Love Bites Read Online Free PDF Page A

Mulholland. It was one of those remarkable evenings in L.A. when the wind had blown the pollution somewhere else and you could see the lights on the mountains all the way across the Valley. If I’d been alone, I’d have been thinking about the people who live out there, separated from one another by acres and acres of scrub. I’ll bet they could see stars for miles. I always wonder who they are and what their lives are like. As much as I love the wilderness, I couldn’t stand the isolation.
    “You’re probably not used to that much commotion. Did you have a good time?” I asked.
    “I did,” she said, and she smiled. She was beautiful when she smiled. She was beautiful all the time, but I realized I hadn’t seen her smile often. Maybe it had something to do with hiding her . . . whatever they were . . . teeth. “It made me feel . . . I don’t know what. I’d say homesick, but that’s ridiculous. I’ve never had a home like that to begin with. I guess I experienced the connection you all have to each other—even Aunt Addie—and it was nice. Loud, but nice. Is it like that for every holiday?”
    “Pretty much. Except Bastille Day. Aunt Addie’s not a big fan of the French.”
    A pack of photographers stood waiting outside her gate. Seven of them. There’d been more when I’d come to interview her about her partner’s murder, thirty or forty, not counting the TV crews. All of them screaming for Ovsanna to come to the door so they could get shots of her to put money in their pockets. But that had died down; she was no longer a suspect, and I couldn’t see any reason for them to be there. When they realized I was driving, they stampeded across the road in a herd to get to Ovsanna’s side of the car.
    “Is it always like this?” I asked her. “It’s midnight. How late do they hang around your house?”
    “They don’t, usually. I don’t know what this is all about. And these guys I’ve never seen before.”
    I hadn’t, either. And I know most of the paparazzi in town. You can’t be a cop in Beverly Hills for sixteen years and not know the photographers by name. Half my time is spent smuggling drunken celebrities past their flashbulbs or breaking up fights between them and some star’s bodyguard. Or the star himself. Sean Penn calls me Pete. I rolled the window down a few inches. “Haven’t you guys got something better to do on Christmas Eve?”
    Normally they would have answered back, made some kind of joke, even asked me what I was doing with Ovsanna in the car, was I on duty? As much as I have to police the paparazzi, we’ve got a pretty good relationship. But these guys, nobody said a word. Nobody yelled, “Ovsanna, over here! Give us a smile!” Nobody yelled anything. They just aimed their cameras at the car, shooting silently through the side window. Ovsanna turned her head toward me, hiding her face from them, and gave me the code to the gate. When I tapped it in, they stopped shooting and stared at us, still without speaking. It bothered me. There was something creepy about it. I wondered where they were from, who sent them. I rolled up the window and waited on the other side until I was sure the gates had closed completely. Maybe I’d get out and talk to them on my way home. Assuming I was leaving.
    I had to brake twice on the quarter-mile drive to the house to avoid hitting the geese. Ovsanna has them wandering all over the yard. She says they’re as good as any alarm system. They’re as loud, that’s for sure. And a lot more messy.
    Her house was great. Spanish architecture like mine, only on a much bigger scale. Probably ten million dollars bigger. It had a music room, a screening room, a gym, three offices that I knew about, God knew how many bedrooms, a separate guesthouse, a library, and a dining room with a fifteen-foot-long table. I don’t even know that many people I’d want to eat with. My sister would have thought she’d died and gone to heaven in the laundry