Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #3)(35)
"I could tell."
"How--? Oh, yeah." He shook his head. "You seem like the most regular person I ever met, and it's hard to remember you've got all this extra stuff."
No one had ever put it quite like that.
"When you were coming in, did you smell something strange by--" he began, but then the doorbell rang.
Alcide went to answer it while I took off my coat.
He sounded pleased, and I turned to face the door with a smile. The young man coming in didn't seem surprised to see me, and Alcide introduced him as Janice's husband, Dell Phillips. I shook his hand, expecting to be as pleased with him as I was with Janice.
He touched me as briefly as possible, and then he ignored me. "I wondered if you could come by this afternoon and help me set up our outside Christmas lights," Dell said--to Alcide, and Alcide only.
"Where's Tommy?" Alcide asked. He looked disappointed. "You didn't bring him by to see me?" Tommy was Janice's baby.
Dell looked at me, and shook his head. "You've got a woman here, it didn't seem right. He's with my Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
mom."
The comment was so unexpected, all I could do was stand in silence. Dell's attitude had caught Alcide flat footed, too. "Dell," he said, "don't be rude to my friend."
"She's staying in your apartment, that says more than friend," Dell said matter-of-factly. "Sorry, miss, this just isn't right."
"Judge not, that ye be not judged," I told him, hoping I didn't sound as furious as my clenched stomach told me I was. It felt wrong to quote the Bible when you were in a towering rage. I went into the guest bedroom and shut the door.
After I heard Dell Phillips leave, Alcide knocked on the door.
"You want to play Scrabble?" he asked.
I blinked. "Sure."
"When I was shopping for Tommy, I picked up a game."
He'd already put it on the coffee table in front of the couch, but he hadn't been confident enough to unwrap it and set it up.
"I'll pour us a Coke," I said. Not for the first time, I noticed that the apartment was quite cool, though of course it was much warmer than outside. I wished I had brought a light sweater to put on, and I wondered if it would offend Alcide if I asked him to turn the heat up. Then I remembered how warm his skin was, and I figured he was one of those people who runs kind of hot. Or maybe all Weres were like that? I pulled on the sweatshirt I'd worn yesterday, being very careful when I eased it over my hair.
Alcide had folded himself onto the floor on one side of the table, and I settled on the other. It had been a long time since either of us played Scrabble, so we studied the rules for a while before we began the game.
Alcide had graduated from Louisiana Tech. I 'd never been to college, but I read a lot, so we were about even on the extent of our vocabulary. Alcide was the better strategist. I seemed to think a little faster.
I scored big with "quirt," and he stuck his tongue out at me. I laughed, and he said, "Don't read my mind, that would be cheating."
"Of course I wouldn't do any such thing," I said demurely, and he scowled at me.
I lost—but only by twelve points. After a pleasantly quarrelsome rehash of the game, Alcide got up and took our glasses over to the kitchen. He put them down and
began to search through the cabinets, while I stored the game pieces and replaced the lid.
"Where you want me to put this?" I asked.
"Oh, in the closet by the door. There are a couple of shelves in there."
I tucked the box under one arm and went to the closet. The smell I'd noticed earlier seemed to be stronger.
"You know, Alcide," I said, hoping I wasn't being tacky, "there's something that smells almost rotten, right around here."
"I'd noticed it, too. That's why I'm over here looking through the cabinets. Maybe there's a dead mouse?"
As I spoke, I was turning the doorknob.
I discovered the source of the smell.
"Oh, no," I said. "Oh, nononono."
"Don't tell me a rat got in there and died," Alcide said.
"Not a rat," I said. "A werewolf."
The closet had a shelf above a hanging bar, and it was a small closet, intended only for visitors' coats.
Now it was filled by the swarthy man from Club Dead, the man who'd grabbed me by the shoulder. He was really dead. He'd been dead for several hours.
I didn't seem to be able to look away.
Alcide's presence at my back was an unexpected comfort. He stared over my head, his hands gripping my shoulders.
"No blood," I said in a jittery voice.
"His neck." Alcide was at least as shaken as I was.
His head really was resting on his shoulder, while still attached to his body. Ick, ick, ick. I gulped hard.
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"We should call the police," I said, not sounding very positive about the process. I noted the way the body had been stuffed into the closet. The dead man was almost standing up. I figured he'd been shoved in, and then whoever
had done the shoving had forced the door closed. He'd sort of hardened in position.