Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse #9)(16)
Author: Charlaine Harris

The very fact of the existence of wereanimals frightened some people. "I’m scared I’ll shoot my neighbor by accident if I see him trotting down the road," said a farmer in Kansas. "What if he gets after my chickens?"

Various churches were thrashing out their policy on weres. "We don’t know what to think," a Vatican official confessed. "They’re alive, they’re among us, they must have souls. Even some priests are wereanimals." The fundamentalists were equally stymied. "We were worried about Adam and Steve," a Baptist minister said. "Should we have been more worried about Rover and Fluffy?"

While my head had been in the sand, all hell had broken loose.

Suddenly it was easier to see how my werepanther sister-in-law had ended up on a cross at a bar owned by a shifter.

Chapter 6

The moment the nails came out of her hands and feet, Crystal’s body reverted to looking completely human. I watched from behind the crime scene tape. This process drew the horrified attention of everyone on the site. Even Alcee Beck flinched back. I’d been waiting for hours by then; I’d read all the newspapers twice, found a paperback in the glove compartment and gotten about a third of the way through it, and had a limp conversation with Tanya about Sam’s mother. After we’d rehashed that news, she mostly talked about Calvin. I gathered that she had moved in with him. She’d gotten a part-time job at Norcross in the main office, doing something clerical. She loved the regular hours. "And I don’t have to stand up all day," she said.

"Sounds good," I said politely, though I’d hate that kind of job. Working with the same people every day? I’d get to know them all too well. I wouldn’t be able to stay out of their thoughts, and I’d reach the point of wanting to get away from them because I knew too much about them. At the bar, there were always different people coming in to keep me distracted.

"How’d the Great Reveal go for you?" I asked.

"I told ’em at Norcross the next day," she said. "When they found out I was a werefox, they thought that was funny." She looked disgusted. "Why do the big animals get all the press? Calvin got huge respect out in the plant from his crew. I get jokes about bushy tails."

"Not fair," I agreed, trying not to smile.

"Calvin is completely wiped out about Crystal," Tanya said abruptly. "She was his favorite niece. He felt awful bad for her when it turned out she was such a poor shifter. And about the babies." Crystal, the product of a lot of inbreeding, had taken forever to change into her panther form and had had a hard time reversing the process when she wanted to become a human again. She’d miscarried several times, too. The only reason she’d been allowed to marry Jason was that it had become obvious she would probably never carry a pureblood baby to term.

"Could be this baby was lost before the murder, or she aborted during the murder," I said. "Maybe the – whoever did this – didn’t know."

"She was showing, but not a whole lot," Tanya said, nodding. "She was real picky about her food, ’cause she was determined to keep her figure." She shook her head, her face bitter. "But really, Sookie, does it really make any difference if the killer knew or not? The end is the same. The baby is dead, and so is Crystal, and she died afraid and alone."

Tanya was absolutely right.

"Do you think Calvin can track whoever did this from the smell?" I asked.

Tanya looked uneasy. "There were lots of scents," she said. "I don’t know how he can tell which one’s the scent. And look, they’re all touching her. Some of ’em are wearing rubber gloves, but those have an odor, you know. See, there’s Mitch Norris helping take her down, and he’s one of us. So how will Calvin know?"

"Besides, it might be one of them," I said, nodding toward the group gathered around the dead woman. Tanya looked at me sharply.

"You mean law enforcement might be in on it?" she said. "Do you know something?"

"No," I said, sorry I’d opened my big mouth. "It’s just … we don’t know anything for sure. I guess I was thinking about Dove Beck."

"He’s the one she was in bed with that day?"

I nodded. "That big guy, there – the black guy in the suit? That’s his cousin Alcee."

"Think he might have had something to do with it?"

"Not really," I said. "I was just … speculating."

"I’ll bet Calvin’s thought of that, too," she said. "Calvin’s very sharp."

I nodded. There was nothing flashy about Calvin, and he hadn’t managed to go to college (I hadn’t either), but there was nothing wrong with his brain.

Bud beckoned to Calvin then, and he got out of his truck and went over to the body, which had been laid on a gurney spread with an open body bag. Calvin approached the body carefully, his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t touch Crystal.

We all watched, some with loathing and distaste, some with indifference or interest, until he’d finished.

He straightened, turned, and walked back in the direction of his truck. Tanya got out of my car to meet him. She put her arms around him and looked up at him. He shook his head. I’d lowered my window so I could hear. "I couldn’t make out much on the rest of her," he said. "Too many other smells. She just smelled like a dead panther."

"Let’s go home, Calvin," Tanya said.

"Okay." They each raised a hand to me to let me know they were leaving, and then I was by myself in the front parking lot, still waiting. Bud asked me to open the employee entrance to the bar. I handed him the keys. He returned after a few minutes to tell me that the door had been securely locked and that there was no sign anyone had been inside the bar since it had closed. He handed the keys to me.

"So we can open up?" I asked. A few police vehicles had left, the body was gone, and it seemed to me that the whole process was winding down. I was willing to wait there if I could get into the building soon.

But after Bud told me it might be two or three more hours, I decided I’d go home. I’d spoken to every employee I could reach, and any customers could clearly see from the tape put across the parking lot that the bar was closed. I was wasting my time. My FBI agents, who’d spent hours with their cell phones clamped to their ears, seemed now to be more concerned about this crime than about me, which was great. Maybe they’d forget all about me.

Since no one seemed to be watching me or to care what I was doing, I started my car up and left. I didn’t have the heart to run any errands. I went straight back to the house.

Amelia had long ago left for work at the insurance agency, but Octavia was home. She had set up the ironing board in her room. She was pressing the hem on a pair of pants she’d just shortened, and she had a pile of her blouses ready to iron. I guess there wasn’t any magic spell to get the wrinkles out. I offered to drive her into town, but she said her trip with Amelia the day before had taken care of all her needs. She invited me to sit on the wooden chair by the bed while she worked. "Ironing goes faster when you have someone to talk to," she said, and she sounded so lonely I felt guilty.