The rest of the night at Club Krev hadn’t been much fun for me. I danced with all the guys and I drank some new drink called Teeth of the Vampire that was good enough to rate a space in my memory for future reference. I chatted with Shay, Lily, Franz, Mitchell and Corbin about the movie and what the plans were for Headlights Productions next few projects. I didn’t care. I kept alternating between avoiding staring at Johnny Gerard who, naturally, was making a huge hit with the crowd as the guest DJ and deliberately staring at Mr. Gerard. I also wavered between wanting him to come over to our table and praying that he wouldn’t see us this far in the back.
The latter turned out to be the prayer answered but I wasn’t happy about it. Shay and I stayed at the club for about two hours after Johnny had done his forty-minute DJ stint and we hadn’t seen him once he’d left the stage. Presumably, he’d just done the job and gone home.
Our own crowd left together about one-thirty in the morning and walked back to our respective hotels. Well, Shay and I, Franz and Mitchell were at hotels. Lily took a cab to the house of some relatives of hers and Corbin got into an old Jeep and took off for Kouzlo Noc where I gathered he had been given room and board for the duration of his work in the old cemetery.
Shay and I were silent as we trudged up the stairs to my room. We both sank onto my bed as soon as we were inside the room.
“Damn. Damn. Damn.”
“Oh Abby, don’t start that again.”
“Well? Prison record? I thought he and I had no secrets from each other. When the hell was in in prison? And why the hell didn’t he tell me? Man! This little jaunt to Prague is getting weirder and weirder when it comes to the man I’m marrying—whenever.”
She frowned. “Not buying it and you aren’t either. You just want something to obsess about. So, damn well ask him tomorrow if it’s A—true and B—if so, what was he convicted of? Remember all the b.s. you thought about Johnny and Tracy when y’all were first dating? You put yourself through hell and all for nothing. Yes, you have some trust issues—which, playing shrink, I personally think were pushed into your tiny brain by your dear mother right after birth but that’s beside the point. What is the point—for once in your life can’t you push them aside and hear the man out? Be a good little American and not presume guilty?
“Yeah, right. Great sentiments.”
“Ah shit!” She exclaimed. “How many of those Teeth of Vampire drinks did you have? Lord Above and the good Sisters of St. Agnes, help us. Johnny Gerard is a pussycat and you’re so nuts about him it’s sickening to be around. So just go to sleep and I’ll see you in the A.M. when you’re sober and not letting your imagination take over what’s left of your zapped brain cells.”
Good advice and I knew it, but it still took me another hour before I was finally able to get the words “prison record” out of my head enough to sleep.
They came back in my head when the hotel called me at seven to tell me I had a visitor in the lobby. Johnny Gerard wanted to take me to breakfast.
I got ready in fourteen minutes. My hair was still slightly wet from the shower and my outfit, black jeans and a black turtleneck (I looked like one of the Klezmer Volny Rabin) wasn’t the fanciest thing in my suitcase, but my make-up was on and I was as prepared as I could get for a nice morning repast with an Irish-eyed, well-rounded felon.
Johnny greeted me in the lobby with a red rose. Only Mr. Gerard could do that at seven-fifteen in the morning and still look smooth. He gave me the rose, then crooked his elbow so I could link my arm through. We exited the lobby without exchanging a single word.
The silence remained until we found a café three blocks away that had an empty table and wasn’t filled with business people jabbing fingers at pocketsize computers and organizers.
Johnny poured coffee into my waiting cup, then sailed right in. “So Lily decided to make the shocking pronouncement that I have been in prison.”
My eyes opened. I was wide-awake before I’d even tasted my coffee. “Hold up there, pardner. Were you skulking near our table last night and overheard? Been in communication with cousin Julien’s shaman guide Bubba?”
“Nothing so crude. Nope. Shay called me at three in the morning to tell me what the sweetly vicious Miss Lowe had said.”
“Ah.”
He plopped a huge dab of whipped cream in my coffee and sprinkled cinnamon on top. Which is exactly what I’d done with my cocoa and Kahlua at the café the afternoon we’d run into each other under the tree at Kouzlo Noc. One of many reasons I adored him. He remembers little things like that.
He continued, “Shay did not ask for the story behind this incarceration. She said she’d let me give you the details and she trusted that I hadn’t done anything “really rude” like hijacking planes and dumping small children out over the Atlantic while I smoked Cuban cigars and had wild sex with a dozen kidnapped Rumanian prostitutes—or mowing down little old ladies crossing Trafalgar Square in London and stealing all their worldly possessions. Something to that effect. I told her to keep all those in mind for story lines on the soap so Greg Noble can catch the creeps that really do that stuff.”
I hid my amusement and looked staright into those hypnotic green eyes of his. “And so… what is the true story behind your felonious past?”
He shook his head. “Two-fold and all revolving around circuses. I got into some trouble when I was eleven down in Houston. I was hanging out at some circus musing over a career as the Elephant Man and I ended up being friends with Serpent Boy who was about my age. One afternoon we decided to take a joy ride in a customer’s classic Corvette convertible while the customer was watching the antics of fifteen clowns in a Volkswagen towed by a sleepy elephant who had nothing to do with Elephant Man.”
I snorted. “You desperado, you.”
“Hey! We brought it back. Absolutely intact. Better even. We’d taken it to a car wash and got the thing cleaned for him since we hated seeing dust on a vehicle that fine. The customer was very understanding, especially since he’d been dumb enough to leave the top down and the keys in the ignition. Serpent Boy and I got the whipping of our young lives from his parents and my mom grounded me for a year so that ended my days of benign carjacking.”
“And the second half of that fold?” I asked.
“I was in Montana doing summer stock when I was still in college and I -well—I stole two lions from a different circus touring the Western states in the U.S. Those poor beasts were being abused beyond belief. So I snuck in and got them out with the help of a group who ran a rescue habitat for animals. We got caught. The owner of the circus rather gleefully pressed charges even though it was obvious the cops were in sympathy with all the rescuers. I refused to give up the whereabouts of Fred and Ginger, the lions, so I was indicted with a felony charge since the animals were considered worth in excess of $50,000. Two others actors from the company and I spent seven nights in the clink in Butte, where we learned of things best left forgotten. Although, once the inmates knew why we were there they were rather nice. Kieran always told me that other than serial killers and general sociopaths, most guys behind bars are major softies when it comes to kids, puppy dogs and large animals who’ve been beaten every day since they were born.”
“Did Kieran get you and your felonious buddies out?” Kieran, Johnny’s Dad, is Deputy District Attorney in Manhattan.
“He made a call to a local judge he knew from Yale.” Johnny beamed at me. “The judge happened to be president of the local animal shelter. So I—quote unquote—did time for a whole week. What gripes my butt is why some dimwit bimbo like Lily Lowe is doing searching my background. I mean—why?”
I was silent for a moment, taking time to ingest this along with my coffee and kolaches.
“Because she’s a bitch. I’m sorry, Johnny. Really.”
“For what?”
“For not socking her in her overly-collagened lips, then pondering not-so-great things after Lily laid her little bombshell out last night.”
“What not-so-great thoughts were you pondering?”
“Hmm. Now that you mention it, I wasn’t even specific in those thoughts. My gosh, Shay comes up with scenarios to curl your hair, yet tells me to trust and I honestly couldn’t imagine anything bad enough to have landed you behind bars. Really. Uh. The word ‘research.’ was my first thought as in, ‘Johnny got himself behind bars to research something for Endless Time.’” I smiled. “I did wonder if robbery was your thing. Having seen your butt slide out of a tower window at the castle, I could just see you sliding out of other windows. You’ll be happy to hear I didn’t even consider murder although by rights you should be listed with the other suspects around here for that piano tuner’s demise.”
Johnny smiled, then reached over and added another kolache to his plate from the dozen or so that had been placed in a basket in the middle of the table. He carefully took a bite, chewed and finished before he said another word. “Abby. It’s okay. More than okay. You’d just been told by that, saccharine-smiling, scheming—ah shit, words fail me when it comes to Lily Lowe—anyway, you’d just learned that I had a prison record thanks to her poisonous and mistaken mouth. Although, I guess I am an ex-con if you want to get literal. I should have told you ages ago, but honestly? It’s not looming large in importance anymore. A week spent in what was actually a very nice jail space all for rescuing giant pussycats ten years ago doesn’t keep me awake nights.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“For what? Going to breakfast and listening to my side of the story instead of giving me the silent treatment for the next week? There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“Well, I’d like to go open up a big can of whup ass on Lily Lowe’s bimbo-headed blonde curls though. Why the hell was she yakking about your past? And how did she find out anything anyway?”
“Are you serious? Join the Twenty-first Century and learn to spy on your friends and neighbors. Heck, woman, you can get background checks of almost any kind on the Internet for a price. Type in your credit card number and pay your $39.95 and not only can you find out whether your new business partner or lover is a serial child molester, if you ‘act today, the offer of information comes with steak knives, a bamboo steamer and a set of coasters!’” His expression grew less cheerful. “Now, as to why the lovely Lily Lowe decided to check on me in the first place? That’s a question I plan to ask the next time I see her. Which will hopefully be at the castle with a room full of people because I’ve never yet socked a woman and I don’t want to start now. Well, unless you count Melissa Harrigan in first grade who refused to let me release the fireflies she was keeping in a sealed jar.
“You’re a worse softie than I, you macho actor, you. Fireflies and lions. Next you’ll be telling me you pick up stray dogs and -oh my-actually keep them!”
He looked sheepish. “You know I do. Except I can’t keep them. Someday when you’re Mrs. Gerard and we’re sharing a big space to put the pups in, I’d love for us to have about ten. Sadly, ‘til then, we’re both gone so much it’s not fair to the pups.” His expression hardened again. “But Lily Lowe’s efforts to entertain using the private life of Johnny Gerard make me feel anything but soft.” He scowled. “Ah crap, I shouldn’t have told you all this. I should have let you believe I was a three-strikes-you’re-out arsonist or something even if it meant breaking up with you for awhile.”
“What! Why?”
“I mentioned this the other night but it bears repeating. Because I don’t want you—or Shay anywhere near Kastle Kouzlo Noc.”
I straightened up. “Wait. I thought you were all set to acknowledge my place in your misbegotten life as your best beloved. What did I do now?”
“Don’t be dense, gorgeous. You know you haven’t done anything. It’s what’s been done.”
“Ah. You mean murder.”