From Dead to Worse (Sookie Stackhouse #8)(10)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Cope had a good appetite, and he enjoyed the Brie. He sipped the wine, which was an Arkansas label, and nodded politely. Well, at least he didn’t spit it out. I seldom drink, and I’m no kind of wine connoisseur. In fact, I’m not a connoisseur of anything at all. But I enjoyed the wine, sip by sip.

"Amelia, tell me what you’re doing with your time while you’re waiting for your home to be repaired," Cope said, which I thought was a reasonable opening.

I started to tell him that for starters, she wasn’t screwing around with me, but I thought that might be a little too direct. I tried very hard not to read his thoughts, but I swear, with him and his daughter in the same room, it was like listening to a television broadcast.

"I’ve done some filing for one of the local insurance agents. And I’m working part-time at Merlotte’s Bar," Amelia said. "I serve drinks and the occasional chicken basket."

"Is the bar work interesting?" Cope didn’t sound sarcastic, I’ll give him that. But, of course, I was sure he’d had Sam researched, too.

"It’s not bad," she said with a slight smile. That was a lot of restraint for Amelia, so I checked into her brain to see that she was squeezing herself into a conversational girdle. "I get good tips."

Her father nodded. "You, Miss Stackhouse?" Cope asked politely.

He knew everything about me but the shade of fingernail polish I was wearing, and I was sure he’d add that to my file if he could. "I work at Merlotte’s full-time," I said, just as if he didn’t know that. "I’ve been there for years."

"You have family in the area?"

"Oh, yes, we’ve been here forever," I said. "Or as close to forever as Americans get. But our family’s dwindled down. It’s just me and my brother now."

"Older brother? Younger?"

"Older," I said. "Married, real recently."

"So maybe there’ll be other little Stackhouses," he said, trying to sound like he thought that would be a good thing.

I nodded as if the possibility pleased me, too. I didn’t like my brother’s wife much, and I thought it was entirely possible that any kids they had would be pretty rotten. In fact, one was on the way right now, if Crystal didn’t miscarry again. My brother was a werepanther (bitten, not born), and his wife was a born… a pure… werepanther, that is. Being raised in the little werepanther community of Hotshot was not an easy thing, and would be even harder for kids who weren’t pure.

"Dad, can I get you some more wine?" Amelia was out of her chair like a shot, and she sped on her way to the kitchen with the half-empty wineglass. Good, quality alone time with Amelia’s dad.

"Sookie," Cope said, "you’ve been very kind to let my daughter live with you all this time."

"Amelia pays rent," I said. "She buys half the groceries. She pays her way."

"Nonetheless, I wish you’d let me give you something for your trouble."

"What Amelia gives me on rent is enough. After all, she’s paid for some improvements to the property, too."

His face sharpened then, as if he was on the scent of something big. Did he think I’d talked Amelia into putting a pool in the backyard?

"She got a window air conditioner put in her bedroom upstairs," I said. "And she got an extra phone line for the computer. And I think she got a throw rug and some curtains for her room, too."

"She lives upstairs?"

"Yes," I said, surprised he didn’t somehow know already. Perhaps there were a few things his intelligence net hadn’t scooped up. "I live down here, she lives up there, and we share the kitchen and living room, though I think Amelia’s got a TV upstairs, too. Hey, Amelia!" I called.

"Yeah?" Her voice floated down the hall from the kitchen.

"You still got that little TV up there?"

"Yeah, I hooked it up to the cable."

"Just wondered."

I smiled at Cope, indicating the conversational ball was in his court. He was thinking of several things to ask me, and he was thinking of the best way to approach me to get the most information. A name popped to the surface in the whirlpool of his thoughts, and it took everything I had to keep a polite expression.

"The first tenant Amelia had in the house on Chloe – she was your cousin, right?" Cope said.

"Hadley. Yes." I kept my face calm as I nodded. "Did you know her?"

"I know her husband," he said, and smiled.

Chapter 3

I knew Amelia had returned and was standing by the wing-back chair where her father sat, and I knew she was frozen in place. I knew I didn’t breathe for a second.

"I never met him," I said. I felt as if I’d been walking in a jungle and fallen into a concealed pit. I was sure glad I was the only telepath in the house. I hadn’t told anyone, anyone at all, about what I’d found in Hadley’s lockbox when I’d cleaned it out that day at a bank in New Orleans. "They’d been divorced for a while before Hadley died."

"You should take the time to meet him someday. He’s an interesting man," Cope said, as if he wasn’t aware he was dropping a bombshell on me. Of course he was waiting for my reaction. He’d hoped I hadn’t known about the marriage at all, that I’d be taken completely by surprise. "He’s a skilled carpenter. I’d love to track him down and hire him again."

The chair he was sitting on had been upholstered in a cream-colored material with lots of tiny blue flowers on green arching stems embroidered on it. It was still pretty, if faded. I concentrated on the pattern of the chair so I wouldn’t show Copley Carmichael how very angry I was.

"He doesn’t mean anything to me, no matter how interesting he is," I said in a voice so level you could’ve played pool on it. "Their marriage was over and done. As I’m sure you know, Hadley had another partner at the time she died." Was murdered. But the government hadn’t gotten around to taking much notice of vampire deaths unless those deaths were caused by humans. Vampires did most of their own self-policing.

"I’d think you’d want to see the baby, though," Copley said.

Thank God I picked this out of Copley’s head a second or two before he actually spoke the words. Even knowing what he was going to say, I felt his oh-so-casual remark hit me like a blow to the stomach. But I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him see that. "My cousin Hadley was wild. She used drugs and people. She wasn’t the most stable person in the world. She was really pretty, and she had a way about her, so she always had admirers." There, I’d said everything pro and con about my cousin Hadley. And I hadn’t said the word "baby." What baby?