Undead and Unpopular, page 13
part #5 of Undead Series
So that’s why they were so twitchy. Funny; I’d imagine ancient vampires didn’t much care about imminent death, but I’d found the older they were, the more they thought they were entitled to live. It was amazing, when you sat down and thought about it.
“You guys, relax. I didn’t do it. None of us did it.” I looked at Sinclair and Tina, who I just remembered had mysteriously disappeared earlier tonight before Alonzo’s death.
“None of us did it,” Sinclair echoed. Right! Besides, he and Tina were always mysteriously disappearing. If Tina hadn’t been gay, I would have had to keep a much closer eye on—
“The monarchy had nothing to do with this,” Tina reiterated. I was glad she seemed to know all about it. “We assumed he had been killed in a dispute with one of you.”
“Why would one of us kill Alonzo?” Carolina asked. “Why would I kill him?”
“To get in our good graces?” Sinclair suggested.
“Family doesn’t always get along,” Tina added.
“And for the same reasons humans kill,” I said. “For money? To get property? For love? Hate? Jealousy? Revenge?”
Carolina was shaking her head; they were all shaking their heads. “No, no. Alonzo was—any differences we had were worked out decades ago. You were the only cause—that is to say, we had different opinions on what to do.”
“Because of the situation with Dr. Trudeau,” Sinclair said.
“That was her name? The brunette from your parlor?”
I looked away and counted to five before talking again. “What happened?” I asked, wondering if vampires had a CSI-type team they could send out for to, I dunno, vacuum for fingerprints or whatever.
“We had risen, of course, and were preparing to go out and get something to eat. David—” Carolina, the group’s unofficial spokesvampire, nodded to a tall, quiet (but then, they were all quiet) gray-haired vampire who looked like a used car salesman in a good suit. “David was having someone come up; the rest of us were going out in a while. Alonzo was going to wait to dine, though, he wanted to leave right away. He was excited. He said you wanted him to come over. He—he was excited,” she said again. “He was looking forward to seeing you again.”
I turned to Tina. “For the record, not that I think you’d be so obvious and sloppy, but did you call Alonzo, pretending to be me, to lure him out away from his buddies, ambush him in the elevator on his way down, shoot him in the head, then cut his head off?”
“No, Majesty. I had to go to Best Buy and get a new DVD player for the game room.”
“I can verify her story. I went with her.” Sinclair sniffed down at Tina. “You are a gem in all things but one: you will insist on buying American.”
“Can we focus, please? So after a while, Alonzo went skipping out the door, all happy to come to my house, and then a while later we came up with—blech—his headless body.”
“Yes, there he was,” used car salesman said. David! His name was David.
“And none of us did it,” I clarified, “and none of you guys did it.”
“If one of us had a grudge,” Carolina pointed out, “we would hardly wait all this time, until we were here under your watchful eye, and kill him in a strange country in a strange hotel room. This draws your attention to us at a time when we have little interest in being noticed.”
“Good point,” I admitted. That “no attention” thing made sense, too. Getting noticed was a great way to get singled out and, well, just check the elevator for why it was bad to get noticed.
“We will take care of this,” Sinclair told them. “We have a small team coming to tend the body. Do you wish to take him back to France?”
“Why?” Carolina asked. “He is dead. What difference does it make where his body is?”
Nice epigraph: You’re dead now, and who cares? Not even your cousin.
“If you did not kill him,” she continued, “then his properties are on the table, so to speak. Speaking for myself, I am most anxious to return and look into disbursement issues.”
The three of us looked at each other. These guys didn’t know that I had planned to give all Alonzo’s stuff to Sophie. But now that he was dead, there was no reason to avenge the good doctor.
“You’re not sad he’s dead because you want his stuff?”
“His being dead solves a rather large problem for you, too, Majesty.”
Larger than you think, honey. I pushed the thought of Sophie—an obvious suspect—aside for now. “Yeah, but—come on, the guy’s dead. A friend of yours—family member—for decades? Perhaps a century? Don’t you owe him something? Don’t we all? I barely knew him and I sort of liked him, when I wasn’t thinking about—” Shooting him, I’d started to say, but probably that wasn’t the best way to go. “Look, there’s got to be something. I mean, I’m glad you guys aren’t in a killing psycho rage because of this, but the poor guy got iced in a hotel elevator, for God’s sake.”
“What is it you want us to do?” Carolina asked. Her expression made it clear she could not think of a single idea that appealed to her.
It took me a moment, but then I realized what this group needed. What Alonzo needed. What I needed. “Okay, let’s—okay, everybody bow your heads. Bow your heads! Okay. Uh, dear God, please—”
“You’re praying? We can’t pray,” David said.
“Not to mention, I don’t think Alonzo is with…Him,” Tina added.
“Shut up, you guys. I’m sure you won’t burst into flames if I do all the talking. I see heads are up. They should be bowed. Bowwwww.” All the heads dropped like they were on a string, except for one. Sinclair’s. He was looking at me and struggling valiantly not to laugh. I glared at him, but he wouldn’t bow his head. Typical. I’d let the Big Man handle him another day.
I bowed mine and looked at my clasped fingers. “Heavenly Father, you may have noticed our friend, Alonzo, has run into a spot of misfortune. We’re not sure where he is, but regardless, please bless him and look after him, forever and ever, and please let him be happy where he is and not scared or lonely. And, um, thanks again for all the help you’ve been giving me on the whole fasting-for-my-birthday thing. Amen.”
“Okay,” Tina said. “Now that the…the royal prayer is out of the way, perhaps we can get back to the business at hand.”
“Which is what? We talked to these guys, other guys are coming to take Alonzo’s body—we’re not cops, we’re not forensic scientists, and we’re not journalists. We’re—”
A phone began to ring. I glared around at them. “You guys! Shut that off. Hotel room phone, cell phone, whatever it is, kill it, just don’t get me started on phones. Will you—”
After a few seconds of looking around, everyone looked straight down. The phone continued to ring.
It was coming from Alonzo’s body.
Chapter 29
The dead man’s pants are ringing,” Tina said, somewhat needlessly.
“Maybe it’s a sales call,” I said. “They have the worst timing.”
Sinclair stepped into the elevator, fished around blank-faced in Alonzo’s pants for a minute, then pulled out a small ringing cell phone.
He flipped it open and said, “Dr. Trudeau?”
Ooooh, snap! Except—
He held it out. “It’s for you.”
“Did you tell her that now isn’t a good time? I mean, just because the phone is ringing doesn’t mean—”
“Elizabeth.”
“Okay, but I’m just saying. I mean, obviously this is an important call, but in general, if it’s really important, they’ll call back.” I took the cell phone from Sinclair, who looked like he’d be happy to make me eat it. “Hello?”
“Hello, gorgeous,” Liam drawled. “You having fun in the elevator?”
“Uh, is this the part where you taunt me and leave me clues?”
“Not hardly. I did it. Sophie wanted to, so I’m afraid I had to send her on a bit of a wild-goose chase so I could take care of things for her—”
I looked around at the others. “When you use euphemisms like ‘take care of it’ and stuff, are we, I just wanted to make sure, are we talking about the same thing?”
“I cut the smug bastard’s head off,” Liam said. “After I stuck my .38 in his forehead and pulled the trigger.”
“Oh. Well, it’s good that you got that out of your system.” I didn’t say his name out loud, though why I was trying to protect the maniac was beyond me. “So, uh, what now?”
“Now nothing, blondie. I just wanted to call you and let you know in case your barrel was swinging over to Sophie. Now listen close, ’cause there might be a test later: I did it. Sophie had nothin’ to do with it. She didn’t ask me to do it and she didn’t know I was gonna go out and take care of it tonight. I told her you called and were looking for her—”
“That seems like a popular strategy today.”
“—and she scooted right over to your place. Then I called Alonzo—”
“How’d you get the number?”
“He gave it to Sophie. Called her cell—she’s listed up in Embarrass, since she’s gotta be accessible—and left her the number in case she wanted to ‘work things out.’ Boy, if I didn’t want to kill him before, I sure woulda after that.”
“I, uh, gave him your number. He was supposed to call her and set up a meeting and apologize.”
“Too late now,” Liam said, totally unmoved.
I turned and walked a little ways away from the group. “Then you came over here and did it?”
“Yep. Then I came back to our room, told Sophie, and we lit on out of here. But I didn’t want you guys wondering. It was me.”
“Your friend must have flipped right out of her gourd,” I said in a low voice, but who was I kidding? They were vampires. They could probably hear both ends of the conversation.
“Yep, she was pretty pissed at me. Still is. But we’ll work it out.”
“How does this affect your—your earlier plans?”
“Dunno.” I could almost hear him shrug over the phone. “Don’t much care right now. She’ll turn me when she gets around to it. Right now, we gotta get in the wind.”
“Maybe you don’t have to—”
“You ever seen a vampire have a nightmare, Bets?” His voice was lower, too, either because he didn’t want Sophie to hear or in response to mine. “It’s awful. It’s about the worst thing you ever saw. You have nightmares, Bets?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “I don’t dream anymore. I didn’t think any vampires dreamed.”
“Lucky,” he said, and hung up.
I closed the phone and turned back to the group. “Okay! Where were we? Right, we were leaving.”
“Dr. Trudeau’s lover.” Carolina, looking very relieved, glanced around at the others. “Of course! We should have guessed much sooner.”
“What, you’re happy?”
“No, just…reassured. Vengeance for a loved one is—”
“An understandable motive,” Tina interrupted. “Like being interested in taking over his properties.”
“Right,” Carolina said, completely missing the sarcasm.
“We’re going,” I said.
Chapter 30
Wow!” Jessica said. “That is—wow! Liam! Sneaking over and icing the vampire—who’d have thought?” She answered her own question. “In retrospect, everyone. And it’s so slick.”
“Slick?”
“Well, Bets, what are you going to do?”
I opened my mouth, but Jessica rushed ahead. “Punish him? You can’t do anything to him—he’s human. If he was a vampire, you could do something, but he’s not in your, what do you call it, jurisdiction. Turn him over to the cops? For what, killing a dead guy? Assuming you could find the body—which I bet, thanks to Sinclair’s little gray men, I bet you can’t—you sure don’t want a forensic guy poking around in it.”
“You’re giving me a headache,” I muttered.
“Sophie didn’t do it, so you guys can’t be pissed at her or punish her or anything. And someone did kill Alonzo, avenging Sophie. The Europeans won’t expect you to do anything—they gave you a big hint when they were all uncaring about what to do with his body. In fact…” She shot Sinclair a sly look. “Am I right? Did you tell her?”
“I haven’t had the chance, and besides, you’re obviously dying to.”
“I hate when you go all Sherlocky on me,” I grumbled.
“They’re gone! Aren’t they gone?” she asked Sinclair. “I bet they beat feet out of here this very night.”
“They are gone,” Sinclair confirmed.
“What? Already? It’s only—” I looked at my watch. It was eight-thirty the next night. Once we’d left the hotel, the evening had been a bust. Sinclair made feeble mention of tracing Sophie’s cell through Alonzo’s cell, but I waved that away (could it even be done? I didn’t know from cell phone technology). Let it go. They were long gone from here, anyway, and Liam probably wouldn’t have been dumb enough to hang on to whatever phone he’d used to taunt me from Alonzo’s pants. “How do you know?”
“I have been keeping an eye on them, of course,” Sinclair replied, looking surprised at my abysmally stupid question. “They departed as soon as the sun set.”
“They just took off? Without a word to anybody?”
“Of course.” Sinclair was looking like the cat that had eaten fifty canaries.
“But it was such a big deal when they came. And now they’re just—what? Sneaking out of town? Aren’t they afraid that’ll make us mad?”
“They know it won’t.”
“It won’t?”
“Look at it from their point of view, Majesty,” said Tina. “They are not remotely sure of your power base. They wait almost a year before coming to pay tribute. While they are here, you show evidence of fasting, prayer, powerful allies—vampire and human—live through an attack by a vampire killer—”
“Delk wasn’t trying to kill me,” I protested. “He was just having a really shitty day.”
“—publish your life story, maintain a cop and a doctor as blood-sheep—”
“The hell!”
“—kill a zombie sent here for obviously sinister reasons—”
I’d told them about Zombiefest in the car on the way to Alonzo’s hotel. They had both been flabbergasted. Both denied ever seeing a zombie in their long, long lives. “We don’t know if it was sent, or just wandered in.”
“And, when presented with a moral dilemma, you arranged for the death of a contemporary.”
“But I didn’t!”
“From their point of view,” she reminded me.
“Well, how dumb are they?” I muttered.
“Frankly,” Sinclair said, smiling, “I am surprised they did not skulk out of town quite a bit earlier.”
“So—you’re happy? You’re happy that those guys think I’m a royal murdering jerk.”
“You should be very happy they think that—if you can bear it, Miss Congeniality.”
I stuck a finger in his face. “I told you about that privately. It’s private. Private information! Not for sharing with the class!”
“You should never have told Jessica, then,” Tina piped up, “because she told everyone that story.”
“What?” Jessica cried when I looked at her. “You were in the Burnsville paper, for God’s sake. It’s not like it was a Pentagon secret.”
I turned to Sinclair. “So do we ask Sophie and Liam to leave? Banish them?”
“They banished themselves,” Sinclair said quietly. “They did not return to their home in Embarrass; no one has seen them in days. Too bad; I have questions.”
“Questions like what?”
“Like how a farmer of modest means could have killed one of the oldest, most powerful vampires on the planet.”
“A classic assassination,” Tina pointed out. “He just walked up to him and—well. Alonzo was distracted, apparently. Perhaps Liam got close to him with a lie—I’ll be your driver tonight, orders from the Queen, she’s the one who had me call. Something. Anything.”
“And he isn’t a farmer,” I said. “He lives in a small town, on a farm, but he doesn’t work the land. He’s retired from the Air Force, Sophie told me.” I nearly groaned as I remembered what she had told me. “Where he used to teach small arms.”
“Small arms?”
“Handguns,” Tina clarified. “Hmm. In hindsight, someone should have been watching those two.”
“I guess I thought Sophie would just wait around for—” What? For me to make a move? For justice? “Indefinitely,” I finished. “I should have known none of this would sit well with Liam. And he wouldn’t think killing Sophie’s killer—I mean, I don’t get the idea that it’s going to be weighing heavy on his mind, you know?”
“Did killing Nostro weigh heavily on yours?” Sinclair asked.
I shook my head; if he was looking for answers, he had the wrong girl. “I’m so fucking thirsty right now,” I admitted, “it’s hard to get worked up about anything.”
Jessica edged away.
“I don’t think you have to worry,” Tina teased. “You smell so bland and tasteless right now.”
“Hey, that’s right!” She brightened. “Vampire repellant.”
“You’ve always been repellant,” I told her gently.
“Oh, that reminds me. We’re redoing the parlor—”
“The second one?”
“No, the first. All the foot traffic in there just reminds me how awful the wallpaper is. Anyway, once the walls were stripped the workmen found something really interesting.”
“Interesting how? Interesting bad? Termites? What?”
“Come and see,” she invited.
I followed her, groaning. What fresh hell was this? Couldn’t I ever get a break? And why was Jess even bothering me with this stuff? She knew I was bored to death by anything having to do with the house; not to mention, if there was a real problem it would be her, not me, who would have to take care of it financially.
