A Touch of Dead

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 gave you the money bag, and you left?”
    “Yeah. I went to put the cash in the safe until the second show was over. I didn’t see her again.”
    And that seemed to be the truth to me. I couldn’t see another vision of Claudette in Rita’s head. But I saw a lot of satisfaction that Claudette was dead, and a grim determination to keep Claude at her club.
    “Will you still go to Foxes, now that Claudette’s gone?” I asked him, to spark a response that might reveal something from Rita.
    Claude looked down at me, surprised and disgusted. “I haven’t had time to think of what will come tomorrow,” he snapped. “I just lost my sister.”
    Rita’s mind sort of leaped with joy. She had it bad for Claude. And on the practical side, he was a big draw at
Hooligans, since even on an off night he could engender some magic to make the crowd spend big. Claudette hadn’t been so willing to use her power for Rita’s profit, but Claude didn’t think about it twice. Using his inbred fairy skills to draw people to admire him was an ego thing with Claude, which had little to do with economics.
    I got all this from Rita in a flash.
    “Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’m through with her.”
    She was happy.
    We stepped out of the pantry into the kitchen, where the final candidate for murderer was waiting. He’d been pushed under the table, and he had a glass in front of him with a straw stuck in it, so he could lean over to drink. Being a former lover had paid off for Jeff Puckett. His mouth wasn’t even taped.
    I looked from Claude to Jeff, trying to figure it out. Jeff had a light brown mustache that needed trimming, and a two-day growth of whiskers on his cheeks. His eyes were narrow and hazel. As much as I could tell, Jeff seemed to be in better shape than some of the bouncers I’d known, and he was even taller than Claude. But I was not impressed, and I reflected for maybe the millionth time that love was strange.

    Claude braced himself visibly when he faced his former lover.
    “I’m here to find out what you know about Claudette’s death,” I said, since we’d been around a corner