Chapter 7
If there was one thing Arthur could not abide, it was a bad pun.
He’d suffered many in the trenches of his marketing job before he’d died, and as eternity stretched out before him, he longed for a future with better wordplay.
Salvatore, a pun aficionado, would have loved the werewolf’s business card.
In fact, he probably would have hired Theodore on the spot. Attorney-at-claw, indeed.
“What an interesting business card, Ted,” Arthur said, frowning at it. He’d take great pleasure in running it through the paper shredder later.
“I prefer Theo, actually.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Before things could devolve further into outright insults, Lore cleared her throat and stood. “Okay. I gotta get back to work.”
Arthur, who was now trying to hold his umbrella, Rumble, and the inane business card, stood to see her off.
Managing the cat proved difficult, and she began to squirm.
Theodore gave him a searching look before reaching out to adjust Arthur’s grip so that he held her from beneath, palm cradling her chest, her hind quarters tucked into the crook of his arm.
“There we go, little one,” Theodore said gently.
“No need to condescend,” Arthur grumbled before realizing Theodore meant the ten-pound cat, not the vampire of a perfectly respectable stature.
“You two play nice,” Lore said, then strolled off through the bright spring morning.
“So,” Arthur began, turning to face Theodore once more. “You’re a lawyer and a barista?”
“I contain multitudes.” Theodore tucked his hands into his pockets. “The lawyer lifestyle was never really my jam. Lots of meetings and long hours. And after I got bitten—”
“They fired you for being a werewolf?” Arthur couldn’t decide what was worse—that Theodore’s firm was clearly bigoted or that the lawyer he was about to align himself with had been fired in the first place.
“No, no, nothing like that.” Theodore waved him off.
“They actually offered to make me partner, but I realized if I was going to have my name on a door, I’d rather it be for something I actually enjoy, like coffee.
I quit the firm and opened up shop here.
It just seemed so clear to me all of a sudden that the city life wasn’t for me, and when I saw this place—well, what can I say? I fell in love.”
“Understandable enough,” Arthur grunted. He could begrudge Theodore many things, but Trident Falls was his favorite place on earth. At least the werewolf lawyer/barista had good taste.
“Knew you’d get it—you and Sal did the same thing, reopening the Iris Inn, right?”
“Suppose so.” It didn’t sit well with Arthur how similar their stories were, if only because he preferred not to have anything in common with Theodore.
They’d both left corporate jobs for a country lifestyle, they’d both opened a small business in this town, and they both wanted Sal out of jail.
It had to be enough. “Funny how sometimes it takes dying to realize how you want to spend your life.”
“Exactly!” Theodore gave a hearty laugh that was almost a bark, then slapped Arthur on the arm that wasn’t currently holding an unruly cat. “Anyway, I’m still barred in Oregon.”
“And you think you can help Sal?” Arthur didn’t want to pin his hopes on Theodore if he could help it, but circumstances were such that, well, he couldn’t help it. “Lore mentioned something about Miranda rights?”
Theodore deflated. “I wish it was that easy. Vega v. Tekoh made that pretty much moot, though.”
Arthur, who knew as much about legal proceedings as the average Law we would’ve smelled it.” Arthur glanced at his husband to confer.
Salvatore nodded. “And I was famished—there’s no way we would’ve missed it.”
Arthur drew himself up and faced the sheriff once more. “Which means a vampire couldn’t have killed George Roth.”
“How do you figure that?” McMartin scoffed.
“There’s no way a vampire could completely drain a body in one go,” Arthur said, doing his best to suppress a triumphant smile, “and I can prove it.”