All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #7)(25)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Johan paid absolutely no attention to this accurate assessment but turned the page of his book.

"Thanks, dear," Mr. Cataliades said. "Miss Stackhouse, bring me up to date on your life."

I moved to sit opposite the trio. "Not much to tell, Mr. Cataliades. I got the check, as I wrote you. Thanks for tying up all the loose ends on Hadley’s estate, and if you’d reconsider and send me a bill, I’d be glad to pay it." Not exactly glad, but relieved of an obligation.

"No, child. It was the least I could do. The queen was happy to express her thanks in that way, even though the evening hardly turned out like she’d planned."

"Of course, none of us imagined it would end that way." I thought of Wybert’s head flying through the air surrounded by a mist of blood, and I shuddered.

"You are the witness," Johan said unexpectedly. He slipped a bookmark into his book and closed it. His pale eyes, magnified behind his glasses, were fixed on me. From being dog poop on his shoe, I had been transformed into something quite interesting and remarkable.

"Yeah. I’m the witness."

"Then we must talk, now."

"I’m a little surprised, if you’re representing the queen at this very important trial, that you haven’t gotten around to talking to me before," I said in as mild a voice as I could manage.

"The queen had trouble contacting me, and I had to finish with my previous client," Johan said. His unlined face didn’t exactly change expression, but it did look a bit tenser.

"Johan was in jail," Diantha said very clearly and distinctly.

"Oh, my goodness," I said, truly startled.

Johan said, "Of course, the charges were completely unfounded."

"Of course, Johan," Mr. Cataliades said with absolutely no inflection in his voice.

"Ooo," I said. "What were those charges that were so false?"

Johan looked at me again, this time with less arrogance. "I was accused of striking a prostitute in Mexico."

I didn’t know much about law enforcement in Mexico, but it did seem absolutely incredible to me that an American could get arrested in Mexico for hitting a prostitute, if that was the only charge. Unless he had a lot of enemies.

"Did you happen to have something in your hand when you struck her?" I asked with a bright smile.

"I believe Johan had a knife in his hand," Mr. Cataliades said gravely.

I know my smile vanished right about then. "You were in jail in Mexico for knifing a woman," I said. Who was dog poop now?

"A prostitute," he corrected. "That was the charge, but of course, I was completely innocent."

"Of course," I said.

"Mine is not the case on the table right now, Miss Stackhouse. My job is to defend the queen against the very serious charges brought against her, and you are an important witness."

"I’m the only witness."

"Of course – to the actual death."

"There were several actual deaths."

"The only death that matters at this summit is the death of Peter Threadgill."

I sighed at the image of Wybert’s head, and then I said, "Yeah, I was there."

Johan may have been lower than pond scum, but he knew his stuff. We went through a long question and answer session that left the lawyer knowing more about what had happened than I did, and I’d been there. Mr. Cataliades listened with great interest, and now and then threw in a clarification or explained the layout of the queen’s monastery to the lawyer.

Diantha listened for a while, sat on the floor and played jacks for half an hour, then reclined her seat and went to sleep.

The Anubis Airline attendant came through and offered drinks and snacks from time to time on the three-hour flight north, and after I’d finished my session with the trial lawyer, I got up to use the bathroom. That was an experience; I’d never been in an airplane bathroom before. Instead of resuming my seat, I walked down the plane, taking a look at each coffin. There was a luggage tag on each one, attached to the handles. With us in the plane today were Eric, Bill, the queen, Andre, and Sigebert. I also found the coffin of Gervaise, who’d been hosting the queen, and Cleo Babbitt, who was the sheriff of Area Three. The Area Two sheriff, Arla Yvonne, had been left in charge of the state while the queen was gone.

The queen’s coffin was inlaid with mother-of-pearl designs, but the others were quite plain. They were all of polished wood: no modern metal for these vamps. I ran my hand over Eric’s, having creepy mental pictures of him lying inside, quite lifeless.

"Gervaise’s woman drove ahead by night with Rasul to make sure all the queen’s preparations were in place," Mr. Cataliades’s voice said from my right shoulder. I jumped and shrieked, which tickled the queen’s civil lawyer pink. He chuckled and chuckled.

"Smooth move," I said, and my voice was sour as a squeezed lemon.

"You were wondering where the fifth sheriff was."

"Yes, but you were maybe a thought or two behind."

"I’m not telepathic like you, my dear. I was just following your facial expressions and body language. You counted the coffins and began reading the luggage tags."

"So the queen is not only the queen, but the sheriff of her own area."

"Yes; it eliminates confusion. Not all the rulers follow that pattern, but the queen found it irksome to constantly consult another vampire when she wanted to do something."

"Sounds like the queen." I glanced forward at our companions. Diantha and Johan were occupied: Diantha with sleep, Johan with his book. I wondered if it was a dissection book, with diagrams – or perhaps an account of the crimes of Jack the Ripper, with the crime scene photographs. That seemed about Johan’s speed. "How come the queen has a lawyer like him?" I asked in as low a voice as I could manage. "He seems really…shoddy."

"Johan Glassport is a great lawyer, and one who will take cases other lawyers won’t," said Mr. Cataliades. "And he is also a murderer. But then, we all are, are we not?" His beady dark eyes looked directly into mine.

I returned the look for a long moment. "In defense of my own life or the life of someone I loved, I would kill an attacker," I said, thinking before every word left my mouth.

"What a diplomatic way to put it, Miss Stackhouse. I can’t say the same for myself. Some things I have killed, I tore apart for the sheer joy of it."

Oh, ick. More than I wanted to know.

"Diantha loves to hunt deer, and she has killed people in my defense. And she and her sister even brought down a rogue vampire or two."