Deaths Excellent Vacation

they’d seemed to be having a good time, and after all, that was the point of a vacation.
    It was lovely to shut the door of my room and enjoy the silence. I threw myself down on the bed and closed my eyes. It wouldn’t be long until Pam rose.
    Sure enough, she knocked on the door thirty minutes later. “Did you get some tickets?” she asked.
    “Hi, Pam, good to see you. Yes, I had an interesting day,” I said. “I got us tickets to the Mucho Macho contest.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a strongman competition. I wasn’t sure you’d like any of the music acts. The groups I actually knew, they were all sold out for tonight. So I got tickets to see big strong guys. I thought you’d like that? You like guys too, right?”
    “I like men,” Pam agreed guardedly.
    “Well, we have an hour before the show,” I said. “You want to go get some warm blood?”
    “Yes,” she said, and followed me to the elevator, still looking dubious.
    While Pam drank a couple of bottles of TrueBlood Type A, I had a bowl of ice cream. (Calories don’t count while you’re on vacation.) Then we went to the casino next door to watch the Mucho Macho contestants do their manly thing. I got to say, I really enjoyed it: muscular guys lifting heavy weights, swinging big hammers, pulling farm equipment with their teeth. No, I’m just kidding about the teeth. They used a rope harness.
    It was like monster trucks, but with men. Even Pam got into the spirit, yelling encouragement to Billy Bob the Brawler from Yazoo City as he harnessed up for his second attempt to move the tractor a yard across the floor.
    Of course, Pam herself could have done it easily.
    She got a call on her cell phone as we were leaving the show.
    “Yes, Eric. Oh, we’ve just finished watching big, muscular, sweaty men move large things around. Sookie’s idea.”
    Her eyes went sideways to meet mine. She grinned at me. “I’m sure you could, Eric. You could probably do it without your hands!” She laughed. Whatever Eric said next got her serious attention. “All right, then. We’ll go now.” She handed the phone to me. I didn’t like the compressed lips and narrowed eyes. Something was up.
    “Hey,” I said. I felt a surge of lust down to my toenails just knowing that Eric was on the other end of the connection.
    “I miss you,” he said.
    I pictured him in his office at Fangtasia, the nightclub he and Pam owned. He’d be sitting in his leather office chair, his thick golden hair falling in a waving curtain past his shoulders, and he’d be wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Eric had been a Viking, and he looked like it.
    “I miss you, too,” I whispered. I knew he could hear me. He could hear a cricket fart at twenty paces.
    “When you return, I’ll show you how much.”
    “I look forward to that,” I said, trying to sound brisk and businesslike, since Pam could hear the conversation.
    “You’re not in any danger tonight,” he said, sounding more businesslike himself. “Victor insisted you go with Pam. The vampire you’re meeting has a human companion. You will know if Michael is dealing with us in good faith or not.”
    “Can you tell me what this is about?”
    “Pam will brief you on the way. I wish I’d had time to discuss it with you myself, but this opportunity came up very quickly.” He sounded, just for a second, like he was wondering why it had come up so quickly.
    “Is something funny about that?” I asked. “Funny strange, I mean?”
    “No,” he said, “I was considering that . . . but no. Let me talk to Pam again.”
    I handed the phone back. A glimmer of surprise crossed Pam’s face. “Sir?” she said.
    Whatever transpired in the rest of the conversation was lost to me, because the Ittabena Hulk plowed through the crowd in his street clothes, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was intent on the stacked brunette who was waiting for him by the “wait to be seated” sign at the entrance to yet another buffet. She curved in all the right places. She was wearing a tight leopard-print stretch top and a black leather miniskirt grazing the tops of her tan legs. Four-inch black heels completed the ensemble.
    “Wow,” I said, in genuine tribute. “I wish I had the guts to wear something that bold.” The cumulative effect was literally stunning.
    “I would look excellent in that,” Pam said, a simple statement of fact.
    “But would you want to?”
    “I see what you mean.” Pam looked down at her own silk blouse and