Chapter Ten

I woke up the next day and checked the Araby Motel's scratchy sheets first thing.

My panties had passed the period test last night. No blood. My dreams had been vaguely gory, sometimes a prelude to my periods, but the sheets passed too.

No "virginal" spot of blood, m'Lord. She is fit to marry a King. Of course she could just be pregnant...

I sighed, trying to come to grips with my sudden new Sunset Park side: sexy chick.

I'd always tried to act like a hip modern girl, especially once I'd got out into the working world, but sometimes I thought I was an oddball escapee from some forgotten fairy tale. I didn't remember a lot about my "wonder" years when things like hormones and periods and what guys might want appeared on the horizon.

Any shrink could tell you that never being adopted might lead to self-esteem issues. On top of that, my vamp-attracting coloring meant I'd had to stand up solo and secretly to the older bad boys who kept recycling back to the orphanage from foster home after foster home. All of them had long tails of initials in their case files, and half of them were OOW (out-of-wedlock) unwanted half-vampire spawn.

Every jaunt in and out of the institution just made them nastier.

Our Lady of the Lake convent school was a relief in getting away from the bad boys, being a girls' school, but the other students all had homes and families and their own venom-tongued ways of tormenting someone different.

By the time I hit college, working like a stevedore to earn living expenses, a social life was an afterthought. Somewhere, sometime after my institutional stays, I had the impression that I was no longer a virgin, in terms of not bleeding if you pricked me. Imagine how the fairy tale would have gone if Sleeping Beauty couldn't bleed? But I didn't remember when or how or who. Or what.

I also didn't remember a couple of heavy drinking college parties very well either. Maybe then. Whatever had happened, if it had, I came out of it with memory loss, nightmares, and such an aversion to vampire lunges and to lying on my back that the dentist had to work on me sitting up.

During my last year at the group home, my dreams of a humiliating and terrifying "alien abduction" pelvic exam began, mixed up with vamp boy attacks. That drove me in high school to the underground drug sellers for the "others." A lot of teen female werewolves had period difficulties during their "change," and I could get the Pill without a prescription or a pelvic, since many doctors still wouldn't treat supernaturals. No one ever questioned my supernatural credentials. They were selling meds like street drugs. Besides, who would want to masquerade as an outcast? All this shady rigmarole to get the Pill made me feel neurotic and squeamish and childish. From what I'd heard, women my age had abortions with less angst than I produced for a P.E.

So it wasn't that I didn't want male company or affection or that I didn't dream that someday my prince would come. It's that the dreams I remembered were always of a huge pale stingray hanging over me. I couldn't breathe... was I underwater? Being held underwater? Being held down? A lot of working women had that dream. The stingray's flaccid white wings were arched and veined like a bat's, and became a black shadow above me, diving down, smothering me.

So I had some sexual hang-ups. My mind veered away whenever my thoughts wandered too close to the mystery. But it wasn't rape. I'd never thought that was my problem. That nail file had done the job.

It was even harder to veer away from my old edgy emotions and fears now, after feeling that bolt of earthy energy from the ground under my feet, from the man behind me, whose hands in front of mine had tapped into all that subterranean sexuality.

Maybe my prince had come.

Literally.

So the good news at this point was that my sudden sogginess wasn't my usually predictable period after all. The bad news was that I'd never had much luck playing well with men and I might be heading for another major disappointment. At least my ��ber-headache was gone and I didn't remember dreams of any kind from last night whatsoever. Round one to Ric Montoya. Too bad I didn't have time to moon over him a little.

I had a lot of other things to do, Hector Nightwine still looming number one on my A-list. I'd come back from the breakfast buffet at the Lotsa-Slotsa-Fun on this gentrification-doomed low-end part of the Strip when my phone rang at 11:00 am on the dot.

My first phone call in Vegas! I let it ring two more times for sheer pleasure before I panicked and flipped it open. In the meantime I fantasized that Hector Nightwine's secretary... a male secretary named Niven... was on the line begging me to see his boss. Hmmm, my fantasies were definitely perking up.

"Hello."

"Good morning. It's Ric."

Number two. Not bad.

"Ye-es?" I'd never turned one word into two with that little purring note in my voice. Get it together, girl! Irma nagged me.

"I'm back in the park." And he gave great phone voice.

"Oh." Was it going to be their place?

"I wondered if you could come over before noon."

Hmm. Charming hot-dog-stand lunch in the park. Feeding bun breadcrumbs to the ducks. Settling down at "their" picnic table. Arranging something more formal. Dinner perhaps. Plus I could keep an eye on Hector's place and maybe figure out how to storm the palace somehow.

"Sure."

No, girlfriend! Hard to get.

Too late.

That is no way you play a hot guy, a fashion stud right out of GQ, honey.

I gagged my inner girlfriend. Sometimes she is way too shallow.

Ric seemed a serious guy underneath the high-end accessories. He obviously believed he could dowse for water, and... maybe he could. I have an open mind. But maybe I'd better consider wearing a Lite Days pad if we're rendezvousing in the park again. Those dowsing rod visions seemed to have touched something in me nothing, or no one, ever had before.

Still, visions of sedate sugarplums danced in my convent-bred head. A stroll, maybe an ice cream cone for dessert in the desert. Something sweet, mundane, and old-fashioned. Pure Kansas corn.

I parked Dolly in a lot off Sunset Road and walked back to the area where I'd met Ric. It's a huge park, with tennis and golfing areas, but I kept bearing west until I spied Kon Tiki (my nickname for Mr. Easter Island head). He got me near where I needed to be.

I stop, bemused. There is a dreamlike quality to the scene I walk into slowly. Time slows down like lazy molasses.

The park right here is teeming with busy men in suits and buff uniformed cops in buff-colored uniforms: Bermuda shorts and short-sleeved shirts that showcase tanned biceps and quads. The air buzzes with walkie-talkie communications. Chrome yellow Crime Scene: do not cross tape wraps several of the dead-dedicated trees, cordoning off a pizza-pie-shaped slice of the open ground.

A chill runs up my spine when I triangulate between the reeds on the west, Kon Tiki's dour face on the lake's central island, and Sunset Road. This is "our" place and suddenly, this summer, it is verboten to anyone not among the city's law enforcement crowd.

'"Scuse me, miss." Officer Buff is looming beside me. "This area is off-limits to the public."

Luckily I'm stunned into silence long enough for an equally authoritative voice behind me to announce, " Miss Street is with me."

Ric Montoya is standing behind me. As has become usual for us. His designer sunglasses with their titanium frames only enhance his strong cheekbones, aristocratic nose, knife-edge jaw. He is still just as good-looking, just as professional, and he is eyeing me like I am a ten of clubs in a game of Twenty-One. Keep or fold?

"What's going on here?" I ask when Officer Buff has withdrawn in a state of high grouch. I know his type. Works out, hits the tanning beds, and thinks he's the cat's pajamas. Likes to pull over helpless women on a pretext, and if they're young and alone, screw them.

"Something I thought you should see," Ric says.

I eye the Crime Scene tape. I've been here before, at crime scenes in Kansas, with a camera crew. But not after melting down the previous evening on this very spot.

"I know it'll be hard." Ric is standing very close to me, face-to-face this time, his fingertips on my elbows. He has excellent fingertip technique no matter the occasion. "I know you saw something... awful. I felt that too. You need to see what's really there."

"I do?"

He leans away, stung. "No, you're right. I do. Maybe we do. I won't let go of you."

How many women have dreamed of hearing that from the right guy? But I know how he means it. Literally. He won't let go of me. We'll be linked. In touch. And he knows what this is about.

I nod. I'm a tough girl. I've seen dead people before.

Ric leads us to the tape, where we're questioned again. Ric flashes an ID. "The captain okayed it."

"You maybe. Her too?"

"A new associate, Miss Street."

The middle-aged officer is all on-duty starch. I could be a naked Madonna impersonator and he wouldn't blink an eye. "Go ahead."

We duck under the familiar yellow plastic ribbon, not attached to an old oak tree but to small pine and ash trees. Out-of-the-blue songs are running through my mind, the windmills in my mind. Interior distraction for what I might be seeing all too soon.

Ric leads me to where we stood together only last twilight. There is now an actual pit, larger than a bread box; say the size of a grave site, all the better to accommodate the CSI crew kneeling around the revealed centerpiece. This is a pair of interlocked skeletons lying in a tomb of desiccated limestone. A hard night's digging work. Someone really wanted them six feet under.

The skeletons seem blissful, even rapturous, unaware of their gruesome state, or even of when death came. Grinning skulls face each other in profile, all the teeth in place, as clean and even as pearl bangles. The spines and ribs are collapsed, but the arm bones intertwine, and the large leg bones tangle with each other forming a horizontal ladder. It's hard for a civilian like me to discern the finger and foot bones, but something about the pair's cuddling position, now eternal, screams young lovers.

When you're about to faint it's just like in those movie special-effects sequences. You stay fixed in place and the foreground is rushing away from your senses as if you were on a departing French super-train. Zoom.

Because I now find myself hit with a rerun of the exact visceral blend of high-impact sex and death I'd felt yesterday afternoon. These dry bones, so sedate now, are the writhing, naked, ultimately blood-soaked limbs of the coupling couple of my vision.

"Male and female," I mutter at Ric.

"Good. What else?"

"Passion and death."

"Is it ever different?"

I ignore his cynicism, too busy tapping my own.

"Murder."

His hands tighten on my upper arms.

I frown. "Old."

"Old? Who?"

"Old. Just old. Believe me, I know old!"

He stands behind me like a wall, his fingertips reading the tremors of my nerves and skin.

"Thanks," Ric says. "Don't say anything. The lead detective is coming. He'll be a pain. Let me answer."

"I speak for myself."

"When you know the ground."

"These are my... corpses."

"Mine too. Shhh. Delilah." He whispers in my ear. Touches it with the tip of his tongue.

Well, that worked. I am pretty much speechless. How did he know my first name? How did he know how to shut me up?

The plainclothes man swaggers over, dripping dislike. I can see why. He is short, squat, vampire-pale without any of the mystique that goes with a professional bloodsucker.

"If it ain't the Cadaver Kid again," he says to Ric. "I heard you were nosing around. Montoya." The voice is grating, egotistical, and, my very favorite thing to go after with a nail file, bullying.

"Detective Haskell." Ric's voice sounds icy but I can sense he is super hot under that cool white collar. I'm suddenly very attuned to what's under that cool white collar. "The captain likes me to eyeball these crime scenes. And I did call it in."

"You. Not your little casino luck-piece tootsie."

I stiffen as much as Ric had done on me yesterday. His hands clamp like handcuffs on my arms, a dislocated gag, but I get the message.

" Miss Street is a fellow professional," he says, smooth as variated tinted glass in a 24-carat gold-accented frame. "An associate."

"And what's your specialty, sister? Knee-work?"

I tear loose of Ric and round on the Lieutenant. He's middle-aged, middle-gutted, middling-haired; every position-loving, not-very-sharp man who likes to throw his considerable weight around instead of doing his job.

I draw on all the interviews I've done with women in law enforcement.

" Quantico didn't think so, Lieutenant, when I took their serial killer workshop with John Douglas. Granted this is all theoretical and speculative compared to what you might dig up from beat work, but you have male/ female vies here, you have major trauma to the remaining bones, which indicates an ultra-violent-and bizarrely controlled-end. You have coitus interruptus, which guarantees a textbook-sick perp, and you have very old bones, which means a very... cold... case."

The guy stands paralyzed.

"Remind me," Ric murmurs in my same damn oversensitive ear, "to forget about getting a pit bull."

"So you're FBI too," Detective Haskell says. "Ex-FBI like our Meskin friend here?"'

At first I don't get the word, "Meskin," but Ric's fingers digging into my upper arms allow me to translate it, pronto.

"Right," I say. Claiming to be ex-FBI gives me much more status than admitting to being a reporter. An ex-reporter. "And I didn't quite get what you just said."

Haskell doesn't bother to translate. He just eyes Ric with an ugly smile. "Our Cadaver Kid here is one lucky bastard. Got a nose for dead bodies. Me, I think the whole thing stinks. Maybe he's really working for the Christophe syndicate or one of the other mob czars in town and just knows where all the bodies are buried."

Before this confrontation can deteriorate any more, it's interrupted by a cry from the gravesite.

"Most of the clothes are rotted to threads," a woman's voice calls from the pit, "but we've found some surviving artifacts."

She's right to call any finds "artifacts." This is almost an archeological site. I recall glimpses of cast-off clothes and am starting to date them. Quantico Girl? No. Retro Girl. Yes.

A quart-size plastic bag holding a heavy load of large silver dollar coins is passed up.

"Wanta bet there are thirty of them?" Ric murmurs in my ear.

Then a sandwich baggie holding something small and black is also passed up to Officer Buff, but Haskell snags it. He stares at it, then eyes me with mean triumph.

"A gambling chip," he says. Tells me. "From the Inferno. So much for your 'old' theory, babe. So, Montoya. You came, you saw, you bombed. Get yourself and Quantico Girl outahere."

We retreat a few yards. Once we're alone, I fight not to double over and barf. Because I re-feel their pain, this live-dead couple. Interlocked bones, loved to death. I've seen them at their best and at their worst. Vies. I know the lingo, but it makes them into pawns, not people who lived and breathed and loved at one time.

I think about how everything I own could be pawned. Achilles' urn. My own soul.

Ric is shaking me loose of my flashback. "You'll have to tell me what you saw later."

He's frowning behind the sunglasses. They prevent sun damage and don't hurt his looks at all. Does every woman fixate on him like this, or just me? What is going on?

"He called you-" I start to say.

"He lives to offend. Anyway, it's true."

"Well, yeah, but... hey, what's really bothering you?"

"Besides you?" The easy humor is back. And then the frown. "The Inferno is the hottest hotel-casino in town for the Pseudo-Goth-Hypehead-Decadent set."

"And?"

"It opened three years ago."

"Oh."

"That's okay. Silver dollars haven't been used for gambling in this city since the price-run on silver in the seventies. It's up to the coroner's office to determine the time of death. Those bones looked well seasoned to me."

"It's not only that. I... saw... shards of their clothes, jewelry. Particularly hers. Strictly late forties or early fifties."

He's smiling down at me. "They teach you that at ' Quantico '?'"

"No, but they should have, if I'd been there. I have worked as an investigative TV reporter. I covered ritual murders, although in Kansas they were cattle mutilations, most often. Are you really ex-FBI?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"You're the best freaking dressed Fed I've ever seen."

"Maybe that's why I'm 'ex.' Hey, I appreciate your coming over here. I wanted to establish that we have a right to be on this case. I didn't expect it, but you cooked Haskell's goose."

We? This case? Maybe. But I've got my own cases to solve, my own bones to pick.

Bone number one is not who Ric is, but what. We walk away from the crime scene for a heart to heart.

Chapter Eleven

"Now that we're alone, Ric, tell me what happened here. This murder scene is what the dowsing rod targeted last night, and I saw it. Only I saw that couple alive, and being killed. I've never had daylight nightmares before. You must have had something to do with it. You're a water witch, aren't you?"

Ric winced at my last phrase. ''Water dowser. It's a respected... faculty among rural folk all over the world. I can do it a bit now, but it's not my particular gift. It's not any part of this Millennium Revelation upsurge in supernaturals and freaks at all. I'm not a freak. I'm not a witch or a wizard of anything. Just a guy with a quirky family gene."

"So what's your 'faculty,' if not finding water?"

He looked away, maybe appealing to the island god for inspiration so that I'd believe him.

"Most dowsers do find water. A very few find precious metals and stones. I'm unique, as far as I know. I see dead people. Underground. That's what I do. Know they're there."

"That's what you consult about?"

He nodded. "Law enforcement people are pig-headed and pride themselves on that. They just think I'm superbly educated and well-trained." He gave a self-effacing grin. "Which I was, no thanks to myself."

There was a story there, but I'd get it later. I can wait.

"A lot of them like to think I'm just lucky," he added. "I let them believe that I have a photographic memory for news stories. Most dead bodies in wrong places are MIAs. Someone's missing; somebody's reported something, if you look hard enough. Which I do. After the fact."

He met my eyes again. "You seem to have some folk faculty yourself."

"You didn't literally see them, the victims?"

"I don't see anything that specific. The dowsing rod draws me to the grave. I report it and the authorities always find a body. Or bodies. Sometimes they're more than human. Or less."

I shuddered. "Are you saying -?"

"Yeah. Human murder victims are the simplest. Sometimes the bodies are staked vamps, victims of vigilante attacks. Other things."

"In this case, you didn't sense the bodies' pre-death... agony? Their-" I didn't know how to put it.

"Their heat? Yeah. I got that this time, but only through your reaction." His bedroom eyes apparently couldn't resist giving me a visual pat down. "It adds a whole new dimension to my work, believe me."

I was blushing now, and on me, it always showed.

He managed to ignore that, at least. "This crime... feels... like revenge for infidelity. I've never picked that up before, never anything about means or motive. We make a hell of a combo, Delilah. I wasn't kidding about you being an associate."

Maybe. But he'd just seen me reacting to what I'd felt. He hadn't experienced it, not both the glory and the gory. I didn't like hanging out there on the naked edge like that, my emotions showing like a black lace slip under a white satin gown, literally in some strange guy's hands.

"I've got my own agenda here to take care of."

"I noticed. Now you know my secret. So what's eating you?"

I jerked my head toward Sunset Road. "I'd sure like to get an appointment with the man behind that wall but I can't even get past the driveway gate to the security call box inside."

Ric turned to eye the imposing property.

"There? Easy. I've been hanging in this park long enough to notice the pool service truck that coasts through those gates every day at four pm. If you can hitch your wagon to a chlorine machine, you're in."

"Thank you!"

My watch read 1:00 pm. I had time to plan.

Ric fingered my elbow-length mesh sleeves. Holding a dowsing rod like a psychic set of reins had given him a touch that could veer from sheer gossamer to a grip of iron. I'd felt that as intimately as I'd seen and experienced the dead couple's passion and death.

"I'll be in touch, Delilah. Okay?"

Oh, yeah, even though my knees were knocking about what that might mean.

Or maybe because they were.

Chapter Twelve

Three hours to kill. Oops. That phrase had an ugly echo in Sunset Park now that I'd viewed the skeletons in the ground.

I wandered around, avoiding the crime scene I'd been banned from. I bought my own hot dog and drenched it in mustard that made my mouth pucker, avoiding onions for my possible interview later. I stared at the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse across the street, meditating on Hector Nightwine and who, or what, he might be. Nice man, bogeyman, entrepreneur, thief?

At the lower end of the park, I spotted a dog run and stood watching from a distance, sawdust in my throat. I couldn't help being drawn there, thinking of Achilles. The signs advertised obedience trials at 5:00 pm every day. The word "obedience" made me smile through my tears. Achilles wasn't big on obedience but he was spot-on about everything I needed. Loyalty. Spirit. Elegance. Love.

My throat was clogging, caught in a vise. Here I was, a new woman in a new city, and my past still had me by the throat harder than any vampire.

Las Vegas SPCA the sign read. Women bustled around wire cages while I wandered among them, eavesdropping. What else is a reporter but a professional snoop? Just browsing.

"Gosh, I hope one of these guys goes soon," a petite redhead fretted as I passed. "The city shelter will have to kill any one that comes back today."

"Maybe we should put a sign out." The plump, gray-haired woman sounded bitterly passionate. '"Adopt me now or I die tomorrow.'"

"Shhh! Truth doesn't get good homes. People can't face that."

I'd seen death up close and personal at the park's other end. I couldn't face a return encounter here. So I hunted for an Achilles look-alike. Small, white, cute.

These were all big dogs. Crossbred. Unwanted.

One in particular hunched hopelessly in a big wire crate still way too small for it. It was a shaggy gray ghost of a dog, ten times Achilles' size, nothing cute and apartment-sized about it.

I approached the cage, then tapped the wires to see the most beautiful pale blue eyes ever, way better than my own, turn to me from a silver-and-cream furred face. A widow's peak of darker fur over those amazing eyes made them seem almost human.

"Too big," I heard the women whisper behind me. "What a shame."

Am I easy? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just ambitious.

"How big?" I turned to ask.

"A hundred and fifty pounds. He's definitely from the wolf-spitz family, but really big for the breed. Maybe a touch of Irish wolfhound or Alaskan malamute in him. The eyes are blue, but pale to gray in the right light. Random-breds are hard to tell sometimes, you know?"

No, I didn't know, except for the hole in my heart. I scanned the organization's single-spaced adoption papers. Eighty dollars, no other pets, a permanent address...

I copied Ric Montoya's street address in the appropriate blanks.

"Really? You want this guy? He's a monster dog. You'll need to exercise him daily."

"I run," I told them. "A lot."

So forty minutes later I walked out of the area with a huge gray dog wearing the black leather-and-steel two-inch-wide collar he came with, attached to a new limp nylon half-inch-wide leash, blue with white letters reading Nevada SPCA.

He will go where I lead, and that's to Sunset Road coming up on 4:00 pm.

"Okay," I told him like he could get it. "I'm new here too. We've got to swing on a star and get into this place by hook or by crook. You ready?"

The pale blue eyes said yes.

We lurked outside in the juniper bushes until the pool service truck paused, then gunned past the electrically opened gate. We slipped in after the truck. I led. He followed. I held his leash. He already held my heart.

Can we really storm this castle? And, if so, who will care?

The truck chugged past the second round of gates, but I spotted the needed squawk box here. Also a camera eye. I'm attuned to recognizing cameras. I went on tiptoe to hit the lever and speak my piece into the impersonal infrared eye.

"Hi, Mister Nightwine. My name is Delilah Street. I'm a TV reporter from the heartland, and I've got a few questions about a dead body on a recent episode of Las Vegas CSI V."

I heard the echo of my own words. Recorded. Dismissed. No go.

Suddenly the box squawked back at me, sounding like a televangelist. Rotund. Ponderous. With great big bad hair.

" Miss Street. My deepest apologies for keeping you and your, er, associate, waiting. My man will be down post haste."

"Post haste," I told my new dog.

He tilted his huge head, then whimpered and strained at his leash, showing his teeth in a big grin. My God, he had a maw the size of a grizzly bear's! Good dog.

When the butler appeared he was half what I dreamed him to be: natty, with an amiable, worry-corrugated forehead. A forty-something dude with a bit too much tummy and a smidge too little chin, but charming nonetheless. Not sexy, but certainly cute, especially with that pencil-thin mustache. I pictured Ric with same and was so not turned off that I banished that idea... post haste.

This butler guy wore a real monkey suit from a Fred Astaire movie, white tie and tails, and his skin matched the outfit to a T. It was paler than any vampire could manage on his darkest day. He was a literal symphony in living black-and-white.

"Please come in, Miss Street. And your little dog too." He gave-whoever-a welcoming but sardonic grimace. "However, I will keep custody of his, hmmm... leash, I suppose. Might as well put the Minotaur on a string. Gracious, he's ready to eat a grandmother-hopefully not mine-isn't he?"

Dog growled and showed his teeth. My, what big teeth he has!

"It's okay," I told butler dude.

Dog sat and lolled his tongue sideways out of his mouth. My, what a huge tongue he has!

The butler I wanted to believe was named "Niven" led me down acres of marble and tile-paved hallways to show me into a magnificent office where a magisterial man of size, dressed all in black, bearded and mustached, awaited me.

"I will take Mister, ahem, Dog to the kitchen for a soup-bone repast," the butler announced. "Don't worry, Miss. He'll be returned even fatter and happier than he left you."

Since Dog looked lean and hungry and still somewhat sad at the moment, I hoped so.

"Fine," I said.

"Thank you, Godfrey," said my host. "Do keep him out of the lamb for tonight's supper."

Dog immediately turned and dragged Godfrey out of sight. This did not bode well for the lamb.

We were alone now, and my heart was beating like one of the drums in Rod Stewart's "The Rhythm of My Heart." It wasn't reacting the erratic way Ric Montoya made it hiccup, but with the steady elevated rate I felt when I was hot after a story.

The magnificent office reminded me of Hearst Castle. I could barely absorb the details: enormously high coffered ceiling twinkling with gilt. Exquisitely carved wainscoting up to twelve feet, at least.

"Sit," Nightwine said before I could speak further. Did this feel like a dog-training class or what?

I sat, surprising myself. The rococo wooden chair would easily hold an archbishop. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. My feet didn't even touch the thick Turkey rug under my feet and I'm five-eight without heels.

"I must tell you, Miss... Street, you say?"

"I say and am."

"I must tell you, Miss Street, that I won't tolerate any of my copyrights being violated. Should you wish to make an issue of this, I will sue you to Kingdom Come. Which, the pundits tell us, will be sooner than we anticipate or like, given what disagreeable and unforeseen events happened at the recent Millennium. On the other hand, if you are reasonable and we can come to a civilized agreement, you will find me very amenable indeed to deal with."

That's when I realized that he took me for the double I saw playing the corpse on the CSI episode. That's when I also realized I had some decent pairs to play in my poker hand, primarily a deuce of queens: me and my double.

I mustered my forces to explain my mission. "I don't know what you think I'm here for, Mr. Nightwine-"

"A deal is a deal. You signed a contract. As you know, people clamor to play the corpses on my shows. Shopping mall auditions from here to Tokyo host hundreds and thousands of wannabe corpses. My show may pay the union minimum for a non-speaking extra, but the right corpse in the right episode can be in demand for speaking roles on other shows."

"I just had some questions."

"Speak to your agent. I can't recall if you had one or not."

I took a gamble. "No, it was just one of those mass open auditions."

Nightwine's bulk deflated a bit, as if he was a puffer fish relaxing.

"As you will recall from the contract, Nightwine Productions bought all rights to your likeness in this particular role."

"Do you mean naked? Or dead?"

"Both."

"Sort of puts some essential reins on my career."

"Of course we would give you a... dispensation, if a future role was not merely exploitive of your notoriety on my show."

"Notoriety?"

"I meant that as a compliment. It's much more difficult to portray a corpse than most people appreciate. That glassy morning-glory stare, that graveyard pallor, all natural to you, I see. Unfortunately the obsessive fans pick up on successful corpses and there's a black market in blue movies featuring my former players. I can't allow that. If that's what you're here to discuss-"

"Blue movies! No!"

"Delighted to find you the lady-" he caressed the word with a tongue that tied itself into a sensual knot of over-precise diction "-your appearance on my dissecting table indicated you were."

"Your dissecting table?"

"I oversee almost every autopsy on my shows. Attention to details is what has made them the most popular franchise in the world. We have more spin-off units than McDonalds."

Yuck!

"It's possible that I might find a use for you on a future show. Perhaps even a one-line part, if you wore a wig and contact lenses. Perhaps green."

"I hate green."

"Aqua? That would be a suitable compromise. I see you have added a creature to your entourage."

"An entourage of one."

"Well, I approve, although he is somewhat large and galumphing."

He could have been describing himself. I watched his beady dark eyes shift left and right. This was a man preparing to lie, or preparing to scam.

"My dear lady. I realize the compassion that spurred you to adopt such a beast-"

"You do? How?"

He shrugged great rounded shoulders as black and looming as mountains in a Chinese print. "Forgive me. My operations must be kept secret or I'd be ripped off. I have an extensive security camera system. I couldn't help seeing you in the park."

Voyeur! Did this creep see me dowsing with Ric? My pulse went stratospheric. I felt again the tempestuous emotions of the quick and the soon dead under the ground at my feet. And Ric's iron arms around me, his iron... never mind.

Nightwine nattered on. "The beast is huge and ungoverned yet might not be an impractical acquisition. However, where will you find rented quarters that will take him? Even apartments are supersonically priced around Las Vegas, and I'm afraid very few will accept dogs, especially a dog of size like yours. Believe me, I do feel for him. Perhaps I can help you."

"Why are you being so... hospitable?'

"You need a place to live where you can keep the dog."

"That's my problem."

"Yes, of course, but I do have a guesthouse on the premises. Completely separate entrance and egress, very charming, hot-and-cold running servants, laundry service, pool service."

"You propose that I rent from you?"

"You'll find me a very amiable landlord."

"No. I'll find my own quarters, thank you. I prefer my independence."

"Then our discussion is over, I fear."

"I don't know why you agreed to see me if you had so little to say."

"It's possible we could do business in future." Nightwine pursed his ruby lips. They were small and bee-stung and totally creepy. "Perhaps you may reconsider. In time. My door is always open."

"Are you kidding? You have one of the most air-tight security systems I've ever seen."

"Flattery is also always welcome." His large, cerebral brow frowned. "I do advise you to accept my offer."

Was I detecting a faint, sweaty blossom of guilt on that Olympian brow? But why?

"I don't need charity. Why would you offer it?"

Nightwine's stern face softened into a beaming smile. "It was simply such a pleasure to see you again, my dear, even on my black-and-white security camera. And in the flesh, in living color, well, you are a symphony of pale peach and sky blue and with that very dramatic black hair. I was out of the country during your dissection and didn't view your segment until the show aired, and your... portrayal was quite, quite breathtakingly lovely."

He leaned forward to gaze at my bare legs as if they were basted with a golden almond-butterball glaze for Thanksgiving.

Ghoul!

Godfrey gave an Old World bow as he returned my new dog's scrawny temporary leash to my custody at the door when I left.

"Your associate was quite satisfied with the menu of our kitchens during your absence, Miss, but you'd do well to pause at an establishment dedicated to the canine palette and fashion wardrobe after you leave us. Might I recommend a stronger leash? Forged steel, perhaps. Twelve gauge. There is a Pet Palace about two miles from here."

I eyed the dog, who licked his chops, i.e., his huge white teeth, with his washcloth-sized tongue, much as Hector Nightwine had done while discussing my double's cameo appearance on an autopsy table.

"Thanks for the suggestion. Godfrey, is it?"

"Yes, Miss."

I gave him a high five that shocked the bejeesus out of him. "Thanks, my man. We'll be in touch again."

He shook his stinging white-gloved palm. "I sincerely hope not, but you are always welcome otherwise."

I doubted it. Hector had handed me the long goodbye, aka the brush-off.

But Godfrey was right. The new owner of a mondo big dog needed a mondo big grooming and containing set.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***