Free Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne & Scott Barbeau Page A

you all right?” He was staring at me with concern. I ran my tongue over my teeth to make sure I wasn’t losing control.
    I nodded, saying nothing. I’m not sure what I’d learned from the contact—more than I anticipated certainly, and enough to revise my initial impression. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole after all.
    “Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked.
    “We can go to my trailer.”
    We cut through the set of Hallowed Night . I saw King glance at it—and suddenly the severed head on top of the Christmas tree didn’t seem like such a good idea.
    “I thought it was a special effect,” he said suddenly. “The body on the wall,” he explained, catching my look. “When I first saw it, I thought it was just another special effect. It’s so hard to tell what’s real anymore.”
    “Especially in this city,” I agreed.

Chapter Ten
     

     
    SANTA CLARITA
3:30 P.M.
     
    All I could think was she must use a great cinematographer or a really fine makeup artist because up close and personal, she was older than I expected. Still hot, but older.
    She didn’t look like she’d had any work done, either, which, in this town, almost puts her in a category by herself. Women don’t get older in Hollywood; they get freakier. Between Botox, laser peels, liposuction, and that stuff they shoot into their lips, there’s not a real face walking Rodeo Drive. And that’s before the cheek implants and the lunchtime thread-lifts. My tenant, SuzieQ, is a Nip/Tuck fan—well, the first two seasons, at least—and she keeps me up-to-date on all the available procedures. Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned nose job like my sister had in the sixties? Although, come to think of it, that wasn’t too successful, either.
    And it’s not just the women.
    I’ve never been tempted to go under the knife myself, not yet anyway, but when the time comes and there’s more gray than black in my hair, I’ll get Enrique, my barber over in Los Filez, to start adding a little color. Not too much, though; there’s nothing worse than an older man with jet-black hair. I had my eyes lasered a while back, but that was practical; I’ve got to be able to see. And I use those teeth-bleaching strips from the drugstore, but in this town that’s also practical—nobody wants to see a Beverly Hills cop with yellow teeth. But that’s where I draw the line. I don’t want to end up looking like David Gest.
    I couldn’t guess Ovsanna Moore’s age from looking at her. Could be at least a decade older than me. No doubt it was listed in IMDb; I’d check when I got back to the office. There were the faintest traces of lines on her forehead and around the edges of her eyes, but as far as I was concerned, that only enhanced the package; everything else looked real and natural, moving and swaying in all the right directions. Ovsanna Moore looked like she’d been a few places, seen a few things, and maybe even done a couple of them. I’d have said mid-forties, but I could have been off by ten years.
    The girlfriend, however, had to be at least fifteen years her junior. I say “girlfriend,” but no one introduced her that way. She was waiting in the trailer with the door opened as we approached, a cell phone in one hand, folded laptop under her arm.
    “Allow me to introduce Maral McKenzie, my personal assistant and right hand. Maral, this is Detective King, from the BHPD.”
    The assistant looked at me as if I was something she’d scraped off her expensive shoe. She didn’t extend her hand.
    McKenzie was a knockout. Ash-blond hair tumbling down her back, gray eyes behind black-framed Buddy Holly glasses, not enough of a rack to draw attention, but no question she was a girl. She was wearing some sort of strangely cut black and white suit that looked like high-end Rodeo Drive.
    As Ovsanna stepped into the trailer a look passed between them.
    I knew immediately there was something going on between these two that was more than professional.