A Taste of the Nightlife (18 page)

“I hope so too,” I told him. I really didn’t want to ask the next question, but I had to. “Robert, the night we had the . . . incident. The couple at table two—they didn’t have a reservation, did they?”

Robert’s flicker of hope died, leaving resignation behind like ashes. “No. Mr. Caine had asked me to keep an eye out for them.”

“So he knew they were coming?”

“Yes.”

“Was he waiting for the man or the woman?”

He hesitated, and my fingers curled up, looking for something to hang on to. I did not want to have to deal with Robert lying to me.

“The gentleman,” Robert said at last, and I knew this was true. “They seemed to be friends. I got the impression this was his first time meeting the young lady.”

“Okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “Thanks again, Robert. I appreciate it.”

“Anything I can do, Chef Caine.” He stood, brushing his suit coat down and straightening his tie and cuff links. “I look forward to hearing from you about the reopening.”

We said our good-byes and he let himself out. The back door closed firmly and I sat staring at my computer screen for a long time.

I didn’t like what Robert had told me. None of it. Unfortunately, it made sense out of the vamplette attack. If Shelby thougt I knew something about whatever extracurricular activities he was setting up at Post Mortem, that might justify assault with intent to drain. It also meant he might be willing to create dead bodies, or work for those who did.

So had Cousin Dylan come to be one of those bodies? If Brendan was to be believed, he was nothing more than a lovesick puppy determined to bring his wayward cousin home (again I say, “Ew!”). Except Cousin Pam didn’t seem to want to come home, and Pammy’s squirmy-vamp escort knew Chet well enough that Chet gave him a table without a reservation. Chet also knew Shelby well enough that he got Taylor Watts a job at his suddenly complicated-looking club.

“God Almighty,” I whispered to my empty kitchen. “What does he think he’s
doing
?”

And what did Anatole Sevarin have to do with it? There was a logical explanation for Brendan’s involvement in this mess. This was his family, and he was a security expert. Of
course
he was trying to find out what was going on. But Anatole . . . what was going on with Anatole?

I felt my jaw tighten. I didn’t want anything to be going on with Anatole. I wanted things to be just the way he said—he wanted this mess cleared up before the antivamp crowd started getting restless. But the possibility that Anatole Sevarin had been up front with me was starting to feel vanishingly small.

I had to call Chet. Break time was over. I had to have it out with him once and for all. I turned to pick up the landline, and another thought struck me hard enough to make me pull my hand off the receiver. I swiveled back to the computer. A few more clicks and I was through to our employee records. We hadn’t deleted Taylor Watts’s contact information yet because we still owed him his last paycheck. I thumbed his address and contacts into my cell phone.

With Robert’s informal background check on Bert Shelby, we had clearly increased the potential level of stupid that Chet could have gotten himself into. I was going to have to handle this differently. This time I really couldn’t just confront my little brother and use a good hard glare to get him to talk to me. This time I would get at least some facts into my own hands so he couldn’t weasel out on me.

I dialed the number and listened while the phone rang once.

“Yeah?” came Taylor’s voice.

“Hello, Mr. Watts.”

“Chef Caine.” I could hear my ex-barkeep’s oily smile. “Bert said you were looking for me.”

“Somehow I thought he’d let you know. Heard from Chet recently?”

“He told me you’d ask that. Communications breakdown in the family, honey?”

Ignore it. Ignore it.
“Right now, you’re the one I need to talk to.”

“So talk.”

“In person.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’ve got all kinds of things you want to say to me and I’ve got your paycheck.”

The silence on the other end stretched out a full thirty seconds.

“Say I felt like doing you a favor later. Where?”

“Nightlife. Come in by the back door.”

“Maybe.”

He hung up. But he’d be here, and I knew it. He n’t pass up the chance to gloat at me over whatever-the-hell stunt he thought he was pulling off. Plus, while Taylor might or might not be working for some flavor of the underground, he clearly wasn’t at the point where he could say no to $934.22 after taxes.

I sat alone in my office with my paperwork and my old computer, looking out onto my clean, quiet kitchen. Before long, Taylor Watts was going to walk through the door. In the back of my mind, I opened the mental walk-in fridge where I keep my personal pride, cut out a large slice and swallowed it.

Then I made two more phone calls.

14

“Well, snap, Chef C. You must be moving up in the world.” Taylor Watts leaned his pretty-boy butt against my clean counter and folded his arms. “You got yourself hot-and-cold running bad boys.”

My ex-bartender was a bulked-out predator, dressed to lounge with in a black jacket and a scarlet shirt with the top three buttons undone. He waxed. No hat, of course, so you could see that his chestnut hair was in fact perfect.

Of course, he had stiff competition in the good-looking-predator department just then, because Brendan and Anatole stood by the cold prep station. They’d both agreed to be my backup for this meeting, and I’ve got to admit they had the whole menacing-look thing down cold.

I’ve also got to admit neither of them had been entirely thrilled to see the other.

“I can’t believe you didn’t think I could handle your bartender,” said Brendan.

This made Anatole smile. “While I can easily understand that oversight, I find it difficult to believe you did not think
I
would be able to handle your ex-bartender.”

“Put away the macho, guys.” I sighed. “If Taylor thinks I need a warlock
and
a vampire to handle him, he’ll get cocky. He’s that kind. And if he’s cocky, he’ll talk.”

So far, Taylor was proving me right. Instead of getting nervous when he saw Brendan and Anatole taking his measure across a room full of knives and kebab skewers, Taylor puffed up.

Cue obnoxious sexual comment.

“So,” he drawled, “you guys do her separate or together? Or is she the kind that just likes to watch?”

Anatole looked at Brendan, and Brendan looked back at Anatole. A mental game of rock-paper-scissors was clearly being played. Anatole won.

“Mr. Watts, Chef Caine invited you here for a polite talk. A civilized exchange of information and views. I would suggest you remember that.”

“Or what? You’ll say nasty things about me in your little vamp column?”

Anatole smiled and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. “That is one of many, many possibilities.” He raised his hand, and Taylor flinched. So did I. I had to hope Taylor didn’t notice.

The vampire inspected his clean, well-kempt fingernails. I was surrounded by clean-nail fanatics. He and Robert could exchange manly manicure tips. “So many possibilities,” Anatole murmured.

“Look, Taylor, this does not have to be complicated.” I pulled the white envelope holding his paycheck out of my pocket. “All I want to know is why’d Chet get you a job with Bert Shelby?”

“Why don’t you ask Chet?” Taylor snapped his fingers. “Oh, that’s right. Because you’re trying to clean up Baby Brother’s mess all quiet-like.”

But as with his previous snark, I’d been expecting something like this. Taylor didn’t get hired because he was any kind of original.

“So enlighten me, Taylor. Explain to me what I don’t know.”

“Why should I? Like you’ve got anything on me you could take to the P-Squad.”

Now what made you mention the P-Squad?
Taylor reached for the check and I snatched it back. Then and there, I decided on a gamble. Taylor liked to think he was in the know. Taylor the Player, he called himself when he was trying to bullshit the more naive waitresses. Brendan had said there was a turf war of some kind going on. Robert said there was a power shift happening, and Shelby had more than once had his digits deep in bad money. Taylor was taking himself a walk on the wild side, and maybe I could work it. Not too hard, just enough for Taylor the Player to get all kinds of wrong ideas.

I’d just have to hope my “bad boys” would pick up and play along.

“Things are going to change, Taylor. You might want to be sure you’ve got the right kind of friends.” I held up the check again.

Brendan, at least, caught my drift. When the easily confused Taylor felt it necessary to look to a fellow guy for confirmation, Brendan nodded.

“You’re shittin’ me.” A little desperate now, Taylor turned to the only other male in the room. Anatole also nodded. “
You’re
getting in the game?”

Good start. Which game are you talking about?
“Why did Chet get you the job with Bert Shelby?” That the answer would almost surely mean Chet was also “in the game” was something I’d deal with later.

“You haven’t got the balls.” Taylor struggled to retrieve his attitude, which had been knocked seriously askew.

I shrugged and pushed the check across the counter. “If you’re really sure about that, you can walk out of here now. But I will remember this conversation, and more important, Mr. Maddox will remember this conversation.”
And I’ll apologize to him for this later.

When it came to personality, Taylor Watts was about one inch deep. That made it very easy to see the possibilities rattling around his brain. The name Maddox worked on him. Something was going on there. At least he thought there was.

“Answer my question,” I said to Taylor. “Or quit wasting my time.”

Slowly, the new arrangement of reality settled into place behind Taylor’s eyes like so many Tetris pieces, and unfortunately, the only set of facts he was comfortable with came out on top. I needed him. He had information, therefore he had power. Taylor grinned at Brendan and Sevarin. The fact that either one could have squashed him like a bug did not seem to be registering. The fact that I could have squashed him like a bug was not even on the radar, although I was itching to put it there.

“Chet got me a job because otherwise I was going to tell you he was cooking the books.”

What!

Anatole realized my voice had just short-circuited. Probably those acute undead senses, or the fact that my eyes ha bugged out of my head. “Chester Caine was embezzling from his sister?”

“Or laundering money.” Taylor shrugged.
No!
my brain howled.
That’s
Shelby’s
game. Not Chet’s!

“Chet wasn’t in a sharing mood when I caught him,” Taylor went on.

“
You
caught him?” put in Brendan.

“I’d left my keys here one night and had to come back for them.” In Taylor-speak that meant he’d planned on pilfering a bottle of top-shelf vodka again. “So I’m behind the bar, where I leave my stuff during my shift. . . .”
As if I’ve forgotten we have lockers.
“And they didn’t see me when they came out of the office.”
I heard the boss coming and I ducked. . . .
“So, there’s Chet with this other little vamp. I couldn’t understand all of what they were saying. . . .”
I couldn’t catch all of it because I was busy trying to keep two vampires from hearing me breathe. . . .
“But they were definitely talking about shuffling around the money in the Nightlife accounts.”

The same fierce nausea that had hit me in Post Mortem when I found out about the menu came back with a vengeance, and I found myself wanting to take the smug smile off Taylor Watt’s face with the back of a frying pan.

“What then?” Brendan prompted

If Taylor had been chewing gum, he would have popped it right then. “They must have heard my heartbeat or something, because the next thing I know Chet hauls me over the bar and threatens to fire me. But pretty soon he knows it’s too late for that.”

“Two vampires could have talked you into forgetting,” remarked Anatole. “Why didn’t they?”

Taylor snorted. “The mental oogity-boogity only works on the tourists.”

Silence fell, and so did the temperature in the kitchen by another five degrees. “Would you care to look at me and say that?” Anatole inquired.

“No, thanks, Dracula. I’m fine.”

There are things you don’t call other people; a whole range of insults that immediately change the game. With vampires, it’s the D-word.

For one heartbeat, Taylor was leaning against the counter, full of bullshit and vinegar. By the next, there was a rush of cold wind and Taylor was pinned against the wall, with Anatole’s dead-white hand around his neck.

“Gah!” said Taylor.

Anatole barked something in Russian, dry-spat and said, “Look at me, you pathetic little peasant boy.”

“Gah!” said Taylor again. I glanced sideways at Brendan. Brendan stayed right where he was, arms folded, watching the proceedings with detached interest.