“More work. And speaking of this morning, why were you smelling Parker? It’s hard enough to tout the benefits of a vampire friendship without you sniffing around him like he’s dinner.”
“It’s just that he smells weird,” she said, frowning. “Not like dinner weird, either. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s different.”
“It’s Buffalo. That’s where he’s from.”
Nina looked at me sideways.
“I smell it, too.” Vlad said, turning down the death metal on his iPod. “What is he, anyway?”
“He’s a detective!”
Neither Nina nor Vlad looked convinced.
“Look, you two, I don’t know what’s stranger—you guys thinking that he smells weird or you guys smelling him at all.”
“He doesn’t smell like a detective,” Vlad murmured, turning up his iPod. “He doesn’t even smell human.”
“What does he smell like?” I asked.
Nina shrugged. “Just weird.”
“He’s human,” I said. “You guys are nuts. I’ve even felt his heartbeat.”
Nina’s eyebrows waggled. “Sexy.”
“Gross,” Vlad contended from the backseat.
We rode in silence until Nina pulled her car into the police station parking lot, maneuvering over to the UDA-reserved spaces.
“Hey.” I grinned, relief washing over me. “That’s Pete’s car. At least one thing is back to normal.”
“Our boss is back at work,” Nina moaned, pulling her key out of the ignition. “Yippee.”
I headed straight for Mr. Sampson’s office when we walked into UDA but stopped short when I got to his closed office door. I knocked timidly, then poked my head in. “Mr. Sampson?”
I pushed the door open when there was no answer and stared at the empty room.
“Sampson’s not in,” Lorraine said from behind me.
I whirled, clutching my heart. “Oh. Lorraine, sorry, you scared me.”
Costineau whined as he circled around her ankles, throwing me dagger glares with his yellow cat eyes.
“I saw that he—at least his car—is here. Do you know where he is?”
Lorraine held the file folders she was clutching close to her chest and pinned me with her stare. Finally, she simply said, “No.”
I strode toward her. “Really, Lorraine? Because this could be really important. I’m worried about Sampson. Did you see anything, anything at all, when you did that scan?”
Lorraine’s eyes shone. “Yes.”
My eyebrows rose in the universal “Well?” fashion.
“I think you need to ask your detective friend.” Lorraine smiled thinly and stepped away, Costineau following after her.
“What does that mean? Ask him what?” I yelled, tailing her.
But Lorraine didn’t turn around. Costineau jumped onto Lorraine’s shoulder and hissed at me as they disappeared down the hall.
By one o’clock I had made eighteen passes in front of Lorraine’s empty desk and listened to Parker’s voice mail greeting twenty-two times. Nina was sitting on the end of my desk, swinging her long legs and sucking on a plasma pop, when I finally got Parker on the line.
“Parker, thank God! I’ve been calling you all day.”
“Sorry,” Parker said, sounding distracted, “I’ve been tied up. What’s going on?”
“Sampson’s car is here. In the UDA parking lot. But Sampson never showed up to work.”
There was a short pause, and then Parker said, “Okay, show me. Meet me in the lot.”
I tightened the belt on my sweater against the damp air while Parker reclined on a white SUV, looking all at once Abercrombie attractive and CSI-cocky. I showed him to Sampson’s car, and he circled it, scrutinizing it from every angle while I jumped from foot to foot, trying to keep warm.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, it looks like the dog drives a nice BMW, while I—a perfect angel—get a 4Runner with a transmission problem.”
“Fabulous. Can you do your male comparisons on your own time? What does the car tell us about where Sampson is?”
“It tells us that Sampson is not here.” I gaped at Parker, and he grinned at me.
“Real smart,” I said.
“Ask a stupid question,” Parker said as he shook his head and sunk down to his knees. Before I could blink he had jimmied the driver’s side door lock.
“Parker!” I hissed as he slid into Mr. Sampson’s front seat. “What are you doing? Get out of there. You’re breaking and entering.”
He grinned up at me and kicked open Mr. Sampson’s glove box. “You call it breaking and entering, I call it being thorough. Besides, I’m a cop. This is totally legal.” He handed me a stack of registration papers. “Here, make yourself useful.”
I slid onto the passenger seat and looked out the front windshield nervously, holding the papers in my lap. “So, I talked to Lorraine today.”
Parker didn’t look up while he rifled. “Oh yeah? What did she have to say?”
“She said to ask you about the scan.”
“What scan?”
I put the papers down and blew out a sigh. “When she scanned the other day, looking for Sampson, remember?”
Parker paused. “Yeah. Didn’t she say she couldn’t find anything?”