“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?”
7
Lopez said with forced patience, “No, of course not.”
I frowned in confusion. “But you just said . . .”
“She was exsanguinated, Esther,” he said. “Not bitten by an immortal creature of the night.”
“How do you drain all of someone’s blood?” I wondered. A scant familiarity with vampire fiction was my only source of information on the subject.
“Details probably aren’t a good idea.”
“Who besides a vampire exsanguinates people?” I demanded.
“I should have guessed,” Lopez said wearily. “You believe in vampires.”
“No,” I said. “No . . . Well, actually, I don’t know.” I had seen too many strange things (such as zombies, animated gargoyles, evil spirits, doppelgängers, and mystical vanishings) to dismiss the possibility outright. “Let’s say I don’t believe in the pop culture stereotypes of vampires.”
“Like your leading man?” Lopez cast another dark glance at the welt on my neck.
The leading man, I realized, who had been feeling his oats tonight. Who had, for a few moments there onstage, scared me into believing he might actually be what he claimed to be.
“He keeps blood in his dressing room,” I blurted.
“Yeah, I heard. I gather everyone’s heard. We’ll find out soon what it really is.”
“Oh, it’s blood, all right.” I felt a little queasy again.
My companion was skeptical. “What makes you so sure?”
“I drank some of it.”
“You what?” He reflexively grabbed my shoulders.
“It was an accident. I thought it was Nocturne wine cooler.”
He looked shocked. “You drink Nocturne?”
“No,” I said. “But it was the only thing available at the time.”
“Even so . . .” He let go of me, his expression suggesting that he was completely rethinking his opinion of me.
I said, “To return to the point, those bottles in his fridge are filled with—”
“What were you doing, having a cocktail in that guy’s dressing room?” my ex-almost-boyfriend demanded.
I sighed and explained. I tried to keep it brief but, as was often the case, Lopez had a lot of questions, so I wound up telling him almost everything that had happened in Daemon’s dressing room. While we talked, we drifted toward one of the theater’s darkened backstage alcoves, both tired and wanting to get off our feet. He used his dirty sleeve to dust off a packing crate for me, then we sat on it together. I could hear occasional familiar noises and voices echoing through the backstage area as the stage crew reset everything for tomorrow’s performance and various people milled around.
When I finished my account, Lopez was silent for a few moments, mulling it over—probably looking for possible links with information he wasn’t sharing with me.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably. I’d been in this push-up corset for hours, and it was starting to feel like diabolical torture.
“If it’s human blood,” he answered, “whose is it and how did the Vampire Ravel acquire it?”
“Those are creepy questions.”
“But the answers aren’t necessarily criminal. He claims in public that he indulges in blood play, so—”
“In what?”
“Blood play. Sexual practices that involve shedding, sharing, and/or ingesting blood.”
“Oh, vampire sex. Right. He makes claims about it in private, too. I assumed he was lying until I took an innocent swig of his wine cellar.”
“I can’t believe you were going to drink Nocturne,” Lopez muttered, clearly still disillusioned with me.
“Can we stick to the subject?”
“Okay. Right.” After a moment, he asked, “What was the subject again? Sorry, I’m a little tired. I haven’t been to bed since ... Actually, I can’t remember.”
“Ah. So that’s why you fell asleep in my dressing room.”
“Yeah. I was listening to the show on the intercom for a while after I snuck in. You sounded really good, Esther. I wasn’t even sure it was you, at first—very much the proper English lady,” he said. “But then there was a scene with the vampire yammering at the half-wit brother about a vow of silence and the meaning of honor . . . something like that, anyhow. And I guess it lulled me right to sleep.”
I laughed. Lopez smiled as he removed his bandana, stuck it into a pocket, and ran his fingers through his overlong hair, rubbing his scalp as if trying to soothe a fatigue headache. I suddenly wanted to do that for him, so I folded my hands tightly together on my lap.
Returning to the subject, I asked, “If the blood in Daemon’s refrigerator turns out to be human, will they arrest him?”
“No, not necessarily. Not if he can produce the consensual adult whose blood it is, for example.”
“So you don’t think it’s . . .” Remembering that I had tasted some of it, I couldn’t manage to finish my sentence.
“The victim’s blood?” Lopez shook his head. “I doubt it. It would be very convenient for the cops if Daemon were dumb enough to stock his fridge with evidence of a homicide. But we don’t get that lucky in most investigations.”
“He picks up fans for casual sex, so I suppose he could have blood samples from multiple partners,” I mused.
“Maybe . . .”
Hearing his doubtful tone, I prodded, “But you don’t think so?”
“I think he might not still be alive and healthy enough to do eight performances a week if he didn’t make a point of knowing exactly whose blood he’s playing with and that it’s safe.”
“He told me it was safe.” I felt anxious again.
“And I’ll make sure we get a definite answer from the lab about that tomorrow,” Lopez promised firmly.
“They’ll analyze it that soon?”
He nodded. “This case will be a feeding frenzy for the media, so the department wants to clear your costar or else charge him—one or the other—as soon as possible. They’ll start processing the physical evidence as soon as they collect it.”
“Maybe the blood isn’t even human.” I liked this theory, because it meant that I had not sipped human blood tonight.
“Oh, I think it probably is.” Lopez absently rubbed the black stubble on his jaw while he mused aloud, “I have a feeling you were right. Daemon Ravel’s been so rigorous about cultivating his vampire image, he wouldn’t neglect a detail like that after giving a tabloid writer access to every corner of his unlife. He’s invested years in this masquerade, after all.”
“And a lot of money, too,” I added, thinking of the famous sun-blocking windows he’d had installed in his Soho loft.
“So he’s probably been thorough enough to stock that fridge with human blood, knowing the reporter would pilfer some of it. I’ll bet the cops will find more of it in his home, too.”
“You think the police will search his loft?”
“They might be there already.” Seeing my surprise, he explained gently, “The victim went home with Daemon late last night, Esther. Based on what’s known right now,
that’s the last time that anyone saw her alive. And the body was dumped only about eight blocks from Daemon’s address. The investigating officers were getting a search warrant while I was being briefed. Cops will be arriving here any minute, too.”
“Oh.” I remembered that he had said so earlier. My head was spinning. After a moment, I realized what had probably upset Victor between shows. I asked, “You said too many people already know about this?”
He nodded. “By the time the police arrived and secured the scene, locals were talking, and a couple of journalists were asking questions.”
“I think someone phoned Daemon’s assistant around midnight and told him about it.” Perhaps a reporter asking for a comment or quote about the murder? If so, no wonder Victor had been so unnerved. “I’m sure he didn’t say anything to Daemon before the second show was over, but he might be telling him right now.”
Lopez shrugged. “It’s all right. No one involved in the case seems to think there’s any risk of Daemon Ravel trying to run away. He’ll lawyer up, but he won’t go into hiding.”
“Oh. Good point.” I thought it likely that, if forced to choose between the two things, Daemon would prefer a prompt public hanging in Times Square to disappearing and eventually falling off the radar. “I guess the cops will question all of us—everyone who works with Daemon?”
“Probably. In any case, they’ll definitely want to talk to you, due to your connection with the victim.”
“We weren’t connected,” I said irritably. “She dressed like my character, and she punched me in the face last night outside the stage door. That’s not a connection.”
“It is now that she’s been murdered,” Lopez said. “Listen to me. I want you to stay away from Daemon. Depending on what happens in the next few hours, he might be in custody by morning, anyhow. But if not, then until he’s either arrested or cleared, stay away from him. Do you understand me?”
“You really think he’s the killer?”
“I don’t know. And until I do, you shouldn’t go anywhere near him.”
“But I do eight shows a week with him,” I pointed out.
“Stay away from him offstage,” Lopez clarified patiently. “However badly Daemon behaves onstage, I’m pretty skeptical he’d commit a murder there.”
Vamparazzi Page 10
