All Together Dead

though the traffic was heavy and the weather was cold and raining. I hadn’t been out of the hotel since we’d arrived, and it was kind of refreshing to see the outside world. Also, this was probably the only glimpse of the rest of the city I would get. I did as much looking as I could. Who knew if I’d ever come back? And this was so far north.
    Barry plotted our course, and we began our archery tour of Rhodes.
    We started with the farthest business, called Straight Arrow. It was a long, narrow place on a very busy avenue. It was gleaming, well-lit—and had qualified instructors behind the counter who were heavily armed. I knew this, because a big sign said so. The men there were not impressed by Barry’s southern accent. They thought it made him sound stupid. Though when I talked, they thought I was cute. Okay, how insulting is that? The subtext, which I read very clearly from their minds, was: women sound stupid anyway, so a southern accent just enhances that adorable dimness. Men are supposed to sound crisp and direct, so southern men sound stupid and weak.
    Anyway, aside from their built-in prejudices, these men were not helpful. They’d never seen Kyle Perkins at any of their night classes, and they didn’t think he’d ever rented time to practice at their place.
    Barry was fuming at the disrespect he’d endured, and he didn’t even want to go in the second place. I trotted in by myself with the picture, and the one guy at work at the second archery supply store, which had no range, said, “No,” immediately. He didn’t discuss the picture, ask me why I wanted to know about Kyle Perkins, or wish me a nice day. He didn’t have a sign to tell me how formidable he was. I figured he just ruded people to death.
    The third place, housed in a building that I thought might at one time have been a bowling alley, had a few cars in the parking lot and a heavy opaque door. STOP AND BE IDENTIFIED a sign said. Barry and I could read it from the car. It seemed a little ominous.
    “I’m tired of being in the car anyway,” he said gallantly, and got out with me. We stood where we could be seen, and I alerted Barry when I spotted the camera above our heads. Barry and I both looked as pleasant as we could. (In Barry’s case, that was pretty pleasant. He just had a way about him.) After a few seconds, we heard a loud click, and the door unlocked. I glanced at Barry, and he pulled open the heavy door while I stepped inside the room and to one side so he could enter, too.
    We were faced with a long counter extending the length of the opposite wall. There was a woman about my age behind the counter, with coppery hair and skin, the product of an interesting racial blend. She’d dyed her eyebrows black, which added a touch of the bizarre to the whole uni-color effect.
    She looked us over just as carefully in person as she had over the camera, and I could read the thought that she was much happier to see Barry than she was to see me. I told Barry, You better take this one.
    Yeah, I’m getting the idea, he answered, and while I laid Kyle’s picture on the counter, he said, “Could you tell us if this guy ever came in here to buy arrows or to practice?”
    She didn’t even ask why we wanted to know. She bent over to look at the picture, maybe a little farther than necessary to give Barry the benefit of her neckline. She scanned Kyle’s picture and immediately made a face. “Yeah, he came in here right after dark yesterday,” she said. “We’d never had a vampire customer, and I didn’t really want to serve him, but what are you gonna do? He had the money, and the law says we can’t discriminate.” She was a woman who was ready and willing to discriminate, no doubt about it.
    “Was anyone with him?” Barry asked.
    “Oh, let me think.” She posed, her head thrown back, for Barry’s benefit. She didn’t think his southern accent sounded stupid. She thought it was adorable and sexy. “I just can’t remember. Listen, I’ll tell ya what I’ll do. I’ll get the security tape for last night; we’ve still got it. And I’ll let you have a look at it, okay?”
    “Can we do that right now?” I asked, smiling sweetly.
    “Well, I can’t leave the counter right now. There’s no one else here to watch the store if I have to go to the back. But if you’ll come to look tonight after my replacement gets here”—she cast a very pointed glance at Barry, to make sure I realized I need not come—“I’ll let