“Did Dan tel you what was wrong with him?” Mike Coughlin was persistent and thorough, if not bril iant.
“Sure, he said he’d had too much to drink. I’d keep that to myself, normal y, but we’re talking about murder here, and I don’t want to get into trouble.”
Coughlin gave Vince a level stare. “I’m betting it was you cal ed us to the scene,” he said. “Why didn’t you own up to it?”
“We’re not supposed to cal the cops,” Vince said. “Dan said the vamp tips him big to keep his mouth shut about his doings. The vamp, that is.”
“He’s seen other girls in trouble?” There was an ominous undertone to Coughlin’s voice.
“No, no! Dan woulda cal ed that in. No, the extra money was just to keep Dan quiet about the goings and the comings from the house. There are reporters and just plain snoopy people who’d pay to know who visits a vampire. This vampire, Eric whatever, he didn’t want his girlfriend to catch grief about staying over at his place.”
I hadn’t known that.
“But when I stood up to stretch, I could see the front of his yard, and I saw the body lying there. I didn’t know who it was, but she wasn’t moving.
That’s definitely the kind of thing I need to report to the police.” Vince was practical y glowing with virtue by the time he finished his account.
The detective was regarding Vince with open skepticism, and Vince’s glow of civic virtue diminished with every second of Coughlin’s stare.
“Yeah, buddy,” Coughlin said final y, “I find that real interesting, since you couldn’t possibly see the girl’s body from the guard shack. Unless you did that big stretch while you were hovering over the ground.”
I tried to remember the lay of the land in the little gated community, while Vince goggled at the detective. Coughlin was right: Eric’s house was higher than the guard shack, and furthermore, the row of crepe myrtles by the walkway would prevent an easy sight line.
I sure wanted to hold Vince’s hand. It would make it so much easier to find out what was going on in his head. I sighed. There was simply no casual way to touch flesh with a virtual stranger. Cara Ambrosel i returned, looking impatient.
The interview staggered on for thirty more minutes. I gradual y understood that Ambrosel i had assembled a lot of facts about each of the people present at the scene, but that al these facts might not add up to anything. She appeared to be homing in on the stripper part of Kym Rowe’s life, rather than the desperate-and-reckless part … or the part-Were part.
I had no idea how to make that add up to clues about why Kym Rowe had shown up at Eric’s house, or who’d paid her to do so. But to me, it seemed obvious that the girl had been bribed to do her best to seduce Eric. Who’d paid for this and what they hoped to gain … I was as far from discovering the guilty party as Ambrosel i.
While I worked that night, I went over and over the events of Saturday at Eric’s house. I served beers on autopilot. By the time I fel into bed, I found I couldn’t remember any of the conversations I’d had with customers and co-workers.
Tuesday was another black hole. Dermot came in and out without saying much. He didn’t look happy; in fact, he looked anxious. When I asked him a question or two, he said, “The fae at the club, they’re worried. They wonder why Claude left, when he’l return, what wil happen to them when he does. They wish they had seen Nial .”
“I’m sorry about Nial ’s attitude,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t know if I should broach the subject or not. It had to be a painful one for Dermot, Nial ’s son, to be so pushed aside and disregarded.
Dermot looked at me, his eyes as pathetic as a puppy’s.
“What’s Faery like?” I asked, in a clumsy attempt to change the subject.
“It’s beautiful,” he said immediately. “The forests are green, and they stretch for miles and miles. Not as far as they used to … but stil they’re green and deep and ful of life. The shoreline is stony; no white sand beaches! But the ocean is green and clear….” He stood, lost in dreaming of his homeland. I wanted to ask a thousand questions: How did the fae pass their time? Did creatures like Bel enos mix with the fairies? Did they get married? What was childbirth like? Were there rich and poor?
But when I saw the grief in my great-uncle’s face, I kept my curiosity to myself. He shook himself, gave me a bleak look. Then he turned to go upstairs, probably to seek consolation in House Hunters International.
That night was notable only for what didn’t happen. Eric didn’t cal me. I understood that his out-of-town company had the biggest claim on his time, but I felt almost as shoved aside and disregarded as Dermot. As far as I was concerned, the vampires of Shreveport weren’t speaking to me, consulting me, or visiting me. Even Bil was conspicuously absent. Mustapha was presumably stil searching for Warren. Ambrosel i was presumably searching for the kil er of Kym Rowe.
Normal y, I was a pretty cheerful person. But I wasn’t seeing an end to this complicated situation, and I began to think there might never be one.
I made a creditable effort to leap out of bed with enthusiasm the next morning. I was rested, and I had to go to work, no matter what was happening in the supernatural world.
Not a creature was stirring, not even an elf. I ate some yogurt and granola and strawberries, drank some coffee, and put on some extra makeup since I was stil feeling unhappy in general. I took a few minutes to paint my fingernails. A girl’s gotta have a little color in her life.
At the bustling post office, I used my key to empty the Merlotte’s mailbox, which served Sam for both business and personal use. Sam had gotten three envelopes from his duplex tenants. I riffled through the flyers that had been stuffed in the box and saw that the only bil worth worrying about was the electric bil . It soared in the summer, of course, since we had to keep the bar cool. I was almost scared to open it. I bit the bul et and slit the envelope. The total was bad, but not more than I expected.
Terry Bel efleur pushed open the glass door while I was tossing unwanted mail into the trash. He looked good: more alert, not as skinny, maybe.
There was a woman with him. When Terry stopped to speak to me, she smiled. She needed some dental work, but it was a good smile.
“Sook, this here’s Jimmie Kearney from Clarice,” Terry said. “She raises Catahoulas, too.” Terry loved his dogs, and he seemed to have overcome his bad luck with them. His latest bitch, Annie, had had her second litter of puppies. This time they’d been purebred. I’d heard Terry talk about Jimmie when he’d found a match for Annie, but I’d assumed Jimmie was a guy. She very much wasn’t.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” I said. Jimmie was younger than Terry. I put her at about forty. There were streaks of gray in her long brown hair, which hung nearly down to her waist. She wore baggy khaki shorts with a ruffled white peasant blouse and huaraches.
“I heard a lot about you,” Jimmie said shyly. “You should come by Terry’s and see the puppies. My Tombo is the daddy. They’re just as cute as they can be. And we’ve got them al sold! We had to check out the homes they would go to, of course.”
“Good job,” I said. I was getting the information from Jimmie’s head that she was over at Terry’s a lot of the time. A lot. Just in my little peek, Jimmie seemed like an okay person. Terry deserved someone real y nice; he needed someone real y, real y stable. I hoped she was both. “Wel , maybe I’l get a chance to see those puppies before they go to their new homes. I’m glad I got to meet you, Jimmie. Terry, talk to you later.”
Before I headed to the bar, I needed to check on Tara, who hadn’t returned my cal s. Maybe she’d gone to work today, too? Sure enough, her car was parked beside Tara’s Togs.