Vamparazzi (18 page)

“Does this still hurt?” His voice was low and soft.

“Um . . .” I'd forgotten about the bite on my neck. And now that Lopez had reminded me of it with his gently tickling touch ... All I could think about, actually, was the feel of his hands on me, his body warming me, the soft caress of his breath on my hair ... and the quickening rise and fall of his chest as he held me. I had no idea if my neck hurt, but the exultant pounding of my heart sure did.

The heavy thudding in my chest brought me to my senses. The sound of my own heartbeat reminded me that I wanted
his
heart to go on beating, too.

“Be honest with yourself, Esther,” the vicious killer had said to me that fatal night in Harlem, having left Lopez to die alone in the dark. “Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for
you?
”

Fueled by remembered horror, guilt, and grief, I summoned every bit of willpower I possessed, and I stepped away from him. “I have to go upstairs.”

In an effort to conceal my chaotic feelings, I wound up sounding curt. He heard it and immediately removed his hands from me.

“Right. Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Remember what I said. Don't lie to the cops about anything, but be discreet about what we've discussed.”

“I will.” I met his dark-lashed eyes, blue and bloodshot and a little brooding now. Then I looked away again. “Thank you for coming here to warn me even though you weren't supposed to get involved.”

He didn't say anything. Maybe he was remembering, as I was, that he'd done more extreme things than this for me in the past—including lie to his superiors, conceal evidence, and falsify reports. Which had a lot to do with why he'd broken up with me in the first place. That wasn't the kind of cop he wanted to be, and seeing himself as an honest and honorable police officer was closely entwined with how he saw himself as a man, too.

Finally he said, “I'd better leave.”

When he turned around and went the way we had just come, I said, “You're really going back there?” I knew he didn't want to be seen, but the underground passages still struck me as a dark, scary, and damp way to make his exit.

“I like the tunnels,” he said, walking away without looking back, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. “It's quiet down there.”

“Sure,” I muttered, lifting my skirts as I turned to climb the stairs back up to the theater. “Very quiet. Except for a vampire prowling around, draining people of their—”

“I
heard
that,” Lopez said irritably.

 

I exited the basement without encountering anyone. As soon as I closed the door softly behind me, though, I heard a terrible wailing that seemed to penetrate the very walls of the building. Someone was sobbing and screeching with the uninhibited passion of a toddler, but this person sounded a little older than that, if not necessarily more mature.

Following the tooth-jarring noise of Mad Rachel's wails of rage and anguish, I made my way toward the dressing rooms. I arrived to find that the area was jammed with people; the cast, the crew, Al Tarr, Victor, and a number of cops were all present.

Mad Rachel was inside our dressing room with the door closed. Between sobs, she screeched,
“I want Eric! I want my mamma!”
And also:
“Don't touch that!”

I heard someone else in the room trying to reason with her; someone who sounded stressed-out and exasperated. A cop assigned to the hapless task of questioning her, I guessed. Whatever he said, it was followed by full-volume ranting from Rachel, the gist of which seemed to be that the police were horrible people and she hated them.

Bill was standing in a corner, deep in conversation with a uniformed cop, his face morose. Victor was pacing just outside the closed door of Daemon's dressing room, wringing his hands and muttering to himself. Leischneudel was with him, trying to persuade Victor to take a sip of water. The actor dropped the water bottle when he saw me. It hit the floor with a thud, startling Victor, and rolled away.

“Esther!” Leischneudel cried with obvious relief. “I thought you'd left without me.”

“Ah, there's the missing actress,” Tarr said casually, to no one in particular.

Leischneudel ran toward me, but a tall stranger in a dark coat got in the way, saying, “Esther Diamond?”

Behind him, Leischneudel was waving his arms and grimacing at me.

“Yes,” I said.

“We've looked all over for you.” Without even glancing behind him, the man moved smoothly to block Leischneudel's path when the actor tried to get around him to reach me. “Where have you been?”

“Who are you?” My gaze flashed to the gold badge he was wearing in plain view. “And what's going on here?”

“Esther, you won't believe what's happened!” Hovering behind the tall detective, Leischneudel's face and tone reflected appalled shock.

“I'm Detective Branson, NYPD.” The cop's gaze fastened on my neck, and I realized he was looking at the bite mark Daemon had left there. “I need to ask you some questions.”

I looked around with an air of alarmed bewilderment. “About what?”

“Esther!” Leischneudel exclaimed. “Jane has been m—”

“Please wait over there, sir,” Detective Branson interrupted him, pointing to a chair about ten feet away without taking his gaze off my neck. “I need to speak with Miss Diamond.”

Leischneudel was hopping around behind him, trying to get my attention. In a moment of lapsed judgment, the actor clutched his throat, stuck out his tongue, and crossed his eyes.

Branson turned around and looked at him. Perhaps due to his years on the police force, he didn't react to Leischneudel's grotesque pantomime. “
Now,
sir.”

“Jane's been murdered!” my friend cried, abandoning his attempt at simulating violent death. “The one who attacked you last night!”

“Murdered?”
I repeated.

“She hath been most foully slain!” Seeing our expressions, Leischneudel forced himself to taking a calming breath. “Sorry. That just slipped out.”

“Is there somewhere private we can talk?” Branson asked me. “Such as your dressing room?”

I pointed at the door that was practically vibrating under the assault of Mad Rachel's shrieking wails. “She and I share that room.”

A spasm briefly crossed Branson's face. “Okay, not in your dressing room then.”

“Jane's been
murdered?
” I said.

“Her name wasn't Jane,” Branson said wearily, evidently having already learned why we called the victim that.

“But she's been murdered?”

“She's been found dead.” Branson used the dogged tone of one trying to get control of the conversation. “And I have some questions for you. Starting with, where have you been for the past twenty minutes?”

“The bathroom.”

He shook his head. “We looked for you the bathroom.”

“The one in the lobby,” I specified, hoping they hadn't searched that far afield for me.

The cop frowned. “Why were you
there?
”

The volume of Rachel's sobs increased until I could have sworn the door was rattling. I nodded toward it. “I was avoiding
her
.”

My explanation evidently satisfied Branson, since he moved on. “I understand that you and Adele Olson met last night?”

“Who?”

“The victim.”

“She's been
murdered?
” I repeated.

“Please answer the question, Miss Diamond.”

“What was the question?”

“Did you meet the victim last night?”

“Not exactly. And you know,” I said seriously, “she might not be dead now if you people had arrested her, the way I asked you to.”

I thought I saw a vein pulsing in Branson's forehead as he said, “Tell me about your encounter last night with Adele Ol—”

“Oh, my God!” Leischneudel gasped, startling both of us. He pointed toward my heels. “What happened to your dress? Fiona will kill you!”

Branson frowned. “Remind me who Fiona is.”

“Something's happened to my dress?” The last thing I needed, considering everything else that was going on, was trouble with the wardrobe mistress. “Oh,
no.
”

“Miss Diamond—”

“Here, look.” Leischneudel lifted the back of my skirt while I twisted around to see what he was trying to show me. I discovered that my recent subterranean sojourn had left a dark smudge on the hem of my white gown. Fortunately, it didn't look like a permanent stain; but Fiona would snark at me about it, even so. “Damn.”

Bending to look at the damage reminded me of how tortuously uncomfortable my corset had become by now. I said absently, “I need to take off my clothes.”

“What?” said Detective Branson.

“The worst part, Esther,” Leischneudel said urgently, “is that the cops think Jane was killed by a vampire.”

“We do
not
think—”

“You can't keep me here!” Rachel screeched inside our dressing room. “Equity will hear about this! You'll never work in this town again!”

“Actors.”
Branson looked like he had inherited Lopez's headache.

The door to Daemon's dressing room opened, and all eyes turned in that direction. The
Vampyre
star emerged, preceded by a uniformed cop and followed by a female detective.

As soon as he saw me, Daemon said, “Esther! Tell them I didn't really mean it!” His pale face was tense and strained, his normally seductive voice taut and panicky. “Tell them it was just part of the play!
Tell
them.”

My hand flew to my neck, my palm covering the telltale welt there. The melodramatic gesture was reflexive, not intentional. But everyone in the hallway stopped speaking and stared at me. I could feel all eyes fixated on the bite mark I was instinctively covering with my palm. Obviously, the incident onstage had already been a subject of interest in the police interviews.

“Esther,”
Daemon said desperately.

I looked at my handsome costar: vain, self-absorbed, ambitious, and deeply mired in his fame-seeking masquerade. Even if I could picture him murdering a girl (and I still didn't see it), could I imagine him prowling around in dark, dank, dirty underground tunnels to hide her body? Or to prey on other victims?

I stared mutely at Daemon, simply unable to envision him in that role.

Yet another cop came out of Daemon's dressing room. He held up one of the little bottles from the refrigerator and said to the female detective near Daemon, “It sure
seems
like blood. The same stuff's in the other bottle that's in the fridge, too.”

“Oh, it's blood, all right,” said Tarr, taking notes. “I could've told you that.”

Daemon snapped at him, “You're not helping, Al.”

The female detective looked at Tarr with open dislike. She did not, however, confiscate his notebook. Tarr was presumably a witness in the case, since he'd left here last night with Daemon and Angeline. And Lopez had said that Daemon's involvement would put this investigation under a spotlight. So maybe the cops figured that trying to prevent Tarr from writing about tonight would just be a fruitless effort. It would also presumably ensure that he wrote incendiary commentaries about the police stifling freedom of the press in an attempt to conceal how they were bungling the investigation.

No wonder Lopez liked the underground tunnels. There were no tabloid reporters, photographers, or groupies down there.

“When will you release pictures of the stiff?” Tarr asked the policewoman, still writing in his notebook.

“We won't.” She raised her voice to be heard above the sound of Rachel's persistent screaming and crying. “Can't someone convince that woman to calm
down?
”

“Lotsa luck with that,” Tarr said. “Noisiest broad in the world. High-strung, too.”

The policewoman said to Branson, “Maybe we should send her home.”

Everyone in the hallway nodded vigorously in response to this suggestion.

Except for Detective Branson, who shook his head with manifest regret. “We haven't been able to get a statement yet. Well, not one that's of any use. And I think we really need it tonight.
Before
tabloid goons have a chance to start planting absurd ideas and false impressions in her head.”

“Hey, I take that as an insult,” said Tarr.

“Good,” said Branson.

“I want Eric!”
Rachel screeched.

“Will getting ahold of this Eric person calm her down?” the frustrated lady detective asked, also looking a bit headachy now.

“Not that I've ever observed,” I said.

“When I was in Hollywood,” Tarr said, “this
really big
star I was covering—I probably shouldn't say who, since he was married—was sleeping with a girl like Rachel, and there was this one time—”

“Not now, Mr. Tarr,” the policewoman said.

“Come on, you
gotta
release photos of the corpse,” Tarr said without missing a beat. “I mean, this is great stuff!”

We all glared at him with varying degrees of revulsion.

“What?” he said, looking around at us. After a moment, he shrugged. “Just doing my job.” He went back to scribbling in his notebook.

The Exposé
would have a field day with this murder. The case was one more reason, I realized, that I (and anyone else with taste or sound judgment) should avoid Tarr.

“I hear that freelancers were at the scene, anyhow,” Tarr said. “So we're gonna run photos from
someone,
even if you guys won't play ball.”