Touch of Dead, A - By Charlaine Harris Page 0,4

it worked out. I do it in the dressing room, and the other guys are good about staying out.”

He was getting more relaxed, the thoughts in his head calming and flowing more easily. The first person he’d done tonight had been a woman so bone-thin he’d wondered if she’d die while he did the shaving routine. She’d thought she was beautiful, and she’d obviously enjoyed showing him her body. Her boyfriend had gotten a kick out of the whole thing.

I could hear Claudine buzzing in the background, but I kept my eyes closed and my hands on Barry’s, seeing the second “client,” a guy, and then I saw his face. Oh, boy. It was someone I knew, a vampire named Maxwell Lee.

“There was a vamp in the bar,” I said, out loud, not opening my eyes. “Barry, what did he do when you finished shaving him?”

“He left,” Barry said. “I watched him go out the back door. I’m always careful to make sure my clients are out of the backstage area. That’s the only way Rita will let me do the shaving at the club.”

Of course, Barry didn’t know about the problem fairies have with vamps. Some vamps had less self-control when it came to fairies than others did. Fairies were strong, stronger than people, but vamps were stronger than anything else on earth.

“And you didn’t go back out to the booth and talk to Claudette again?”

“I didn’t see her again.”

“He’s telling the truth,” I said to Claudine and Claude. “As far as he knows it.” There were always other questions I could ask, but at first “hearing,” Barry didn’t know anything about Claudette’s disappearance.

Claude ushered me into the pantry, where Rita Child was waiting. It was a walk-in pantry, very neat, but not intended for two people, one of them duct-taped to a rolling office chair. Rita Child was a substantial woman, too. She looked exactly like I’d expect the owner of a strip club to look—painted, dyed brunette, packed into a challenging dress with high-tech underwear that pinched and pushed her into a provocative shape.

She was also steaming mad. She kicked out at me with a high heel that would have taken my eye out if I hadn’t jerked back in the middle of kneeling in front of her. I fell on my fundament in an ungraceful sprawl.

“None of that, Rita,” Claude said calmly. “You’re not the boss here. This is our place.” He helped me stand up and dusted off my bottom in an impersonal way.

“We just want to know what happened to our sister,” Claudine said.

Rita made sounds behind her gag, sounds that didn’t seem to be conciliatory. I got the impression that she didn’t give a damn about the twins’ motivation in kidnapping her and tying her up in their pantry. They’d taped her mouth, rather than using a cloth gag, and after the kicking incident, I kind of enjoyed ripping the tape off.

Rita called me some names reflecting on my heritage and moral character.

“I guess that’s just the pot calling the kettle black,” I said, when she paused to breathe. “Now you listen here! I’m not taking that kind of talk off of you, and I want you to shut up and answer my questions. You don’t seem to have a good picture of the situation you’re in.”

The club owner calmed down a little bit after that. She was still glaring at me with her narrow brown eyes and straining at her ropes, but she seemed to understand a little better.

“I’m going to touch you,” I said. I was afraid she might bite if I touched her bare shoulder, so I put my hand on her forearm just above where her wrists were tied to the arms of the rolling chair.

Her head was a maze of fury. She wasn’t thinking clearly because she was so angry, and all her mental energy was directed into cursing at the twins and now at me. She suspected me of being some kind of supernatural assassin, and I decided it wouldn’t hurt if she was scared of me for a while.

“When did you see Claudette tonight?” I asked.

“When I went to get the money from the first show,” she growled, and sure enough, I saw Rita’s hand reaching out, a long white hand placing a zippered vinyl pouch in it. “I was in my office working during the first show. But I get the money in between, so if we get stuck up, we won’t lose so much.”

“She