people, both naturals and unnaturals, who let themselves go downhill, and I had no intention of turning into one of those decrepit necrotic shamblers who stagger around like drunken sleepwalkers with bad hemorrhoids and can’t carry on an intelligent conversation. I wouldn’t be effective at solving cases if I had pieces falling off me here and there.
Bruno gestured me toward a side room. “We’ve reserved your private chair, sir. I know you don’t like to be disturbed during the process.”
It’s true that I like the private embalming chair, where I can mull over my cases while the embalmer does his work. But because I had just reviewed the files that Sheyenne had dumped on my desk, not to mention Sheldon Fennerman’s predicament, I wanted more interaction. No telling what I might pick up if somebody happened to drop a juicy tidbit. “I’ll be more sociable today, Bruno. Why not put me among the ladies?”
Bruno’s artificially darkened eyebrows rose like ravens taking wing. “I’m sure they’d love that, sir. They talk about you after you’re gone, you know.”
Apparently, zombies can blush when the situation calls for it, because I felt a definite warmth in my cheeks. “Well, why make them wait? Now they can talk about me to my face.”
In the brightly lit main salon, three makeup-plastered undead women reclined in their chairs while Heinrich flitted from one to the next, chatting and smiling while his clients gossiped in raspy cackling voices. The trio had been in their early sixties in human years, after which they’d added a few hard undead years. All three had the sinewy, rough look of heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, and heavy flirters. Heinrich did his very best, though the women still looked as if they had graduated from the Bride of Frankenstein School of Cosmetology.
“Well, look who’s decided to join us today, honey,” said the first, whose name was Victoria (“want to be my Vic-tim?” she had once said in a creaky attempt to be sexy). Zombie cougars on the prowl.
“He looks delicious,” said the next, Cindy. (“Rhymes with sin, heh, heh.” Well, not really.) “It’ll be wonderful to have some masculine company here, instead of just us girls.” She looked up quickly at Heinrich. “No offense, of course.”
“None taken, love. My masculinity’s not in question.”
I eased myself into the chair while Bruno began to gather the tubes and tanks of fluid.
The third woman leaned over in her chair: Sharon (“I don’t need clever wordplay to get a man”). “Got any plans, Dan? I’ll be finished here long before these other ladies are ready for a public viewing. They need a lot more work done than I do.” The other two looked at her with glares like wooden stakes, but Sharon ignored them. “You and I could go out for lunch or cocktails . . . or just someplace for an afternoon delight.”
“Sounds tempting,” I said, feeling no interest whatsoever, “but my caseload is killing me. Mysteries to solve, bad guys to catch.”
“Oh, you’re not still obsessed with your dreary murder, are you?” Cindy-rhymes-with-sin gave a flippant toss of her head.
I wanted to get the bastard who had killed me, but more importantly I needed enough answers to be sure Robin wasn’t in any continuing danger. What if the murderer had other targets on his list? And who had poisoned Sheyenne?
“Tragic,” Victoria said. “I think about you every time the girls and I go to the Basilisk nightclub.”
“My body was found in an alley a block away,” I said. “Not at Basilisk.”
Still, my death might have had some connection with the nightclub and the under-the-table blood-bank sales I had exposed. I’d been avoiding the place . . . because of Sheyenne. “Anyway, I do work on more than one case at a time, ladies. Many clients to satisfy. Have you heard about threats being made against vampires? Wooden stakes left on doorsteps, anything like that?”
Cindy said, “Vampires . . . not my sort of undead.”
“I’ll try anything,” Sharon said. “I may be dead, but I’m not that dead.”
“Any thing is right,” Victoria cackled. “We’ve seen some of the creatures you’ve gone home with.”
Heinrich gave a worried frown. “Vampires are some of our best clients during the night shift. They’re so particular about their hair. And we do a brisk business in fang whitening.”
“Not much for the tanning beds, though,” Bruno said as he hooked up the heavy-gauge trocar to the cannula and started the pump to fill my vessels with fresh embalming fluid. He used a