moment, he asked, “Eric is her husband ?”

I shook my head. “Boyfriend.”

“Wow. Imagine what the fights will be like when they're
married.
”

I remembered that, as a cop, he sometimes thought of marriage in terms of domestic violence statistics. “You think they'd ever get married?” I said doubtfully.

“Sure. People just like them get married all the time,” he said. “Ain't love grand?”

“Okay, I'm better now. Really.” I sighed. “She just gets on my last nerve.”

“I can see why.” He smiled. “But I'll bet people in the very last row can hear every word she utters in the play.”

I gave a puff of laughter and nodded.

“Let's just hope she doesn't turn up dead,” he said seriously. “If anyone besides me knows how you feel about her, it won't look good.”

Recalling what we had been talking about before Mad Rachel interrupted us, I said, “Lopez, you're scaring me. Who
has
turned up dead? What's going on?”

“Okay, here it is.” He paused, then warned me, “This is disturbing stuff.”

“Go on.” I braced myself.

“The body of Adele Olson was found this afternoon.”

“Who?” I said blankly.

“In the, uh, vampire community, she's known as Angeline.”

I shook my head. “I don't think I know anyone named Angeline
or
Adele Olson.”

“She's the fan who attacked you outside the theater last night.”

“What?”
When he nodded, I said, “Jane's been
murdered?
”

He frowned. “You knew her as Jane?”

“Huh? Oh. No. I didn't know her at all.” I briefly explained about the Janes. “So that's what I call anyone who dresses up like my character.”

“
Exactly
like your character.” He looked me over. “Right down to the shoes, earrings, and hair. She didn't have quite the same build as you, and I don't think her face looked anything like yours—then again, I never saw her when she was alive.”

“You mean you've seen her
dead?
”

“No, I've seen some postmortem photos.”

“Oh.” That sounded grisly, too.

He continued, “But despite the differences, to a casual observer, she was pretty much a ringer for you. When you're both in costume, I mean.”

Seeing how troubled he looked, I realized why he'd come to the theater in the wee hours to speak to me, evidently against orders, and without pausing to clean up first. Appalled by what I suspected was on his mind, I said slowly, with great reluctance, “You think the resemblance is significant.”

“It might have nothing to do with you,” he said. “Initial investigation suggests she was a mixed-up girl with dangerous tastes and not much sense.”

Recalling the way she had attacked me, I wasn't inclined to argue with that description.

“So maybe she just ran into some fatal trouble last night. But, well, yeah, I'm a little worried,” he admitted, “Someone who hung around this theater, who superficially resembled you, and who dressed
exactly
like you when you're onstage has been murdered.” He nodded. “The possible implications bother me.”

I shivered. “
This
is your attempt not to alarm me?”

“Sorry. This all went much better in my head than it's going in person.”

“Ah,” I said. “That
never
happens to
me.
”

He smiled briefly, then got serious again as he said, “There's something else I need to tell you about this. Something . . . a little weird.”

“Oh, goody.”

“You're going to hear about it, one way or another. So I'd rather you hear it from me.”

“Because you're so good at not alarming me?”

“Okay, if you'd
rather
learn about it from the tabloids . . .” Lopez said a little crankily.

“The tabloids?” I repeated with dread.

“The department won't be able to keep this quiet.” He gave a disgusted sigh. “That would've been for the best, but too many people already know. If it's not on the Internet yet, it will be any minute now.”

“What?” I asked anxiously.

“The victim was exsanguinated.” He added, as if thinking that I might not be familiar with the term, “Drained of all her blood.”

I gaped at him in horrified astonishment. “You mean she was killed by a vampire?”

L
opez said with forced patience, “No, of course not.”

I frowned in confusion. “But you just said . . .”