Alcide grinned at me and changed back. He’d become the fastest changer I’d ever seen. I wondered if that ability came with the packmaster job.
“Any luck?” I asked, keeping my eyes modestly focused on my hands while he got dressed.
“At least you didn’t clean the throw rug by your bed,” he said. “I can tell you that one person who’s been in your room, I don’t know at all. But your friend Tara’s been there, right by your bed. Your two fae buddies were in there, but then, they lived here.”
“They were searching my house while I was gone every day,” I said. “They were searching for the cluviel dor.”
“That’s sad, that your kin would do that,” Alcide said, and he patted me on the shoulder. “Who else did I smell? Eric, of course. And you know who else? Arlene. She was carrying a charm of some kind, but definitely Arlene.”
“I didn’t remember you’d met Arlene.” I grasped at an irrelevant issue because I was stunned silly.
“She served me once or twice when I came by Merlotte’s.”
I figured out her access after five seconds’ more cogitation. “She knew where I hid my keys from when we were friends,” I said, infuriated by my own carelessness. “I guess before, or even after, she came to Merlotte’s, she let herself in here and got the scarf. But why?”
“Someone told her to, I expect,” Alcide said, buckling his belt.
“Someone sent her here to get the scarf that would be used to kill her.”
“Apparently, that’s what happened. Ironic, huh?”
I couldn’t think of any other explanation.
And it made me sick.
“Thanks so much, Alcide,” I said, remembering my manners. I got him the glass of lemonade I’d promised him, and he drank it in one long gulp. “How’s Kandace doing, integrating into the pack?” I asked.
He smiled broadly. “She’s doing real well,” he said. “Taking it slow. They’re warming up to her.” Kandace had been a rogue wolf, but because she’d turned in some worse rogues, she’d gotten a chance to join the pack while the bad ones had been banished. Kandace was quiet and tall, and though I didn’t know her well, I knew she was the calmest person Alcide had ever been with. I had the sense that after a life on rough seas, Kandace was looking for inland waters.
“That’s real good to hear,” I said. “I wish her luck.”
“Call me if you need me,” Alcide said. “The pack stands ready to help you.”
“You’ve already been a help,” I said, and I meant it.
Two minutes after he left, Barry pulled up in a car he’d rented from a new place out by the interstate. He’d also brought Amelia and Bob. Amelia said, “I’m asleep on my feet,” and headed for the bedroom to take a nap, Bob hard on her heels. Barry ran upstairs to plug his cell phone into his charger. I glanced at the clock and realized it was time to get busy. I began cooking supper for six. Country-fried steak took a while, so I got that in the oven first. Then I cut up crookneck squash and onions to sauté, and I chopped okra and breaded it to fry, and I put bakery rolls on a baking sheet to pop in the oven right before I served supper. I’d start the rice soon.
Barry came into the kitchen, sniffing the air and smiling.
“Did you have a productive day?” I asked.
Barry nodded. He said,
I’ll wait until everyone gets here so I’ll only have to say it once.
Okay
, I said, and wiped the flour off the kitchen counter. Barry cleared the counter of dirty dishes in the best possible way, by washing and drying them. He was far more domesticated than I’d ever suspected, and I realized there was much more to know about him.
“I’m going outside to make some phone calls,” he said. I knew he wanted to be out of my earshot and mindshot, if I can put it that way, but that didn’t bother me in the least. While he was outside, Bob ambled through the kitchen and straight down the porch steps, carefully easing the porch door closed.
A few minutes later, Amelia came out into the kitchen sleepy-eyed. “Bob went for a walk in the woods,” she muttered. “I’m going to splash some water on my face.” Mr. Cataliades and Diantha came in the back door ten minutes later. Diantha looked exhausted, but Mr. C was positively bubbly.
“I am smitten with Beth Osiecki,” he said, beaming. “I’ll tell you all about it over our meal. First, I must shower.” He sniffed the air in the kitchen appreciatively and told me how much he looked forward to dinner before he and a silent Diantha went upstairs. Amelia came out of the bathroom; Mr. Cataliades went in. Bob returned from the woods, sweaty and scratched and with a bag full of various plants. He collapsed in a chair and begged for a big icy glass of tea. He drank it dry. Diantha had stopped at a roadside stand to buy a honeydew melon, and she cut into it. I could smell the sweetness as she cut out the fruit and diced it.
My cell phone buzzed. “Hello?” I said. The rice was boiling, so I turned it down and covered it. I glanced at the kitchen clock so I could turn it off in twenty minutes.
“It’s Quinn,” he said.
“Where are you? Who were you tracking down? We’re about to eat. You coming?”
“The two men I saw were gone this morning,” he said. “I think they caught a glimpse of me and checked out during the night. I’ve spent all day trying to find them, but they’re in the wind.”
“Who were they?”
“Do you remember . . . that lawyer?”
“Johan Glassport?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Barry saw him in New Orleans.”
“He was here. With some guy who looked kind of familiar, though I couldn’t put a name to him.”
“So . . . what are your plans?” I glanced at the clock anxiously. It was hard to concentrate when I was trying to put a meal on the table. My gran had always made it look so easy.
“I’m sorry, Sookie. I have other news. I’ve been called away to take a job, and my employer says I’m the only one who can do it.”
“Uh-huh.” Then I realized I hadn’t responded to his tone of voice, but his words. “You sound pretty serious.”
“I have to stage a wedding ceremony. A vampire wedding ceremony.”
I took a deep breath. “In Oklahoma, I take it?”
“Yes. In two weeks. If I don’t do it, I’ll lose my job.”
And now that he was going to have a kid, he couldn’t afford to do any such thing. “I get it,” I said steadily. “Really, I understand. You showed up, and I love that you came here.”
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t catch up with Glassport. I know he’s dangerous.”
“We’ll find out if he has anything to do with this, Quinn. Thanks for your help.”
And we said good-bye a few more times, in different ways, until we had to hang up. By that time, I had to get busy with the gravy or supper would be ruined. I simply had to postpone thinking of Eric and Freyda’s wedding until later.
After twenty minutes, I was calmer, the food was ready, and we were all seated around the kitchen table.
No one joined in my prayer but Bob, but that was okay. We’d said one. Getting everyone served was a ten-minute process. After that, the floor seemed open to discussion.
Barry said, “I visited Brock and Chessie, and I talked to the kids.”
“How’d you get in?” Amelia asked. “I know you called ’em before you went.”
“I said I’d known Arlene and I wanted to say how sorry I was. I didn’t lie to them after that.” He looked defensive. “But I did tell them I was a friend of Sookie’s, and that I didn’t think she had anything to do with Arlene’s death.”
“Did they believe that?” I said.
“They did,” he said, with an air of surprise. “They don’t believe you killed Arlene, strictly from a practical point of view. They said you’re smaller than Arlene and they didn’t think you could have either gripped her neck hard enough
or
gotten her into the Dumpster. And the only person they could think of who would help you is Sam, and he wouldn’t have put the body behind his own bar.”
“I hope a lot of people have figured that out,” I said.
“I said Arlene hadn’t called me when she got out of prison. They told me that they hadn’t had any warning, either, which was what I wanted to know. She’d just shown up on their doorstep three days before her death.”
“What did they observe about her demeanor before her death?” Mr. Cataliades said. “Was she frightened? Secretive?”
“They thought Arlene looked kind of nervous when she came by to see the kids. She was excited to see them, but she was scared about something. She told Chessie she had to meet some people and she wasn’t supposed to talk about it, that someone was going to help her pay her legal bills so she could get back on her feet and take care of her kids.”
“That would have interested her, sure,” I said. “Maybe applying for a job at Merlotte’s wasn’t her idea. Maybe these mysterious men put her up to it. Maybe she
did
know how unlikely it was that she’d be hired back.”
“The Johnsons don’t know anything more specific than that? They didn’t see the people she was going to talk to?” Amelia was impatient. This didn’t seem like much information to her.
“It confirms what I heard from Jane Bodehouse,” I said. “Jane saw Arlene meeting with two men in back of Tray’s old place the night before we found her body.”
A shadow crossed Amelia’s face at the mention of Tray Dawson. They’d been close, and she’d hoped they’d get closer, but Tray had died.
“Why there?” Bob said. “It would have been a lot easier to meet at an isolated place rather than out back of someone’s house, especially someone who would definitely ask questions.”
“That house is empty, and the garage next to it, too,” I told him. “And I don’t know if Arlene had a vehicle or not. Her old car was parked at the Johnsons’ house, but it may or may not have been running. Plus, as the crow flies, Tray’s place is not far from Merlotte’s, and that’s where they were going to take her. They didn’t want her to have time to figure out what was going to happen.”
There was a long pause while my friends worked this through.
“Possible,” Bob said, and everyone nodded.
“How are Coby and Lisa?” I asked Barry.
“Stunned,” Barry said shortly. “Confused.” From his head, I could see the images of the kids’ bewildered faces. I felt horrible every time I thought about those kids.
“Did their mom tell them anything?” Amelia asked quietly.
“Arlene told them she was going to take them away to live with her in a cute little house—that they’d be able to get nice food and clothes without her having to work such long hours. She told them she wanted to be with them all the time.”
“How was she going to do that?” Amelia said. “Did she tell them?”
Barry shook his head. He was feeling a twinge of self-disgust, and I didn’t blame him. Somehow it seemed ignoble to read the minds of children when they’d suffered such a string of misfortunes. But it wasn’t like Barry had been giving them the third degree, I told myself.
“The bottom line is, Arlene planned on doing something for these two men, something that would pay off big,” Barry concluded.
“When is your touch psychic coming?” Mr. Cataliades asked Bob.
“She’s getting here tomorrow morning after she finishes feeding her animals or something.” Bob reached out for another piece of country-fried steak. He narrowly missed getting stabbed in the hand by Mr. Cataliades, who was after the same piece.
“I got your scarf, Sookie,” said Diantha, who was eating very slowly. Her voice and demeanor were pale shadows of her normal hypervitality. She was even speaking slowly enough to be understandable.
Silence fell around the table as we all regarded her with awe. Mr. Cataliades was looking at his niece fondly. “I knew she could do it,” he told us, and I wondered if he’d actually had a foreseeing or if he just had a lot of faith in Diantha.
“How?” Amelia asked. (Amelia never hesitated when it came to asking a direct question.)
Diantha said, “I went in the police station after I saw the big woman cop.”
Everyone else looked at her blankly.
“She turned herself into Kenya Jones,” I explained. “Kenya’s a patrolwoman who’s been trained to do crime-scene processing.”
“We waited at the police station a long time this morning, Sookie,” Mr. Cataliades explained. “I had to interview Detective Bellefleur personally, and Detective Beck, too, since I am now co-counsel on your case, thanks to Ms. Osiecki. During our long, long wait we had time to find out all kinds of interesting information. Like where the evidence locker is and who can check out items from it. Diantha is so quick and devious!”
Diantha smiled faintly.
“How’d you manage it?” Amelia asked. She looked admiring.
“I had a scarf in my pocket in a plastic bag. It was pretty close to Sookie’s description. We found it at Tara’s Togs. I turned myself into Kenya. I went to the locker and storage area. I told the policeman there I needed to see the scarf. The old guy, he brought it to me in a plastic bag. I looked at it, and when he went to the bathroom, I swapped it for the scarf I’d brought. I handed it to him when he came back. I walked out.” She reached for her glass of tea in a weary way.
“Thank you, Diantha,” I said. I was both happy she’d done such a ballsy thing and sorry she’d done something illegal. My law-abiding half was kind of appalled that we were screwing around with real evidence in a real murder. But my self-preserving half was relieved that we might find out something, now that we had the real scarf . . . if the touch psychic lived up to her billing.
Diantha perked up after receiving a good helping of praise from all of us. Though she was still moving and speaking slowly, after she ate everything on the table that wasn’t on someone’s plate she seemed to have taken a big step toward restoring her strength. Obviously, the transformation she’d accomplished had burned up a tremendous amount of energy.
“It’s much harder when she has to speak as the person, rather than just resemble them,” Mr. Cataliades said quietly. He’d read my mind. He treated her with courtesy and respect, refilling her glass with tea and passing her the butter with great frequency. (I made a mental note to add butter to my store list.) Barry had bought a cake at the bakery. Though Gran would have thrown up her hands in horror at having a store-bought cake in her house, I was not so proud, since I hadn’t had time to bake. Diantha was definitely on board for dessert, which I planned to dish up as soon as the kitchen was clean.