Box Office Poison (Linnet Ellery) Read online

  The menu was eccentric. Lots of things with ketchup and very all-American. Jeff went with the Barking Dogs appetizer, which was two mini Kobe beef hotdogs, chili, melted cheddar, and homemade ketchup. The idea of making hotdogs out of Kobe beef sort of hurt my head. I went with the Californication appetizer which was Dungeness crab cakes with chili lime aioli. In an effort to keep down the calories I went with a cup of the lobster bisque for my main course, while Jeff ordered this giant twelve-ounce Kobe burger with bacon and blue cheese. He also added the Threesome appetizer, which was garlic parmesan, sweet potato, and Cajun fries with all five varieties of the restaurant’s homemade ketchup. I wished I’d gone with just a salad for dinner because I was never going to be able to resist.

  While we were ordering the waiter kept up a nonstop conversation that consisted of not very funny quips and schmoozing compliments. Jeff kept his easy smile and quipped back. It was a repeat of Toby and the golf cart. David stared at the young man with the frozen expression of an offended vampire. The kid didn’t notice because he was totally focused on Jeff, which made sense, and on me—which made no sense.

  “How appalling. I could never live here,” David stated. “Is everyone auditioning all the time?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Pretty much. You make a point of being friendly and charming because you never know who might be seated at your table, whose car you might be parking, whose pool you’re cleaning.”

  “But he wasn’t charming,” David complained.

  “He’s a puppy. I wasn’t any different when I moved out here. You learn to be a little tolerant.”

  I spoke up. “Look, I get why you’d get the full court press, but why include me? I’m nobody?”

  “You might be a casting director or my new squeeze, so he doesn’t want to offend me by ignoring you.”

  “An impression you fostered outside,” David said, then added, “And why leave me out?” David asked.

  “You’re piqued by that,” I said and choked on a laugh.

  David glared at me. “I am not. I’m just trying to understand the dynamics at work in this insane town.”

  “Vampires have never been big players in this town,” Jeff said. “Maybe most of them have your attitude,” but he smiled to pull the sting out of the words. “The major players in town from the Powers are, of course, the Álfar, and there are a couple of powerful werewolf agents. My guy, Scott, is a hound—nobody drives a harder deal. But vampires, not so much.” He grinned and looked like a mischievous ten-year-old. “We’re too déclassé for you guys.”

  After that we engaged in social chitchat until the appetizers arrived. Then I raised a point. “Look, David is the AAA-approved arbitrator. I’m here to assist him, but are any of the parties likely to raise an objection because you’re meeting alone with him? And me?” I added as an afterthought.

  “As I understand it, SAG isn’t a party to the arbitration,” Jeff said.

  David shook his head. “Not quite correct. You are designated as an interested party, so I think there can be no objection.”

  Jeff shrugged, his expression rueful. “Yeah, and since both sides hate me probably more than they hate each other, I don’t think anyone’s going to kick up a fuss.”

  “Hate you, why?” I asked, and found myself adding, “I think it would be very hard to dislike you.”

  He gave me a suggestive smile. “I work very hard at it … being charming.” He leaned in close.

  He was clearly overplaying it, and I picked up on the game. “Be careful you don’t sprain something,” I shot back. Montolbano laughed and leaned back. I tried a bite of crab cake. It was very good, and the chili didn’t send me diving for my water glass.

  “I didn’t want this in the courts, and I didn’t want the organization I love to tear itself apart over this fight. I went back to the constitution and the bylaws of the Screen Actors Guild and found a clause about arbitration. Our lawyers said the wording was vague, but I decided to interpret it my way.”

  “That being?” David asked.

  “That I can force everybody into an arbitration when it’s an in-house dispute. The human actors screamed and the Álfar actors screamed, but I don’t give a crap. I want this settled peacefully. The studios and networks and producers fuck us over all the time. Weakening ourselves by fighting each other is just stupid.”

  “So, what are you looking for?” David asked.

  “Everybody to stop fighting,” Jeff said. He reacted to David’s expression. “I know, I’m being naive. Look, the human actors have real grievances. I know. Hell, I’ve started to lose roles to Álfar, but there has to be a solution.”

  “Quotas?” I suggested.

  “Which have had less than stellar outcomes,” David said.

  “And have, at times, been absolutely necessary,” I countered.

  “I kind of hate that,” Jeff said. “It’s like getting a part out of pity.”

  “So, every part is won on pure merit?” I couldn’t hide the sarcasm. “Guess the casting couch is just a myth.” For some reason I was feeling argumentative.

  “No, it’s real, and of course people get parts for reasons aside from merit. It happens because of family connections, because they’re owed, or because someone wants to get in their pants. But to force a set quota on the industry—” He shook his head.

  “And the Powers wouldn’t much like it either,” David said in his dry way. “We’re a very small percentage of the population. We don’t want the perception that we wield disproportionate power.”

  “Worried about peasants with pitchforks,” I said.

  “Always,” David said, then added, “Well, tomorrow we’ll start hearing evidence and see if we can find that solution.”

  Our main courses and the stack of exotic french fries arrived, carried by a young, very pretty waitress. I wondered if she’d bribed the waiter to get to bring the food or if there was an unwritten rule about giving every aspiring actor a shot at the famous actor-producer-director?

  “Who are you planning to have eat with you?” David asked. “I’ve watched Linnet eat. Birds consume more.” It was spoken in that way men have when they are trying to prove they know more about you than the other male in the room, which meant I couldn’t let it pass.

  “First off, birds actually eat a lot considering their size, and you know I’m always hungry … especially when I get nervous or stressed.”

  “Are you nervous now?” Jeff asked with a teasing grin.

  “Well, duh. I’m having dinner with a famous movie star and heartthrob.”

  “Well, good, then you’ll help me with the fries.”

  For a few moments Jeff was busy doctoring his gigantic hamburger while our waitress hovered; she kept leaning across the table to offer both David and Jeff an unrestricted view of her décolletage. She seemed to focus more on David—there is something so alluring to women about a man who seems unattainable. I wanted to take her aside, and tell her it was probably hopeless. Some vampires and werewolves would skate dangerously close to the edge of the ban on turning women by forming relationships with them—I’d had a client who was married to an abusive werewolf, and of course there was my own stupid and disastrous one-night-stand with a vampire lawyer in our office—but many followed an almost monastic rule and just didn’t get involved. David struck me as that sort. The waitress seemed to get my telepathic message because she moved away from the table.

  I took a sip of my lobster bisque, and nibbled on a Cajun fry. Then a sweet potato fry. Then a garlic parmesan fry. Add to that the crème fraîche in my soup, and I mentally added another twenty minutes to the time I would spend in the gym tomorrow.

  “So, Linnet, I checked you out. Both of you,” he added with a nod to David. He turned back to me. “But you’re way more interesting,” Jeff said. I was once again treated to that total focus that locked his eyes on mine. “But I’m nosy, so I’ve got to ask: You were fostered in a vampire household—what does that mean, exactly?”

  “That wh
en I was eight years old my parents sent me off to live with a vampire in his household.” I wasn’t surprised at the question. Most human families never meet a vampire, much less send a child to one, and the whole custom must seem strange.

  “Why would they do that?” Jeff asked. “It seems sort of cruel.” He laid his hand lightly on mine.

  “For access,” David said in a too loud voice. I slipped my hand from beneath Jeff’s, and David seemed to relax. “We tend to be rich and successful. Easily accomplished when we live for centuries. Humans are attracted by power and money.” He shrugged. “We have both.”

  “You used to be human,” Jeff said. David just stared at him. It’s hard to meet a vampire’s direct gaze, and David was giving it a little more punch than normal. Jeff proved to be no different than any other human. The actor cleared his throat and asked, “Okay, maybe not so much, but what’s in it for the vampire?” Jeff asked. “Why raise a human kid? Looking for a steady supply of food? Kidding,” he added after David stiffened.

  I shook my head. “We’re considered súbito or súbita de casa—a servant of the house. To feed on us would be a gross violation of honor and virtue.”

  “Also, she’s female,” David added. “We don’t feed on women.”

  Jeff turned his thousand-watt smile on me and leaned in a little closer. “Their loss, my … er our gain, huh?”

  David stiffened, but I didn’t even blush because it sounded so trite and canned. Not that I would have bought it anyway. I had a feeling an actor’s flirtation was about as real as an Álfar’s glamour. Not that Montolbano wasn’t handsome as hell, and very charming, and he seemed bright, but he was married, which was a nonstarter for me. Even if I was interested in Montolbano, spending time with him wouldn’t look all that good. While not an actual party in the arbitration, he had forced the parties to the table. Caesar’s wife and all that.

  And I was still hurting over the loss of John. I’d never actually been on a date with John. We’d gone straight to making love, sharing fear and deadly danger, and finally he had sacrificed himself and stayed in Fey (a place he hated) so his bat-shit crazy Álfar mother would release me and my clients, but I didn’t actually know him all that well. I knew he was a changeling who had been switched for a human infant. That he had followed in his human foster father’s footsteps and joined the police force. That after twenty years with the Philly police force he’d retired and turned private investigator doing a lot of work for my firm, IMG. John described himself as a blue-collar elf, and it fit.

  And I was, by God, going to free him, though I had no expectations about what our relationship might be or become after he returned.

  David’s voice pulled me out of my navel gazing. “I was surprised when I heard you speak in person,” the vampire said to Montolbano. “You don’t sound like you do on screen.”

  “Wow. You go to those newfangled talkies?” The response to my teasing was a glare.

  “We do move with and adapt to the times.”

  “Just very slowly,” I added sotto voce.

  “I heard that. I apologize,” he added with a nod to the actor. Montolbano was laughing.

  “You two, you’re like…”

  “What?” asked David, his tone a bit dangerous.

  Montolbano shook his head. “I can’t really figure it out. But to answer your question, no, I don’t sound the same on screen. Given my looks, I affect a touch of a Central European Eurotrash accent, but I’m a kid who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.”

  “Get out of here!” I said.

  “Yeah, really. I keep my background pretty quiet, all part of that privacy mystique, but I’m fifth generation in the States. My great-great-grandfather came over and opened a restaurant in Brooklyn. Then Granddad decided the rest of the country deserved real Italian food, so he moved the family to Nebraska.”

  “Wow. I understand that actors put on roles, but that makes you seem like a complete chiseler.”

  “Not content to follow in the family business, I take it?” David said, and he made it sound like Jeff was some kind of sellout.

  I wondered why he was being so snotty. Maybe because he’d been forced to eat hotel food because of Jeff’s squeamishness?

  “Nope, got the bug early, hammed it up in every school play, went to school at CAST in Minneapolis. Quit before I graduated and drifted west.”

  “No legitimate theater for you, I take it.” David really was sneering. I shot him a questioning look, but he refused to meet my eye.

  For an instant Montolbano stiffened then relaxed, and the lazy smile was back in place. “Nope. I knew I was prettier than I was talented. I figured I had a better chance in Hollywood.” A shrug. “I was right.”

  Desperately, I shifted the conversation, bringing up the past November’s presidential election. We found common ground in approving of the new occupant in the White House, and we brushed through the rest of dinner without any further tension between the two men.

  * * *

  Montolbano dropped us off at the hotel. I walked up the red carpet and wondered what it would be like to walk a real red carpet—at a movie premier or the Academy Awards. David was stalking along behind me. He paused at the front desk to check for messages.

  “Well, see you in the morning,” I said and turned to head for the elevators. “Do we know how we’re getting to the arbitration in the morning?”

  “I assume Kobe will pick us up.”

  “Look, if we’re going to be here for weeks, I’d like to have my own car. Can we rent something?” I asked.

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” David said.

  “Okay. Well, good night.”

  He surprised me by saying, “Let me walk you to your room.” Vampires were all about the old-world courtesy, but this was a bit extreme. Something was up. I decided to try for a joke.

  “I don’t think I’m going to get mugged in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but thanks.”

  We rode the elevator in silence. Even with the nap I was pretty tired, and looking forward to sinking into the pillow-top mattress. At the door to my room I swiped the key card and, trying to forestall whatever was going on, said, “Good night.”

  “I want to talk to you privately.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that. What’s going on?”

  “Not in a public hallway, if you please.”

  We went into the room and I was horribly aware of the unmade bed, strewn with various rejected outfits. “Looks like you put a lot of thought into what to wear tonight,” David said,

  I didn’t like the implication. “I wanted to make a good professional impression. This is the guy who brought us in.”

  “Really? That’s all it was? How hard can it be to pick an appropriate outfit?”

  “For men? Not hard at all. You put on a suit. Your only choice is what color shirt and tie. Women have to think about so many other issues. Where’s the hem? What kind of neckline? Jewelry, how much and what kind? What shoes—” I broke off. “And why, exactly, are we talking about this?”

  “You were clearly trying to make an impression,” David said.

  “Yes, I said that.”

  “There’s a certain standard of professional behavior that Ishmael, McGillary and Gold expects from its associates.”

  “Why are you sounding like the prudish school teacher in a Merchant Ivory movie?” I was starting to get mad. “Are you saying my behavior wasn’t professional? In what way? What did I do?”

  “You allowed him to take liberties with you!”

  “What?” Shock had my voice spiraling into dolphin sonic mode. I regained control and decided to turn it into a joke. “Wow, rethinking that gay thing. Did you ever actually go out with a girl before you died? He was flirting, and he didn’t mean a bit of it.”

  “I’m not joking. You were all over him.”

  “And I was joking, and so was he. I think you should leave now.” I drew myself up to my full height and tried to look down my nose at him. It wasn’t entirely successfu
l since he was six feet tall.

  David did start for the door, but as he left he added, “I want you to keep an appropriate distance from Mr. Montolbano.”

  The door closed behind him. I stared at the blank expanse of wood, emitted an enraged squeak, snatched a pillow off the rumpled bed, and threw it at the door. I then resolved to spend as much time as possible with Jeffery Montolbano.

  4

  Since I was still on New York time I woke up at 4:20 a.m. Lying perfectly still, and squeezing my eyes shut did not return me to dreamland. After fifteen minutes I gave up and got up. Since I had a lot of time before the car arrived I hied myself down to the health club and did a hard workout on the stationary bike and the balance ball. I can never remember if I have fast or slow twitch muscles, but the result was that I bulk up quickly. Which is why I don’t run or use the elliptical machines. The muscles in my calves get huge, and my handmade König dressage riding boots don’t fit. And since they cost twelve hundred dollars and take several months between order and delivery, I wasn’t about to run the risk.

  Thinking about my boots had me thinking about the horse I rode back in New York. Vento was a sparkling white, young Lusitano stallion. I had done legal work for his owner, and in addition to paying my fee he loaned me his horse to ride. Jolyon Bryce had been crippled in a car accident and couldn’t ride any longer, but wasn’t willing to part with his horse. I could see why: Vento was great. And now I was going to be away from him for weeks and possibly months on end. It made me sad thinking about it, and I resolved to look for a stable. Maybe there was someplace I could rent a horse to ride in this vast megalopolis.

  The sun was coming up when I returned, panting and sweaty, to my room, and the clouds seemed to be breaking up. I took a hot bath, did my hair, put on my makeup and picked an appropriate powerful professional woman outfit—black pencil skirt, deep purple blouse, and high black heels. After checking through my briefcase to make sure I had everything I needed, I headed down to the restaurant for breakfast.

  Despite the wide window the room felt dark because of the carpet and paisley upholstery. I noticed one end had been screened off, granting privacy to the vampires and comfort to the humans. I caught the faintest whiff of blood. Somebody had been feeding. I wondered if it had been David?