“Are you the couple asking for me?” he said in a guarded voice.

“We are.” I forced myself to smile. “You must be the ‘N’ in ‘R&N.’ ”

“That’s right. How can I help?”

Lon gave a fake name and said, “We’re looking for something a little different and heard you could help us.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He leaned over the counter with his arms spread, hands gripping the edge for support. “What are you looking for?”

This guy didn’t seem like someone we could sweet-talk, so I got right to the point. “We’ve been told there’s a Pentecostal church in the desert that handles snakes. We don’t care about what they do there, but we’re looking for someone in that church—for personal reasons. And we were hoping someone here might’ve heard of it.”

Ned blinked several times and tightened his grip on the edge of the counter. “A church? Can’t say that I’ve heard of anything like that. What kind of snakes do they handle?”

“Exotic,” Lon said. “Big and bright. Possibly venomous.”

“Sounds like something they’d have to buy out of state.”

“Look, we don’t give a damn about state laws,” I said, struggling not to breathe in when Ned was exhaling. “We’re not cops or reporters. We’re just looking for that church. You don’t have to tell us if you supply them or not. We couldn’t care less.”

Ned got a little peeved with my gruff manner. “That may be, but I’m not sure anyone here could help you. We don’t deal directly to clients. If the church wanted snakes, they’d probably go through a pet store, who’d buy them from us. We get dozens of orders every day, and we don’t ask them for the names of their buyers.”

“Seems like you might remember orders for exotic snakes.”

“Like I said, they’d need to go out of state for that.”

“Are you sure? It sort of looked like you had the special orders back there,” I said, nodding toward the chicken-wire room.

Wrong thing to say. Ned narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m fully licensed and have passed every state inspection. So if you’re one of those Save the Reptiles nutjobs, you can save something else—your own breath.”

“No affiliation with any of those groups,” Lon assured him. “What about another reptile wholesaler in the area who might have an . . . interstate business?”

“There isn’t anyone else. I service accounts from Covina to Palm Springs to Bakersfield. So maybe you should try L.A.,” he said defensively. “And as far as this snake-handling church, I haven’t heard of anything like that out here, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“What about someone else here?” I asked quickly. “Someone in sales, maybe?”

“He’s working with a paying client.”

“We can wait.”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. He’s working with a client who doesn’t pay us to air his laundry. And he’s working for a boss who’d fire him if he did. Now, unless I can place an order for you, I’ve got work to do.”

He pushed away from the counter and gave us one last semithreatening look before storming away. Fine by me. He wasn’t going to tell us anything freely, and the stench inside the shop was making me want to hack up all the goat-cheese crêpes I’d eaten back at the fancy hotel. So I told Lon to meet me at the car and then marched back out the front door and took a nice big breath of smoggy air. Give me dusty asphalt over dead reptiles any day.

Dusty asphalt and valrivia smoke, to be exact.

I glanced across the covered entry and saw the Earthbound who’d been loading the truck around the side, the guy who’d been screaming obscenities like they were going out of style. He was leaning against the building with one foot up, the sides of his black industrial lifting brace undone and flapping around his ribs.

Maybe my sense of smell was all screwy from Reptile Hell, but the first thing I thought after the smoke blew away was that this guy smelled . . . approachable.

“Bad day?” I asked.

He glanced at me without moving his head, lazily looking me over until he spotted my silver halo and did a double take. “Very bad day,” he said, offering me valrivia.

I waved it away. “It smells wonderful, but I’m too nauseated right now. It’s a little overripe inside,” I said, motioning at the door.

“Hmph. You’re telling me.” He pushed his dark hair back with one hand while flicking ash with the other. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, maybe a few years older than me. “The owners are cheap bastards who haven’t cleaned a cage in years. They hired the secretary’s son to do it a couple weeks back, but he’s terrified of snakes. Best I can tell, all he does is sweep and take naps in his mom’s office.”

“Kids,” I said conspiratorially.

“The whole place is a toilet. Management, clients, buyers, drivers—all of ’em.”

“Well, they certainly didn’t help me.”

He lifted his chin. “You a new customer? Haven’t seen you around.”

“Not a customer. Definitely not a customer. I’m Cady.”

“I’m Ralph.” He flicked a look to my halo. “Nice to meet another nonsavage, Katy.”

I gave him a nod of solidarity and didn’t bother correcting him about my name; I got Katy-ed a lot in the bar after patrons had one too many. “Yeah, I’m just trying to find out if anyone around here knows where I could find a church in the desert, one of those wacko groups that handles snakes.”