“Abear,” he said, sitting next to the chair I had pointed to.
“Say what?” I put the kettle on the stove and turned on the fire.
“My name. It’s pronounced Abear. The French pronunciation.”
I thought about saying, “Big whup,” but didn’t. No point in stirring the pot just yet. When I didn’t respond, except to open a bag of cookies and slide it on the table for them, Jodi asked, “Where were you last night?” She wasn’t sitting. Jodi was standing at the corner of the table, back a little, so she could see both of us but not get in the way. Interesting position.
“All over.” I leaned into the corner of the cabinets, the counter at my hips, and crossed my arms, putting one foot on the cabinet behind me, as if propping myself up. The fact that the position gave me leverage to leap was not incidental. “I was up and down the street in front of Katie’s Ladies on Dauphine, down St. Louis Street to Royal. I wove around a lot after that.”
“A girl was killed on Barracks Street last night. It’s come to our attention that you might know something about it,” Jodi said.
Well, well, well. Rick had been talking. Was he a source? “Something,” I agreed, making it sound like it wasn’t much.
“You want to tell us about it?” Implied was the threat that if I didn’t want to talk here and now, we could go to the department. Where I could cool my heels for a few days in lockup.
I kept my voice unemotional when I answered. “I was hired to track down the rogue vamp. I followed him there. I was too late to stop him. He had drained and was eating the girl when I arrived. So when he booked, I tailed him.”
“Where did he go?” she asked, her voice tight, her eyes focused tightly on my face.
“Over the rooftops, mostly, and across the river, where I lost him.”
“You should have called us,” she snarled.
“My cell was dead.” Now that was an outright lie, but I wasn’t going to admit that I had paws and couldn’t dial. Nor was I going to say that I wouldn’t have called anyway.
“How did you track him?” she asked. They were both listening with the kind of intensity cops saved for child rapists and serial killers. And cop killers.
“Line of sight and with a little witch amulet. Tracks vamps. One of a kind and expensive as all get-out.” Lie number two. I couldn’t afford to go much higher and keep my story straight.
“So, you saw him. Got a description of the guy?” Herbert /Abear said.
“Middle height, slender, long dark hair, hooked nose. It was dark and he was fast. That’s all I got. Not enough to work with an artist,” I added, to keep me out of NOPD HQ.
“I want to see this amulet.”
My cell phone rang from the bedroom. “Excuse me.” I grabbed the phone and returned to the kitchen doorway where I could keep an eye on them. The number displayed was Molly’s.
“Witchy woman!”
“Hey, Big Cat. What’s up?”
“Good timing on the call. I got two cops in my kitchen. They wanna know about the tracking amulet you gave me. The one for whacked-out vamps, not the one for humans.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“Fly it.”
Molly laughed. When a spell didn’t work, she made paper airplanes out of the scratch pages and flew them across the room to entertain her kids. “Did you have a blood trace to work with?”
“Big-time,” I said.
“Put me on with them.”
I blanked the screen and handed the phone to Jodi. Saved by the bell.
I ate a cookie and listened to the cop chat with Mol. Molly likes cops even less than I do, having had to register as a witch with the local law, but she’d had mostly redneck, hillbilly types as role models. I had met some nifty cops in my time and some were okay. Some, however, were on ego trips, had authority issues, or were chauvinist pigs. Herbert was an ass. I was withholding judgment on Jodi.
The lady cop handed my cell back and I said into it, “Thanks, Mol. I’ll call back later.”
“You having problems down there in the steamy South?” she asked.
“It’s interesting.”
“So, maybe I’ll come visit sooner than we planned. Kill that rogue so it’s safe.” She laughed and cut the connection. I hit END and set the phone on the counter.
“So. May I see the amulet that tracked the vampire? And a demonstration?”
“No and no. Goes back to that warrant thing. Bring me a piece of paper and I’ll share. Till then, no way.”
“Why don’t you like cops, Miss Yellowrock?” Herbert asked.
“I like some cops just fine. But I don’t like all cops just like I don’t like all dry cleaners or all street sweepers or all nurses. The job is fine, but it doesn’t necessarily attract the best people. You want to go have a beer, maybe take in a movie, I might find you’re charming as hell and the salt of the earth. So far, right now, I’m not too terribly impressed.”
“She’s glib,” he said to Jodi, sounding mean and malicious. His face had twisted as I spoke and now he looked a little on the cruel side too.