Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(28)

The contrast was cruel. I felt tired all over again, and remembered the night before in more detail than I wanted to. The world seemed a bad and terrible place, all its denizens suspect, and I the lamb wandering through the valley of death with a bell around my neck. I stomped over to my car and opened the door, sank sideways into the seat. I’d be standing plenty today; I’d sit while I could.

JB followed me. Now that he’d rediscovered me, he could not be detached. I remembered when Gran had had high hopes for some permanent relationship between us, when I’d been in high school. But talking to JB, even reading his mind, was as interesting as a kindergarten primer was to an adult reader. It was one of God’s jokes that such a dumb mind had been put in such an eloquent body.

He knelt before me and took my hand. I found myself hoping that some smart rich lady would come along and marry JB and take care of him and enjoy what he had to offer. She would be getting a bargain.

“Where are you working now?” I asked him, just to distract myself.

“My dad’s warehouse,” he said.

That was the job of last resort, the one JB always returned to when he got fired from other jobs for doing something lamebrained, or for not showing up, or for offending some supervisor mortally. JB’s dad ran an auto parts store.

“How are your folks doing?”

“Oh, fine. Sookie, we should do something together.”

Don’t tempt me, I thought.

Someday my hormones were going to get the better of me and I’d do something I’d regret; and I could do worse than do it with JB. But I would hold out and hope for something better. “Thanks, honey,” I said. “Maybe we will. But I’m kind of upset right now.”

“Are you in love with that vampire?” he asked directly.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Dawn said so.” JB’s face clouded as he remembered Dawn was dead. What Dawn had said, I found on scanning JB’s mind, was “That new vampire is interested in Sookie Stackhouse. I’d be better for him. He needs a woman who can take some rough treatment. Sookie would scream if he touched her.”

It was pointless being mad at a dead person, but briefly I indulged myself by doing just that.

Then the detective was walking toward us, and JB got to his feet and moved away.

The detective took JB’s position, squatting on the ground in front of me. I must look in bad shape.

“Miss Stackhouse?” he asked. He was using that quiet intense voice many professionals adopt in a crisis. “I’m Andy Bellefleur.” The Bellefleurs had been around Bon Temps as long as there’d been a Bon Temps, so I wasn’t amused at a man being “beautiful flower.” In fact, I felt sorry for whoever thought it was amusing as I looked down at the block of muscle that was Detective Bellefleur. This particular family member had graduated before Jason, and I’d been one class behind his sister Portia.

He’d been placing me, too. “Your brother doing okay?” he asked, his voice still quiet, not quite as neutral. It sounded like he’d had a run-in or two with Jason.

“The little I see of him, he’s doing fine,” I answered.

“And your grandmother?”

I smiled. “She’s out planting flowers this morning.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said, doing that sincere head shake that’s supposed to indicate admiring amazement. “Now, I understand that you work at Merlotte’s?”

“Yes.”

“And so did Dawn Green?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw Dawn?”

“Two days ago. At work.” I already felt exhausted. Without shifting my feet from the ground or my arm from the steering wheel, I lay my head sideways on the headrest of the driver’s seat.

“Did you talk to her then?”

I tried to remember. “I don’t think so.”

“Were you close to Miss Green?”

“No.”

“And why did you come here today?”

I explained about working for Dawn yesterday, about Sam’s phone call this morning.

“Did Mr. Merlotte tell you why he didn’t want to come here himself?”

“Yes, a truck was there to unload. Sam has to show the guys where to put the boxes.” Sam also did a lot of the unloading himself, half the time, to speed up the process.

“Do you think Mr. Merlotte had any relationship with Dawn?”

“He was her boss.”

“No, outside work.”

“Nope.”

“You sound pretty positive.”

“I am.”

“Do you have a relationship with Sam?”

“No.”

“Then how are you so sure?”

Good question. Because from time to time I’d heard thoughts that indicated that if she didn’t hate Sam, Dawn sure as hell wasn’t real fond of him? Not too smart a thing to tell the detective.

“Sam keeps everything real professional at the bar,” I said. It sounded lame, even to me. It just happened to be the truth.

“Did you know anything about Dawn’s personal life?”

“No.”

“You weren’t friendly?”

“Not particularly.” My thoughts drifted as the detective bent his head in thought. At least that was what it looked like.