“There was a vamp in the bar,” I said, out loud, not opening my eyes. “Barry, what did he do when you finished shaving him?”

“He left,” Barry said. “I watched him go out the back door. I’m always careful to make sure my clients are out of the backstage area. That’s the only way Rita will let me do the shaving at the club.”

Of course, Barry didn’t know about the problem fairies have with vamps. Some vamps had less self-control when it came to fairies than others did. Fairies were strong, stronger than people, but vamps were stronger than anything else on earth.

“And you didn’t go back out to the booth and talk to Claudia again?”

“I didn’t see her again.”

“He’s telling the truth,” I said to Claudine and Claude. “As far as he knows it.” There were always other questions I could ask, but at first “hearing,” Barry didn’t know anything about Claudia’s disappearance.

Claude ushered me into the pantry, where Rita Child was waiting. It was a walk-in pantry, very neat, but not intended for two people, one of them duct-taped to a rolling office chair. Rita Child was a substantial woman, too. She looked exactly like I’d expect the owner of a strip club to look-painted, dyed brunette, packed into a challenging dress with high-tech underwear that pinched and pushed her into a provocative shape.

She was also steaming mad. She kicked out at me with a high heel that would have taken my eye out if I hadn’t jerked back in the middle of kneeling in front of her. I fell on my fundament in an ungraceful sprawl.

“None of that, Rita,” Claude said calmly. “You’re not the boss here. This is our place.” He helped me stand up and dusted off my bottom in an impersonal way.

“We just want to know what happened to our sister,” Claudine said.

Rita made sounds behind her gag, sounds that didn’t seem to be conciliatory. I got the impression that she didn’t give a damn about the twins’ motivation in kidnapping her and tying her up in their pantry. They’d taped her mouth, rather than using a cloth gag, and after the kicking incident, I kind of enjoyed ripping the tape off.

Rita called me some names reflecting on my heritage and moral character.

“I guess that’s just the pot calling the kettle black,” I said, when she paused to breathe. “Now you listen here! I’m not taking that kind of talk off of you, and I want you to shut up and answer my questions. You don’t seem to have a good picture of the situation you’re in.”

The club owner calmed down a little bit after that. She was still glaring at me with her narrow brown eyes, and straining at her ropes, but she seemed to understand a little better.

“I’m going to touch you,” I said. I was afraid she might bite if I touched her bare shoulder, so I put my hand on her forearm just above where her wrists were tied to the arms of the rolling chair.

Her head was a maze of fury. She wasn’t thinking clearly because she was so angry, and all her mental energy was directed into cursing at the twins and now at me. She suspected me of being some kind of supernatural assassin, and I decided it wouldn’t hurt if she were scared of me for a while.

“When did you see Claudia tonight?” I asked.

“When I went to get the money from the first show,” she growled, and sure enough, I saw Rita’s hand reaching out, a long white hand placing a zippered vinyl pouch in it. “I was in my office working during the first show. But I get the money in between, so if we get stuck up, we won’t lose so much.”

“She gave you the money bag, and you left?”

“Yeah. I went to put the cash in the safe until the second show was over. I didn’t see her again.”

And that seemed to be the truth to me. I couldn’t see another vision of Claudia in Rita’s head. But I saw a lot of satisfaction that Claudia was dead, and a grim determination to keep Claude at her club.

“Will you still go to Foxes, now that Claudia’s gone?” I asked him, to spark a response that might reveal something from Rita.

Claude looked down at me, surprised and disgusted. “I haven’t had time to think of what will come tomorrow,” he snapped. “I just lost my sister.”

Rita’s mind sort of leaped with joy. She had it bad for Claude. And on the practical side, he was a big draw at Hooligans, since even on an off night he could engender some magic to make the crowd spend big. Claudia hadn’t been so willing to use her power for Rita’s profit, but Claude didn’t think about it twice. Using his inbred fairy skills to draw people to admire him was an ego thing with Claude, which had little to do with economics.

I got all this from Rita in a flash.

“Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’m through with her.”

She was happy.

We stepped out of the pantry into the kitchen, where the final candidate for murderer was waiting. He’d been pushed under the table, and he had a glass in front of him with a straw stuck in it, so he could lean over to drink. Being a former lover had paid off for Jeff Puckett. His mouth wasn’t even taped.

I looked from Claude to Jeff, trying to figure it out. Jeff had a light brown mustache that needed trimming, and a two-day growth of whiskers on his cheeks. His eyes were narrow and hazel. As much as I could tell, Jeff seemed to be in better shape than some of the bouncers I’d known, and he was even taller than Claude. But I was not impressed, and I reflected for maybe the millionth time that love was strange.

Claude braced himself visibly when he faced his former lover.

“I’m here to find out what you know about Claudia’s death,” I said, since we’d been around a corner when we’d questioned Rita. “I’m a telepath, and I’m going to touch you while I ask you some questions.”

Jeff nodded. He was very tense. He fixed his eyes on Claude. I stood behind him, since he was pushed up under the table, and put my hands on his thick shoulders. I pulled his tee shirt to one side, just a little, so my thumb could touch his neck.

“Jeff, you tell me what you saw tonight,” I said.

“Claudia came to take the money for the first set,” he said. His voice was higher than I’d expected, and he was not from these parts. Florida, I thought. “I couldn’t stand her because she messed with my personal life, and I didn’t want to be with her. But that’s what Rita told me to do, so I did. I sat on the stool and watched her take the money and put it into the money bag. She kept some in a money drawer to make change.”

“Did she have trouble with any of the customers?”

“No. It was ladies’ night, and the women don’t give any trouble coming in. They did during the second set, I had to go haul a gal offstage who got a little too enthusiastic about our Construction Worker, but mostly that night I just sat on the stool and watched.”

“When did Claudia vanish?”

“When I come back from getting that gal back to her table, Claudia was gone. I looked around for her, went and asked Rita if she’d said anything to her about having to take a break. I even checked the ladies’ room. Wasn’t till I went back in the booth that I seen the glittery stuff.”

“What glittery stuff?”

“What we leave when we fade,” Claude murmured. “Fairy dust.”

Did they sweep it up and keep it? It would probably be tacky to ask.

“And next thing I knew, the second set was over and the club was closing, and I was checking backstage and everywhere for traces of Claudia, then I was here with Claude and Claudine.”

He didn’t seem too angry.

“Do you know anything about Claudia’s death?”

“No. I wish I did. I know this is hard on Claude.” His eyes were as fixed on Claude as Claude’s were on him. “She separated us, but she’s not in the picture anymore.”

“I have to know,” Claude said, through clenched teeth.

For the first time, I wondered what the twins would do if I couldn’t discover the culprit. And that scary thought spurred my brain to greater activity.