“Like what?” Deborah demanded.
“Well, you’d have to hide the smell, too,” he said. “The smell of cooking human bodies. It lingers, and it’s rather unforgettable.” He sounded a little bit embarrassed and he shrugged.
“So we’re looking for a gigantic smelly statue with a furnace inside,” I said cheerfully. “That shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Deborah glared at me, and once again I had to feel a little disappointed at her heavy-handed approach to life—especially since I would almost certainly join her as a permanent resident in the Land of Gloom if the Dark Passenger refused to behave and come out of hiding.
DEXTER IN THE DARK
165
“Professor Keller,” she said, turning away from me and completing the abandonment of her poor brother, “is there anything else about this bull shit that might help us?”
It was certainly a clever enough remark to be encouraging, and I almost wished I had said it, but it appeared to have no effect on Keller, nor even on Deborah herself, who looked as though she was unaware that she had said something notable. Keller merely shook his head.
“It’s not really my area, I’m afraid,” he said. “I know just a little background stuff that affects the art history. You might check with somebody in philosophy or comparative religion.”
“Like Professor Halpern,” I whispered again, and Deborah nodded, still glaring.
She turned to go and luckily remembered her manners just in time; she turned back to Keller and said, “You’ve been very helpful, Dr. Keller. Please let me know if you think of anything else.”
“Of course,” he said, and Debs grabbed my arm and propelled me onward.
“Are we going back to the registrar’s office?” I asked politely as my arm went numb.
“Yeah,” she said. “But if there’s a Tammy enrolled in one of Halpern’s classes, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
I pulled the tattered remnants of my arm from her grip. “And if there isn’t?”
She just shook her head. “Come on,” she said.
But as I passed by the body once more, something clutched at the leg of my pants, and I looked down.
“Ahk,” Vince said to me. He cleared his throat. “Dexter,” he said, and I raised an eyebrow. He flushed and let go of my pants. “I have to talk to you,” he said.
“By all means,” I said. “Can it wait?”
He shook his head. “It’s pretty important,” he said.
“Well, all right then.” I took the three steps back to where he was still squatting beside the body. “What is it?”
He looked away, and as unlikely as it was that he would show real emotion, his face flushed even more. “I talked to Manny,” he said.
166
JEFF LINDSAY
“Wonderful. And yet you still have all your limbs,” I said.
“He, ahm,” Vince said. “He wants to make a few changes. Ahm.
In the menu. Your menu. For the wedding.”
“Aha,” I said, in spite of how corny it sounds to say “Aha”
when you are standing beside a dead body. I just couldn’t help myself. “By any chance, are these expensive changes?”
Vince refused to look up at me. He nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “He said he’s had an inspiration. Something really new and different.”