The Trouble With Hairy, page 15
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
“First,” she said, “tell me everything you know.”
“About werewolves? God, there’s so much. Where do I start?” He thought for a moment. “Well, first,” he began, starting to tick the items off on his fingers, a habit which annoyed Becky to no end, “as I said, they don’t spend much time with the rest of the community. Second,” another tick, “they’ve got a very rigid set of morals and standards that they expect everyone else to comply with. Third…”
“They smell bad, and they have no manners.” Troy was unwilling to let this point be overlooked.
“Third,” Chris said forcefully, “they don’t talk much. Unlike Troy,” he added as his lover looked to add another comment. “Troy’s like nature. He abhors a vacuum.”
“Thank you, Doris,” Troy said, batting his eyelashes flirtatiously.
“Wait a minute,” Becky said. “They don’t sound dangerous at all. Well, no more dangerous than an Orange County republican. You might be okay living next to one, but you wouldn’t invite him over for coffee.”
“I knew one who was a democrat,” Chris mused, as if to himself. “Very strange man. Exceedingly social for a furball. Worked for Roosevelt on some wilderness thing. Franklin, not Teddy.”
“What I need to know is how to stop one.” Becky interrupted Chris’ jaunt down memory lane. “What about the full moon?”
“Poppycock,” Chris replied. “They can change any time they want. Human to wolf and back again. Some of them can even become something that’s sort of half and half. Very Lon Chaney. And because they rarely associate with humans, they often behave like wolves even when they don’t look like them.”
“Yeah,” said Troy, “They claw the furniture, chase the mailman, that kind of thing.”
“They can’t be that bad,” Becky protested.
“Oh no?” came Troy’s confident reply.
“Fourth,” Chris continued and Becky reached out and grabbed his hand before he could start the finger ticking again.
“That really gets on my nerves.”
“Sorry. Fourth, the bit about silver is true. Not much else works. Except time, of course. Or another werewolf. They’re not immortal although they tend to live a bit longer than humans. Upwards of a hundred is fairly common.”
“So we start melting down the silver candlesticks, huh?”
“Finding silver shouldn’t be a problem in this town,” Troy said airily. “Our neighbor over on Harper, that southern queen Sheldon? You should see his place! His flatware alone could kill an army of werewolves! Who needs place settings for sixteen in a one bedroom apartment anyway?” he sniffed haughtily.
“Silver’s got a low melting point,” Becky mused, “but how do we turn it into bullets?”
Chris held up his hands in mock defeat. “That’s Clive’s problem. But if he’ll take advice from an old queen like me…”
“A very old queen,” Troy quipped, with affection.
“He’ll use buckshot.”
“Buckshot?” Becky asked.
“It won the Revolution,” Chris shrugged. “If you don’t hit the heart or the brain, you’ve got to rely on getting as much silver into the bloodstream as possible. It takes longer than a direct hit but it’s just as effective. Buckshot’s got a large spread pattern. It should do the job.”
“How about silver nitrate?” Becky wondered.
“Are you willing to get close enough to inject it?” Chris responded. “I’m certainly not.”
They were interrupted by Crystal approaching their table, followed closely by Gus, who was wheeling over a cart bearing a large, covered tray.
“Compliments of the house,” Crystal announced grandly, and with a flourish, he uncovered the platter to reveal three huge slices of dark chocolate cake swimming in a golden syrup and topped with whipped cream.
“Chocolate mousse layer cake with burnt almond filling floating in a sea of Grand Marnier coulée,” he announced with a flourish and he placed one plate in front of each of them.
Becky looked up miserably, pure angst showing in her face.
“She’s gonna start drooling on the tablecloth in a minute,” whispered Troy.
“Crystal…” she began, and stopped, clearly torn. “Oh screw it!” she said to herself. She flashed the drag queen a beaming smile.
“Crystal, sometimes it takes a true friend to show us the error of our ways.” She picked up her fork.
“The error of your ways?” Crystal asked, straightening his wig slightly. A look of pure horror crossed his face. “You haven’t been eating that…that…that cardboard they call dessert over at Chez Butch, have you?”
He turned to Gus, who was careful to show nothing but sympathetic anger. “Those health food restaurants! Low fat Desserts! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Low fat, my ass! All cornstarch and Elmer’s Glue-All!” He turned back to Becky. “You just enjoy yourself, honey. There’s more where that came from.” And so saying, he waltzed off back to the kitchen with Gus in tow, loudly proclaiming his outrage at those who would attempt to pass off tofu and wheat grass as sources of nourishment.
Becky dug in with gusto and a look of pure ecstasy. Chris debated saying something, but after all, how many years did she have left? He chose to remain silent and pushed his own plate over to her side of the table.
“Here. Have mine.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Becky exclaimed, trying to preserve a modicum of composure.
“Yes, you could,” Chris smiled. He dipped his finger into a bit of the whipped cream and affectionately deposited it on the tip of Becky’s nose.
“Hey!” she said happily and licked her finger clean after wiping the errant cream from her nose. “Where were we?” The last came from around a mouthful of cake.
“You were asking questions.”
“Right,” she paused, chewing thoughtfully. “How do I recognize one?”
“Easy.” Troy waved away her concern with a flippant gesture shamelessly copied from Loretta Young. “Just shake hands.”
“Huh?”
“Hairy palms,” said Chris.
“And you thought it was just from masturbation.”
“Troy!” she said, shocked, almost missing her mouth with the fork.
“It was just a thought,” he smiled dreamily and, as Gus finally came over to the table bearing Troy’s drink, he unbuttoned the last button which had kept the vest fastened closed over his chest.
“If you just keep ’em coming, honey, I’ll have a surprise for you when we leave.”
“Ignore him, Gus,” Becky told him. “He thinks he’s a West Hollywood public utility.”
Gus returned Troy’s smile with a dazzling one of his own and leaned down to whisper in his ear. Becky and Chris watched as Troy’s expression changed from one of tickled expectation to puzzlement, shock and, finally, to sheer disbelief. Gus straightened, and ruffling Troy’s curls with one hand, he moved off to serve his other customers.
Becky and Chris exchanged glances, astonished at Troy’s reaction.
“Dare we ask?” Becky wanted to know.
Troy heard her and chose to ignore her comment. Instead, he tugged on Chris’ sleeve until Chris, overcome by curiosity, leaned down so that Troy could whisper in his ear.
“What’s a rice queen?” Troy wanted to know, and since his voice was slightly louder than he’d intended, Becky was forced to hide her amused smile.
“It’s…well…” Chris looked at Becky helplessly as he tried to refrain from laughing himself.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Becky quoted and then her cell phone rang. She dug it out of her purse and immediately dropped it into the remnants of the cake and coulée.
“Shit,” she said, looking at it mournfully. “Another one bites the dust. I have no talent for these damned techno things.” She dug it out of the chocolate and fruit sauce, licked the crumbs from its casing and glance at the number displayed. “It’s Clive. I’ll be right back. I dropped the damned thing into a Slim Fast shake a couple of days ago and the signal’s been wonky ever since.”
She stood and moved off into the restaurant in search of a telephone, leaving Chris to explain to Troy why, to some people, his blond hair and lack of almond-shaped eyes made him less than attractive.
“Crystal?” she called as she pushed open the open door to the kitchen. “Can I use your phone? I busted my damned cellular again.”
“Go ahead, honey,” Crystal called back. “You know where it is.”
Becky let the door close as a stream of irate French, directed at a piece of chicken, if she recalled her one semester’s attempt at mastering the language, floated out of the kitchen to the amusement of two people sitting at a table by the door.
She found the telephone and dialed the station number. She was put through to Clive immediately.
“A werewolf?” Clive chuckled as soon as Becky had identified herself. His relief was so overwhelming that he was unable to restrain himself from laughing out loud.
“God, we had ourselves going there for awhile!”
“What are you talking about?” Becky demanded.
“It’s a kid,” Clive replied. “Well, not a kid exactly. Maybe twenty-three or four. Can you believe it? It’s a goddamned kid!”
“Clive, stop cackling like the March Hare and tell me what’s going on.”
“I am telling you,” he said. “Two old ladies over on Poinsettia caught him red-handed in their garden. Tore a frigging cat clean in half. We just brought him in. Oh! And get this…” he paused for dramatic effect. “Not a stitch of clothing on him! Almost gave one of the old broads a heart attack. We don’t know who he is yet. He’s not talking, but we will.”
“Clive, listen to me very carefully,” Becky said, her voice intense. “Whatever you do, keep him in a cell alone. And don’t book him. You got that? Alone. And don’t you dare take his fingerprints.”
Clive’s chortles ceased. “We probably already printed him.”
“Shit,” she responded. “Well, don’t run ’em yet.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked cautiously, after a moment’s pause.
“I don’t have time right now. Just don’t run the fingerprints.”
“Goddammit, Becky!” he roared, “I’m telling you, it’s a fucking person!”
“I’m sure it is,” she said soothingly. “But keep him isolated and, if you can, hold off on the prints anyway. We’re just down the street. We’ll be right there.”
“We?” Clive asked. There was a short silence. When Clive started speaking again, there was panic in his voice.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “You are not gonna let those two make this into anything other than it is. Do you hear me, O’Brien? There is no fucking way you three are gonna make me crazy. I’m telling you…”
Becky hung up and raced back to the table.
“Let’s go!” she said, urgently, digging into her purse and coming up with a wad of bills which she threw on the table without counting.
Chris stood up, yanking Troy to his feet. “Another murder?”
“Even worse,” Becky said. “Clive thinks he’s caught the guy. We’re going to the station!”
CHAPTER 8
Clive stared at the telephone, dumbfounded that Becky had hung up on him. He thoughtfully replaced the receiver then made up his mind and strode toward the door.
“Claire,” he said to his secretary. “Call down to the lock up. That kid they just brought in? Put him in a holding cell alone. If they haven’t booked him yet, tell ’em to stop. No prints, no nothing. Got it?”
Clair nodded and picked up the phone as Clive started to walk away. He turned with an afterthought.
“Clair? Make sure they gave him a blanket or something to cover up.”
He walked down the hall. The customary trickle of perspiration had started to form and was slowly working its way down toward the small of his back where, Clive thought ruefully, it would probably spread into an unsightly blotch as the evening went on. Fortunately, he’d covered it with a jacket, but at the rate he was sweating, the lining would probably be ruined.
Even though he didn’t want to, he trusted Becky’s instincts. And frankly, he had been feeling a small pang of doubt ever since the call had come in that the pet murderer had been apprehended nude in someone’s garden. What’s more, just in case the prisoner was in fact innocent of any misdoing, Clive was beginning to feel more than slightly guilty that his continued refusal to believe in anything more than a bona fide human killer might cost more citizens of West Hollywood their lives. Then again, neither of the old broads had mentioned a thing about seeing a dog; that certainly bothered him.
Well, he thought smugly, Becky didn’t say anything about not questioning the witnesses, did she? He continued down the hall toward the interview room.
He reached it and opened the door, quickly taking in its three occupants with a single glance. Both females were in their early seventies at least. The taller of the two had folded her arms and was sitting ramrod straight, her face set with belligerent dislike. The other, a plump, fluttery sort, was trying to calm her partner down, stroking her shoulder gently with little effect. The air was filled with tension.
The reason was immediately clear to Clive. Some idiot had assigned Detective Norbert Washington to do the interview. While Washington was not a bad sort, likable, friendly and quick with a smile or a joke, he was one of those people who had been drawn into law enforcement by fate and circumstance, even though he possessed not a jot of the social grace necessary for the community service portions of police work and just slightly less than enough intelligence to realize it. Clive often thought that Bert would have made a marvelous assistant fire chief as he and Delaney were peas in a pod.
Clive suppressed a sigh at the memory of Bert’s first field experience in West Hollywood. One of the deputies had responded to a public disturbance call and arrived to find a ninety-two-year-old woman, stewed to the gills, pounding on her apartment building manager’s door. Although the deputy had tried to calm the old lady down, she persisted in smacking her high-heeled shoe on the door, insisting that the manager had been coming into her apartment nightly in order to molest her. The manager had been persuaded to come out into the hall to resolve the difficulties. As soon as he stepped out of the apartment, the old lady had attacked, beating on the poor man’s chest with her shoe. The deputy intervened, and the irate tenant had turned her wrath on him, delivering several nasty blows to his head and shoulders and kicking him in the shins.
With no choice left, she’d been brought into the station, and Bert Washington had been assigned to do the booking. It was a mistake. Despite repeated attempts to take her fingerprints, the old gal refused, loudly stating that she’d just had a manicure that afternoon and didn’t want to ruin her nails. She did use her nails — and the hand to which they were attached — to take a swipe at the fingerprint technician. A ruckus had ensued, echoing throughout the station, and Clive had arrived on the scene to witness Washington, a man well over six one and weighing in at nearly 260, with the old lady’s head in a hammer-lock hold, pressing her ink-smudged hands to the fingerprint card with a grunt of satisfaction. Clive had not been amused.
After several similar incidents, Clive had issued tacit instructions that Washington was to handle nothing more than routine bookings, car theft interviews and the like. But apparently, this evening, he’d been the only detective available, and someone had fouled up.
“I’ll take it from here, Bert,” he said and watched Washington, with reluctance, rise from his seat and leave the room.
“Now ladies…” Clive began, but Gertie Stamford didn’t give him a chance to finish.
“What the hell kind of police department are you running here?” she demanded.
“Actually,” Clive said reasonably, “We’re sheriffs, not police. Now…”
“I don’t give a cow’s hind end what you call yourselves!” she shouted, pointing toward the vanished Bert Washington. “Is that the kind of person my tax dollars support?”
Gertie was royally ticked off. Even Ruth’s tender attempts to soothe were getting on her nerves.
“That damned idjit had the audacity to ask us if we were… well…you know.”
Clive sighed. “I’m terribly sorry, ladies. You’re both quite right. He shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Damned right, he shouldn’t,” sniffed Gertie.
“I will certainly see that he’s reprimanded later,” Clive glanced down at the partially completed interview sheet. He could only imagine what comments Washington had made in his efforts to clarify the fact that the two elderly women shared a one bedroom apartment at the same address.
“Now, if you’ll accept my apologies, I understand you Miss, uh….” He checked the sheet. “Miss Stamford. You discovered the suspect?”
Gertie seemed to relax in her eagerness to tell her story. “Naked as a jay bird, he was,” she confided. “Right in the middle of Ruth’s garden, under the sundial. Ain’t that right, Ruthie?”
Ruth nodded, and Gertie, encouraged, went on.
“Blood everywhere! You shoulda seen it! That cat looked like road kill.” She reached up and rested her hand on her own shoulder, covering Ruth’s. “I bet he woulda tried to kill us if it wasn’t for my old friend here.” She nodded toward the pearl-handled gun lying in the center of the table.
“Did you fire any shots?” Clive asked.
“Nope,” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “And it’s registered, too. Don’t you go getting any ideas about lockin’ up Ruthie ’n me.”
“Oh, no,” Clive assured her. “I’m sure the registration’s fine.” He tried not to show his eagerness with his next question. “Tell me, did either of you happen to notice a large dog anywhere around?”
“A dog?” Gertie snorted with disgust while Ruth shook her head. “I’m tellin’ ya, it was the naked guy. Covered in blood! Pieces of that poor cat in his hands. What the hell are you lookin’ fer a dog fer?”
Clive felt like a child called into the principal’s office under Gertie Stamford’s imposing stare. He was now certain the lining of his suit was a complete loss.
