I sort of agreed with Barbara, but I wasn’t a mother, so maybe my sympathies would have been elsewhere if I was. “So you don’t know if the vampire is male or female.”
“Male,” she said, very firm, too firm.
“Amy’s friend told you it was a guy vampire?”
Ms. Mackenzie shook her head, but too rapid, too jerky. “Amy would never let another girl do that to her, not…down there.”
I was beginning not to like Ms. Mackenzie. There’s something about someone who is so against all that is different that sets my teeth on edge. “If I knew for sure it was a guy, then that would narrow down the search.”
“It was a male vampire, I’m sure of that.” She was working too hard at this, which meant she wasn’t sure at all.
I let it go; she wasn’t going to budge. “I need to talk to Barbara, Amy’s friend, without you or her parents present, and we need to start searching the clubs for Amy. Do you have a picture of her?”
She did, hallelujah, she’d come prepared. It was one of those standard yearbook shots. Amy had long straight hair in a rather nondescript brown color, neither dark enough to be rich, or pale enough to be anything else. She was smiling, face open, eyes sparkling; the picture of health and bright promise.
“The picture was taken last year,” her mother said, as if she needed to explain why the picture looked the way it did.
“Nothing more recent?”
She drew another picture out of her purse. It was of two women in black with kohl eyeliner and full, pouting lips, one with purple lipstick and the other with black. It took me a second to recognize the girl on the right as Amy. The nondescript hair was piled on top of her head in a casual mass of loose curls that left the clean, high bone structure other face like an unadorned painting, something to be admired. The dramatic makeup suited her coloring. Her friend was blond and it didn’t match her skin tone as well. The picture seemed more poised than the other one had, as if they were playing dress-up and knew it, but they both looked older, dramatic, seductive, lovely but almost indistinguishable from a thousand other teenage Goths.
I put the two pictures beside each other and looked from one to the other. “Which picture did she go out looking like?”
I don’t know. She’s got so much Goth clothing, I can’t tell what’s missing.” She looked uncomfortable with that last remark, as if she should have known.
“You did good bringing both pictures, Ms. Mackenzie, most people wouldn’t have thought of it.”
She looked up at that, almost managed a smile. “She looks so different depending on what she wears.”
“Most of us do,” I said.
She nodded, not like she was agreeing, but as if it were polite.
“How old is Barbara, her friend?”
“Eighteen, why?”
“I’ll send my friend, the private investigator over to talk to her, maybe meet me at the clubs.”
“Barbara won’t tell us who it is that’s been…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“My friend can be very persuasive, but if you think Barbara will be a problem I might know someone who could help us out.”
“She’s very stubborn, just like my Amy.”
I nodded and reached for the phone. I called Veronica (Ronnie) Sims, private detective and good friend first. Ms. Mackenzie gave me Barbara’s address, which I gave to Ronnie over the phone. Ronnie said she’d page me when she had any news, or when she arrived at the club district.
I dialed Zerbrowski next. He was a police detective and really had no reason to get involved, but he had two kids and he didn’t like the monsters, and he was my friend. He was actually at work, since he belonged to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team and worked a lot of nights.
I explained the situation, and that I needed a little official muscle to flex. He said it was a slow night, and he’d be there.
“Thanks, Zerbrowski.”
“You owe me.”
“On this one, yeah.”
“Hmm,” he said, “I know how you could pay me back.” His voice had dropped low and mock seductive. It had been a game with us since we met.