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girl, move, move. The fun is calling." Apollo urged me into the main salon, lured by the body-swaying rhythms, the bursts of laughter.
    I don't know what I imagined a gay bar would look like, but certainly not this. Had I been teleported to Vegas? Would the Pussy Cat Dolls materialize before my eyes? The entrance was on the fourth tier of four tiers. Half-moon shaped booths served as seating and a staircase ran through the middle down to a packed dance floor and an open bar. All of it centered around the stage.
    "Isn't it grand?" Apollo gushed.
    "That's an understatement. It's breathtaking."
    "It is the place to be and to be seen."
    Apollo might think this nightspot was the bomb, but to me it was a world of potential heartache, of sexual promise — where one night with the wrong person could change your life forever — leave you emotionally destroyed, or infected with an STD, or bleeding in an alley with a black carnation on your chest.
    Just like any normal bar — except for the being murdered part.
    "Our table's this way." Apollo pulled me down the stairs, toward the stage and bar.
    As we passed one booth after the other I made a discovery. "Hey, I'm not the only Dolly Parton here."
    "I told you no one would notice you."
    "For once in my life, I might blend."
    "As long as you keep your lips zipped."
    "I'll pretend I have laryngitis." And keep my ears and eyes open, my guard up.
    Apollo shuffled down the stairs to the beat, his little fanny gyrating like matched ball bearings, his shoulders shimmying, his head bobbing. "Our table is on the main floor next to the dance area."
    As we descended, I realized beautiful women were everywhere. At tables, on stage, and kicking up their heels to a Barbra Streisand favorite. I caught hold of the tip of the starburst tie and tugged Apollo to me so my mouth was near his ear. I gestured to the room around us. "I had no idea so many men were transvestites."
    Apollo arched an eyebrow and smirked as though I were funnier than Jack Black. "My God, I really must get you out on the town more, girl."
    He pointed to a couple at the table nearest ours. "Husband and wife."
    "No."
    "Yes. A lot of the women here are women. Even heteros enjoy quality entertainment. Dinah Edger puts out great show."
    I felt as though I'd thrown open a window blind and discovered daylight where I'd expected night. "Why didn't you tell me I could have come as myself?"
    His hand hit his waist and he cocked his hip, glancing at me as if I'd asked whether or not blood was red. "I thought you didn't want to be recognized. I thought you were working undercover?"
    Oh, sure, throw the obvious at me. "I'm just surprised."
    I'd expected Club Jaded Edge would be exclusively male, a dark, smokey dive. Brilliant deduction, Sherlock, what with current laws prohibiting indoor smoking. But that wasn't the real hiccup in my thinking. Somewhere in my blond head, I'd decided a person as skewed as a serial killer would hang out — as well as choose his victims from — a place that honored, welcomed, and even embraced a slightly off the norm lifestyle.
    As opposed to somewhere I might normally hang.
    This same kind of thinking occurs when we hear of a horrible crime committed against a stranger and think: Thank God, that could never happen to me. But the fact is, anyone can become a victim of violent crime. Ted Bundy, after all, selected his victims at a public lake access, for God's sake, and since Club Jaded Edge was like every other night club in the city, the reminder that we weren't safe anywhere flushed a chill through me.
    "Apollo, maybe this isn't such a great idea. Maybe we should leave."
    "Getting cold feet again?"
    "No, but..." I should have told him about the Black Boutonniere's connection to Club Jaded Edge and how it was at the heart of Lars' reason for hiring me, and how I feared he might end up on the killer's radar, and how I desperately wanted to avoid that. But life was unavoidable. I couldn't bubble wrap Apollo and