"Have you talked to the coroner?"

"Not yet. I don't know what to ask him."

"Ask if the male victim's heart had mesquite slivers in it."

"A stake?"

"Or your lover's dowsing rod splinters. The wands peel free of bark when they dowse. That very power drives deep beneath the surface, finding and altering, perhaps."

"You're saying Ric accidentally staked the male victim, decades after the original crime?"

"Possibly. Not knowing. Not all of us know our own powers. Not all of us control our powers."

I sipped the pallid cocktail. It was delicious, if I did say so myself, down to the liquor-soaked cherry in the bottom, which was still sweet.

Ric. Did he dowse for more than he knew? Did the act of dowsing change what the rod found? "Not all of us know our own powers." Snow had seemed to sweep Ric and myself up in his mystic trail of bewitchment and hidden purposes.

"Will solving the identity of the dead couple in Sunset Park achieve anything?" I asked.

"It will win you Hector Nightwine's regard. It will upset various powerful and vicious personages around town, which will make you someone to reckon with, and possibly destroy."

"And you?"

"It may suit me very much, as you do, Delilah Street." He lifted his Albino Vampire and ticked rims with mine.

"I don't like being used."

"No one does, you more than most, but one day you will beg me for a Brimstone Kiss."

"Not damn likely."

"No, merely certain." Those cold white lips drew in more of my own creation, the Albino Vampire cocktail. "Check with the coroner on the boy's body. It wouldn’t hurt to cultivate the coroner, as only you can. You'll be seeing a lot of him from now on, one way or another."

Chapter Fifty-One

As usual, Snow had implied more than he gave away. The next day I looked up the address of the coroner's office…Most municipalities had medical examiners nowadays, but Vegas still called its head man for dealing with dead bodies a coroner.

An online map site showed the Clark County Coroner's office located on a two-block-long street north of busy Charleston Boulevard, the east-west street that also featured a lot of vintage shops, I noticed as Dolly and I cruised along Charleston with the top down.

I figured I'd need fresh air coming back from the county morgue.

Pinto Lane was not far from Our Lady of Las Vegas Convent school. I was reminded of poor Father Black. Imagine if he saw me driving Miss Dolly these days! My vintage Caddy was as long and black as a hearse, but the red interior and white ragtop gave her a jaunty rather than a funereal look. Still, I could smuggle a few dead bodies in her huge trunk, if I wanted to.

Smuggling dead bodies made me think of Ric. I didn't know if he'd be proud or annoyed that I was taking the investigation by the horns and waltzing right over to interrogate the coroner himself. Having been a reporter gave me the nerve to ask anybody anything, but without official credentials, I wasn’t sure that nerve alone would work.

The low-profile morgue building had sculptural brushed aluminum lettering on the outside. I made out the name, Grady Bahr, Coroner.

Dolly dwarfed the other cars and vans in the lot. I slammed the door with a satisfying thump and went in through the glass door into a lobby that looked like a dentist's office waiting room.

A young woman at the walk-up window eyed my blue suit and hot pink pumps. I figured Business Brazen would work on coroners as well as rock stars.

"Delilah Street, PI," I said. "I'd like to see Dr. Bahr."

Darn, I needed to run some pro-looking business cards on the enchanted cottage computer. Maybe pixies would do the graphics for me.

"You don't have an appointment."

"Like death, investigative matters have a way of just cropping up."

"I'm sorry, Miss Street, but the coroner is a busy official. You can't see the coroner without an appointment."

The bland blond wood door to my left opened. A guy who had enough rusty-gray eyebrow hair to go to Halloween parties as a caterpillar couple peeped through.

"Fortunately, Miss Street, I can see you via the lobby surveillance camera." The sharp pale hazel eyes behind half-glasses eyed my shoes, and then my calves, including the sweet silver ankle bracelet of dangling…skulls. Oh, Snow. "Come right in. I have a few moments. It's fine, Stephanie."

Stephanie rolled her eyes at having her pronouncements ignored, but I was through the door.

Dr. Bahr was a big, vital man in the expected white lab coat; he bustled me to an empty conference room.

"I don't get a chance to see many attractive live young women," he said, collapsing into a wheeled leather chair. "What totally inappropriate information did you want from me?"

"No more than you want from me," I grinned back.

We grinned at each other like a pair of jolly death heads. I'd run into his type before: late middle-aged authority figure who liked to ogle the ladies but meant no harm.

He was pleased that I recognized we could deal.

"I need information on the old murder in Sunset Park."

"Hmm. Now that's a sensitive case."

"I helped find the bodies."

"You?" He was looking suspicious for the first time.

"And Ric Montoya."

The eyebrows reached for the sky. "So you're an associate of the Cadaver Kid? Why isn't he here?"

"We're not married, Dr. Bahr," I said coyly. "He's been in Mexico a lot lately."

"What else is new?" His mouth seesawed left and right with indecision, then the flat of his hand slapped the bare conference table. "All right. I'll answer what I can, but if one word appears in or on the media-"

"Off the record, I swear."

"Can't be too careful. We had to shield all our windows from paparazzi and morgue-robbers. You from Vegas?"

I shook my head. "Kansas."

"You'd be amazed what folks in this town would do to get a hold of a piece of celebrity bodies."

"Nothing amazes me, but the truth."

"Ah. One of those. All right. Ask away."

"The age of the skeletons – "

"Dead and buried and left alone for sixty-five years or so. That's a good record for undisturbed graves in Vegas, especially now that all the supernaturals are coming out of the closet."

"Their age at death, I meant."

"Young. She was about seventeen. He maybe twenty."

Her Romeo and Juliet, yes!

"And they weren't killed the same way."

Bahr herded his caterpillars into a unibrow frown. "No. Now how did you know to ask that?"

"Just a suspicion."

"You have good suspicions, Miss Street, is it?" He leaned around the conference table corner to eye my ankles again. "And a rather grisly taste in jewelry."

"I thought grisly was up your alley."

"And down my Street, maybe," he quipped, laughing. "Okay, since you suspect so darn much I'm gonna make it easy for you. Normally I'd take you on a tour of the facility first. We have an outstanding decaying corpse room, and a state of the art body parts storage system."

"I don't have time for the Grand Tour. Maybe another day. I want to know about the thirty pieces of silver, the gambling chip, and the causes of death."

"You were there." He was impressed. "That's all top secret. But there were twenty-nine pieces of silver scattered over the bodies."

"Twenty-nine? Was the gaming chip supposed to be thirty?"

"Or thirty-four pieces of silver if you count the pancaked bullets."

"Silver bullets?"

"Yes, ma'am." He leaned close to whisper. "You don't seem too surprised."

"Her. The bullets were for her."

He nodded.

"And the man?"

"Too young to be considered a man. The bone growth showed him to be twenty, but the age of the bone would have better come from a catacomb."