Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse #13)(52)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Barry said, "I visited Brock and Chessie, and I talked to the kids."

"How’d you get in?" Amelia asked. "I know you called ’em before you went."

"I said I’d known Arlene and I wanted to say how sorry I was. I didn’t lie to them after that." He looked defensive. "But I did tell them I was a friend of Sookie’s, and that I didn’t think she had anything to do with Arlene’s death."

"Did they believe that?" I said.

"They did," he said, with an air of surprise. "They don’t believe you killed Arlene, strictly from a practical point of view. They said you’re smaller than Arlene and they didn’t think you could have either gripped her neck hard enough or gotten her into the Dumpster. And the only person they could think of who would help you is Sam, and he wouldn’t have put the body behind his own bar."

"I hope a lot of people have figured that out," I said.

"I said Arlene hadn’t called me when she got out of prison. They told me that they hadn’t had any warning, either, which was what I wanted to know. She’d just shown up on their doorstep three days before her death."

"What did they observe about her demeanor before her death?" Mr. Cataliades said. "Was she frightened? Secretive?"

"They thought Arlene looked kind of nervous when she came by to see the kids. She was excited to see them, but she was scared about something. She told Chessie she had to meet some people and she wasn’t supposed to talk about it, that someone was going to help her pay her legal bills so she could get back on her feet and take care of her kids."

"That would have interested her, sure," I said. "Maybe applying for a job at Merlotte’s wasn’t her idea. Maybe these mysterious men put her up to it. Maybe she did know how unlikely it was that she’d be hired back."

"The Johnsons don’t know anything more specific than that? They didn’t see the people she was going to talk to?" Amelia was impatient. This didn’t seem like much information to her.

"It confirms what I heard from Jane Bodehouse," I said. "Jane saw Arlene meeting with two men in back of Tray’s old place the night before we found her body."

A shadow crossed Amelia’s face at the mention of Tray Dawson. They’d been close, and she’d hoped they’d get closer, but Tray had died.

"Why there?" Bob said. "It would have been a lot easier to meet at an isolated place rather than out back of someone’s house, especially someone who would definitely ask questions."

"That house is empty, and the garage next to it, too," I told him. "And I don’t know if Arlene had a vehicle or not. Her old car was parked at the Johnsons’ house, but it may or may not have been running. Plus, as the crow flies, Tray’s place is not far from Merlotte’s, and that’s where they were going to take her. They didn’t want her to have time to figure out what was going to happen."

There was a long pause while my friends worked this through.

"Possible," Bob said, and everyone nodded.

"How are Coby and Lisa?" I asked Barry.

"Stunned," Barry said shortly. "Confused." From his head, I could see the images of the kids’ bewildered faces. I felt horrible every time I thought about those kids.

"Did their mom tell them anything?" Amelia asked quietly.

"Arlene told them she was going to take them away to live with her in a cute little house – that they’d be able to get nice food and clothes without her having to work such long hours. She told them she wanted to be with them all the time."

"How was she going to do that?" Amelia said. "Did she tell them?"

Barry shook his head. He was feeling a twinge of self-disgust, and I didn’t blame him. Somehow it seemed ignoble to read the minds of children when they’d suffered such a string of misfortunes. But it wasn’t like Barry had been giving them the third degree, I told myself.

"The bottom line is, Arlene planned on doing something for these two men, something that would pay off big," Barry concluded.

"When is your touch psychic coming?" Mr. Cataliades asked Bob.

"She’s getting here tomorrow morning after she finishes feeding her animals or something." Bob reached out for another piece of country-fried steak. He narrowly missed getting stabbed in the hand by Mr. Cataliades, who was after the same piece.

"I got your scarf, Sookie," said Diantha, who was eating very slowly. Her voice and demeanor were pale shadows of her normal hypervitality. She was even speaking slowly enough to be understandable.

Silence fell around the table as we all regarded her with awe. Mr. Cataliades was looking at his niece fondly. "I knew she could do it," he told us, and I wondered if he’d actually had a foreseeing or if he just had a lot of faith in Diantha.

"How?" Amelia asked. (Amelia never hesitated when it came to asking a direct question.)

Diantha said, "I went in the police station after I saw the big woman cop."

Everyone else looked at her blankly.

"She turned herself into Kenya Jones," I explained. "Kenya’s a patrolwoman who’s been trained to do crime-scene processing."

"We waited at the police station a long time this morning, Sookie," Mr. Cataliades explained. "I had to interview Detective Bellefleur personally, and Detective Beck, too, since I am now co-counsel on your case, thanks to Ms. Osiecki. During our long, long wait we had time to find out all kinds of interesting information. Like where the evidence locker is and who can check out items from it. Diantha is so quick and devious!"

Diantha smiled faintly.

"How’d you manage it?" Amelia asked. She looked admiring.

"I had a scarf in my pocket in a plastic bag. It was pretty close to Sookie’s description. We found it at Tara’s Togs. I turned myself into Kenya. I went to the locker and storage area. I told the policeman there I needed to see the scarf. The old guy, he brought it to me in a plastic bag. I looked at it, and when he went to the bathroom, I swapped it for the scarf I’d brought. I handed it to him when he came back. I walked out." She reached for her glass of tea in a weary way.

"Thank you, Diantha," I said. I was both happy she’d done such a ballsy thing and sorry she’d done something illegal. My law-abiding half was kind of appalled that we were screwing around with real evidence in a real murder. But my self-preserving half was relieved that we might find out something, now that we had the real scarf . . . if the touch psychic lived up to her billing.

Diantha perked up after receiving a good helping of praise from all of us. Though she was still moving and speaking slowly, after she ate everything on the table that wasn’t on someone’s plate she seemed to have taken a big step toward restoring her strength. Obviously, the transformation she’d accomplished had burned up a tremendous amount of energy.