Corpse Suzette

you just better keep your eyes closed all night.”
    She settled between the
sheets of the bed next to his and pulled the blanket up to her chin.
    The digital display from
the nightstand clock cast a sickly green light around the room, enough for her
to see that he was lying on his side, his back turned to her, facing the
window.
    Every now and then a bright
light shone on the other side of the curtain, then disappeared just as quickly.
    “That’s the lighthouse,”
she said softly. “Abigail would love this. She’s crazy about lighthouses. I can
see why. They’re really quite romantic when you think about it.”
    “Eh, the damned thing’s
gonna keep me awake all night, shinin’ in here like that.”
    She chuckled. Yes, Dirk was
a smoothie, no doubt about it.
    “Don’t you say anything
about us sharing a room to Tammy, either,” she said. “If you do, I’ll never
live it down.”
    He groaned. “I don’t know
what the big friggin’ deal is. We’ve spent a million nights together, sitting
in a cramped car on a stakeout. You’ve slept with your head in my lap or
stretched out on my backseat. What’s the difference? People put way too much
emphasis on who sleeps where. Sleepin’ is just sleepin’. It don’t mean
nothin’.”
    She laid there in the
semi-darkness for a long time and thought about what he’d said. Of course, he
was right. Eating a meal next to another person, watching a TV show beside
them, sleeping next to them... what was the difference?
    But there was a difference.
    It was somehow cozy,
intimate, being in that room with him, even if they were in separate beds, even
if they were dogged tired and neither one interested in doing anything but
resting, even if the room did reek of stale cigarette smoke and have a
spotlight shining through the window every forty seconds or so.
    It was sort of nice.
    Although, of course, she’d
never tell him that.
    Old Dirk Bear would laugh
at her if she even suggested such a thing.
    “You know, Van,” he said,
his voice jarring her out of her reverie, “I was just lyin’ here thinking.”
    “What about?”
    “Last night. I don’t want
to make a big deal out of it or nothin’, but it was sorta nice, layin’ there in
your bed after John forced me to drink that frog-piss drink he made.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah. I mean, I usually
sleep in my trailer and it’s... you know... a guy place. But your room... with
those satin sheets... and those foo-foo lacy curtain things on the window and
your nightgown was hanging there on the chair in the corner and the whole room
sorta smelled like your perfume.”
    “Yes?”
    “And I was sick and feeling
like shit and... well, it made me feel better. Being there... you know... in
your room.”
    She gulped. “Oh. That’s
nice, Dirk.”
    “Not a big deal. I just
wanted to tell you that.”
    “Thanks, darlin’. Thanks
for sharing.”
    “You’re welcome. Goodnight,
babe.”
    “Goodnight.”
    She reached down, ran her
hand over the softness of his T-shirt, which had still been warm from his body
when she had slipped it on. She could smell a hint of his Old Spice deodorant.
    Wearing it felt a bit like
getting a Dirk hug. And she had to admit it was nice—very nice—to be going to
sleep with someone else in the room besides the cats.
    A second later he began to
snore.

Chapter

22
     
     
     
    S avannah had always loved
the smell of a library. That slightly musty, but delicious aroma of books took
her back to Georgia every time she smelled it. One whiff and she was back in
that spooky old house in the middle of the tiny, rural town of McGill, where
she and her other eight siblings had been raised by their grandmother.
    The creaky, decrepit
Victorian house had been donated to the town by an equally spooky old lady
known as Widder Blalock, who had designated the house be turned into a library
after her death.
    Savannah spent many a
delicious hour combing through the shelves of that library, living the more
exciting lives of the people on those pages—far more interesting worlds than
that of a poor girl from McGill, Georgia.
    Nancy Drew’s and the Hardy
Boys’ adventures were never quite so scary as when read in the cubicle below
the staircase in that rickety old house.
    So, when she and Dirk
walked through the doors of the Santa Tesla Public Library, she paused just a
moment to recollect and reminisce.
    “You coming?” Dirk barked
over his shoulder as he strode away from her and toward the periodicals