Sookie 06 Definitely Dead (7 page)

“My brother’s fiancee,” I said, trying to put a good face on it. “Crystal. She’s a panther.”

Amanda looked almost respectful. Weres often have only contempt for other shape-shifters, but something as formidable as a panther would get their attention. “I heard there was a cluster of panthers out here somewhere. Never met one before.”

“I have to get to work, but my brother’s going to lead you over to his place.”

“So, you’re not really close to your brother’s fiancee?”

I was taken aback at the implication that I was less than concerned about Crystal’s welfare. Maybe I should have hurried over to her bedside and left Jason here to guide the doctor? I suddenly saw my enjoyment of my moments of peace as a callous disregard for Crystal. But now was no time to wallow in guilt.

“Truthfully,” I said, “no, I’m not that close to her. But Jason didn’t seem to think there was anything I could do for her, and my presence wouldn’t exactly be soothing since she’s not any fonder of me than I am of her.”

Amanda shrugged. “Okay, where is he?”

Jason came around the corner of the house just then, to my relief. “Oh, great,” he said. “You’re the doctor?”

“No,” Amanda said. “The doctor’s in the car. I’m the driver today.”

“I’ll lead you over there. I been on the phone with Crystal, and she’s not getting any better.”

I felt another wave of remorse. “Call me at work, Jason, and let me know how she’s doing, okay? I can come over after work and spend the night, if you need me.”

“Thanks, Sis.” He gave me a quick hug and then looked awkward. “Uh, I’m glad I didn’t keep it a secret like Crystal wanted me to. She didn’t think you’d help her.”

“I’d like to think I was at least a good enough person to help someone who needed it, no matter if we were close or not.” Surely Crystal hadn’t imagined that I’d be indifferent, or even pleased, that she was ailing?

Dismayed, I watched the two very different vehicles start down the driveway on their way back to Hummingbird Road. I locked up and got in my own car in no very happy mood.

Continuing the theme of an eventful day, when I walked through the back door of Merlotte’s that afternoon, Sam called to me from his office.

I went in to see what he wanted, knowing ahead of time that a few other people were waiting in there. To my dismay, I found that Father Riordan had ambushed me.

There were four people in Sam’s office, besides my boss. Sam was unhappy, but trying to keep a good face on. A little to my surprise, Father Riordan wasn’t happy about the people that had accompanied him, either. I suspected I knew who they were. Crap. Not only did Father Riordan have the Pelts in tow, but a young woman of about seventeen, who must be Debbie’s sister, Sandra.

The three new people looked at me intently. The older Pelts were tall and slim. He wore glasses and was balding, with ears that stuck out of his head like jug handles. She was attractive, if a bit overly made up. She was wearing a Donna Karan pants set and carrying a bag with a famous logo on it. Heels, too. Sandra Pelt was more casual, her jeans and T-shirt fitting her narrow figure very tightly.

I hardly heard Father Riordan formally introduce the Pelts, I was so overwhelmed with irritation that they were intruding themselves into my life to such an extent. I’d told Father Riordan I didn’t want to meet them, yet here they were. The older Pelts ate me up with their avid eyes.Savage , Maria-Star had termed them.Desperate was the word that came to my mind.

Sandra was a different kettle of fish altogether: since she was the second child, she wasn’t-couldn’t be-a shifter like her folks, but she wasn’t altogether a regular human, either. But something caught at my brain, made me pause. Sandra Peltwas a shifter of some kind. I’d heard the Pelts described as much more involved with their second daughter than they’d been with Debbie. Now, getting bits of information from them, I saw why that might be. Sandra Pelt might be underage, but she was formidable. She was a full Were.

But that couldn’t be, unless …

Okay. Debbie Pelt, werefox, had been adopted. I’d learned that the Weres were prone to fertility problems, and I assumed that the Pelts had given up on having their own little Were, and had adopted a baby that was at least some kind of shape-shifter, if not their own kind. Even a full-blooded fox must have seemed preferable to a plain human. Then the Pelts had adopted another daughter, a Were.

“Sookie,” Father Riordan said, his Irish voice charming but unhappy, “Barbara and Gordon showed up on my doorstep today. When I told them you’d said all you wanted to say about Debbie’s disappearance, they weren’t content with that. They insisted I bring them here with me.”

My intense anger at the priest receded a bit. But another emotion filled its place. I was anxious enough about the encounter to feel my nervous smile spread across my face. I beamed at the Pelts, caught the backwash of their disapproval.

“I’m sorry for your situation,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re left wondering what happened to Debbie. But I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

A tear ran down Barbara Pelt’s face, and I opened my purse to remove a tissue. I handed it to the woman, who patted her face. “She thought you were stealing Alcide from her,” Barbara said.

You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but in Debbie Pelt’s case, that was just plain impossible. “Mrs. Pelt, I’m going to be frank,” I told her. Just not too frank. “Debbie was engaged to someone else at the time of her disappearance, a man named Clausen, if I remember correctly.” Barbara Pelt nodded, reluctantly. “That engagement left Alcide at perfect liberty to date anyone he liked, and we did spend time together briefly.” No lies there. “We haven’t seen each other in weeks, and he’s dating someone else now. So Debbie really was mistaken in what she thought.”

Sandra Pelt bit her lower lip. She was lean, with clear skin and dark brown hair. She wore little makeup, and her teeth were dazzlingly white and even. Her hoop earrings could provide a perch for a parakeet; they were that big. She had a narrow body and expensive clothes: top of the mall chain.

Her expression was angry. She didn’t like what I was saying, not one little bit. She was an adolescent, and there were strong surges of emotion in the girl. I remembered what my life had been like when I’d been Sandra’s age, and I pitied her.

“Since you knew both of them,” Barbara Pelt said carefully, not acknowledging my words, “you must have known that they had-they have-a strong love-hate relationship, no matter what Debbie did.”

“Oh,that’s true,” I said, and maybe I didn’t sound respectful enough. If there was anyone I’d done a big favor to in killing Debbie Pelt, that person was Alcide Herveaux. Otherwise, he and la Pelt would have been tearing each other up for years, if not the rest of their lives.

Sam turned away when the phone rang, but I glimpsed a smile on his face.

“We just feel that there must be something you know, some tiny little thing, that would help us discover what happened to our daughter. If-if she’s met her end, we want her killer to come to justice.”

I looked at the Pelts for a long moment. I could hear Sam’s voice in the background as he reacted with astonishment to something he was hearing over the telephone.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pelt, Sandra,” I said. “I talked to the police when Debbie vanished. I cooperated with them fully. I talked to your private investigators when they came here, to my place of work, just like you’ve done. I let them come into my home. I answered their questions.” Just not truthfully.

(I know, the whole edifice was a lie, but I was doing the best I could.)

“I am very sorry for your loss and I sympathize with your anxiety to discover what’s happened to Debbie,” I continued, speaking slowly so I could pick my words. I took a deep breath. “But this has got to end. Enough’s enough. I can’t tell you a thing other than what I’ve already told you.”

To my surprise, Sam edged around me and went into the bar, moving fast. He didn’t say a word to anyone in the room. Father Riordan glanced after him, startled. I became even more anxious for the Pelts to leave. Something was up.

“I understand what you’re saying,” Gordon Pelt said stiffly. It was the first time the man had spoken. He didn’t sound happy to be where he was, or to be doing what he was doing. “I realize we haven’t gone about this in the best way, but I’m sure you’ll excuse us when you think about what we’ve been through.”

“Oh, of course,” I said, and if that wasn’t a complete truth, it wasn’t a complete lie, either. I shut my purse and stowed it in the drawer in Sam’s desk where all the servers kept their purses, and I hurried out to the bar.

I felt the upheaval wash over me. Something was wrong; almost every brain in the bar was broadcasting a signal combining excitement with anxiety bordering on panic.

“What’s up?” I asked Sam, sidling behind the bar.

“I just told Holly that the school called. Holly’s little boy is missing.”

I felt the chill start at the base of my spine and work up. “What happened?”

“Danielle’s mom usually picks up Cody from school when she picks up Danielle’s little girl, Ashley.” Danielle Gray and Holly Cleary had been best friends all through high school and their friendship had continued through the failure of both their marriages. They liked to work the same shift. Danielle’s mother, Mary Jane Jasper, had been a life-saver for Danielle, and from time to time her generosity had spilled over to include Holly. Ashley must be about eight, and Danielle’s son, Mark Robert, should now be four. Holly’s only child, Cody, was six. He was in the first grade.

“The school let someone else pick Cody up?” I’d heard that the teachers were on the alert for unauthorized spouses picking up their kids.

“No one knows what happened to the little guy. The teacher on duty, Halleigh Robinson, was standing outside watching the kidsget in their cars. She says Cody suddenly remembered he’d left a picture for his mom on his desk, and he ran back into the school to get it. She doesn’t remember seeing him come out, but she couldn’t find him when she went in to check.”

“So Mrs. Jasper was there waiting for Cody?”

“Yes, she was the only one left, sitting there in her car with her grandchildren.”

“This is very scary. I don’t suppose David knows anything?” David, Holly’s ex, lived in Springhill and had remarried. I registered the departure of the Pelts: one less irritant.

“Apparently not. Holly called him at his job, and he was there and had been all afternoon, no doubt about it. He called his new wife, and she had just gotten back from picking up her own kids at the Springhill school. The local police went by their house and searched, just to be sure. Now David’s on his way here.”

Holly was sitting at one of the tables, and though her face was dry, her eyes had the look of someone who’d seen inside Hell. Danielle was crouched on the floor beside her, holding her hand and speaking to Holly urgently and quietly. Alcee Beck, one of the local detectives, was sitting at the same table. A pad and pen were in front of him, and he was talking on his cell phone.

“They’ve searched the school?”

“Yeah, that’s where Andy is now. And Kevin and Kenya.” Kevin and Kenya were two uniformed patrol officers. “Bud Dearborn is on the phone setting up an Amber Alert.”

I spared a thought for how Halleigh must be feeling right now; she was only twenty-three or so, and this was her first teaching job. She hadn’t done anything wrong, at least that I could tell-but when a kid goes missing, no one escapes blame.

I tried to think how I could help. This was a unique opportunity for my little disability to work for the greater good. I’d kept my mouth shut for years about all kinds of things. People didn’t want to know what I knew. People didn’t want to be around someone who could do what I could do. The way I survived was keeping my mouth shut, because it was easy for the humans around me to forget or disbelieve, when the evidence of my odd talent wasn’t shoved in their face.

Would you want to be around a woman who knew you were cheating on your spouse, and with whom? If you were a guy, would you want to be around a woman who knew that you secretly wanted to wear lacy underwear? Would you want to hang with a gal who knew your most secret judgments on other people and all your hidden flaws?

No, I thought not.

But if a child was involved, how could I hold back?

I looked at Sam, and he looked back at me sadly. “It’s hard, isn’t it,cher ?” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I have to. But I have to do it now,” I said.

He nodded. “Go on down to the school,” he said, and I left.

6

IDIDN’T KNOWhow I was going to accomplish this. I didn’t know who would acknowledge that I could help. There was a crowd at the elementary school, of course. A group of about thirty adults was standing on the grass on the street side of the sidewalk in front of the school, and Bud Dearborn, the sheriff, was talking to Andy on the front lawn. Betty Ford Elementary was the same school I’d attended. The building had been fairly new then, a straightforward single-level brick building with a main hall containing the offices, the kindergarten, the first-grade classrooms, and the cafeteria. There a wing to the right for the second grade, a wing to the left for the third. A small recreational building was behind the school in the large playground, attainable by a covered walkway. It was used for the children’s bad-weather exercise sessions.

Of course there were flagpoles in front of the school, one for the American flag and one for the Louisiana flag. I loved driving by when they were snapping in the breeze on a day like today. I loved thinking of all the little children inside, busy being children. But the flags had been taken down for the day, and only the tied-down ropes moved in the stiff wind. The green lawn of the school was dotted with the occasional candy wrapper or crumpled notebook paper. The school custodian, Madelyn Pepper (always called “Miss Maddy”), was sitting on a plastic chair right outside the main school doors, her rolling cart beside her. Miss Maddy had been the custodian for many years. Miss Maddy was a very slow woman, mentally, but she was a hard worker, and absolutely reliable. She looked much the same as she had when I had gone to school there: tall, husky, and white, with a long fall of dyed platinum hair. She was smoking a cigarette. The principal, Mrs. Garfield, had had a running battle with Miss Maddy for years about her habit, a battle that Miss Maddy had always won. She smoked outside, but she smoked. Today, Mrs. Garfield was completely indifferent to Miss Maddy’s bad habit. Mrs. Garfield, the wife of a Methodist-Episcopal minister, was dressed in a mustard-color business suit, plain hose, and black pumps. She was just as strained as Miss Maddy, and a lot less guarded about showing it.

I worked my way through the front of the little crowd, not certain how to go about doing what I had to do.

Andy saw me first, and touched Bud Dearborn on the shoulder. Bud had a cell phone to his ear. Bud turned to look at me. I nodded at them. Sheriff Dearborn was not my friend. He’d been a friend of my father’s, but he’d never had the time of day for me. To the sheriff, people fell into two categories: people who broke the law and could be arrested, and people who did not break the law and could not be. And most of those were people who just hadn’t been caught breaking the law yet; that was what Bud believed. I fell somewhere in between. He felt sure I was guilty of something, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

Andy didn’t like me much, either, but he was a believer. He jerked his head to the left, almost imperceptibly. I couldn’t see Bud Dearborn’s face clearly, but his shoulders stiffened in anger, and he leaned forward a little, his whole body posture saying that he was furious with his detective.

I worked my way out of the knot of anxious and curious citizens and slipped around the third-grade wing to the back of the school. The playground, about the size of half a football field, was fenced in, and the gate was ordinarily locked with a chain secured by a padlock. It had been opened, presumably for the convenience of the searchers. I saw Kevin Pryor, a thin young patrol officer who always won the 4K race at the Azalea Festival, bending over to peer into a culvert right across the street. The grass in the ditch was high, and his dark uniform pants were dusted with yellow. His partner, Kenya, who was as buxom as Kevin was thin, was across the street on the other side of the block, and I watched her head move from side to side as she scanned the surrounding yards.

The school took up a whole block in the middle of a residential area. All the houses around were modest homes on modest lots, the kind of neighborhood where there were basketball goals and bicycles, barking dogs, and driveways brightened with sidewalk chalk.

Today every surface was dusted in a light yellow powder; it was the very beginning of pollen time. If you rinsed off your car in town in your driveway, there would be a ring of yellow around the storm drain. Cats’ bellies were tinged yellow, and tall dogs had yellow paws. Every other person you talked to had red eyes and carried a cache of tissues.

I noticed several thrown down around the playground. There were patches of new green grass and patches of hard-packed dirt, in areas where the children congregated the most. A big map of the United States had been painted on the concrete apron right outside the school doors. The name of each state was painted carefully and clearly. Louisiana was the only state colored bright red, and a pelican filled up its outline. The wordLouisiana was too long to compete with the pelican, and it had been painted on the pavement right where the Gulf of Mexico would be.

Andy emerged from the rear door, his face set and hard. He looked ten years older.

“How’s Halleigh?” I asked.

“She’s in the school crying her eyes out,” he said. “We have to find this boy.”

“What did Bud say?” I asked. I stepped inside the gate.

“Don’t ask,” he said. “If there’s anything you can do for us, we need all the help we can get.”

“You’re going out on a limb.”

“So are you.”

“Where are the people that were in the school when he ran back in?”

“They’re all in here, except for the principal and the custodian.”

“I saw them outside.”

“I’ll bring them in. All the teachers are in the cafeteria. It has that little stage at one end. Sit behind the curtain there. See if you can get anything.”

“Okay.” I didn’t have a better idea.

Andy set off for the front of the school to gather up the principal and the custodian.

I stepped into the end of the third-grade corridor. There were bright pictures decorating the walls outside every classroom. I stared at the drawings of rudimentary people having picnics and fishing, and tears prickled my eyes. For the first time, I wished I were psychic instead of telepathic.

Then I could envision what had happened to Cody, instead of having to wait for someone to think about it. I’d never met a real psychic, but I understood that it was a very uncertain talent to have, one that was not specific enough at times, and too specific at others. My little quirk was much more reliable, and I made myself believe I could help this child.

As I made my way to the cafeteria, the smell of the school evoked a rush of memories. Most of them were painful; some were pleasant. When I’d been this small, I’d had no control over my telepathy and no idea what was wrong with me. My parents had put me through the mental health mill to try to find out, which had further set me off from my peers. But most of my teachers had been kind. They’d understood that I was doing my best to learn-that somehow I was constantly distracted, but it wasn’t through my own choice. Inhaling the scent of chalk, cleaner, paper, and books brought it all back.

I remembered all the corridors and doorways as if I’d just left. The walls were a peach color now, instead of the off-white I remembered, and the carpet was a sort of speckled gray in place of brown linoleum; but the structure of the school was unchanged. Without hesitation, I slipped through a back door to the little stage, which was at one end of the lunchroom. If I remembered correctly, the space was actually called the “multipurpose room.” The serving area could be shut off with folding doors, and the picnic tables that lined the room could be folded and moved aside. Now they were taking up the floor in orderly rows, and the people sitting at them were all adults, with the exception of some teachers’ children who’d been in the classrooms with their mothers when the alarm had been raised.

I found a tiny plastic chair and set it back behind the curtains on stage left. I closed my eyes and began to concentrate. I lost the awareness of my body as I shut out all stimuli and began to let my mind roam free.

It’s my fault, my fault, my fault! Why didn’t I notice he hadn’t come back out? Or did he slip by me? Could he have gotten into a car without my noticing?

Poor Halleigh. She was sitting by herself, and the mound of tissues by her showed how she’d been spending her waiting time. She was completely innocent of anything, so I resumed my probing.

Oh my God, thank you God that it’s not my son that’s missing …

… go home and have some cookies …

Can’t go to the store and pick up some hamburger meat, maybe I can call Ralph and he can go by Sonic … but we ate fast food last night, not good …

His mom’s a barmaid, how many lowlifes does she know? Probably one of them.

It went on and on, a litany of harmless thoughts. The children were thinking about snacks and television, and they were also scared. The adults, for the most part, were very frightened for their own children and worried about the effect of Cody’s disappearance on their own families and their own class.

Andy Bellefleur said, “In just a minute Sheriff Dearborn will be in here, and then we’ll divide you into two groups.”

The teachers relaxed. These were familiar instructions, as they themselves had often given.

“We’ll ask questions of each of you in turn, and then you can go. I know you’re all worried, and we have patrol officers searching the area, but maybe we can get some information that will help us find Cody.”

Mrs. Garfield came in. I could feel her anxiety preceding her like a dark cloud, full of thunder. Miss Maddy was right behind her. I could hear the wheels of her cart, loaded with its lined garbage can and laden with cleaning supplies. All the scents surrounding her were familiar. Of course, she started cleaning right after school. She would have been in one of the classrooms, and she probably hadn’t seen anything. Mrs. Garfield might have been in her office. The principal in my day, Mr. Heffernan, had stood outside with the teacher on duty until all the children were gone, so that parents would have a chance to talk to him if they had questions about their child’s progress … or lack thereof.