“No, got the night off. I wouldn’t miss this!”
The emcee welcomed us all; it was the same wizard who had acted as auctioneer for the Timeworn Treasures liquidation sale. The cocktail waitress brought our drinks, and we all sat back, ready to laugh as Tiffany stepped onto the stage. She was a solid woman, dressed in a too-tight pantsuit, possibly for humorous effect, or possibly because that was what she had in her closet. Tiffany wore very little makeup, didn’t smile, and seemed all business—the last sort of person you would expect behind a microphone in a comedy club. We gave her a round of supportive applause.
On a stool near the microphone stand, she had a plastic bottle of water and a curved cocktail glass filled with what looked like a Bloody Mary but wasn’t. Tiffany began rattling off her jokes and, oddly enough, she was hilarious.
“So, I just came back from dinner. Went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant.” She smiled enough to show her fangs. “I had two waiters and a busboy.”
McGoo laughed out loud, deep rumbling chuckles from his belly. “I’ll have to remember that one. That sounds like a joke I would tell.”
“I went into a bar with two of my vampire friends,” Tiffany continued. “The bartender asked what we wanted to drink. My friends both ordered glasses of blood, but I just ordered a shot of plasma. So the bartender said, Let me get this straight . . . that’s two bloods and a blood lite?”
She was on a roll, and the crowd was already loosened up. “Somebody asked me, How do you fit forty vampires into a Volkswagen Beetle?” Tiffany looked around the audience, saw us, and continued, “Easy, I said. Gather forty vampires out in the parking lot, wait until the sun comes up, and then put them all in the ashtray.”
Tiffany finished her set with most of the audience in stitches—or in unraveled stitches. Bill shot to his feet, slamming his clay hands together with loud thunderclaps. She bowed to another round of applause.
Although McGoo had laughed throughout, now he looked perplexed. “I don’t get it, Shamble. What am I doing wrong? When I tell the same kind of jokes, you never laugh. Well, sometimes, but only because we made a deal. What’s the difference?”
“You know how it is, McGoo,” I said. “She’s a vampire. She’s allowed to tell jokes like that.”
I finally made an appointment to see the Wannovich sisters and their vampire ghostwriter at the Transfusion coffee shop to tell them everything they needed to know. I was no stranger to interviews: As a private detective, I knew how to pry information from suspects or witnesses. I wasn’t accustomed to being on the other side of the questions, though.
I didn’t know what I could say to make my work sound exciting. A detective’s job is just a job, like a grocery store manager, or a cop, or an accountant—not necessarily interesting. (All right, maybe it is more interesting, or at least more hazardous, than an accountant’s job.)
It remained a mystery to me, all detective work aside, why anyone would want to read the adventures of a zombie private investigator, but I’m not the arbiter of literary tastes. Chatting with Mavis and Alma Wannovich over a cup of coffee was the least I could do. Besides, thanks to Sheyenne’s negotiating, I was even getting a regular restoration spell out of it. Mavis was so excited by the prospects that she had given me a bonus touch-up after my rough treatment in the past week, just so I felt fresh for the interview.
We met at Transfusion in the middle of the afternoon. The black-glass windows kept the hazardous sunlight out. Soft jazz played over the speakers—the annoying tuneless kind that no one except the barista seems to like. Only a few other customers sat at the tables: two sleepless vampires working on their laptops, a group of young wizards gathered around two pushed-together tables discussing well-highlighted copies of a thick book—a Necronomicon study group.
The large witch and the large sow were waiting for me, sitting next to a plump female vampire who wore cat’s-eye glasses, and I recognized the Welcome Back Wagon volunteer. Mavis introduced us. “Mr. Chambeaux, thank you so much for coming! We’d like you to meet our friend and colleague, Linda Bullwer. She’ll be writing the zombie detective series for Howard Phillips Publishing.”
“Under the pen name of Penny Dreadful.” The vampire woman pushed her cat’s-eye glasses up on her nose before she shook my hand. “Primarily, I’m a poet, but so far I haven’t been successful in getting published. This is a great opportunity for me.”
“Happy to help out, Miss Bullwer. You’ll have to do some embellishing to make sense out of my cases.”
“Not a problem at all. I have my artistic license, fully paid for. It’s valid for the next year.” She took out her notepad, ready to get to work. She had already doodled in the margins.
I ordered my coffee, got another round for the three ladies; Alma’s was chai tea served in a bowl. I sat down, cautioning the vampire ghostwriter, “Remember, you’re not going to use my real name. These will be fictional exploits, right?”
“Everything will be dramatized, the names changed to protect the innocent and the unnatural,” Linda Bullwer assured me. “But inspired by real events.”
“Howard Phillips hopes to make this series a great success,” Mavis said, accompanied by a succession of grunts from Alma.
“The cases don’t solve themselves,” I said. “And real cases don’t always turn out as neat and tidy as in a novel.”
“Novels don’t write themselves either, Mr. Chambeaux,” said the vampire, scribbling notes. “Don’t you worry—a good writer improves on real life.”
Chapter 54
“Another round, Francine.” McGoo held up his empty beer mug. “Shamble’s buying.”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“I didn’t ask,” McGoo said. “What are friends for?”
“Then give me another one, too, Francine,” I said.
Two nights later, we met at the Goblin Tavern, glad the Quarter was finally getting back to normal—whatever that meant. Francine was back behind the bar, full of energy, chatting with the customers. Her black cobwebby dress had a lower neckline and a higher hemline than most customers would have preferred, but Francine seemed comfortable in it. In fact, she said it helped her fit in. Who were we to judge?
Stu was in his office, working on the accounts, punching keys on a calculator, making phone calls. Ever since the Smile Syndicate had been placed under investigation, all of the company’s records and assets were frozen. I was worried that the Tavern might be shut down pending liquidation, but since the place was generating income with a renewed customer base, the tax authorities allowed it to stay open.