Which was plenty of time for our killer to off Alexa in the bathroom stall. Assuming that the killer punctured her neck and drained her of blood, it would have taken no more than five minutes tops, and the killer would have been on her way.
The only snag would have been I doubted Alexa would let someone drain her of blood without a struggle. Sure she was into the scene, but at some point she must have realized that they weren’t playing. So how come there was no sign of a struggle? No blood anywhere at the scene?
“What’s that?” Ramirez asked, coming up behind me, a plate of cookies in hand. Chocolate chip, if my nose didn’t deceive me.
I quickly shut the laptop screen.
“What?” I asked innocently.
He shot me a look. “Did I just see fangs on that website?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“Luuucy,” he said, doing his best Ricky Ricardo.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, yes. I’m researching vampires. Happy?”
“You know what would make me happy?” Ramirez asked, setting the plate down on top of a diaper genie box. “A wife who sits at home and knits. Or bakes. Or even does crossword puzzles.”
“Boring,” I decreed, grabbing a cookie. “What fun would that be?”
He grinned, showing off the dimple in his left cheek. “You’re right. No fun at all,” he teased.
I grinned back.
But then the weirdest thing happened. A film of awkward settled in the room between us. See, normally, this is where he’d make some sexual comment, do those dark, chocolate eyes at me, I’d melt into a puddle, and then he’d scoop me into his arms and we’d hit the bedroom.
Only his eyes weren’t dark chocolate right now. They were just a slightly amused brown. And he wasn’t making sexual comments. In fact, his eyes were straying to the pile of paperwork beside the laptop more than they were to me. And I was way too big to be scooped by anyone.
It was almost as if I could feel the chemistry between us dying a slow, painful death as we sat there grinning stupidly at each other.
Okay, I had two choices here. I could either grow a pair and ask my husband why he didn’t want to sleep with me… resulting in most likely being rejected for the second night in a row and possibly hearing the dreaded truth that my gargantu-butt no longer turned him on. Or, I could instead take the plate of cookies, get into my Snuggie, and go watch Moonlight for the eighth time with my good pal, Denial.
The cookies were chocolate chip. The decision was a no brainer.
I did a yawn that was bordering on uber-fake, stretching my arms above my head. “Well, I’m super tired so I’m gonna go retire early,” I told Ramirez.
“Sure. Good idea,” he said, his hands already reaching for the papers beside the desk, his eyes not meeting mine as if he’d heard the chemistry die, too. “’Night, Maddie.”
I grabbed the plate, shoved another cookie in my mouth as I mumbled, “’Night,” and made my way into bed.
Alone.
Again.
Chapter Fourteen
I was chasing her. Running through the streets of downtown L.A. It was dark, the streetlights casting only the faintest glow of light as I watched her red hair disappear around a corner. Amazingly, the street was deserted, something that never actually happened in L.A. It was just her and me. I could hear her breath coming hard, was sure I was catching up to her.
“Becca!” I called out. But she didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. Just kept running.
I continued following her, but the faster I needed to go, the slower it seemed my feet would move. It was like the sidewalk was suddenly made of molasses, every step a struggle. And I could see her getting away, pulling farther and farther ahead of me until all I could see was the faintest outline of her shape.
“Becca!” I called out to her again.
But a deep voice behind me responded, “Forget her.”
I stopped running and spun around to find myself face to face with Sebastian. His icy blue eyes were bearing down on me, his hair shining like dangerous spikes in the glow of the lamps above us.
“She’s gone,” he told me. “But I need to replace her.”
He took a step forward. “I want you to replace her.”
I opened my mouth to protest, to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, I felt myself gasping for air as Sebastian’s eyes turned wild, his lips parting, and his fangs gleaming under the streetlamps as he reached for my neck…
The sound of the William Tell Overture screamed from my nightstand, jerking me awake. I took three deep breaths, pulling myself out of my dream and back into reality as I glared at the alarm clock numbers glowing red next to me. 7:30 AM. Reluctantly I fumbled in my sleep-haze until my fingers connected with my cell, and I managed to stab the on button.
“Hello?” I croaked out.
“He didn’t come home last night,” Dana whimpered on the other end.
“Who?”
“Ricky! Maddie, he didn’t come home last night. He’s out with Ava. That’s it, I’ve lost him to a Playboy vamp-bunny!”
I blinked, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “You’re sure he’s out with Ava?”
“Where else could he be?”
“Maybe he was shooting last night?”
I heard Dana nodding on the other end. “Uh huh. He was. But the shoot was over at six, and it’s now seven-thirty, and he isn’t home.”
I did a mental eye roll. “An hour and a half? Honey that’s not a ‘he didn’t come home last night,’ that’s a ‘he’s stuck in traffic on the 101.’”
“This is what she’s doing to me,” Dana said, her voice rising into the hysterics zone. “Thanks to that full frontal twit I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, all I think about is Ricky signing another contract to let her sink her fangs into my boyfriend’s neck.”
“I’m sure Ricky’s on his way. Did you try calling him?”
“His cell is off.” Dana paused. “Oh God. His cell is off. That’s a bad sign, isn’t it? That’s a sign he doesn’t want me to know where he is. He’s sleeping with her, isn’t he? He’s sleeping with her right now with his phone off!”
“Deep breaths. In, out,” I instructed.
I heard her comply on the other end, sucking in a gulp of air. “Maddie, you have to come down to the set with me and find him.”
“Now?” I asked, glancing at my alarm clock again. 7:32. Still way too early for human contact.
“Please, Maddie. I’m going insane here. I need moral support. I need backup. If I find him naked in her trailer, there’s no telling what I might do.”
She had a good point. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“I love you. I’ll be there in ten,” Dana promised, then hung up.
I resisted the urge to fall back into my pillows again, instead dragging my tired self into the shower and through the rituals of hair, make-up, tooth brushing. I then crammed myself into a pair of yoga pants (that were only a little tight in the butt), a forgivingly empire waisted baby-doll sundress (that was long enough to cover said butt), and a pair of woven wedges. I was just shoving Baby-So-Lifelike into my bag (this time wrapped in a plastic diaper from one of the many boxes stored in our spare room) when Dana showed up, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me out to her car.
To say the ride to Sunset Studios was tense was a gross understatement. Dana treated yellow lights like challenges, stop signs like suggestions, and her gas pedal as if it were an icky spider that needed stomped to death, the harder the better. By the time we finally parked in the lot next to the line of golf carts, my knuckles were whiter than a Moonlight cast member and were permanently embedded in her dash.
“That’s it, next time, I’m driving,” I warned her as she grabbed me by the arm and steered me to a golf cart.
Five minutes later we were pulling into the Brooklyn street where the Moonlight set was camped out again today. Dana narrowly missed hitting a wardrobe rack as she pulled up next to Ricky’s trailer and catapulted herself to his front do
or, banging on it with both fists.
A moment later, Ricky’s head popped out of the door. “Dude, what’s going on?” He looked down and saw Dana. “Babe? What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What am I doing here?! What are you doing here?!”
He blinked. “Filming?”
But she pushed past him, storming into the trailer. “Where is she? Where is that pale-faced slut?”
“What is she talking about?” Ricky asked me as I entered a step behind her.
Only I didn’t get to answer as Dana turned on him.
“You didn’t come home last night,” she said, pointing a finger in his face.
Ricky took a step back. “We ran late with filming.”
“And you didn’t call me?” Dana asked,
Ricky shrugged. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“And your phone is off.”
“Like I said, we were filming. I didn’t want it to go off in the middle of a scene.”
“You’re not filming now.”
Ricky’s eyebrows furrowed down. “Babe, what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal? The big deal is,” Dana said, puffing up her chest like a blowfish trying to scare off a shark, “that I was not able to get hold of my boyfriend who didn’t come home last night!”
Ricky blinked at her. “I never come home at night. I’ve been doing night shoots for the last three weeks.”
“But you didn’t come home at six either!”
Ricky looked from Dana to me. “Is this for real?” he asked.
Dana threw her hands up. “Ugh, men!”
Ricky opened his mouth to say more, but a PA stuck his head in the door to the trailer. “Ricky?” he asked. “You’re needed in make-up.”
“Be right there,” he promised. Then he turned to Dana. “Look, we’ll talk later, ‘k? I gotta go.” Then he wisely didn’t wait for an answer before hightailing it out of the trailer.
Dana sat down on the sofa with a huff that ruffled her blonde bangs. “I swear if he signs that contract, it just might drive me insane.”
As much as I would be sad to see the Moonlight saga’s big screen run end, I had to agree. She was a woman on the edge.
“I’m sure they’re close to wrapping, right?” I asked.
Dana nodded. “Yep. Just the sex scene and two more biting scenes and they’re done. Thank God!”
I bit my lip, remembering the last biting scene, the one I’d watched with Dana on my sofa. “You know, there’s one thing that’s been bothering me about Alexa’s death: why didn’t she struggle?”
Dana frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if it were a blow to the head or a gunshot I’d get how someone could sneak up on her. But dragging her into a bathroom stall, biting her neck and waiting for the blood to drain? That would take some time. Why didn’t Alexa fight back?”
“Good point. Maybe she was drugged first?” Dana said.
I nodded. “It’s possible. But then, how would Becca get her into the restroom? Alexa was skinny, but so was Becca. I doubt she would have been able to drag her in without attracting attention.”
“So, she would have needed help. Someone bigger and stronger,” Dana said, following my train of thought.
“Right. But who?” I asked.
But before Dana could answer, a voice piped up from the trailer door. “What about the boyfriend?”
Both of our heads snapped up to find Ava standing in the doorway, wearing a slinky red dress and popping a wad of bubble gum (watermelon if I wasn’t mistaken) between ruby red lips that said she’d already done her stint in make-up that morning.
Dana narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?” she asked.
Ava shrugged her shoulders, all wide-eyed innocence. “Nothing. I was just walking by and heard you guys talking about the murder. Ricky told me all about it.”
“I’ll bet he did,” Dana said under her breath.
“Anyway, I was just saying, if you’re looking for who killed her, what about the boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she was seeing anyone.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ava argued. “She totally was.”
I paused. “Wait – you knew Alexa?”
Ava nodded. “Sure. We did a toothpaste commercial together a couple years ago. I mean, that was back when I was just starting out, so we’re not like, close-close anymore or anything, but we’re Facebook friends.”
Mental forehead smack.
“And she told you she had a boyfriend?”
Ava shrugged. “Well her status has been ‘in a relationship’ for the past six months.”
I suddenly felt like an amateur. Every CSI junkie knew that the boyfriend was the first place to look for your killer. But with all the vampire stuff, I’d been so distracted that I’d never even thought to find out if she’d been seeing someone. “Do you happen to know the boyfriend’s name?” I asked, mentally crossing my fingers.
Ava scrunched up her nose, her eyes going to the ceiling as if looking for the answer there. “Um, Devin or Darin or something. Not sure. But I know he works at this new club on Sunset.”
And I knew him, too, I realized. Darwin. The bartender at Crush the night Alexa died.
Chapter Fifteen
“Wait,” Dana said holding up a hand. “Are you telling me that Alexa’s boyfriend was at the club the night that she died?”
Ava gave her a blank look. “I dunno. All I know is the boyfriend is always the first suspect, right?”
Sadly, the ditz had a point. They were. And considering that “opportunity” had just cropped up for the bartender, we definitely needed to investigate both means and motive.
* * *
Half an hour later (which would have been only twenty minutes if I hadn’t had to stop to pee at a gas station on La Brea along the way) we were back at Crush. Once inside, we made a bee-line for the bar, where Darwin was busy slicing limes. He glanced up as we entered, and I could have sworn I saw irritation flit cross his features before his “boss’s girlfriend” face slipped on.
“What can I do for you ladies today?” he asked, a fake smile showing off a set of unnaturally white teeth.
“You can tell us the truth,” Dana said, going all no-nonsense on him.
Darwin paused, raised an eyebrow her way. “The truth? I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“About your relationship with Alexa,” I prompted. “You didn’t tell us you were dating the dead girl.”
His “on” face slipped again, eyes pinging from Dana and back to me again before answering with, “I didn’t lie. You didn’t ask, I didn’t tell.”
“A lie of omission,” Dana pointed out.
He shrugged. “Not really. As of that night, we were no longer dating. So there wasn’t any relationship to talk about.”
“Wait, you two broke up the night she died?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. Motive-ville here we come!
He nodded. “That’s right. So what?”
“So… who broke up with whom?”
He shifted, no longer slicing citrus but, I noticed, still holding the knife in a tight clutch in his right hand. “If you want to know, I broke up with her.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I was tired of seeing her with other guys,” he said, his eyes flashing in away that told me he meant it.
“What other guys?”
“Those vampire freaks.”
“That she met at the parties she worked?” I prodded.
“That’s right. I mean, who gets paid to hang out with old dudes? Hookers, that’s who.”
“So Alexa was sleeping with the men from the parties.”
Darwin paused. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, she said she wasn’t, but who knows what goes on up there, you know? Bunch of weirdos.”
“So, I take it you weren’t into the vampire scene?” I asked.
“Hell, no. What do I look like some kind of freak?”
I glanced at his pie
rced eyebrow, eyelid, nose, and lower lip. Probably best not to answer that question.
“Alexa knew you didn’t like her doing the parties?” Dana jumped in.
Darwin nodded again. “Yeah. We fought about it all the time. In fact, last week she promised she was leaving the scene.”
My spidey senses started tingling. “Did she say why?”
“Said she didn’t need the money anymore. Said she was getting a big payday and would quit the vampire gig.”
“But if she said she was going to quit, why did you break up with her over it the night she died?”
His face screwed up into a snarl. “Because she lied.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“I saw her that night with one of those freaks. Clearly she’d just been playin’ me about quitting. So, I told her it was over.”
“And how did she take that?” Dana asked.
He shrugged. “What did I care? I’d wasted enough time on her.”
His compassion for the dead girl was overwhelming. Not for the first time, I found myself kinda feeling sorry for Alexa. “You said you saw her with someone,” I said, jumping on that nugget of info. “Who was it?”
“Hell if I know.”
“But you knew it was someone from the vampire parties?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “All dressed in goth black and had a pair of fangs in.”
Which could have fit any one of the people we’d seen at the vampire party.
“Anything else you can tell us about him?” I asked, grasping.
He bit his lip, sucking a black stud into his mouth. “Yeah. The guy had these weird eyes. Like, super pale looking, you know?”
I did know.
Sebastian.
* * *
“So, Becca and Alexa are into something,” I said, thinking out loud as we hopped back into Dana’s Mustang. “Blackmail maybe. But something goes wrong, and Becca decides to kill Alexa. Only she needs help to stage it like a vampire murder.”
“And she gets Sebastian to do it?” Dana asked.
Fearless in High Heels Page 10
