Dead But Not Forgotten (25 page)

“What about that nursing home in Miami?” Todd said, after a deep think. “All those scotch mints and menthol anti-inflammatory creams?”

Bev nodded, though she thought he was wrong. The place felt more like a movie set.
Arsenic and Old Lace
or some thirties B film. Its hominess felt staged.

Toddy picked up the TV's clicker and began testing how well the power button worked. On. Off. On. Off.

“Sweetie,” she murmured, holding out her hand.

He dropped it into her palm and she turned to place it back on the table. That was when she noticed a thick tome jammed between the chair's cushions. It was both expensive and heavy: an art book filled with images of jewel-toned Renaissance paintings. She picked it up and had to work hard to suppress a shudder when the book automatically fell open to a page of belly-rolled nudes.

“Ew,” said Toddy, peering over her shoulder.

“Double ew,” she agreed, flicking past pages and pages of women with apple-sized breasts and meaty thighs.

“Maybe she's a lesbian,” said Toddy. “That's her porn and she doesn't want to be debutched for any guy.”

“And maybe she likes art. Or she's agoraphobic. Or maybe she thinks she's Helen of Troy and she doesn't need our help.” Bev dropped the book to the floor. “I don't care. All I want to do is finish this job and head back to New York.”

Liara's home decorating efforts were getting on Bev's nerves. The only thing remotely tasteful in the place was the long rectangular mirror mounted on the wall behind her favorite chair.

As was her habit, Bev checked her reflection.

Damn.

Humidity was trying to restore her blond hair to its original, crimped permanent wave. Excellent. She was going to stink like a salesclerk from Target for the rest of the night because Toddy had emptied the last can of unscented hair spray on yesterday's makeover. Maybe she should hit it now with another layer of lacquer before it became unmanageable? Her gaze started to slide toward the doorway, then stalled. There was a mess of fingerprints on the mirror's beveled edge. A line of them, as if someone habitually grabbed one side of the mirror's ornate metal frame. Oddly placed, those grubby marks. The rest of the glass was clean, except for that cluster of smudges at approximately hip level. Now, why would someone . . .

This Liara woman is devious.

“Toddy, I think this mirror is a two-way.” She tested her theory by tugging on the edge of the frame. A piece of wood splintered off, but the mirror didn't so much as shiver on its mooring. “Yes, it is. She's hiding behind a false wall.”

Todd floated over. “You're kidding.”

“Not this time.” Bev tucked the offending lock of hair behind her ear. Perfection nearly reinstated, she scratched the polished glass with her sharp nail. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

“I don't think so,” Liara replied from the other side of the wall.

“Yours is not to think.” Bev turned, searching for the source of the voice, and finding it in a small speaker that she'd dismissed as an air grate. “Yours is just to do. In this case, hold perfectly still while we throw some curlers in your hair and take a hedge trimmer to your eyebrows.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because I've seen your picture.” A small fabrication. The image in question had been a frustratingly unfocused shot taken at a gathering of Louisiana vamps. Eric had tapped his finger on a dark-haired woman, half-hidden behind two very large males, and said, “That's her in the sweats.”

Yes,
sweats
.

Try as she might, Bev hadn't been able to pick out one distinguishing feature that could turn the toadstool into the temptress. Did Liara have great hair? Fine eyes? Who could tell from that blurred photo? Liara's hair had been scraped back, and her face was a pale blur, save for a pair of thick, dark brows. “Darling, it's time to shuck you out of your sweats and let your inner goddess shine.”

“Why don't you buzz off? I have no intention of coming out.”

Toddy pulled his lips back to show all his teeth.

In her line of work, Bev had run into a few reluctant vampire brides and grooms. But eventually, they all came around to going through the rites of the ceremony in relatively good grace because they knew marriages between their kind weren't always love matches. All too frequently, they were the results of credits owed and debits balanced.

But this vampire was saying no. Flat out. Not only to her obligations to Eric, but to Van D.—the same misbegotten son of a bitch who'd dallied with a chorus girl named Bev through an entire off-Broadway season of
Kiss Me, Kate
.

“You want me to break down the wall?” asked Toddy.

“Not yet,” she replied.

Serves you right, Van D.

Five months they'd had together. Anton had taught her lots—like how to test a pearl for quality and how to hone her personal taste until it was sharp as a stiletto. And mostly, they'd had fun and naughty times until the night he'd returned home with takeout and her refusal to eat (she had an audition the next day) had culminated in an absurd and final argument about how it was all in her mind; she didn't look any thinner when she starved herself. She'd snapped back, and he'd huffed off. Leaving Bev to deal with the next month's rent, a dead human, and the curious feeling that she somehow hadn't measured up.

“Stand back,” said Todd. “I'll break the mirror.”

“Not this time.” Bev made a fist, then punched the wall with all the anger she'd kept locked inside her since the night she lost that part to Bernadette Peters. Perhaps with a little too much force. On impact, plaster pulverized.

“Peaches!” Toddy exclaimed.

Teeth clenched, she cradled her throbbing hand while her bones knitted back together and visibility was restored. When the dust settled into a ground-level haze, Bev inhaled in shock.

“What is it?” inquired Todd. “Did you ruin your manicure?”

Her assault had left a large jagged hole in the plaster, exposing a wall behind a wall. The latter was gray, smooth, and metallic.

“That's not a false wall,” she said. “It's a
safe
room.”

Todd had done as Todd was prone to do—act first, think last. Diverted by the thought of a secret room, he'd forgotten about the splendor of his attire and attacked the rest of the wall with all the enthusiasm of a sunburned kid peeling off a layer of dead skin.

He stepped away, dusting his hands. “That's a big safe room.”

That's an understatement,
Bev thought, her gaze moving along the sixteen feet of exposed steel wall. She opened the window and leaned out to see how far back it went. The building extended another ten feet, maybe eight.

“It must have cost a fortune,” she said, as much to herself as to Toddy.

“Forty grand and the lives of the three mortals who knew of its existence,” crowed Liara through her speaker.

Bev eased herself back into the room. “Well, bless your heart. It must be nice to be so rich.”

“Four words,” said Liara. “Buy low. Sell high.”

Todd fussed with his cuticle while Bev prowled the length of the wall. She gave it an experimental slap. “There's always a way in. Like a button or something.”

Eyes gleaming, her production partner pivoted. “Like a secret switch? A book or a . . .” He zipped over to the fireplace mantel. The candlestick on the left end was briefly examined, then tossed. Likewise the taper on the right. Once set on a task, Toddy was gratifyingly OCD. Ever helpful, he picked up everything in the room that could be possibly lifted and tweaked anything that could be possibly tweaked.

“Stop messing up my house,” Liara shouted through the speaker.

While her roommate explored, Bev eased aside the panel of polyester drapes flanking the window near the mirror. As she'd suspected, the lock to Liara's lair was hidden behind them. Mounted at hip height, it was surprisingly small—she'd anticipated a keypad or maybe a big fat red panic button. But there were no buttons, just a small, card-sized, flat touch screen.

“Shoot,” she said. “She has a fingerprint scanner.”

Todd dropped the vase he was on the point of shattering against the wall. “This is like a Bond movie,” he cried, thoroughly charmed. He zipped across the room, then leaned over her shoulder to press his thumb on the pressure pad.

Nothing happened.

“I'll go get my Glock.”

“This is not a mailbox, Toddy. Destroying it will only jam the door lock.”

Her friend worried his lip between his teeth. Except for the copier that sat on the counter in the RV—he liked to take imprints of his face and other parts of his anatomy—Toddy was a trifle intimidated by electronics. “Maybe I'll go look around the house. See if I can find anything that will help.”

“You do that.” She dusted off the chair's arm before she lowered herself to it and crossed her legs. Neatly, on an angle, so as best to display their length. Then she focused on the pressure pad, thinking hard. There's always a way in; you just have to find the right lever.

Liara spoke. “I'm perfectly comfortable in here.”

“I know that.”

“And those walls aren't steel,” called Liara. “Tell your gun-happy dimwit that they're Kevlar.” Then she chuckled nastily. “You're never getting me out of here.”

Bev was formulating a perfectly wonderful reply when she caught the smell of burning kerosene. “Toddy, nooooooo!”

“What?” Todd skidded back into the room, carrying high his version of the Olympic flame—a kitchen broom, well wrapped with kerosene-doused rags, that he'd set alight.

“Put it out!” Bev shouted.

He cocked his beautiful, empty head. “Why?”

“Because of that!”

It was almost like the water sprinkler had been waiting to be introduced. No sooner had she jabbed a finger at it than it stuttered to life. Water whipped—horizontal, vertical,
everywhere
—from its nozzle head. She could have counted each elongated drop of nasty wetness had she not been so busy screaming directions. “Cut the power!”

“How?” he shouted.

“Go outside and find the electrical box!”

Todd and his smoking Olympic flame fled the room. “Box, box, box,” she heard him dither before the lights went off and the deluge from hell abruptly ceased.

He skulked back into the room. “Peaches?”

Bev stared at the puddle by her knee for a moment, working up some calm. Then she lowered the seat cushion she'd used as a shield and asked a stupid question. “What were you thinking?”

“That we'd burn her out.” Toddy lifted a tense shoulder. “You know. Like the old days . . . Burn him! Burn him!” He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment of deep reflection. “You're really wet, Bev.”

She didn't have to glance down to confirm that, though she did. Her merino wool skirt, bought with the aim of outlining her taut thighs, clung like stretched cling wrap. She touched her hair, relieved to discover that its roots were mostly dry.

A small grace, because Liara's
heh-heh-heh
s were eating through her spine.

Bev eyed Todd fretting over a scorch on the edge of his sleeve. “It wasn't a terrible idea, Toddy. But what we really need is something like a blowtorch. Why don't you go get us one? Some farmer has to have one in his shed.” She waved her hand vaguely, hoping that he'd have to fly all the way back to that welding shop they'd passed in Natchitoches to find one. “Off you go.”

“That's a great idea,” said Todd with relief.

“I'm just full of them.” Once he'd left on the mission that would hopefully keep him out of her hair for the next hour, she went into the hall to retrieve her tool kit. When she returned, her teeth were set as tightly as a Vegas showgirl balancing sixty pounds of feathers on top of her head.

“Your spray tan is running,” snickered the recluse of Vicksburg.