Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery Page 4

  Peter walked over and took the paper from me. I loved watching him walk, especially nude. Michelangelo would have had a field day. “Well, I suppose Severance could be a woman, Bea is definitely a woman, but I doubt seriously if Nado Goren, Esq. is our Buffy.”

  “Peter… she uses Bea Summers. But Monk has it spelled B E A and I’ll bet it’s not, it shouldn’t be. It’s the initial B.— as in B. Summers.” He looked at me blankly. “Don’t you get it? That’s the name of Sarah Michelle Geller’s character on the show. Buffy Summers.”

  “You know the character’s last name?”

  “What can I tell you? I watch the show occasionally. I can’t believe I’m admitting it, but you’ve got to understand, from my point of view it’s an absolute hoot. Joss Whedon can write. I mean, none of his vampyre mythology has any basis in reality, and he doesn’t spell vampyre correctly, but he’s incredibly witty and he writes great women characters. I’ve wanted to get him to do something for Anticipation for a long time, but until the merger, I couldn’t afford him; and since then, I’ve put all my energy into getting Satan Gone Bad in the can.”

  “So it’s possible this Bea Summers woman who’s been stalking you on Facebook is the Buffy wanna-be who just tried to kill you. Another wacko to add to your list. Let’s see, there was Rudy Valentino, your ex-lover; that asshole agent Mick Erzatz; and Lilith, the mother of all evil. Well, at least this woman’s just schizophrenic and not supernatural. I hate it when your enemies morph into something else.”

  7. PETER

  I got dressed while Ovsanna called Monk and told him what we were thinking. She asked him to forward me any Facebook messages she’d gotten from Bea Summers. He said that Summers had written fan mail to Ovsanna in care of the studio, too, and he’d call the office staff to have them fax copies to me at the hotel.

  I went back to my room, spent ten minutes figuring out how to connect to the hotel’s wifi, and started the search for our perp on Facebook.

  OMG. A term I never use because I can’t stand it, but in this case, it was either that or ‘fuck me’. Six pages of Bea Summers on Facebook, six pages of last name Summers with the middle initial B on Facebook, 26 pages of Buffy Anne Summers or Buffy Annie Summers on Facebook, and another I don’t know how many pages of Summers Buffy, Summerss Buffy, Summers-Slayer Buffy, Buffy Summersz, Buffy Summersx, and a whole bunch of Buffy Summers hyphenated with a real last name. Almost every single one of them used a shot of Sarah Michelle Geller for their profile pic.

  I spent the next three hours eliminating suspects. Going deeper into every Facebook page that had Sarah Michelle for its cover photo, to find actual pictures of the person whose page it was. At least thirty of them were guys; don’t ask me how that works. Another two dozen had no photos whatsoever. I skipped over the ones who were obviously teen-agers or twenty-somethings— almost everyone listed Sunnydale High as either their school or place of employment— and those who posted in a foreign language or said they lived outside the U.S. Our Buffy didn’t look like she had the money to fly to New Orleans from any great distance. Actually, she didn’t seem sane enough to get through airport security at all, although CNN had just broadcast the tale of a nine-year-old who got himself past security, the gate agents, and the flight attendants, and flew from Minneapolis to Las Vegas without a ticket, a boarding pass, or— evidently— having to show any ID. So much for Homeland Security these days.

  By 8 p.m. I’d narrowed it down to two Facebook pages— a Buffy Bea Summers who, yes, of course, went to Sunnydale High but maybe, if she was telling any truth at all on her site, lived in Baton Rouge, and another woman posting as B. Summers, from Bay St. Louis. They’d both used photos of Buffy for their profiles, but their photo albums each showed a gray-haired woman who looked to me enough like Ovsanna’s attacker to merit showing the hotel staff. Granted, I hadn’t gotten a close look at her, but both these women filled the bill.

  Monk called to say Ovsanna had gone back to the con to continue signing. He was there with her, but he’d have the faxes for me in half an hour or so, after he made sure she was back safely in her room.

  Ovsanna had arranged for ten of us to have a late dinner in her suite. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast so I called room service and ordered a bowl of gumbo to hold me until then.

  I wanted to get down to reception to see if anyone recognized either of the faux Buffys as being a registered guest. She hadn’t used her Facebook name or Monk would have already found her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t staying in the hotel.

  While I waited for Monk and the gumbo, I did a Google search for Maral McKenzie. Seeing her doppelganger at the con had me thinking about her, wondering what had happened to her since she’d disappeared from L.A. There were several mentions of her in articles about Ovsanna, dating back to the years she’d been Ovsanna’s assistant. Only one was recent: A woman with her name had been interviewed at a crime scene in the Meatpacking District in downtown Manhattan. It seems she was the first bystander to come upon a dead body that had been eviscerated beyond recognition. The reporter included her description of the victim, but that was all. No information about the bystander save her name and neighborhood— a Ms. Maral McKenzie of the Upper East Side.

  By the time I finished the gumbo, put the bowl on the tray, and the tray on the floor outside the room, there was Monk coming down the hall. He had a stack of faxes in his hand.

  “I didn’t realize she’d sent so many emails,” I said. “Are these all from the same woman? Are they all threats?” Monk nodded.

  We went inside. I spent the next ten minutes reading through the emails, making notes on anything B. Summers said that might help identify her. There wasn’t much. She stuck to the same script on all of them— “I know who you are, Ovsanna Moore. I recognize you. I have a job to do and I’m going to do it. You won’t see me coming, but I know how to get rid of you and I will. I am a slayer. I’m Buffy.” Not much variation in her choice of words. Once or twice she referred to others “of your kind” that she recognized and how she’d been sent to “do away with you all”. I wondered for a moment if she really was the real deal. Maybe she was talking about Orson Welles and Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and the rest of Ovsanna’s clan I’d fought alongside in Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. No. Impossible.

  “Jesus, Monk, why didn’t you tell me about all of these? These are serious threats.”

  He shook his head. Said Ovsanna hadn’t been worried about them. She didn’t want him saying anything, and she was the boss. All she wanted him to do was keep an eye out for the woman’s name, along with the names of the other two people who’d sent disturbing emails. If he found them on the guest lists of any events she was attending, he was to let her know.

  Just like her to think she can handle anything and everything all by her lonesome. As far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t need help from anyone. She doesn’t need anyone. I wondered if all her clan are like that.

  I grabbed my laptop and we went down to the lobby to question the staff.

  8. OVSANNA

  SuzieQ was standing at the dining table buffet with her hands full. “Oh Lord, Ovsanna, these fixin’s are to die for. I haven’t even gotten to the chicken yet and already I’m happy as a pig in shit.”

  I was glad to hear it, since I’m no one to judge. My kind can ingest human food, but there’s not much point in it. It passes quickly through our system and provides about as much nutrients as Metamucil— like eating wood. With about as much flavor. My attorney, Ernst Solgar, is of the Obour clan. They dine on carrion. I can’t get past the smell, but they love it. It doesn’t seem to make much difference to Ernst what the animal is, as long as it’s been dead a few days. Needless to say, he’s rarely a guest at my dinner parties.

  For this evening’s dinner, I’d asked Christiano Raffignone to have his staff at the Martinique Bistro do the catering. I’d met Christiano when we were filming Blood on the Bayou in Houma, before Katrina hit. His self-named restaurant
there was a favorite of the crew and he’d catered our wrap party when we’d returned for pick-ups there after the storm. For tonight’s menu, he’d sent over char-grilled oysters, pan fried green tomatoes with crabmeat remoulade, a spinach and blood orange salad, chicken breasts filled with triple crème brie, and pecan risotto with praline sauce.

  “What are these creampuff-like things?” Justin asked, as he put two more on his plate. “They’re fantastic.” He looked pretty fantastic himself, and it was obvious SuzieQ thought so, too. That’s good. I wouldn’t mind seeing them together. Justin Passenger plays Sir Roland of Essex, the fourth lead in Mid-Evil, and I’d just used him as my leading man in Satan Gone Bad. He’s a really nice guy, for an actor. Reminds me of a young Jeff Bridges. Between Mid-Evil and Satan Gone Bad, he was riding the wave of “overnight success”— albeit after twelve years of brilliant work on Broadway and the London stage that went unnoticed by the great unwashed. Fame had come late to him and I think that’s what kept him humble. He seemed genuinely happy to be here meeting his fans. And getting to know SuzieQ.

  “They’re wild mushroom beignets,” I said. “I hope you’re not allergic to fungi.”

  “Aw, damn,” SuzieQ answered, “I toss real good ever’ time I chew magic ’shrooms. But these are so tasty, I’m not gonna mind if that’s what happens.” She turned to Justin. “Let me have another one off your plate, sugar.” He used two fingers to pop one in her mouth.

  “I’ll tell the chef, SuzieQ. I’m sure the image of you in your footies stretched out over a toilet bowl will give him no end of delight.” She’d changed out of her snake dance costume and in spite of the armadillo print footie pajamas she was wearing and the two piled-high plates of food she was carrying, she looked sexy as hell. She had in her green contact lenses; they matched the cactus on her jammies.

  Matty Ianucci added more milk to his scotch and charged over to where I was standing. He could barely contain himself. The attack on me was publicity he couldn’t have paid for— unless maybe he’d thought of it himself and hired the Buffy imposter, which was something I wouldn’t put past him. He was from Massapequa, Long Island, after all. He had a mild tic— his neck snapped to his right shoulder when he got excited. Now, talking about the TV coverage of my attempted murder, his neck was snapping a mile a minute. I put the sofa between us to keep his splashing drink from ruining another outfit.

  “I mean, Ms. O, you’re okay, right?” Snap. “I mean, ya look like you’re okay. That bandage, I mean, what is it, the size of a scratch, right?” Snap. “Jeez, are we lucky that psycho couldn’t aim. I mean, you coulda been hurt! Oh man, I gotta tell ya, we couldn’a paid for this kind of publicity if we’d wanted to. I mean, screw that guy from Bill O’Reilly. We were on every local news broadcast from N’Orleans to Baton Rouge. Six o’clock and ten!” Snap. Snap. Snap. “And TMZ, ET, you name it. A lagniappe to beat all!” Scotch and milk went flying all over the place. “I tell ya, it’s a good thing I got the fire marshal on my iPhone, ’cause, not for nothin’, but when the doors open tomorrow, I’m gonna be payin’ off people right and left.”

  I was happy to hear that. Not the bribery part, but the fact that he expected an even bigger crowd. I was completely booked up with the advance photo sales, but everyone else in the con would benefit.

  There was a knock on the door, so soft that I was the only one to hear it. I recognized Derek’s scent and deliberated momentarily. I could smell he had Constance with him.

  Did I really want to open the evening up to a full-out brawl between Annie and the two of them? It wouldn’t be anything I couldn’t handle, but it wouldn’t be fun for the rest of my guests.

  Oh, well. They were both at the convention as a favor to me, and the least I could do was feed them; even if they didn’t have enough common sense to arrive separately. I opened the door.

  Annie saw Constance standing half-hidden behind Derek. She went nuts. From zero to sixty in a split second. She picked up the first thing she could get her hands on and threw it at him, screaming, “You son-of-a-bitch, you brought that cunt with you so you could eat?! You wanna eat?! I’ll cut off your fucking balls and you can chew on them! I’m gonna shove ’em down your throat!”

  Luckily for Derek, the thing she got her hands on was a piece of corn bread, and instead of taking him out, it smooshed into a spray of crumbs and landed six feet short. She grabbed a baguette and let loose with that. The roll held its shape, but missed its mark, and that’s when she picked up the cheese knife and charged at him.

  I grabbed Annie’s wrist mid-lunge, whirled her around, and forced her back into the room. Angela was there to catch her. The cheese knife went flying, knocking over an open bottle of wine. Red wine. So much for the second tablecloth of the day.

  “Go back to your room, Derek,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll get someone to bring you a couple of plates of food. And for God’s sake, have a little consideration— for your safety, if not for Annie’s feelings. You can’t keep throwing this in her face without paying a price.”

  9. PETER

  The hotel manager was a nattily dressed, fairly young man named Sam Koh. His entire staff referred to him as Sam Koh, not Mr. Koh or Sam, but always Sam Koh. Like the Sons of Anarchy without the r. Sam Koh was a big fan of Ovsanna’s. He was eager to help, but he didn’t recognize either of the Facebook photos I showed him. Neither did the two men working reception. They’d been working the night shift all week. I needed to talk to the people who’d been behind the counter during the day, when most of the guests checked in. Sam Koh was sufficiently worried about bad publicity for his hotel that he called all three of the clerks who’d been on the day shift and let me talk to them over the phone. I forwarded the photos to each of them. Bingo… one of the women recognized the B. Summers from Bay St. Louis.

  “That wasn’t her name, though, I’m sure of that,” said Jerlyn Doucette, the last clerk I talked to. Jerlyn handled check-ins during the week, from 8 a.m. ’til 6 p.m. “I would have noticed that, especially because she was wearing a hoodie with Sunnydale High on it, and we talked about how we were both fans of the TV show. If she’d checked in as B. Summers, I would have noticed that, for sure.”

  “Do you remember which day she checked in?” I asked. “Or what time? Anything else that can help us figure out the name she checked in under or which room you put her in?”

  “Well, it would have been a single, that’s for sure. She made a big deal about how expensive the rooms were and how she needed the AARP discount on the cheapest room, but she didn’t have a membership card so I couldn’t give it to her. And she was dressed sort of like a teen-ager so I couldn’t really tell how old she was. Not young, but… well, without the card I just couldn’t give her the rate. I asked if maybe she had a Triple AAA card. She said she didn’t own a car. She made a bit of a scene. I was afraid I was going to have to call Sam Koh. And it was after lunch, I remember that, on… Thursday, ’cause we were really crowded with people checking in for the convention. Oh, wait… I remember… her first name was Angel. Angel something. I remember because she said she was a Buffy fan and I thought, wow, isn’t that cool, you ended up with the same name as the guy on the show.”

  By the time I hung up, Monk was with Sam Koh in his office, going over the guest registrations for Thursday afternoon. At 2:45 that day, a woman from Bay St. Louis had checked in using the name Angel Detroit. She was staying in room 1213.

  I called her room from the house phone on the manager’s desk. No answer. Sam Koh was willing to open the room for me. He was now my new best buddy as long as I could track down Ovsanna’s attacker and turn her over to the police before his anxious hotel guests checked out en masse. He either didn’t know or didn’t care that my BHPD badge gave me absolutely no authority in his town. I called the head of the security detail for the convention, a real New Orleans cop with plenty of authority, and asked him to meet us in front of room 1213.

  He beat us there. He introduced himself as Sergeant Abellard Cyp
hers. “Call me Abe,” he said, shaking my hand. He was wearing a baggy seersucker sport coat and khaki pants. Nothing to peg him as a cop. Matty had already told him about me and he was cordial enough, considering I was encroaching on his territory. I explained to him what I was thinking; that Ovsanna’s attacker was the woman registered in 1213. He got Sam Koh to agree, and we basically broke in and entered. Sam Koh used his passkey, though, so it wasn’t much of a crime.

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter anyway. Buffy wasn’t there to complain.

  We tossed the room, taking care not to disturb anything. No question Angel Detroit was the woman we’re looking for. Sergeant Cyphers left one of his men posted by the elevator with instructions to notify him, and me, if she returned to her room. Sam Koh did something to the door lock to prevent her key card from being recognized. If she did return, she was going to have to go back downstairs to have it re-coded. Plenty of time for us to get to her.

  Monk and I headed upstairs to Ovsanna’s suite. I wanted to bring her up to date on the search. Matty and my mother were the only ones remaining by the time we got there. Annie had left in tears, with her manager in tow, and Justin had carried Tricky Dick and Anthony Weiner back to SuzieQ’s room for her. I’ll bet he was hoping she’d invite him in. I hoped he could handle the 90 degree heat in there. Suzie keeps her rooms like an oven for those damn snakes.

  “The woman wasn’t there, but her purse was, with a Louisiana driver’s license in it,” I explained. “Monk identified her; I never got close enough to her to get a good look. She’s definitely the one who attacked you. Your website was showing on her computer, her bed was covered with clippings about you. She had a carry-on suitcase open on the floor, filled with what looked like all seven seasons of the Buffy series DVDs. Her name’s Angel Detroit and she checked in yesterday afternoon. From Bay St. Louis. Didn’t list a license plate number when she registered so there’s no way to know if she’s got a car here. She told the receptionist she didn’t own one, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a rental. There are cameras in the parking garage. We’ll review the footage tomorrow. I doubt she’s driven anywhere— not without her wallet and license. And she wouldn’t leave those DVDs behind, I don’t think.”