Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"Delilah Street, PI," I said. "I'd like to see Dr. Bahr."

Darn, I needed to run some pro-looking business cards on the enchanted cottage computer. Maybe pixies would do the graphics for me.

"You don't have an appointment."

"Like death, investigative matters have a way of just cropping up."

"I'm sorry, Miss Street, but the coroner is a busy official. You can't see the coroner without an appointment."

The bland blond wood door to my left opened. A guy who had enough rusty-gray eyebrow hair to go to Halloween parties as a caterpillar couple peeped through.

"Fortunately, Miss Street, I can see you via the lobby surveillance camera." The sharp pale hazel eyes behind half-glasses eyed my shoes, and then my calves, including the sweet silver ankle bracelet of dangling…skulls. Oh, Snow. "Come right in. I have a few moments. It's fine, Stephanie."

Stephanie rolled her eyes at having her pronouncements ignored, but I was through the door.

Dr. Bahr was a big, vital man in the expected white lab coat; he bustled me to an empty conference room.

"I don't get a chance to see many attractive live young women," he said, collapsing into a wheeled leather chair. "What totally inappropriate information did you want from me?"

"No more than you want from me," I grinned back.

We grinned at each other like a pair of jolly death heads. I'd run into his type before: late middle-aged authority figure who liked to ogle the ladies but meant no harm.

He was pleased that I recognized we could deal.

"I need information on the old murder in Sunset Park."

"Hmm. Now that's a sensitive case."

"I helped find the bodies."

"You?" He was looking suspicious for the first time.

"And Ric Montoya."

The eyebrows reached for the sky. "So you're an associate of the Cadaver Kid? Why isn't he here?"

"We're not married, Dr. Bahr," I said coyly. "He's been in Mexico a lot lately."

"What else is new?" His mouth seesawed left and right with indecision, then the flat of his hand slapped the bare conference table. "All right. I'll answer what I can, but if one word appears in or on the media-"

"Off the record, I swear."

"Can't be too careful. We had to shield all our windows from paparazzi and morgue-robbers. You from Vegas?"

I shook my head. "Kansas."

"You'd be amazed what folks in this town would do to get a hold of a piece of celebrity bodies."

"Nothing amazes me, but the truth."

"Ah. One of those. All right. Ask away."

"The age of the skeletons – "

"Dead and buried and left alone for sixty-five years or so. That's a good record for undisturbed graves in Vegas, especially now that all the supernaturals are coming out of the closet."

"Their age at death, I meant."

"Young. She was about seventeen. He maybe twenty."

Her Romeo and Juliet, yes!

"And they weren't killed the same way."

Bahr herded his caterpillars into a unibrow frown. "No. Now how did you know to ask that?"

"Just a suspicion."

"You have good suspicions, Miss Street, is it?" He leaned around the conference table corner to eye my ankles again. "And a rather grisly taste in jewelry."

"I thought grisly was up your alley."

"And down my Street, maybe," he quipped, laughing. "Okay, since you suspect so darn much I'm gonna make it easy for you. Normally I'd take you on a tour of the facility first. We have an outstanding decaying corpse room, and a state of the art body parts storage system."

"I don't have time for the Grand Tour. Maybe another day. I want to know about the thirty pieces of silver, the gambling chip, and the causes of death."

"You were there." He was impressed. "That's all top secret. But there were twenty-nine pieces of silver scattered over the bodies."

"Twenty-nine? Was the gaming chip supposed to be thirty?"

"Or thirty-four pieces of silver if you count the pancaked bullets."

"Silver bullets?"

"Yes, ma'am." He leaned close to whisper. "You don't seem too surprised."

"Her. The bullets were for her."

He nodded.

"And the man?"

"Too young to be considered a man. The bone growth showed him to be twenty, but the age of the bone would have better come from a catacomb."

I felt a chill in the super-cool air-conditioning. For the first time I detected a fruity scent of decay overlaid by a wave of bitter orange.

"What killed him?"

"Not who?"

"That's for me and Ric to find out."

"'What' may describe it better. There were thirty pieces of silver. Silver dollars. You were right. But only twenty-nine in the grave. The last one was in the jaws of the man, and he was killed with an axe. Spinal cord severed at the neck."

Now I frowned, and Bahr leaned close again. "One old world method of laying a vampire to rest forever. Coin in the mouth; head cut off, buried for eternity. Except you and Ric came along. You have the Kid's same…knack?"

"No," I said, a bit stunned by my instincts turning out to be true.

"Good. I find it rather creepy."

I sat stunned, then laughed! Trust a coroner to find dowsing for the dead "creepy." He was first and foremost a doctor, a scientist.

"We work together," he added. "He had to tell me how; otherwise, it would have hampered my reports. I'm surprised he let you in on his facility."

"You let me into yours."

"Ah." He nodded. "Anything else?"

"It was suggested to me that Ric's wooden dowsing rods could act as a sort of psychic stake."

"You mean kill, as well as find?"

I nodded.

"Interesting theory, but I doubt it."

"What do the police know?"

"Shot and axed. That's all they want to know at the moment. These Millennium Revelation changes have freaked out the criminal justice system. It's just been a few years; the laws are a patchwork that's being fought out in the courts. I hope I've been of service."

I stood. "Very much so, Dr. Bahr." I held out my hand for a shake and he took it in his big paw.

"Call me Grisly. All my friends do. Not that there are very many of them in my line of work."

I worked it through. Grisly/Grizzly Bahr. "Black humor gets us all through."

"You sound like you know a little of what I'm about, Miss Street."

I nodded.

"Bring Ric the next time you come. Not that I'm eager to share the riches, but he's spending too much time in Juarez. He needs a social life and less morbid atmosphere."

And then he laughed.

So did I, so I left.

Driving Dolly home from Pinto Lane, I had the white top down so the wind would freshen my hair and dispel the orange-scented decay of the coroner's facility.

That's when I noticed a huge billboard above the Strip advertising Madrigal's show at the Gehenna.

I'd seen lots of photos of the Strip featuring similarly huge billboards of Siegfried and Roy and one of their white tigers before Roy's tragic accident shortly after the Millennium Revelation. (White tigers are magnificent creatures but they don't hold the same allure for me now that I've seen Snow's shape-shifting bodyguard-cum-personal assistant, Grizelle.)

I'd probably driven by this and matching billboards a dozen times since coming to Vegas, never noticing the striking image of Madrigal posed with a delicate and fey familiar assistant on each brawny bare shoulder. What almost made me make Dolly shriek to a sudden stop was the image of my own airbrushed face behind the trio. And the words: Nightly: Miss Maggie, dead and alive, only at the Gehenna.

The frenetic Strip traffic flow doesn't allow for gawking, so I drove on, stewing. Why not paste up a giant Wanted: Dead or Alive! poster of me all over town? Every Maggie freak around would be hunting me everywhere. The Rococo lettering style actually read "Margie," but you had to look really hard to see that. I was sure Nightwine's non-CinSim lawyers would make hash of that dodge, but legal action could take years.