The Trouble With Hairy, page 28
part #2 of West Hollywood Vampires Series
“I am prepared…” he began, “…to forget that this embarrassing little incident ever occurred.”
“But she…”
“But he…”
“However, if you two want to keep at it, be my guest. Just remember Larsen’s on his way over here. With a photographer.”
“Well, Captain,” Eversleigh pulled himself together. “I see you have the situation well in hand. In that case I think it would be best if I just moseyed along.” He glanced down at his ruined suit. “You won’t mind if I use the rear exit, would you?” Drawing himself up to his full, most dignified height, the mayor went toward the office door, pausing in the doorway, unable to resist a parting comment. “Larsen or no Larsen, Captain,” he said firmly, “I want that bastard caught!” So saying, he turned on his heel and strode confidently out of the office, still dripping cold coffee and non-dairy creamer, not forgetting to take care to slam the door behind him.
Clive turned to face Burman, who was blushing furiously from embarrassment.
“Well…?” he demanded.
She mumbled something. Clive cupped one hand to his ear as if he hadn’t heard her.
“I said, I’m sorry, goddammit,” Burman spat. “That fart-faced little ferret just makes me forget myself. That’s all.”
She slumped into a chair.
“Is it over?” Becky poked her head out of the bathroom.
“Yeah,” Clive said tiredly. “Now all we have to do is catch a killer.”
“Speaking of killers, Captain,” Chris said, climbing out from under the conference table, “the last thing you need is a bunch of nighttime vigilantes while we’ve got a rogue werewolf on the loose. It would be like hanging out a fast food sign advertising McPeople burgers. Therefore,” he paused for a moment, “…it seems to me that since we know who the killer is, all we have to do is find him before Mayor Eversleigh manages to put his plan into motion.”
“What?” The exclamation came in chorus as Becky slammed open the door from the bathroom and came out.
Chris nodded. “Guy Chartreuse.”
“My cousin?” Becky was bowled out of the way as Louis came bolting out of the bathroom to stand in front of the rest, his feet wrapped in cotton gauze, a huge bandage covering his chin. “Hercule called me,” Chris told him.
“Hercule?” Louis’ eyes grew round with wonder. “The Old Wolf himself?”
Chris nodded. “By the way,” he added, “He’s on his way to New Mexico.”
Louis nodded. “Good,” he said firmly, “It’s about time.”
“You’re not going back to Albuquerque,” Burman said, her tone brooking no argument.
“No, but Uncle’s needed to be put down for some time,” Louis explained.
“Put down?” Clive asked, hesitantly.
“Killed,” Chris informed him gently. He shrugged. “It’s their way.”
Clive turned to Louis, slightly pale. “Are you sure you weren’t raised in East LA?” he asked and, in response to the confusion on Louis’ face added, “Never mind. Bad joke.” Clive picked up the telephone and, while the others listened, issued a terse series of instructions.
“Well, that’s that,” he said, after he’d hung up. “They’ll check out hotels and motels in town. We should have an answer in an hour or so. Now,” he surveyed the mess, “all we have to do is wait…and clean up.”
“And if we don’t find him?” Chris asked.
“We’ll get Beverly Hills in on it. Although,” Clive paused thoughtfully, “if we do that and they find him, it’s gonna be a race to see if we can get there first. Otherwise, they’ll try to bring him in.”
“That could be disastrous,” Chris said. “And deadly.”
“Not half as deadly as I’m gonna be if we catch him outside city limits and I have to explain our barging into Beverly Hills without permission to their Chief of Police.”
“Wait a minute, Pam,” Becky said, before the city manager could work up another head of steam. “We’re jumping the gun. Guy may be in West Hollywood.”
“You just better pray that he is!”
“I’ll stop by the synagogue on my way back to the morgue,” Becky promised. She turned to Chris, “Wanna come with me and pick Troy up?”
“I wondered where the little monkey got to,” Chris said. “Well,” he continued as he stood up, “we’ll leave the rest of you to your work.”
“Wait a minute!” Clive protested. “Who’s gonna help me clean this mess up?”
Chris went out the door with Becky, closing it behind him, but not quite quickly enough to avoid overhearing Pamela Burman’s final barb as she stooped to retrieve a piece of broken coffee mug.
“Our work! Did you hear that? As if our workload hasn’t tripled since he and his friends started showing up in town!”
CHAPTER 16
I’m a miracle worker, Becky thought a few days later.
In record time, she had managed to isolate the antigen that caused Troy’s allergy and come up with a solution. Getting him to take the injection had been another problem altogether. Troy didn’t really mind her use of a hypodermic to draw blood — although he bitched about it incessantly. But the smaller needle that she had tried to use to give him the allergy shot filled him with obstinate terror. She supposed, given his private life, he was used to his blood going out. But he was adamant about anything being injected in. Finally, after watching Becky chase him around the autopsy table, Chris intervened. To her astonishment and irritation, Troy had bravely allowed Chris to give him the injection, closing his eyes in blind trust in his lover’s judgment.
And Troy’s biochemistry had been truly astonishing, defying everything that Becky had been taught was within the realm of medical possibilities. Although he ate, drank and disposed of bodily wastes in much the same way as a normal human being, the similarities ended there. His body actually utilized very few of the nutrients found in normal foods; he passed them almost intact. The exception seemed to be alcohol which was almost immediately absorbed and metabolized very quickly by his bloodstream. At least, Becky thought she finally had an explanation for Troy’s annoying penchant for becoming a roaring drunk after three drinks only to be miraculously sober within half an hour, ready to repeat the process over and over again — endlessly.
He could be hurt, of course, and killed, but cuts and bruises healed at a fantastic rate. Several times, after taking blood, the minuscule puncture in his arm had healed by the time Becky was ready to cover it with a Band-Aid. The exception seemed to be burns, as Becky found out when Troy accidentally overturned an alcohol burner and singed a finger. The healing rate was still incredibly rapid, but at least it wasn’t instantaneous.
Becky was most intrigued when she discovered how his body had halted the ageing process. In normal human beings, the cells were in a constant state of decay and replacement; thus, the old adage about the human body totally replacing itself each seven years or so. Troy’s cells, however, neither degenerated nor divided; they had lost the ability to reproduce. Indulging her curiosity, Becky found that even his ejaculations were devoid of sperm. The only way Becky was able to force a cellular reaction at all was by intentionally damaging a cell, whereupon it repaired itself with amazing rapidity. It was as if his cells made up for their lack of interest in reproducing themselves with an incredible instinct for self-preservation.
His lungs were also a marvel of efficiency. He needed to breathe, of course, as Becky had countless times heard him remind Chris when the two of them French kissed. But his capacity for extracting and utilizing oxygen was much higher than normal. His allergies somehow interfered with this process.
Her curiosity was fully aroused and, with gusto, she set about solving the problem. By the time she managed to do so, she was simply itching to get a gander at whatever the hell it was that made Chris tick. For three nights, she woke from a sound sleep, shame-faced, trying to remind herself that, were her dreams of coshing Chris over the head with an empty Yoo-Hoo bottle and wading in with a scalpel to swipe tissue samples ever to come to pass, it might put an insurmountable strain on their friendship. Despite her racing mind as she strove to develop an antihistamine compatible with Troy’s biochemistry, it was her talk with Troy that first day that had given her the most food for thought. She looked upon him differently now. Oh, he still irritated the crap out of her at times; chasing him around the morgue, she’d gladly have strangled him. But now, she found a certain involuntary affection mingled with her frustration in dealing with him. She’d even, to her great surprise, found herself sticking up for him several times when she felt Chris was being unduly harsh.
The little bastard had started her thinking. Not about Chris — she honestly believed she’d be able to deal with that — but about herself, her life or lack thereof. The most obvious manifestation of her introspection was the total abandoning of her diet. She enjoyed eating, she’d concluded, and she refused to deny herself the pleasure.
Today, on her way home from the morgue, she’d reached a decision, stopped at Mayfair Market and gone — one should pardon the expression — absolutely batshit, in the baked goods aisle. Barely restraining herself until she had reached her car in the parking lot, she’d slid behind the driver’s wheel and tore into the cellophane wrapping of a two-pound bag of Double-Stuffed Oreo cookies. For the first time in weeks, she bit into a sugar and fat laden treat without guilt. Although, she supposed, the actual abandonment of her diet had come when she’d stopped at Mrs. Field’s on the way to Clive’s office, the comforting sight of the grocery bags full of no nos made her freedom from Nutri-System seem somewhat more official.
Life is too short, she’d told herself and proceeded to dump the rest of the grocery bag full of caramel fudge brownies, Marie Callendar’s frozen fruit pies, assorted candy bars and bags of Pepperidge Farms cookies onto the passenger seat. She considered the pile of goodies with satisfied pleasure and, with a shiver of delight, chose a particularly luscious looking cinnamon crumb cake. After all, Becky thought as the buttery crumbs melted in her mouth with a burst of flavor, although she was rather stout, she was by no means unattractive. Men had often sung her praises. Unfortunately, she considered with a grimace and another Oreo, most of her admirers had rendered their compliments whilst sobbing onto Becky’s shoulder after their break up with some other woman.
Becky realized that she unfortunately possessed what recent self-awareness books had labeled a “caretaker mentality.” Thus, her marriage to a man needing her tender care should have been assured years ago. Her irresistible urge to succor those in need was, however, made less attractive to members of the opposite sex because her profession caused many to assume her to have an undertaker mentality as well. In the romantic arena, what she did for a living, no matter how empathetic she was, put an invariable damper on the male libido.
She’d quickly dropped two men who, upon discovering that Becky spent her days amongst corpses, seemed to have bizarre ideas on how Becky could best spend her nights. In one case she’d even needed to change her telephone number when he persisted in bothering her. Her idea of a romantic evening had more to do with bouquets of roses and dinners at La Dome; the thought of complying with the gentleman’s request that she, instead, spend a half hour in a bathtub full of ice cubes and then undress and remain motionless on the bed struck her as strange at the very least.
The other beau, when the relationship had reached the intimate stage, had ushered her into his bed chamber to reveal black satin sheets, black candles, a black crepe canopy — and a large black casket. Her own libido had immediately flown off on a quick trip to Tahiti; at least Chris had a good reason for his own particular sleeping arrangements. As a result, once she’d weeded out the weirdos, that elusive engagement ring seemed farther off than ever.
In some ways, the more normal men Becky had dated were even worse than the occasional necrophile. Like most professionals, she saw nothing wrong with bitching and griping after a hard day at work, seeking sympathy and affectionate understanding from the empathetic ear of her current romantic interest. But, the fascinating, albeit baffling, details of her discovery, via an extremely difficult analysis of stomach contents, that Mrs. Rutherford had, indeed, been murdered by her husband’s surreptitious addition of oleander twigs to the charcoal underneath some barbecued chicken, rarely left her dinner companions in a state of rapturous enthrallment with her cleverness. She found nary a sympathetic male ear whilst bemoaning the current male homosexual fad of semi-strangulation by placing dry cleaner’s bags over the head to induce the supposed consummate orgasm or while complaining that, really, people should be more careful about seeking immediate medical attention after accidentally sticking fingers into kitchen appliances containing whirring blades. Once in a blue moon, however, she found a man who was both able to deal with her profession and her intelligence. Unfortunately, these men were usually the ones who most needed mothers, rather than girlfriends or wives, and Becky was very good at mothering. Time and time again, she would mentally curse herself for slipping into the mommy role, but she seemed unable to stop. Thus, her initial infatuation with Chris, almost a decade ago.
The very first time she’d met him, back in medical school, she’d realized he was unusual. If she’d only known then exactly how unusual he was, she thought as she ripped the cellophane wrapping even more to get at the Oreo fragments that were hiding at the bottom of the package, she could have spared herself a lot of needless grief.
I was so frigging young back then! she thought as half a cookie slipped from her mouth. She deftly caught it before it could plunge down into the top of her blouse and vanish into her cleavage.
She recalled, with embarrassment, the cow-eyed, dopey adoration she had lavished on Chris during the first few weeks of their acquaintance. Following him around, her head full of sloppy romantic thoughts of a lifetime together, she was always rebuffed in such a kind, gentlemanly fashion that it had taken her almost two months to realize that Chris hadn’t been merely letting her down gently when he’d first told her he was gay. But, by that time, a genuine affection had developed between them and, valuing it, Becky had remained close, via letter and telephone, even after she’d moved to California.
Her attitude toward Troy, however, had been an entirely different story. It was a measure of Chris’ deep feelings for her, she realized now, that had enabled him to put up with Becky’s obvious dislike of his southern lover. Any lesser man would have simply chosen entirely in favor of his mate and told Becky to take her caustic comments and irritable reaction to Troy’s antics elsewhere.
In any case, since her talk with Troy, for the first time, she felt comfortable with both of the young men together. And, surprisingly, her change in attitude toward his lover had revealed a new side to her relationship with Chris. The slight polite reserve, which she’d always sensed in him despite their closeness, had faded. His dealings with her possessed new warmth and an even deeper affection; he seemed to realize that her acknowledgment of Troy’s position had made her needful of reaffirmation of her own.
Everyone’s happy, she thought. Even Clive.
Clive’s fears, at least where Louis was concerned, had vanished. Just this morning, Louis had gone over to the station with Burman and sat, head resting on his paws, while Clive and Pamela discussed crowd control for the upcoming Gay Pride parade. In fact, Clive had called to report proudly, he’d even been able to watch, eyes wide open, while Louis changed form. He was so pleased with his newfound courage that he’d tentatively suggested to Pamela that Louis spend the night at his place. Burman, however, had flatly refused and had called Becky just before the end of the day to gripe about Clive’s audacity in trying to commandeer her ward.
Now, there’s a strange situation, Becky thought with a grin. She struggled with the cellophane wrapping on a bag of caramel corn and succeeded in tearing it halfway down one side, spilling sugar-coated popcorn all over the van’s front seat. For the next several minutes, she amused herself by twisting apart the chocolate Oreo cookies, placing a few of the spilled kernels in the vanilla cream and smashing the cookies back down to make an impromptu sandwich. After the first few tries, she mastered the technique so well that the cookie wafers remained whole and turned her thoughts back to Burman and Louis.
From trying to brain him with a frying pan, Pamela Burman had become Louis’ staunchest supporter. She was fiercely protective of the young werewolf, even yelling at Carlos when he inadvertently hurt Louis’ feelings with a casual comment about the weird infestation of fleas in Burman’s office carpeting. Most of the money Chris had given Burman was gone; her newest hobby was dragging Louis to the finest shops West Hollywood had to offer and terrorizing the salespeople until Louis was outfitted to Burman’s satisfaction.
Becky breathed silent thanks that the city manager firmly believed in the West Hollywood Marketing Corporation’s motto of “Shop West Hollywood.” Had Burman deigned to drive the five or ten minutes into Beverly Hills, she could have single-handedly closed every shop on Rodeo Drive; it was doubtful that the posh, arrogant shopkeepers and sales clerks there could have withstood Burman’s onslaught without a series of paid sick leaves to the Betty Ford Center.
In West Hollywood, though merchants were more used to Pamela Burman’s antics, none escaped entirely unscathed. The butchers at Alpha Beta, Mayfair Market, Pavilions and The Chalet Gourmet had all taken to cringing at Burman’s approach. No meat was fresh enough for her new ward or, if it was proven to be unarguably fresh, it was too fatty or the quality left something to be desired. Burman was being so difficult where Louis’ diet was concerned that the manager of Pavilions Market had called city hall to complain. During Burman’s lunch hour, when she was most likely to commence one of her assaults on the market, the staff of Pavilions — butchers, checkers, bag boys and the like — had started to come down with sudden migraines, flues, sciatica and other assorted ailments, all of which vanished the moment the city manager was spotted stalking back down the sidewalk toward her office.
