Page 29 of Now or Never

“None of the above,” I said. “Speaking of periods…”

Morelli looked stricken. “No.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“I might be able to ignore it.”

“No way.”

“Cramps?”

“Big-time,” I told him. “Like childbirth.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I woke up thinking that the night had been pretty good and could have been a lot worse. I didn’t get caught in my fib, and I didn’t totally have full-on sex. Just some making out, which under the circumstances seemed reasonable. The sun was shining, and Bob was in bed next to me. Morelli was long gone. He was an up-at-the-crack-of-dawn person. He was already locked and loaded and on the job. I got dressed in yesterday’s clothes, grabbed a banana and a protein bar from the kitchen, and drove back to my apartment. No Herbert in my rearview mirror. No Herbert in my parking lot. Yay. Rex was asleep in his soup-can den when I walked into the kitchen, so I blew him a silent kiss and didn’t disturb him with the details of my evening. I made coffee and took a cup into the bathroom. An hour later I was clean top to bottom, mildly caffeinated, and ready to start my day. I had a text message that said my furniture would be delivered between one o’clock and four o’clock. This gave me the morning to make a capturethat would allow me to pay at least the minimum amount on my credit card.

I left my apartment, got into my Trailblazer, and drove to the office. Still no sign of Herbert.

Connie was at her desk and Lula was slouched on the couch when I walked in. Lula had a lot of pink hair today, plus she was wearing a garlic necklace and a chain necklace with a large wooden cross.

“I’m ready to go after the vampire,” Lula said. “I’ve been reading about them and there’s a lot of conflicting information. There’s old-fashioned vampires that are the living dead. They come out of their graves when it’s dark on account of they don’t do good in the sun, so they do their bloodsucking at night. They aren’t real attractive. Then there’s more modern vampires that know enough to wear sunscreen so they can suck blood any time they want. Some of them can’t cast a shadow or be photographed and it turns out we don’t have a good picture of Zoran Whatshisname. Just look at his mug shot. It’s all blurry because he’s a vampire,” Lula said. “And he’s a widower. I looked it up in the obituaries, but it didn’t say what his wife died from so I think that’s real suspicious. Dollars to doughnuts he drained his poor wife dry sucking her blood all the time.”

“Vampires aren’t real,” I said. “They’re folklore and fiction.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Lula said. “What about that guy inBuffy the Vampire Slayer? He looked pretty real.”

I went to the back room and got a giant cup of coffee in a to-go cup. “That was a television show.”

“Yeah, but it was excellent,” Lula said. “And it was almost like reality TV.”

“I’d planned to look for Zoran this morning, but I’m not going out with you dressed like that,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Like wearing all that garlic.”

“It’s to ward off the vampire,” Lula said. “I’m sensitive about losing my blood and vital body fluids.”

I looked over at Connie. “Talk to her. Please.”

“I don’t remember Buffy always wearing garlic,” Connie said. “That might be one of those outdated precautions.”

“I guess I could see that,” Lula said. “There’s garlic in everything these days. Vampires would have a hard time ordering out. So, they might have adapted.” She took the garlic off and dropped it into her tote bag. “Still, I’m going to leave my cross necklace on. It complements my skin tone, and it never hurts to have God on your side.”

I pulled the file out of my bag and paged through it. “Zoran manages a laundromat. We should check that out first.”

“Okay, but if he has fangs, I’m pulling the garlic out of my bag,” Lula said.

I handed the file to Lula. “If he has fangs, we will pretend not to notice because he obviously needs an orthodontist.”

Lula followed me out of the office. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate taking your car so mine doesn’t get contaminated with vampire cooties.”

“Not a problem.” I got behind the wheel. “Where are we going?”

“It says here that the laundromat is on Freemont Street. Another reason not to take my car. My baby doesn’t get parked in that neighborhood.”

Freemont Street was one street over from Stark Street. Stark started out okay and ended up as no-man’s-land. Freemont wasn’t up to Stark Street’s crime-ridden standards, but it wasn’t Rodeo Drive either.

---