Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse #13)(50)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I’d been worried that people would shy away from me, since I’d been accused of killing Arlene. As I waited tables, I came to understand the shocking truth: People weren’t worried much about Arlene’s death. Her trial had taken her reputation away from her. It wasn’t so much that people loved me; it was that people realized a mom shouldn’t lure her friend to her death, and then get caught, because then her children were left in the lurch. I came to see that despite the fact that I’d dated vampires, I had a good reputation in many respects. I was reliable and cheerful and hardworking, and with the people of Bon Temps that counted an awful lot. I put flowers on my family’s graves every holiday and on the anniversary of their deaths. Plus, through area gossip, it had become known that I was taking an active interest in my cousin Hadley’s little boy, and there was a widespread, pleasant hope that I would marry Hadley’s widower, Remy Savoy, because that would tie things up neatly.

Which would have been great . . . except Remy and I weren’t interested in each other. Until real recently, I’d had Eric, and to the best of my knowledge, Remy was still dating the very cute Erin. I tried to imagine kissing Remy and simply wasn’t inclined to go there.

All of these thoughts kept me engaged and busy both outside and inside, until it was time for me to go. Sam smiled and waved when I took off my apron and handed over my tables to India.

No one at all was at my house when I unlocked the back door. That was strange, since it had been such a beehive that morning. Moved by an impulse, I went into my bedroom and perched on the side of the bed, close to my bedside table. Thanks to my compulsory cleaning during my three days off, neatly located in the top drawer were all the things I might need at a moment’s notice during the night: a flashlight, Kleenex, ChapStick, Tylenol, three condoms Quinn had left when we’d dated, a list of emergency phone numbers, a cell phone charger, an old tin box (full of pins, needles, buttons, and paper clips), some pens, a notepad . . . the usual mixture of handy items.

But the next drawer held memorabilia. There was the bullet I’d sucked out of Eric’s flesh in Dallas. There was a rock that had hit Eric in the head in the living room of Sam’s rental house in town. There were various sets of keys to Eric’s house, Jason’s house, Tara’s house, all neatly labeled. There was a laminated copy of my gran’s obituary and my parents’, and another laminated newspaper story published the year the Lady Falcons had won their division at state, with a few nice lines about my performance. There was an ancient brooch in which Gran had placed a lock of my mom’s hair and a lock of my dad’s. There was the old pattern envelope containing a letter from Gran and the velvet bag that had contained the cluviel dor, and the cluviel dor itself, now dull and divested of all its magic. There was a note Quinn had written me during our dating period. There was the envelope in which Sam had given me a partnership agreement to the bar, though the actual partnership document was in a lockbox at my lawyer’s. There were birthday cards and Christmas cards and a drawing made by Hunter.

It was dumb to keep the rock. It was too heavy for the drawer, anyway, and made it hard to open and close. I put it on top of my night table, planning to set it in the flower bed. I got out the keys to Eric’s house, wrapped them in bubble wrap, and put them in a padded mailer to send to him. I wondered if he’d put the house up for sale, or what? Maybe the next sheriff would move into it. If Felipe de Castro appointed him or her, I realized that my grace period was very short. With any new vampire regime, it would be open season on me . . . or would they just forget about me? That would be almost too good to be true.

A knock at the back door was a welcome diversion. The packmaster himself had come to call, and he seemed more at ease than I’d ever seen him. Alcide Herveaux looked comfortable in his own skin and pleased with the world. He was wearing his usual jeans and boots – a surveyor couldn’t tromp through ditches and woods in flip-flops. His short-sleeved shirt was well worn and tight across his wide shoulders. Alcide was a working man but not an uncomplicated one. His love life, up until now, had been nothing short of a disaster. First, Debbie Pelt, who had been a bitch on wheels until I’d killed her; then the very nice Maria-Star Cooper, who’d been murdered; then Annabelle Bannister, who’d been unfaithful to him. He’d had a thing for me until I’d persuaded him that would be a bad idea for both of us. Now he was seeing a werewolf named Kandace, who was new to the area. She would be up for membership in the pack later this month.

"I hear we need to try to find a trail of someone who stole that scarf," Alcide said.

"I hope you can pick up something," I said. "Wouldn’t be court evidence, but we’d be able to track down him or her."

"You’re a clean woman," he said, looking around the living room. "But I can tell there’ve been lots of people in here lately."

"Yeah," I said. "I got a houseful of company. So the best place to catch a scent would be in my room."

"That’s where we’ll start," he said, and smiled. He had white teeth in a tan face and lovely green eyes, and Alcide’s smile was something else. Too bad he wasn’t for me.

"You want a glass of water or some lemonade?" I said.

"Maybe after I get the job done," he said. He took off his clothes and folded them neatly on the couch. Wow. I struggled to keep my face neutral. Then he changed.

It always looked like it hurt, and the sounds were unpleasant, but Alcide seemed to recover quickly. The handsome wolf in front of me padded around my living room, his sensitive nose recording scent trails before he followed them into my bedroom.

I stayed out of his way. I sat at the little desk in the living room where the computer was plugged in, and I passed the time by deleting a lot of old e-mail. It was something to do while he searched. I banished all the spam and the department store ads before a big wolf head thrust its way into my lap, and there was Alcide, tail wagging.

I patted him automatically. That was what you did when a canine head presented itself. You scratched between its ears and under its chin, you rubbed its belly . . . well, maybe not a wolf’s belly, especially a male wolf’s.

Alcide grinned at me and changed back. He’d become the fastest changer I’d ever seen. I wondered if that ability came with the packmaster job.

"Any luck?" I asked, keeping my eyes modestly focused on my hands while he got dressed.

"At least you didn’t clean the throw rug by your bed," he said. "I can tell you that one person who’s been in your room, I don’t know at all. But your friend Tara’s been there, right by your bed. Your two fae buddies were in there, but then, they lived here."