Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

“Uh, no thanks, Molly. I can’t accept gratuities.”

Jenny craned her neck to look at the cover of the tape.

“It’s in Italian, but you can figure it out,” Molly said.

Theo shook his head and smiled.

“Okay,” Molly said. “Gotta go.” She turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving Theo staring at her back.

“I guess she really was in movies,” Jenny said. “Did you see the picture on the cover?”

“Nope,” Theo said.

“Amazing. Did she look like that?”

Theo shrugged. “Thanks for taking her check, Jenny. I’ll find a seat. Just some coffee and an English muffin.”

“Any luck finding the Plotznik kid?”

Theo shook his head as he walked away.

Skinner barked once to warn the Food Guy that he was about to collide with the crazy woman, but it came a little too late and, as usual, the dense but good-hearted Food Guy didn’t get the message. Skinner had finally talked the Food Guy into stopping work and going to get something to eat. Catching rats and hiking around in the mud was fun, but eating was important.

Gabe, covered with mud to the knees and burrs to the shoulder, was head down, digging in his backpack for his wallet as he approached H.P.‘s Cafe. Coming out, Molly was counting her money, not looking at all where she was going. She heard Skinner bark just as they conked heads.

“Ouch, excuse me,” Gabe said, rubbing his head. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Skinner took the opportunity to sniff Molly’s crotch. “Nice dog,” Molly said. “Did he produce B movies in his last life?”

“Sorry.” Gabe grabbed Skinner by the collar and pulled him away.

Molly folded her money and stuffed it into the waistband of her tights. “Hey, you’re the biologist, huh?”

“That’s me.”

“How many grams of protein in a sow bug?”

“What?”

“A sow bug. You know, roly-polies, pill bugs—gray, lotsa legs, designed to curl up and die?”

“Yes, I know what a sow bug is.”

“How many grams of protein in one?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could you find out?”

“I suppose I could.”

“Good,” Molly said. “I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

“Bye.” Molly ruffled Skinner’s ears as she walked off.

Gabe stood there for a second, distracted from his research for the first time in thirty-six hours. “What the hell?”

Skinner wagged his tail to say, “Let’s eat.”

Val Riordan watched the lanky constable coming through the restaurant toward her. She wasn’t ready to be official, that’s why she’d taken herself out to breakfast in the first place—that and she didn’t want to face her assistant Chloe and her newfound nymphomania. She was months, no, years behind on her professional journals, and she’d packed a briefcase full of them in hope of skimming a few over coffee before her appointments began. She tried to hide behind a copy of Pusher: The American Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacological Practice, but the constable just kept coming.

“Dr. Riordan, do you have a minute?”

“I suppose.” She gestured to the chair across from her.

Theo sat down and dove right in. “Are you sure that Bess Leander never said anything about problems with her marriage? Fights? Joseph coming home late? Anything?”

“I told you before. I can’t talk about it.”

Theo took a dollar out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “Take this.”

“Why?”

“I want you to be my therapist. I want the same patient confidentiality that you’re giving Bess Leander. Even though that privilege isn’t supposed to extend beyond the grave. I’m hiring you as my therapist.”

“For a dollar? I’m not a lawyer, Constable Crowe. I don’t have to accept you as a patient. And payment has nothing to do with it.” Val was willing him to go away. She had tried to bend people to her will since she was a child. She’d spoken to her therapist about it during her residency. Go away.

“Fine, take me as a patient. Please.”

“I’m not taking any new patients.”

“One session, thirty seconds long. I’m your patient. I promise you’ll want to hear what I have to say in session.”

“Theo, have you ever addressed, well, your substance abuse problem?” It was a snotty and unprofessional thing to say, but Crowe wasn’t exactly being professional either.

“Does that mean I’m your patient?”

“Sure, okay, thirty seconds.”

“Last night I saw Joseph Leander engaging in sexual relations with a young woman in the park.” Theo folded his hands and sat back. “Your thoughts?”

Jenny couldn’t believe she’d heard it right. She hadn’t meant to, she was just delivering an English muffin when the gossip bomb hit her unprepared. Bess Leander, not even cold in the grave, and her straitlaced Presbyterian husband was doing it with some bimbo in the park? She paused as if checking her tables, waited for a second, then slid the muffin in front of Theo.

“Can I bring you anything else?”

“Not right now,” Theo said.

Jenny looked at Val Riordan and decided that whatever she needed right now was not on the menu. Val was sitting there wide-eyed, as if someone had slapped her with a dead mackerel. Jenny backed away from the table. She couldn’t wait for Betsy to come in to relieve her for the lunch shift. Betsy always waited on Joseph Leander when he came in the cafe and made comments about him being the only guy with two children who had never been laid. She’d be blown away.

Betsy, of course, already knew.

Gabe tied Skinner up outside and entered the cafe to find all the tables occupied. He spotted Theophilus Crowe sitting at a four-top with a woman that he didn’t know. Gabe debated inviting himself to their table, then decided it would be better to approach Theo under the pretense of a rat news update and hope for an invitation.

Gabe pulled his laptop out of his shoulder bag as he approached the table.

“Theo, you won’t believe what I found out last night.”

Theo looked up. “Hi, Gabe. Do you know Val Riordan? She’s our local psychiatrist.”

Gabe offered his hand to the woman and she took it without looking away from his muddy boots. “Sorry,” Gabe said. “I’ve been in the field all day. Nice to meet you.”

“Gabe’s a biologist. He has a lab up at the weather station.”

Gabe was feeling uncomfortable now. The woman hadn’t said a word. She was attractive in a made-up sort of way, but she seemed a little out of things, stunned perhaps. “I’m sorry to interrupt. We can talk later, Theo.”

“No, sit down. You don’t mind, do you, Val? We can finish our session later. I think I still have twenty seconds on the books.”

“That’s fine,” Val said, seeming to come out of her haze.

“Maybe you’ll be interested in this,” Gabe said. He slipped into an empty chair and pushed his laptop in front of Val. “Look at this.” Like many scientists, Gabe was oblivious to the fact that no one gave a rat’s ass about research unless it could be expressed in terms of dollars.

“Green dots?” Val said.

“No, those are rats.”

“Funny, they look like green dots.”

“This is a topographical map of Pine Cove. These are my tagged rats. See the divergence? These ten that didn’t move the other night when the others did?”

Val looked to Theo for an explanation.

“Gabe tracks rats with microchips in them,” Theo said.

“It’s only one of the things I do. Mostly, I count dead things on the beach.”

“Fascinating work,” Val said with no attempt to hide her contempt.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Gabe said. Then to Theo, “Anyway, these ten rats didn’t move with the others.”