How to Party with a Killer Vampire (6 page)

“Aw, come on. Usually when you’re scared, you like to snuggle.” He reached out and took me in his arms.

I pushed him away and glanced around. “Stop that. Not here. It’s not . . . professional. What if some bereaved person sees us?”

“Pretty unlikely, in this deserted cemetery.”

“Well, you interrupted my train of thought. I’m trying to figure out where I want the tables in this what-do-you-call-it area.” I waved my hand around the large cement patio.

“Mausoleum,” Brad said.

“I know what it’s called,” I said.

“You’d better know this stuff if you want to sound professional,” he continued. “A mausoleum is a building, like a monument. It’s usually made from concrete, granite, and marble. Like the Taj Mahal. This one here must have a cost a fortune, back in the day.”

“Now you’re an expert on cemeteries?”

“I know a little. I find them fascinating. Tombs, sarcophagi, burial vaults, coffins, urns, crypts, catacombs. There are lots of different ways to inter the dead.”

“TMI,” I said, for “too much information.” “Let’s just get this party over with and pray we don’t have to buy any extra tombs or crypts or whatever you want to call them.” I was thinking of Spidey when I heard the distinctive click of a rifle being cocked. We both froze, then slowly turned around.

“Otto!” I said, recognizing the old man from the previous night. He still wore the same dirty overalls, plaid shirt, and muddy boots. I hoped my friendly tone would soften him a little.

Instead, he raised the weapon and looked at me with rheumy eyes.

“I tol’ you people to git,” he said, punctuating his last word by spitting a wad of something disgusting on the cement floor. I could smell his alcohol-infused breath from where he stood, about five feet away.

Brad held a hand up. “Hey, listen, old man. Put the gun down.”

Otto did just the opposite. He raised the gun higher so it was aimed at Brad’s broad chest.

“I told you sumpin’ bad was gonna happen if you didn’t leave, and it did, didn’t it.”

“Wait a minute,” Brad said. “Did you see what happened out here last night? Did you see that kid who fell to his death?”

I was surprised Brad had the presence of mind to ask the question, what with that gun pointed at us. My question would have been more along the lines of “Is that thing loaded?”

“They don’t want you here.” Otto indicated the distant headstones with a sweep of his other hand. “And I don’t neither. This here’s private prop’ty, and yer trespassing.”

We were getting nowhere with this guy. He was repeating himself, not making sense, and this time he had a gun to back up his words.

Brad continued, speaking slowly and deliberately. “Otto, please listen. It’s important. Did you see what happened last night? Did you see the kid fall?”

Why was Brad pursuing this? Otto was obviously intoxicated, and most likely brain-damaged by the alcohol he’d no doubt consumed over the years.

Otto ignored Brad’s questions. Instead of answering them, he continued to mumble. “And the next time someone comes to my cemetery in the middle of the night, they’ll meet the same fate. The owl portends . . . and Death responds. . . .”

Portends? Was this guy channeling Shakespeare?

“Drop your weapon and be reaching for the sky,” came a voice from the side. Brad and I both turned to see Raj as he stepped out from his hiding place behind the mausoleum wall. In his hands he held a small gun, aimed directly at Otto. He looked official in his uniform and was scowling at the old man, but I could see his hands trembling.

After I registered the fact that Raj had not gone home—and was wielding a gun—I turned to Otto. He’d disappeared.

Raj came running over, lowering the gun he held in both hands, just as on TV. “Are you all right, Ms. Presley? Mr. Brad?” The weapon still wobbled.

“What are you doing here, Raj?” I said, having sent him home earlier.

“And what are you doing with a gun?” Brad asked, shaking his head.

“I decided just to take a little nap in my car,” Raj explained. “As for the gun, it’s not real.” He gave it to Brad to examine. “You know I’m not licensed to have a real weapon. I got this one from the film studio. In case I ever needed it.”

Brad rolled his eyes and handed back the realistic-looking weapon.

I grinned. “Pretty clever, Raj.”

“Only you could get yourself killed that way,” Brad added. “And now you’ve scared away a person of interest.”

“ ‘A person of interest’?” I said, stunned at his lack of fear from having been held at rifle-point only seconds ago. “Otto was holding a gun on us!”

Brad shook his head. “He wasn’t going to shoot us. That old thing was an antique. A Winchester. Probably from the late eighteen hundreds. You could tell by the octagon barrel and full magazine and butt plate. Didn’t you see the rust? If it had gone off—and that’s pretty unlikely—it probably would have blown up in his face. Or at least burned his hands.”

I looked at Brad, stunned at this information.

“You know a lot about guns, Mr. Brad?” Raj asked, his dark eyes wide.

“A little,” he said, shrugging.

Brad seemed to know a little about a lot of things. He never ceased to surprise me with his knowledge, especially when it came to elements of crime, which I found oddly suspicious, except for his having been a police officer in the past, until a tragic accident ended his career. It was something he didn’t like to talk about.

I turned to him. “Do you think Otto saw something last night?”

Frowning, Brad glanced around the cemetery, most likely looking for the strange old man. “Well, he was probably around here somewhere last night, since he keeps popping up like the undead. He could have seen the kid fall, or . . .” He left the sentence hanging.

“Or what? You don’t believe that stuff he said about ‘owls portending’ and ‘Death responding,’ do you?”

“Easy with the finger-quotes,” Brad said. “You’ll put an eye out.”

“Answer the question,” I insisted.

“No, not necessarily ‘Death,’ ” he said, using finger-quotes to mock me, “but he might have seen someone or something he thought was Death. And if he did, then maybe there was someone else here with Spidey last night who hasn’t come forward.”

I thought about Spidey’s two friends, Trace and Lark. They’d been here with him last night, but that wasn’t mentioned in the news story on TV. Why would they just leave him alone in the cemetery like that? Or was someone else with them too? Someone who hadn’t come out of the shadows like the others?

Before I could ask myself any more questions, my attention was drawn to the sound of an old beat-up VW bus. Painted in a ragtag style in green, tan, and red, it pulled up next to my MINI Cooper on the narrow lane, whimpered, and stilled.

Out stepped my wandering coworker, Duncan Grant. The last I’d heard, he wasn’t planning to help me with the party tonight. Had he changed his mind? Or was he here to see the spot where his friend had died?

“Duncan!” I said when he approached. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you. Are you all right?”

He shrugged and rubbed his curly red hair. “I’m fine. Just needed a little time to myself. What do you want me to do?”

“I didn’t think you were coming back. But if you’re sure you’re up to it,
uh
, would you check all the wiring, make sure the voice recordings are working, that kind of thing?” It was probably better to keep him busy than leave him to his thoughts about Spidey’s death.

He nodded, lacking the enthusiasm he usually had for electronic party tasks.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” I persisted.

“Yeah. I just hope . . . I hope they bury Spidey soon. . . .” His voice drifted off.

I frowned, puzzled, not sure I heard him right. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a stupid superstition. Never mind.” He headed off to do what I’d asked him.

When he was out of earshot, I looked at Brad. “What was that all about?”

“There’s an old superstition,” Brad said softly, “that if you take too long to bury the dead, the deceased person will find another person to take with him.” He gave me an odd look.

I shivered at the thought. “You’re kidding. You think Duncan believes that?”

“A lot of people have superstitions about death and cemeteries.”

“There are more?”

“Sure. Don’t bury your loved one in unconsecrated ground. Don’t step on a dead person’s grave. Don’t move a corpse once it’s buried.”

I remembered what I’d read about Colma when researching this place for the party. Most of the cemeteries in San Francisco had been moved here because of cheaper land. So much for that superstition. And what was supposed to happen if you moved corpses anyway?

“Oh,” Brad said, “and you should put a stone on the grave, to keep the dead from rising up.”

I remembered seeing several graves in the Jewish cemetery with stones on them as I drove around the area and I mentioned it.

“That’s different,” Brad said. “In the Jewish tradition, you leave a stone on top of a grave when you visit, to honor the deceased’s memory.”

“I remember when I was a kid, a friend of mine told me to hold my breath when passing a cemetery or the spirits would enter my body when I inhaled. I held my breath so long, I nearly blacked out.”

Brad laughed. “You seem to have overcome that one. Here you are, holding a party in a cemetery.”

“Yeah, well, that guy Spidey wasn’t so lucky, was he?” I reminded him.

“No, but it’s foolish for anyone to be out alone in a deserted place in the middle of the night. If someone had been there with him, he might have been able to get Spidey to a hospital and may have saved his life. Maybe then he wouldn’t have died from a head injury—”

I felt the blood drain from my head. “He bled to death?”

Brad stopped as soon as he realized he was spooking me out. Woozy at the image, I reached out for him, then sat down on a nearby fake headstone. That was probably not a good idea, what with all the superstitions about graves, but if I hadn’t, I might have keeled over.

“Sorry about that,” Brad said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. . . .”

“No, no, it’s okay.” I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and stood up, holding on to Brad’s arm. “I didn’t know the details. On the news, they said only that he fell.”

“Presley!” I heard my name being called from the periphery of the party area. Duncan waved at me. I let go of Brad and headed over to where Duncan stood.

When I reached him, I noticed he was holding the foot of what looked like a fat dead bird. It dangled from his fingertips.

“One of the owls we rigged up isn’t working,” he said. “It fell off the tree.”

Owl?

I felt a shudder, as if a spirit had passed through me. What was it Otto had said about an owl?

Oh, yes. That Death would respond.

Knock it off, Presley!
I told myself.
That’s just superstition.
If I didn’t watch myself, I’d soon be tossing salt over my shoulder and avoiding Thursby, my black cat, fearing he might cross my path.

But curiosity overcame logic, and I headed for my notebook computer, which was locked in my MINI Cooper’s trunk—I never go anywhere without it. I popped open the latch and pulled out the computer, then sat on the passenger side of the car with the door open and logged in. The connection wasn’t strong, but after a few moments the search engine Mozilla took me to “superstitions + cemeteries,” where I found a bunch of sites listing common beliefs about eerie graveyard etiquette. The warning about the owl appeared near the bottom of one list:

The old man was right—at least about the superstition. I read on to see if there might be other superstitions I needed to know about, in case Otto returned with more warnings. But, like Brad, I found myself growing fascinated about cemeteries in general.

“Presley!”

I’d been so engrossed in an article about safety coffins from the nineteenth century—the ones fitted with bells to prevent premature burials—that I didn’t realize several more cars had pulled up along the narrow street that led to the cemetery. Delicia, carrying a helium canister and a bag of balloons, waved as she approached my car. I turned off the computer and locked it in the trunk, then greeted her.

“Hey, Dee! You made it.”

Behind her came Berkeley, already videotaping the scene with his camera.