Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #3)(5)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I glanced at the only female customer in the bar, trying to keep the distaste off my face. Every drinking establishment has its share of alcoholic customers, people who open and close the place. Jane Bodehouse was one of ours. Normally, Jane drank by herself at home, but every two weeks or so she’d take it into her head to come in and pick up a man. The pickup process was getting more and more iffy, since not only was Jane in her fifties, but lack of regular sleep and proper nutrition had been taking a toll for the past ten years.

This particular night, I noticed that when Jane had applied her makeup, she had missed the actual perimeters of her eyebrows and lips. The result was pretty unsettling. We’d have to call her son to come get her. I could tell at a glance she couldn’t drive.

I nodded to Charlsie, and waved at Arlene, the other waitress, who was sitting at a table with her latest flame, Buck Foley. Things were really dead if Arlene was off her feet. Arlene waved back, her red curls bouncing.

"How’re the kids?" I called, beginning to put away some of the glasses Charlsie had gotten out of the dishwasher. I felt like I was acting real normal until I noticed that my hands were shaking violently.

"Doing great. Coby made the All-A honor roll and Lisa won the spelling bee," she said with a broad smile. To anyone who believed that a four-times married woman couldn’t be good mother, I would point at Arlene. I gave Buck a quick smile, too, in Arlene’s honor. Buck is about the average kind of guy Arlene dates, which is not good enough for her.

"That’s great! They’re smart kids, like their mama," I said.

"Hey, did that guy find you?"

"What guy?" Though I had a feeling I already knew.

"That guy in the motorcycle gear. He asked me was I the waitress dating Bill Compton, since he’d got a delivery for that waitress."

"He didn’t know my name?"

"No, and that’s pretty weird, isn’t it? Oh my God, Sookie, if he didn’t know your name, how could he have come from Bill?"

Possibly Coby’s smarts had come through his daddy, since it had taken Arlene this long to figure that out. I loved Arlene for her nature, not her brain.

"So, what did you tell him?" I asked, beaming at her. It was my nervous smile, not my real one. I don’t always know when I’m wearing it.

"I told him I liked my men warm and breathing," she said, and laughed. Arlene was occasionally completely tactless, too. I reminded myself to reevaluate why she was my good friend. "No, I didn’t really say that. I just told him you would be the blond who came in at nine."

Thanks, Arlene. So my attacker had known who I was because my best friend had identified me; he hadn’t known my name or where I lived, just that I worked at Merlotte’s and dated Bill Compton. That was a little reassuring, but not a lot.

Three hours dragged by. Sam came out, told me in a whisper that he’d given Bubba a magazine to look at and a bottle of Life Support to sip on, and began to poke around behind the bar. "How come that guy was driving a car instead of a motorcycle?" Sam muttered in a low voice. "How come his car’s got a Mississippi license plate?" He hushed when Kevin came up to check that we were going to call Jane’s son, Marvin. Sam phoned while Kevin stood there so he could relay the son’s promise to be at Merlotte’s in twenty minutes. Kevin pushed off after that, his notebook tucked under his arm. I wondered if Kevin was turning into a poet, or writing his resume.

The four men who’d been trying to ignore Jane while sipping their pitcher at the speed of a turtle finished their beer and left, each dropping a dollar on the table by way of tip. Big spenders. I’d never get my driveway regraveled with customers like these.

With only half an hour to wait, Arlene did her closing chores and asked if she could go on and leave with Buck. Her kids were still with her mom, so she and Buck might have the trailer to themselves for a little while.

"Bill coming home soon?" she asked me as she pulled on her coat. Buck was talking football with Sam.

I shrugged. He’d called me three nights before, telling me he’d gotten to "Seattle" safely and was meeting with – whomever he was supposed to meet with. The Caller ID had read "Unavailable." I felt like that said quite a lot about the whole situation. I felt like that was a bad sign.

"You … missing him?" Her voice was sly.

"What do you think?" I asked, with a little smile at the corners of my mouth. "You go on home, have a good time."

"Buck is very good at good times," she said, almost leering.

"Lucky you."

So Jane Bodehouse was the only customer in Merlotte’s when Pam arrived. Jane hardly counted; she was so out of it.

Pam is a vampire, and she is co-owner of Fangtasia, a tourist bar in Shreveport. She’s Eric’s second in command. Pam is blond, probably two hundred-plus years old, and actually has a sense of humor – not a vampire trademark. If a vampire can be your friend, she was as close as I’d gotten.

She sat on a bar stool and faced me over the shining expanse of wood.

This was ominous. I had never seen Pam anywhere but Fangtasia. "What’s up?" I said by way of greeting. I smiled at her, but I was tense all over.

"Where’s Bubba?" she asked, in her precise voice. She looked over my shoulder. "Eric’s going to be angry if Bubba didn’t make it here." For the first time, I noticed that Pam had a faint accent, but I couldn’t pin it down. Maybe just the inflections of antique English.

"Bubba’s in the back, in Sam’s office," I said, focusing on her face. I wished the ax would go on and fall. Sam came to stand beside me, and I introduced them. Pam gave him a more significant greeting than she would have given a plain human (whom she might not have acknowledged at all), since Sam was a shape-shifter. And I expected to see a flicker of interest, since Pam is omnivorous in matters of sex, and Sam is an attractive supernatural being. Though vampires aren’t well-known for facial expressions, I decided that Pam’s was definitely unhappy.

"What’s the deal?" I asked, after a moment of silence.

Pam met my gaze. We’re both blue-eyed blonds, but that’s like saying two animals are both dogs. That’s as far as any resemblance went. Pam’s hair was straight and pale, and her eyes were very dark. Now they were full of trouble. She looked at Sam, her stare significant. Without a word, he went over to help Jane’s son, a worn-looking man in his thirties, shift Jane to the car.

"Bill’s missing," Pam said, shooting from the conversational hip.

"No, he’s not. He’s in Seattle," I said. Willfully obtuse. I had learned that word from my Word-A-Day calendar only that morning, and here I was getting to use it.