"Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

"Did you look around?" Voss asked. "This place has been scoured. There
isn't a smudge or a spot anywhere. It's like someone cleaned up the scene.
"She did that," Theo said. "She was a clean freak."
Voss scoffed. "She cleaned the house, then hung herself? Please."
Theo shrugged. He really didn't like this cop stuff. "I'm going to go
talk to her psychiatrist. I'll let you know what she says."
"Don't talk to anybody, Crowe. This is my investigation."
Theo smiled. "Okay. But she hung herself and that's all there is. Don't
make it into anything it's not. The family is in pretty bad shape."
"I'm a professional," Voss said, throwing it like an insult implying that
Theo was just dicking around in law enforcement, which, in a way, he was.
"Did you check out the Amish cult angle?" Theo asked, trying to keep a
straight face. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten high today.
"What?"
"Right, you're the pro," Theo said. "I forgot." And he walked out of the
house.
In the Volvo, Theo pulled the thin Pine Cove phone directory out of the
glove compartment and was looking up Dr. Valerie Riordan's number when a call
came in on the radio. Fight at the Head of the Slug Saloon. It was 8:30 A.M.


Mavis

It was rumored among the regulars at the Head of the Slug that under
Mavis Sand's slack, wrinkled, liver-spotted skin lay the gleaming metal
skeleton of a Terminator. Mavis first began augmenting her parts in the
fifties, first out of vanity: breasts, eyelashes, hair. Later, as she aged and
the concept of maintenance eluded her, she began having parts replaced as they
failed, until almost half of her body weight was composed of stainless steel
(hips, elbows, shoulders, finger joints, rods fused to vertebrae five through
twelve), silicon wafers (hearing aids, pace-maker, insulin pump), advanced
polymer resins (cataract replacement lenses, dentures), Kevlar fabric
(abdominal wall reinforcement), titanium (knees, ankles), and pork
(ventricular heart valve). In fact if not for the pig valve, Mavis would have
jumped classes directly from animal to mineral, without the traditional stop
at vegetable taken by most. The more inventive drunks at the Slug (little more
than vegetables themselves) swore that sometimes, between songs on the
jukebox, one could hear tiny but powerful servomotors whirring Mavis around
behind the bar. Mavis was careful never to crush a beer can or move a full keg
in plain sight of the customers lest she feed the rumors and ruin her image of
girlish vulnerability.
When Theo entered the Head of the Slug, he saw ex-scream-queen Molly
Michon on the floor with her teeth locked into the calf of a gray-haired man
who was screeching like a mashed cat. Mavis stood over them both, brandishing
her Louisville Slugger, ready to belt one of them out of the park.
"Theo," Mavis shrilled, "you got ten seconds to get this wacko out of my
bar before I brain her."
"No, Mavis." Theo raced forward and knocked Mavis's bat aside while
reaching into his back pocket for his handcuffs. He pried Molly's hands from
around the man's ankle and shackled them behind her back. The gray-haired