A Touch of Dead(18)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Terry fought in Vietnam, got captured, and had a pretty bad time of it. He’s got scars inside and out. The story about the dogs is this: Terry loves hunting dogs, and he keeps buying himself these expensive Catahoulas, and things keep happening to them. His current bitch has had puppies. He’s just on pins and needles lest something happen to her and the babies."

"You’re saying Terry is a little unstable?"

"He has bad times," I said. "Sometimes he’s just fine."

"Oh," Amelia said, and a lightbulb might as well have popped on above her head. "He’s the guy with the long graying auburn hair, going bald at the front? Scars on his cheek? Big truck?"

"That’s him," I said.

Amelia turned to Greg. "You said for at least a couple of weeks you’d felt someone had been in the building after it closed. That couldn’t be your wife, or this Marge?"

"My wife is with me all evening unless we have to take the kids to different events. And I don’t know why Marge would feel she had to come back at night. She’s there during the day, every day, and often by herself. Well, the spells that protect the building seem okay to me. But I keep recasting them."

"Tell me about your spells," Amelia said, getting down to her favorite part.

She and Greg talked spells for a few minutes, while I listened but didn’t comprehend. I couldn’t even understand their thoughts.

Then Amelia said, "What do you want, Greg? I mean, why did you come to us?"

He’d actually come to me, but it was kind of nice to be an "us."

Greg looked from Amelia to me, and said, "I want Sookie to find out who opened my files, and why. I worked hard to become the bestselling Pelican State agent in northern Louisiana, and I don’t want my business fouled up now. My son’s about to go to Rhodes in Memphis, and it ain’t cheap."

"Why are you coming to me instead of the police?"

"I don’t want anyone else finding out what I am," he said, embarrassed but determined. "And it might come up if the police start looking into things at my office. Plus, you know, Sookie, I got you a real good payout on your kitchen."

My kitchen had been burned down by an arsonist months before. I’d just finished getting it all rebuilt. "Greg, that’s your job," I said. "I don’t see where the gratitude comes in."

"Well, I have a certain amount of discretion in arson cases," he said. "I could have told the home office that I thought you did it yourself."

"You wouldn’t have done that," I said calmly, though I was seeing a side of Greg I didn’t like. Amelia practically had flames coming out of her nose, she was so incensed. But I could tell that Greg was already ashamed of bringing up the possibility.

"No," he said, looking down at his hands. "I guess I wouldn’t. I’m sorry I said that, Sookie. I’m scared someone’ll tell the whole town what I do, why people I insure are so … lucky. Can you see what you can find out?"

"Bring your family into the bar for supper tonight, give me a chance to look them over," I said. "That’s the real reason you want me to find out, right? You suspect your family might be involved. Or your staff."

He nodded, and he looked wretched.

"I’ll try to get in there tomorrow to talk to Marge. I’ll say you wanted me to drop by."

"Yeah, I make calls from my cell phone sometimes, ask people to come in," he said. "Marge would believe it."

Amelia said, "What can I do?"

"Well, can you be with her?" Greg said. "Sookie can do things you can’t, and vice versa. Maybe between the two of you …"

"Okay," Amelia said, giving Greg the benefit of her broad and dazzling smile. Her dad must have paid dearly for the perfect white smile of Amelia Broadway, witch and waitress.

Bob the cat padded in just at that moment, as if belatedly realizing we had a guest. Bob jumped on the chair right beside Greg and examined him with care.

Greg looked down at Bob just as intently. "Have you been doing something you shouldn’t, Amelia?"

"There’s nothing strange about Bob," Amelia said, which was not true. She scooped up the black-and-white cat in her arms and nuzzled his soft fur. "He’s just a big ole cat. Aren’t you, Bob?" She was relieved when Greg dropped the subject. He got up to leave.

"I’ll be grateful for anything you can do to help me," he said. With an abrupt switch to his professional persona, he said, "Here, have an extra lucky rabbit’s foot," and reached in his pocket to hand me a lump of fake fur.

"Thanks," I said, and decided to put it in my bedroom. I could use some luck in that direction.

After Greg left, I scrambled into my work clothes (black pants and white boatneck T-shirt with MERLOTTE’S embroidered over the left breast), brushed my long blond hair and secured it in a ponytail, and left for the bar, wearing Teva sandals to show off my beautiful toenails. Amelia, who wasn’t scheduled to work that night, said she might go have a good look around the insurance agency.

"Be careful," I said. "If someone really is prowling around there, you don’t want to run into a bad situation."

"I’ll zap ’em with my wonderful witch powers," she said, only half-joking. Amelia had a fine opinion of her own abilities, which led to mistakes like Bob. He had actually been a thin young witch, handsome in a nerdy way. While spending the night with Amelia, Bob had been the victim of one of her less successful attempts at major magic. "Besides, who’d want to break into an insurance agency?" she said quickly, having read the doubt on my face. "This whole thing is ridiculous. I do want to check out Greg’s magic, though, and see if it’s been tampered with."

"You can do that?"

"Hey, standard stuff."

To my relief, the bar was quiet that night. It was Wednesday, which is never a very big day at supper time, since lots of Bon Temps citizens go to church on Wednesday night. Sam Merlotte, my boss, was busy counting cases of beer in the storeroom when I got there; that was how light the crowd was. The waitresses on duty were mixing their own drinks.

I stowed my purse in the drawer in Sam’s desk that he keeps empty for them, then went out front to take over my tables. The woman I was relieving, a Katrina evacuee I hardly knew, gave me a wave and departed.

After an hour, Greg Aubert came in with his family as he’d promised. You seated yourself at Merlotte’s, and I surreptitiously nodded to a table in my section. Dad, Mom, and two teenagers, the nuclear family. Greg’s wife, Christy, had medium-light hair like Greg, and like Greg she wore glasses. She had a comfortable middle-aged body, and she’d never seemed exceptional in any way. Little Greg (and that’s what they called him) was about three inches taller than his father, about thirty pounds heavier, and about ten IQ points smarter. That is, book smart. Like most nineteen-year-olds, he was pretty dumb about the world. Lindsay, the daughter, had lightened her hair five shades and squeezed herself into an outfit at least a size too small, and could hardly wait to get away from her folks so she could meet the Forbidden Boyfriend.