Vamparazzi (21 page)

“Hey! So I still have a job!” That made me feel energized, even without the caffeine.

“Well, for tonight, anyhow.”

I paused while measuring scoops of coffee. “You mean they still might arrest him?”

“If they think they can make a case,” Lopez said. “They can't right now. But they still like him for this, so they'll be trying. While also looking at other suspects. Such as—oh, for example—
you,
now that you've alienated Branson.”

“Oh, surely I'm not a
serious
suspect?” I switched on the coffee machine.

“No, but you did feasibly have a beef against the victim, who attacked you and then went home with your boyfriend.”

I gasped in revulsion. “He's
not
my—”

“I know. But that's one possible interpretation of the murder. And it's one that Branson's entertaining, now that you've pissed him off.” Lopez added critically, “That wasn't smart, Esther.”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “My whereabouts are accounted for. Leischneudel brought me home in the cab waiting for us outside the theater, and he stayed here until nearly four. Then we called for a taxi to come take him home. If Branson doesn't believe me or Leischneudel, then he can check with the taxi cab company.”

“Oh, he will. But Branson thinks one possibility is that as soon as you were alone, you went back out by yourself—”

“At that time of night?”

“—and you found, confronted, and killed Angeline.”

“I wasn't
homicidally
angry about my black eye.” I stretched a little, trying to wake up my stiff muscles. “I just wanted her arrested for assaulting me.”

Lopez said, “His theory relies on a level of ruthlessly effective time-management that I told him definitely doesn't apply to you.”

“How thoughtful of you to stick up for me,” I said sourly.

“But it's a theory that does fall within range of the estimated time of death—which is never as conveniently precise as they make it seem on
Crime and Punishment
.”

“Oh, for God's sake.” I decided to redirect the conversation. “While you were listening to Branson theorize that I'm a
murderer
—”

“Okay, look, I told him there was no way—”

“Did you happen to notice anything
else,
detective?”

“Such as?”

“He never mentioned
you
being at the theater. Or Hector Sousa. Or a scary-looking guy in desperate need of a barber.”

“Oh. Right.”

“The cops have no idea you were there last night.”

“And I owe that, no doubt, to your shrewdly evasive and cunning conversational skills.”

“Okay, the subject never came up,” I admitted.

“That was going to be my next guess.”

“Things were so bizarre and chaotic when the cops were there—”

“Branson did mention
that
.”

“—that I don't think any of the other actors even remembered they'd met you.”

“On the other hand, I think the cops who were there last night will remember for years to come that they've met all of
you
.”

“For all the good it did them. Why can't they make a case against Daemon?” Realizing from the silence that followed that he was debating whether or not to tell me, I pointed out, “You know that Daemon will tell me if I ask him.”

“So go ask him.”

“But then I'd have to talk to him,” I objected, as the aroma of brewing coffee filled my little kitchen.

He laughed. “All right. That tabloid reporter who follows him everywhere will probably squeeze a lot of this out of him and make it public, anyhow.”

“Count on it. Tarr is persistent.” For no rational reason, I added, “He asked me out.”

“Tarr did?”

“Uh-huh.” I felt my face flush and wished I hadn't mentioned it.

After an awkward pause, Lopez said, “I guess even tabloid writers get lonely.”

“I don't like him,” I said quickly. “I turned him down.”

Another pause. A longer one. “Why are you telling me this?”

I really had no idea. Nor could I have explained why I asked, “Have you gone out with anyone? You know, since . . .”

“Adele Olson was seen leaving Daemon's loft,” he said, retreating safely into cop mode. “Alive and alone, healthy and on her own two feet.”

I was embarrassed and appalled at my own behavior. The last thing I wanted was for Lopez to think I was playing games with him. Which was probably exactly what he did think now.

Fortunately, his information was surprising enough to distract me from my mortification. “She was seen leaving his place? Who sees someone at
that
time of night?”

“There were still some people on the streets. It was barely thirty minutes after she attacked you.”

I snorted involuntarily. “
That
was fast.”

I heard his puff of laughter and felt relieved that we were getting back on an even keel, as if my odd little outburst hadn't just happened.

“I gather that Angeline turned out to be too crazy even for Daemon's taste,” Lopez said. “He insists nothing happened between them.”

“They didn't sleep together?” I said in surprise.

“He says no. Which happens to be consistent with the medical examiner's findings,” he said. “Meanwhile, a thorough—
very
thorough—investigation of Daemon's loft hasn't yet uncovered any evidence to contradict his story.”

“What
is
his story?” I asked. “He just gave her a lift somewhere?”

“No—though he did give one to your friend, Al Tarr.”

“He's not my fr—”

“After leaving the theater that night, Daemon's car swung by the
Exposé
's offices on Houston Street to drop off the reporter.”

The fact that Daemon had given Tarr a lift somewhere made more sense, I realized, than my vague assumption at the time, which was that Tarr was accompanying Daemon and his groupie home, and would watch TV or something in the living room while they ... I stopped there, realizing these were mental images I didn't want to pursue now any more than I had on the night I'd seen the threesome drive away from the theater.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and asked, “Tarr went to work at three in the morning?”

“Sleaze never sleeps,” Lopez said dryly. “The tabloid is a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. So Tarr checked in, did some work, then slept there. I guess they have a few cots on the premises, in case a hot new scandal—like this murder case, I suppose—requires their crack journalists to be on hand around the clock.”

“If Tarr makes a habit of sleeping at work, it certainly explains a lot about his appearance.”

“Doesn't
he
shave, either?”

“Then Daemon went home?” I prodded, steering the conversation back on track.

The ride to Daemon's Soho loft took only a few additional minutes, especially at that time of night. He dismissed the driver, then took Angeline inside with him. Within a few minutes of entering Daemon's home, she damaged a twelve thousand dollar glass sculpture. She sulked about his distressed reaction to the incident, then got angry when she couldn't drag his attention away from the damage.

“Apparently this sculpture wasn't just something an interior decorator had picked out for him,” Lopez said. “Daemon described himself to the investigating officers as a serious art collector.”

“So vampirism isn't his only pretension?” I sipped my coffee.

If Angeline's casual destruction of a treasured work of art hadn't already switched off his libido, then (as Daemon later told the cops) the tantrum that followed certainly would have done so. Just wanting to get rid of the girl now, he told her he wasn't in the mood for company anymore and asked her to leave. She was insulted and offended, ridiculed him, and threatened to expose him as sexually impotent and incapable.

“But apparently he's slept with so many women that he had no concern this would be taken seriously. Or, at least, that's his story, and he's sticking to it,” Lopez said. “And he got rid of her after a few more minutes. With some shouting and foul language, but without any violence—well, except for a little more damage that she did to his sculpture before leaving.”

That was the last he saw of her, according to Daemon. Investigation of his home revealed that the sculpture was indeed damaged, and Angeline's fingerprints could be found on a few things in the living room, which is where she had spent her entire brief visit. So far, the police had found no evidence that she'd ever entered any other portion of the dwelling. Nor were there any signs of violence apart from the broken items accounted for in Daemon's story (the sculpture and also the glass Angeline had been drinking from).

Two witnesses had already been found who saw her alive after that, when she left Daemon's building and then walked up West Broadway. It was late; but it was a Friday, and a few people were coming home from nights out on the town. And apparently a woman on the street in a Regency gown was memorable, even on Halloween weekend in New York City.

“But no one knows yet what happened after that,” Lopez said. “One possibility, of course, is that Daemon followed her.”

“But he had just thrown her out,” I said, pouring a second cup of coffee.

“Maybe he's lying. Maybe she walked out, for whatever reason. Then he followed her, trying to get her to come back, and things got ugly. Or maybe he did throw her out, but then he felt uneasy about her threats to expose and embarrass him, so he decided to go after her.” After a moment, he added pensively, “If so, though, he didn't take her back to his place.”

“How do you know?”

“Even if Daemon spent hours cleaning and scrubbing his loft—which somehow strikes me as even less likely than his being a vampire—forensics would have found
something
if he had committed the murder there. There's a lot of blood in the human body.” I heard a touch of frustration in his voice as he continued, “It happened somewhere else. I'm sure of it. And finding out
where
would be a big step forward.”

“You really don't think Daemon's the killer.” I could tell from his tone.

“No, I really don't,” he admitted. “But it's not my case.”

“It's connected to your case,” I protested. “It's probably the same killer.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, come on. Exsanguinated murder victims found under—”

“Maybe,”
he repeated firmly. “I'm about to head over to Manhattan South to read their reports, review Daemon's interview, and examine their evidence. And I'll see what I think then.” He added, “
No one
has more fun on a sunny Sunday than I do.”

“Did you go to Mass today?” I asked.

“What are you, my mother?”

“There's no need to be insulting,” I said. “It was a friendly question.”

“Well, yes. That's where I was before I called you.”

He waited, apparently expecting me to comment. I didn't. I gathered from things he'd said in the past that his parents were fairly religious Catholics, and I knew from our . . . friendship that he attended Mass regularly. (And that his mother nagged him if he didn't.) By contrast, I was a secular Jew who only went to Temple twice a year, at most (and only if my mother
really
nagged me). I probably shouldn't be interested in his private spiritual convictions, given that I was trying to exorcise my fascination with him, but I was curious about just how religious he was and how much his faith affected his worldview.

I was also aware of the irony that, of the two of us, I was the one who believed in various mystical phenomena (with good reason), while he, who attended the Eucharist each week, was the steadfast skeptic.

Deciding I should stick to the business at hand, I dropped that topic and said, “I assume you've got an alternative theory about who the killer is?”

“I've got a few,” he said. “But I try not to fall in love with a theory when I don't have any evidence to support it.”

“You think that's what
they're
doing,” I pounced. “You think the cops investigating Angeline's death are so in love with their theory that the celebrity vampire killed her, they're not even—”

“Don't,” he said. “Branson's already mad at
you
.”

“Oh, Branson's a—”

“Let's not make him mad at me, too.”

“But if the cops are overlooking—”

“Stop,” he said.

“They could miss—”

“Don't you want to know about the blood?”

“What blood?” I asked blankly.

“That was the first thing I meant to tell you when I called.”

I recognized what he was doing. “Don't change the sub—”

“The blood you
drank,
” he prodded. “Thinking it was—God help us—Nocturne wine cooler.”

“That blood? Oh!” Actually, I did want to know. “Yes! What about it?”

“Well, it's definitely human.”

“Ugh.”
My hand reflexively covered my mouth. “I
think
I spat most of it out. Maybe all of it . . .”

“And there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, it's healthy. You're absolutely fine.”

“Oh, good,” I said with relief. “Er, I guess it's not ... not . . .”

“The murder victim's blood? No.” I could hear amusement entering his voice. “But it does belong to someone you know. Someone who, you'll be pleased to learn, eats lean proteins and whole grains, has never smoked, and takes a multivitamin every day.”