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a vampyre who’s a movie star; it’s not like I could just take her anywhere. We couldn’t go bowling. She’s too strong. She’d probably take out the back of the building with a spare. She’s got a screening room in her house; she doesn’t need to go to the movies. She’d be mobbed at the Grove or the Promenade. And she doesn’t eat. Normally I would have reserved one of the private booths for dinner at La Bohème, but what was she going to do, sit there and watch me devour a steak? That seems rude. Not to mention maybe dangerous.
    From my kitchen window, I looked across my yard and saw SuzieQ on the computer in her breakfast nook. She was online, so I IM’ed her a single word: “Help.” She was out her door and in my kitchen in a flash. For five years she’s been a great friend and neighbor and the perfect tenant. Well, except for the times her snakes get loose. Jesus, there’s nothing I hate worse than waking up to a errant python in my bed.
    She never bothers to knock. “Hey, sugar, what’s up? I got your sweater on. I just love it.” She was wearing the turquoise sweater I’d given her for Christmas. “My babies do, too. I swear Ollie North gets off just rubbin’ against it.” Ollie North is one of SuzieQ’s snakes. She’s named them all after crooked political figures. I was hoping she’d buy another one and call it Blagojevich.
    “Do snakes really get off, SuzieQ?” I stared at the sweater for a second, hoping she was exaggerating. I still hadn’t recovered from the night she’d called me over to see one of them giving birth. Twenty-four baby snakes popping out on the closet floor. Gave me nightmares for a week.
    She opened my fridge and poured a glass of eggnog while I picked her brain about where to go on a date with Ovsanna. I couldn’t tell her about the eating thing, so I just said I wanted to do something other than go to a restaurant.
    “Why don’t y’all drive to the beach? I love doing that. ’Course, I haven’t had a date in so long, I don’t even know if the water’s still there. I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong with the men in this town. Look at me! I’m a good-lookin’ woman.”
    “You’re an intimidating woman, SuzieQ, and the snakes don’t help. You’re hot as hell, but you’re scary ’cause you’re larger than life. A lot of men can’t handle that. It’s like me asking Ovsanna out. She’s a movie star, for Christ’s sake. She’s got more money than God and almost as much power—in her business, at least. She hangs out with other movie stars.” Okay, okay, so some of them have been “dead” for thirty years, but I couldn’t tell SuzieQ that. “What’s she going to see in me, was my first thought.”
    “Yeah? And what was your second?”
    “You can guess. But right now I’m trying to think of a place to take her. So drink your eggnog and give me some help here. Look through this copy of City Beat .”
    By the time Suzie and I came up with a plan and I had showered and shaved, it was almost seven thirty. I put the top down on the Jag and hoped Ovsanna wouldn’t mind a little wind in her hair. “The Jag” sounds more impressive than it is, believe me. It’s forty years old and needs a new clutch kit. It was my father’s, back in the days when a gallon of gas cost thirty-one cents. He sold it to me just before 9/11. Any day now, my ego is going to lose out to my budget and I’ll start using a patrol car for my dates.
    This time, there were no photographers at the gate. I was glad about that. The less anyone knew I was seeing Ovsanna socially, the better. My Captain would shit. Ovsanna had been connected to the Cinema Slayer case. As long as he thought the case was still open, he’d be less than happy about my seeing her. That reminded me, I was going to have to come up with some way to provide a perp for the five dead victims. I knew the killer was Lilith, and I knew she was dead, but there was no way I could deliver her to the Captain.