Page 60 of A Love Most Fatal

“No?” I looked to Leo for help.

“She’s Polish,” Leo supplied.

The mortician was quiet in his white lab coat, hands held in his lab waiting for me to go on, but that was it, that was the whole scenario.

“Do you sleep with her?” I asked.

His lips drew back over his teeth in some semblance of displeasure, and I was about to pen “loyal” in the pros column when he spoke:

“Of course I have sex with her,” he said and smiled. Oh, because he and I? We were in on a little boy’s club truth, apparently. Most of them act like this, like because I am a man, I must speak their misogynistic crime language.

His face fell serious. “I do wear a condom, of course.”

“Of course,” I agreed, and drew a line directly through his name.

Some of the interviews are short. I get what I need very quickly, no blood work required. The last one of today, for instance; we sat down, and after a few pleasantries I dove right in.

“Imagine that you have a young daughter?—”

“Only sons,” he said, and I crossed his name right off the list.

Overall, the men fail.

“These guys suck,” I say now, and throw the files on Vanessa’s desk. She thumbs through looking over the notes I’d written for each. “Are they all like this?”

“Yes,” Mary says before taking a huge bite out of an apple. “All of them.”

“If they’re not rude, they’ve got this fragile masculinity, and if not both of those things, they seem like bloodthirsty creatures, barely human!” I drop into one of the chairs across from Vanessa’s desk with a huff.

“Oh, don’t be dramatic.” Willa files her nails as she leans against the windowsill. “Ness is much more bloodthirsty than them.”

“Not a single redeeming quality for any of them today? Think hard,” Vanessa asks, and I shake my head, grim.

“Maybe if you were interviewing for an aggressive flag football team, but otherwise no,” I say. “Although multiple wanted you to know that they carry a Colt .45.”

“They’re researching,” Willa says. “How sweet.”

“Our dad’s gun of choice,” Vanessa explains. “How many have you met this week?”

“Thirteen,” I say. I lean further into the chair, my head now lulled onto the seat back. “I’d fire them if I was you, honestly. Don’t get within ten feet of any of them.”

“This isn’t helpful.” Vanessa holds the back of her neck for a moment before shutting the file folder and pushing it away from her. “The moms are antsy. They want me to date these men like I’m the fucking bachelor.”

“Bachelorette,” Willa corrects.

“Does that make Nate your Jesse Palmer?” Leo asks.

Mary and Vanessa speak at the same time: “Who?”

“Maybe Nate’s standards are too high,” Willa says, then points her nail file at me. “You can’t rule them out just because they’ve killed a few men.”

“Vanessa’s the one who told me that a likelihood of hidden tenderness was a requirement! And at what point does the number of men they’ve killed become too many?!”

Everyone in the room gives my question serious thought—though the obvious answer is not much higher than one, right?

“Number doesn’t matter if they have a good reason,” Mary says.

I can only blink in response. She’s just like them. If I was interviewing Mary, I would cross her name off the list right now.