“Don’t do that,” I told her sharply. I realized she still had not told me what the development was. “What’s happened anyway?”
“Someone attacked Caitlin Harris tonight,” Ellis said calmly.
Well, wasn’t that just typical of Caitlin to find a way to ruin my evening? “And I suppose we have to go check it out?” I scowled.
Ellis shrugged, nodded.
Great. Just fucking great.
* * *
The actors on The Right Guy were ensconced at a Ramada Inn on the town’s west side. Some of the principle crew was also there. The lesser crew members—those whom in the business we call “below the line” crew, meaning simply that their names come after the TV or movie title—were relegated to a local drive-in motel called The Ocean Crest, although there was neither ocean in the vicinity nor a crest visible from its location. I often think there must be a list kept someplace of motel names, and anyone opening an establishment must choose from this list, even if it means naming their establishment something completely inappropriate. Presumably failure to do so will result in some horrible forfeit being paid. As tonight had not been slotted for any nighttime shooting, the actors and crew had been given the night off. Some had gone into town in search of whatever passed for entertainment in Holly Bush Junction—an apple-pie tasting fair maybe, or carpet bowls at the local Y. Perhaps I was being unfair. The town might have a slew of strip joints, casinos and banging nightclubs hidden away. I doubted it though. Only a handful of people remained in their rooms, catching up on sleep or reading, or catching up with the all-important LA gossip on their cell phones with friends.
Inevitably there were some who took the chance to test out the soundproofing quality of the Ramada’s walls.
Let me explain a rule about location shooting: everyone sleeps around. Actors, crew—even the catering people. You can be on a location shoot for months at a time, away from your regular spouse or partner, inhabiting a make-believe world for that entire time. Given the self-dramatizing, over-imaginative types that actors and a lot of other movie people are, the bleed of fantasy and reality is inevitable. And so cheating happens. Location romances are common, and for the most part they are accepted. Caitlin Harris had been cheating when she was attacked. She was sleeping with a crew member, a wardrobe assistant named Deb, cheating on the writer girlfriend back home in the Hills. The location romance did not appear to have anything to do with the attack itself, however. According to Caitlin, she and her “friend” had ordered room service, and when it arrived Caitlin went to the door because it was her room they were cheating in and she didn’t want rumors getting started.
Everyone looked at each other when she said this, but no one even bothered to comment. What was the point?
The room service guy then wheeled a food cart in. Once he was inside, unprovoked, he lifted the lid off a silver platter of sandwiches and whacked Caitlin upside the head with it.
Okay, I admit it. I had a hard time not sniggering just a little when I heard that.
At this point Caitlin’s location squeeze had leaped from the bed and launched a gallant attack on the room service guy. He, however, displayed an extraordinary strength, shaking her off and sending her crashing into the wall, where she banged her head and wrenched her ankle. Caitlin assured us that Deb had up-to-date worker’s comp, so that was okay, wasn’t it?
I gave her a meaningless smile. I could see the distaste growing in Ellis’s expression although I didn’t look for too long at her. I couldn’t. I kept thinking about the sex we’d just had, and wanting more of it.
The attacker had then fled the room. Someone exiting the elevator further down the hallway heard the tail end of the commotion and came charging to the rescue, a tad late to be of any great assistance but not so late as to miss seeing the room service guy go tearing down the emergency stairs.
I made a perfunctory inquiry if Caitlin was okay, and that earned me a perfectly poisonous glare. “I could have died tonight,” she reminded me.
Boy, I had forgotten just how self-centered a specimen Caitlin Harris was. Nothing and no one existed in Caitlin’s world that did not relate directly to her in some way. Deb could have been lying dead in a dozen different pieces at the foot of the bed and still Caitlin would have been more concerned by her own broken fingernail. I looked to the manager, summoned by the would-be rescuer. Caitlin’s Personal Assistant and some female producer from the show whom I vaguely recognized by face, if not name, were also present.
“Did hotel security record this guy?”
The place had cameras—I had noted them on the way up. The manager shook his head, however, grimacing as he explained how none of the cameras had caught a clear image of the guy.
“He must have been aware of the position of all our cameras,” the manager added with a weak shrug. That got him a withering look from me and a sneer from Caitlin. It would be a miracle if she could be persuaded not to sue. I think the manager knew this. He was sweating profusely in anticipation of just this.
“How about you guys, did any of you get a good look?”
I turned to Caitlin and the would-be rescuer who had come running into the room to tackle the obviously fake room service guy. A traveling salesman by the name of Bill, he was husky like an ex-football player, with thinning brown hair and poor taste in shiny polyester suits.
“I didn’t get a good look at him,” Bill told me apologetically. He obviously knew who Caitlin Harris was—he kept stealing awed glances at her. He also was having a hard time not staring at Ellis. I might as well not have been in the room.
“Caitlin?” I prompted.
She looked up from where she sat on the still-rumpled bed, an ice pack pressed to one side of her head where she’d taken the ding, and all but snarled at me. I suppose her expression intended to convey to me what an insensitive brute I was being, asking her all these questions when all she wanted to do was make a drama out of a crisis. I ignored the look.
“All I know is he had red hair and he was a skinny freak,” she stated. She made a dramatic shrug. “He was probably some deranged fan. Maybe he thinks we’re having a relationship or something. There are lots of deranged people out there thinking things like that about people like me, Dante. You know that. They see us on TV and they think they know all about us. They think we’re sending them secret messages of love or some such nonsense. It’s such a dangerous world for people like me who are famous.”
She ended her tirade with a wide-eyed appeal to everyone in the room to understand her plight. The PA and the producer, and even Bill, all murmured soothing nothings. I clenched my teeth to trap a sigh. I noticed Ellis’s expression had changed to one of pitying curiosity.
“A really strong, skinny guy with red hair” was not much to go on. I glanced at Ellis, who gave me a faint shrug. I swiveled my gaze back to Caitlin. She was going to love me for my next question. “What about your friend that was with you…did she see the guy?”
Caitlin’s eyes narrowed. She darted a look in Bill’s direction. I took the hint and beamed at the guy. “Hey, you’ve been great, Bill,” I told him. I stuck my hand out. He took it, a little bewildered, probably because he had no idea who I was. His palm was sweaty. I had to resist the urge to wipe my own on my pants leg afterward. I held my smile in place. “You should let us give you something for your trouble, Bill. How do some free tickets for you and your family to the next Academy Awards Night sound?”
“It sounds awesome,” Bill enthused. Well, of course it did. He was just a rube from Fungus City, Iowa, or wherever.
“Great. Then let’s get you sorted out and you can go back to your room. You must be damn tired after all this, huh? Course you are!” I was herding him toward the door as I chattered on, and there I handed him off to the PA, who took him away to arrange those tickets for him. It would have disappointed Bill the salesman if he had known just how easy Awards ceremony tickets are to come by. People like me hand them out to the Bills of this world like doctors hand
out candies to crying children after their flu shots. How else would we get asses on seats at those dreary, drawn-out festivals of industry self-congratulation? As far as we movie people are concerned, if there isn’t at least a chance of your own self being up for some of the love and congrats, why bother showing up to have someone else’s success shoved in your face?
With Bill safely out of the room, I asked Caitlin again if her friend had got any better a look at the guy? Caitlin shrugged, said she would not know, since Deb had left immediately afterward. I didn’t bother to remind Caitlin that Deb left because she had a knot on her head and a sprained wrist—it would have fallen on deaf ears. Instead I extracted Deb’s room number from her and Ellis and I headed off there. We left Samson guarding Caitlin’s door. Not that I really thought the attacker would come back to try again.
“What do you think, was it a vampire?” I asked as we walked.
Ellis nodded. She regarded me curiously. “How on earth did you ever get involved with that awful woman, Dante? Were you having some sort of breakdown at the time?”
I smiled grimly. “You’d think, right?”
“Humans are odd.”
“No shit. So, tell me, how did Voshki get to hear about this before we did?”
“Amelia called her.”
Why, I wondered, would Amelia call Voshki all the way in Hollywood rather than call Ellis or me right here in Holly Bush Junction? Come to think of it, how come no one had apparently called the local cops? Something may not have been rotten in Denmark, but it was definitely going sour in Holly Bush Junction.
“Where is Amelia?” I asked.
Ellis shrugged. “I guess she’s around someplace.”
I was tired. Physically, from all of our exertion. And I was mentally tired of the dancing around the subject that the vampires were doing. I stopped, swerved in front of Ellis, forcing her to a halt. She looked down at me with a puzzled frown. I’m five-foot-five, which is not tall by any standards and positively Munchkin-sized by the standards Hollywood likes to claim, but I like to think I carry my lack of height well. Ellis is five-seven and she tends to wear boots with precipitously high heels which carry her towards five-nine and beyond. Trying to make your point whilst you are craning your neck rather ruins the effect. I did my best anyway.
“What in fuck is going on?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” she began. I stopped her with a shake of my head.
“You do know. Or you know something.”
She sighed. Folded her arms. “I only know what I told you already, Dante.”
Ellis either could not or would not tell me anything more. I wanted very much to believe that she really did not know anything more than she had already told me, but I had to keep it in mind that Ellis was a vampire, and vampires lie.
“Can we just go talk to this wardrobe assistant your ex was banging?” Ellis asked with another sigh.
Unsurprisingly, Deb’s impressions of the attacker were also vague, involving “red hair” and “wearing a room service guy’s uniform.” At least she cared enough to inquire whether Caitlin was okay.
“Oh, Caitlin will be just fine,” I told her. And she would be. My ex would dine out on this story for years. We left Deb and went to pick up Samson before heading back to the hotel. Ellis was fairly sure the attacker wouldn’t return, and there was no reason then to either stick around or leave Samson on guard duty. I think Ellis may have been actually hoping the attacker would come back and finish the job. She had taken that much of an instant dislike to Caitlin. It happens. On the way out we met Amelia. She looked as fresh and as bright as though it had been three o’clock in the afternoon and not the same time in the morning. That made me unreasonably annoyed.
“Ellis…Dante,” she greeted us. “You heard about our little drama here tonight then.”
“Yeah. Voshki called us. From Hollywood,” I said with a pointed raise of my eyebrows.
Amelia studied me for a moment. “You need to talk to Voshki,” she said, and I gritted my teeth. Amelia shrugged. “I know as much as Ellis does right now.”
“Yeah, that seems to be catching, nobody knowing nothing,” I huffed.
Amelia’s gazed flicked between Ellis and I. Her eyes narrowed, but she was smiling. “Aha. You did succumb to Ellis’s charms, then.”
Oh no. I attempted to feign ignorance but Amelia wagged a finger at me. “Voshki is going to be so put out,” she scolded.
That did it. I gave a wild shrug and scowled at all of them. “Well, shit. Stop the world. Vosh will be put out. And I’m supposed to give a flying fuck?”
“Oooh, such defiance. I like it. Voshki may not though,” Amelia remarked archly.
I turned and stomped away. “I’ll meet you at the car,” I snapped at Ellis over my shoulder.
Fucking vampires.
CHAPTER SIX
I didn’t want to have breakfast that next morning (well, later the same morning technically) with Ellis and Samson, but particularly not with Ellis. I was in a sulk with her again because I was sure she knew more about whatever was going on in Holly Bush Junction than she was letting on to knowing, and being kept in the dark by someone you have just had mind-blowingly great sex with is aggravating, to say the least. My aggravation with her hadn’t stopped me from having more of the mind-blowing sex with her, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t sulk. I got up before she woke, showered, dressed and went out to find someplace to eat by myself. I ended up back at Mame’s Diner. The burgers had been excellent so I figured the breakfast menu had to be at least as good.
Hardly anyone eats in LA. We have more restaurants and eating places per capita than most other cities in the US, barring perhaps Seattle, which is just wall-to-wall with food-oriented businesses, and yet we eat less per capita than any other state. In LA, going to a restaurant is all about seeing and being seen in the right places. It has very little to do with the actual consumption of edibles. Which is sometimes depressing if you are like me and actually enjoy eating. Breakfast at Mame’s did not disappoint. I even thought about selling up and moving to Holly Bush Junction, or some small town like it, just for the food.
I thought about it for five seconds anyway. Truth was I’d get bored in a small town like this. I like LA. I like Hollywood. If I moved away I would only end up going stir crazy missing the weirdoes and the lunatics and the huge egos and the massive amount of insecurity. I would miss the sound of LAPD airships flying over my house during the night. I would even miss some of my clients. Although I might eventually get over the latter. Whilst I ate pancakes, sausage and toast with real butter, I called Roz in La-La Land and caught up with what was going on there, and then I did some telephone conferencing with clients, and potential clients. God bless the technological age. I was able to get a “yes” on a deal with Disney to use one of my actors for a voice-over in a forthcoming children’s animation. A couple mil in the bank for me right there. Of course, the asking price for using my client’s talents was twenty million, of which the actor himself would probably see at least twelve. For maybe a week’s work. Who says Hollywood actors are overpaid? I was also able to smooth the ruffled feathers of a director who was having difficulties working with another client of mine. She’s an A-list actress married to an A-list actor, very high profile both of them. Problem is, her Earth Mother public image is often at odds with the screaming-psycho-bitch she is in reality. I promised the ruffled director that I would talk to her, buttered him up with vague promises about giving him another of my A-list clients to work on a little indie-prod he had been touting around town. Like that was going to happen. Still, let it never be said that lies, secrets and general bullshit have ever stood in the way of getting business done in Hollywood.
My business concluded, I munched my way through a second helping of toast, accepted a third refill of coffee from the waitress and tried to relax. It was not easy though. My thoughts were all crowding together and getting in each other’s way. I had Ellis in there, and Voshki, and whatever was g
oing on here and how it related to whatever was going on in LA, and then there was also Sheriff Bartlett. I liked the blonde sheriff, even if she did not seem too impressed with us movie people. For that I could hardly blame her. Under different circumstances, I would have liked the chance to try to convince her mind that not all of us were crackpots. What the hell. Even under the present circumstances I wouldn’t say no to the chance.
You can see how disheveled my thoughts were right there. I’d just had mind-blowingly great sex with a vampire, and there I was, thinking about the very human sheriff instead of plotting how I was going to lure Ellis back into bed.
Speak of the devil. A shadow fell over me, and this time I did not even have to look up to know it belonged to the sheriff. I could smell the deodorant she used. And the extra-strong mint toothpaste. And the faint tang of gun oil and leather lingering around her. Which surprised me. Not the smells themselves, but the fact that I was able to detect them so clearly. Was this another effect of ingesting Ellis’s blood last night? Had it strengthened my senses? Fine, I guess, unless the person had poor personal hygiene. Also, I hadn’t noticed this effect with anyone else yet, just the sheriff. I figured I should ask Ellis about it. Later. Maybe much later, once all notion of sleeping with her again had worn off. And just how long would that take anyway?
“Good morning, Dante. You, uh, seem a little distracted?”
Dear God, were my thoughts suddenly tattooed on my forehead? I forced myself to attention. “Good morning, Sheriff,” I said, raising a smile. I saw immediately that Sheriff Bartlett was not in uniform this morning. Instead she wore a black leather motorcycle jacket over black jeans and a black t-shirt. Black suits blondes very well. Black leather suits them even better. The sheriff looked good enough to eat. She also wore dark shades, which gave me a momentary jolt. Then I reminded myself that she was definitely not a vampire and I felt my smile widening at the corners.
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