The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood) Read online

  “No, we have another man in the kitchen,” Claude said.

  “And a woman in the pantry.”

  Under other circumstances, I would’ve smiled. “Why are you sure Claudette is dead?”

  “She came to us in spirit form and told us so.” Claude looked surprised. “This is a death ritual for our race.”

  I sat back on my heels, trying to think of intelligent questions. “When this happens, does the spirit let you know any of the circumstances of the death?”

  “No,” Claudine said, shaking her head so her long black hair switched. “It’s more like a final farewell.”

  “Have you found the body?”

  They looked disgusted. “We fade,” Claude explained, in a haughty way.

  So much for examining the corpse.

  “Can you tell me where Claudette was when she, ah, faded?” I asked. “The more I know, the better questions I can ask.” Mind reading is not so simple. Asking the right questions is the key to eliciting the correct thought. The mouth can say anything. The head never lies. But if you don’t ask the right question, the right thought won’t pop up.

  “Claudette and Claude are exotic dancers at Hooligans,” Claudine said proudly, as if she was announcing they were on an Olympic team.

  I’d never met strippers before, male or female. I found myself more than a little interested in seeing Claude strip, but I made myself focus on the deceased Claudette.

  “So, Claudette worked last night?”

  “She was scheduled to take the money at the door. It was ladies’ night at Hooligans.”

  “Oh. Okay. So you were, ah, performing,” I said to Claude.

  “Yes. We do two shows on ladies’ night. I was the Pirate.”

  I tried to suppress that mental image.

  “And this man?” I tilted my head toward the blond, who was being very good about not pleading and begging.

  “I’m a stripper, too,” he said. “I was the Cop.”

  Okay. Just stuff that imagination in a box and sit on it.

  “Your name is?”

  “Barry Barber is my stage name. My real name is Ben Simpson.”

  “Barry Barber?” I was puzzled.

  “I like to shave people.”

  I had a blank moment, then felt a red flush creep across my cheeks as I realized he didn’t mean whiskery cheeks. Well, not facial cheeks. “And the other two people are?” I asked the twins.

  “The woman in the pantry is Rita Child. She owns Hooligans,” Claudine said. “And the man in the kitchen is Jeff Puckett. He’s the bouncer.”

  “Why did you pick these three out of all the employees at Hooligans?”

  “Because they had arguments with Claudette. She was a dynamic woman,” Claude said seriously.

  “Dynamic my ass,” said Barry the Barber, proving that tact isn’t a prerequisite for a stripping job. “That woman was hell on wheels.”

  “Her character isn’t really important in determining who killed her,” I pointed out, which shut him right up. “It just indicates why. Please go on,” I said to Claude. “Where were the three of you? And where were the people you’ve held here?”

  “Claudine was here, cooking supper for us. She works at Dillard’s in customer service.” She’d be great at that; her unrelenting cheer could pacify anyone. “As I said, Claudette was scheduled to take the cover charge at the door,” Claude continued. “Barry and I were in both shows. Rita always puts the first show’s take in the safe, so Claudette won’t be sitting up there with a lot of cash. We’ve been robbed a couple of times. Jeff was mostly sitting behind Claudette, in a little booth right inside the main door.”

  “When did Claudette vanish?”

  “Soon after the second show started. Rita says she got the first show’s take from Claudette and took it back to her safe, and that Claudette was still sitting there when she left. But Rita hates Claudette, because Claudette was about to leave Hooligans for Foxes, and I was going with her.”

  “Foxes is another club?” Claude nodded. “Why were you leaving?”

  “Better pay, larger dressing rooms.”

  “Okay, that would be Rita’s motivation. What about Jeff’s?”

  “Jeff and I had a thing,” Claude said. (My pirate-ship fantasy sank.) “Claudette told me I had to break up with him, that I could do better.”

  “And you listened to her advice about your love life?”

  “She was the oldest, by several minutes,” he said simply. “But I lo— I am very fond of him.”

  “What about you, Barry?”

  “She ruined my act,” Barry said sullenly.

  “How’d she do that?”

  “She yelled, ‘Too bad your nightstick’s not bigger!’ as I was finishing up.”

  It seemed that Claudette had been determined to die.

  “Okay,” I said, marshaling my plan of action. I knelt before Barry. I laid my hand on his arm, and he twitched. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five,” he said, but his mind provided me with a different answer.

  “That’s not right, is it?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle.

  He had a gorgeous tan, almost as good as mine, but he paled underneath it. “No,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’m thirty.”

  “I had no idea,” Claude said, and Claudine told him to hush.

  “And why didn’t you like Claudette?”

  “She insulted me in front of an audience,” he said. “I told you.”

  The image from his mind was quite different. “In private? Did she say something to you in private?” After all, reading minds isn’t like watching television. People don’t relate things in their own brains the way they would if they were telling a story to another person.

  Barry looked embarrassed and even angrier. “Yes, in private. We’d been having sex for a while, and then one day she just wasn’t interested anymore.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  “She told me I was . . . inadequate.”

  That hadn’t been the phrase she used. I felt embarrassed for him when I heard the actual words in his head.

  “What did you do between shows tonight, Barry?”

  “We had an hour. So I could get two shaves in.”

  “You get paid for that?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He grinned, but not as though something was funny. “You think I’d shave a stranger’s crotch if I didn’t get paid for it? But I make a big ritual out of it; act like it turns me on. I get a hundred bucks a pop.”

  “When did you see Claudette?”

  “When I went out to meet my first appointment, right as the first show was ending. She and her boyfriend were standing by the booth. I’d told them that was where I’d meet them.”

  “Did you talk to Claudette?”

  “No, I just looked at her.” He sounded sad. “I saw Rita, she was on her way to the booth with the money pouch, and I saw Jeff, he was on the stool at the back of the booth, where he usually stays.”

  “And then you went back to do this shaving?”

  He nodded.

  “How long does it take you?”

  “Usually about thirty, forty minutes. So scheduling two was kind of chancy, but it worked out. I do it in the dressing room, and the other guys are good about staying out.”

  He was getting more relaxed, the thoughts in his head calming and flowing more easily. The first person he’d done tonight had been a woman so bone-thin he’d wondered if she’d die while he did the shaving routine. She’d thought she was beautiful, and she’d obviously enjoyed showing him her body. Her boyfriend had gotten a kick out of the whole thing.

  I could hear Claudine buzzing in the background, but I kept my eyes closed and my hands on Barry’s, seeing the second “client,” a guy, and then I saw his face. Oh, boy. It was someone I knew, a v
ampire named Maxwell Lee.

  “There was a vamp in the bar,” I said, out loud, not opening my eyes. “Barry, what did he do when you finished shaving him?”

  “He left,” Barry said. “I watched him go out the back door. I’m always careful to make sure my clients are out of the backstage area. That’s the only way Rita will let me do the shaving at the club.”

  Of course, Barry didn’t know about the problem fairies have with vamps. Some vamps had less self-control when it came to fairies than others did. Fairies were strong, stronger than people, but vamps were stronger than anything else on earth.

  “And you didn’t go back out to the booth and talk to Claudette again?”

  “I didn’t see her again.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I said to Claudine and Claude. “As far as he knows it.” There were always other questions I could ask, but at first “hearing,” Barry didn’t know anything about Claudette’s disappearance.

  Claude ushered me into the pantry, where Rita Child was waiting. It was a walk-in pantry, very neat, but not intended for two people, one of them duct-taped to a rolling office chair. Rita Child was a substantial woman, too. She looked exactly like I’d expect the owner of a strip club to look—painted, dyed brunette, packed into a challenging dress with high-tech underwear that pinched and pushed her into a provocative shape.

  She was also steaming mad. She kicked out at me with a high heel that would have taken my eye out if I hadn’t jerked back in the middle of kneeling in front of her. I fell on my fundament in an ungraceful sprawl.

  “None of that, Rita,” Claude said calmly. “You’re not the boss here. This is our place.” He helped me stand up and dusted off my bottom in an impersonal way.

  “We just want to know what happened to our sister,” Claudine said.

  Rita made sounds behind her gag, sounds that didn’t seem to be conciliatory. I got the impression that she didn’t give a damn about the twins’ motivation in kidnapping her and tying her up in their pantry. They’d taped her mouth, rather than using a cloth gag, and after the kicking incident, I kind of enjoyed ripping the tape off.

  Rita called me some names reflecting on my heritage and moral character.

  “I guess that’s just the pot calling the kettle black,” I said, when she paused to breathe. “Now you listen here! I’m not taking that kind of talk off of you, and I want you to shut up and answer my questions. You don’t seem to have a good picture of the situation you’re in.”

  The club owner calmed down a little bit after that. She was still glaring at me with her narrow brown eyes and straining at her ropes, but she seemed to understand a little better.

  “I’m going to touch you,” I said. I was afraid she might bite if I touched her bare shoulder, so I put my hand on her forearm just above where her wrist was tied to the arm of the rolling chair.

  Her head was a maze of fury. She wasn’t thinking clearly because she was so angry, and all her mental energy was directed into cursing at the twins and now at me. She suspected me of being some kind of supernatural assassin, and I decided it wouldn’t hurt if she was scared of me for a while.

  “When did you see Claudette tonight?” I asked.

  “When I went to get the money from the first show,” she growled, and sure enough, I saw Rita’s hand reaching out, a long white hand placing a zippered vinyl pouch in it. “I was in my office working during the first show. But I get the money in between, so if we get stuck up, we won’t lose so much.”

  “She gave you the money bag, and you left?”

  “Yeah. I went to put the cash in the safe until the second show was over. I didn’t see her again.”

  And that seemed to be the truth to me. I couldn’t see another vision of Claudette in Rita’s head. But I saw a lot of satisfaction that Claudette was dead, and a grim determination to keep Claude at her club.

  “Will you still go to Foxes, now that Claudette’s gone?” I asked him, to spark a response that might reveal something from Rita.

  Claude looked down at me, surprised and disgusted. “I haven’t had time to think of what will come tomorrow,” he snapped. “I just lost my sister.”

  Rita’s mind sort of leaped with joy. She had it bad for Claude. And on the practical side, he was a big draw at Hooligans, since even on an off night he could engender some magic to make the crowd spend big. Claudette hadn’t been so willing to use her power for Rita’s profit, but Claude didn’t think about it twice. Using his inbred fairy skills to draw people to admire him was an ego thing with Claude, which had little to do with economics.

  I got all this from Rita in a flash.

  “Okay,” I said, standing up. “I’m through with her.”

  She was happy.

  We stepped out of the pantry into the kitchen, where the final candidate for murderer was waiting. He’d been pushed under the table, and he had a glass in front of him with a straw stuck in it, so he could lean over to drink. Being a former lover had paid off for Jeff Puckett. His mouth wasn’t even taped.

  I looked from Claude to Jeff, trying to figure it out. Jeff had a light brown mustache that needed trimming, and a two-day growth of whiskers on his cheeks. His eyes were narrow and hazel. As much as I could tell, Jeff seemed to be in better shape than some of the bouncers I’d known, and he was even taller than Claude. But I was not impressed, and I reflected for maybe the millionth time that love was strange.

  Claude braced himself visibly when he faced his former lover.

  “I’m here to find out what you know about Claudette’s death,” I said, since we’d been around a corner when we’d questioned Rita. “I’m a telepath, and I’m going to touch you while I ask you some questions.”

  Jeff nodded. He was very tense. He fixed his eyes on Claude. I stood behind him, since he was pushed up under the table, and put my hands on his thick shoulders. I pulled his T-shirt to one side, just a little, so my thumb could touch his neck.

  “Jeff, you tell me what you saw tonight,” I said.

  “Claudette came to take the money for the first set,” he said. His voice was higher than I’d expected, and he was not from these parts. Florida, I thought. “I couldn’t stand her because she messed with my personal life, and I didn’t want to be with her. But that’s what Rita told me to do, so I did. I sat on the stool and watched her take the money and put it into the money bag. She kept some in a money drawer to make change.”

  “Did she have trouble with any of the customers?”

  “No. It was ladies’ night, and the women don’t give any trouble coming in. They did during the second set. I had to go haul a gal offstage who got a little too enthusiastic about our Construction Worker, but mostly I just sat on the stool and watched.”

  “When did Claudette vanish?”

  “When I come back from getting that gal back to her table, Claudette was gone. I looked around for her, went and asked Rita if Claudette had said anything to her about having to take a break. I even checked the ladies’ room. Wasn’t till I went back in the booth that I seen the glittery stuff.”

  “What glittery stuff?”

  “What we leave when we fade,” Claude murmured. “Fairy dust.”

  Did they sweep it up and keep it? It would probably be tacky to ask.

  “And next thing I knew, the second set was over and the club was closing, and I was checking backstage and everywhere for traces of Claudette, then I was here with Claude and Claudine.”

  He didn’t seem too angry.

  “Do you know anything about Claudette’s death?”

  “No. I wish I did. I know this is hard on Claude.” His eyes were as fixed on Claude as Claude’s were on him. “She separated us, but she’s not in the picture anymore.”

  “I have to know,” Claude said, through clenched teeth.

  For the first time, I wondered what the twins would do if I could
n’t discover the culprit. And that scary thought spurred my brain to greater activity.

  “Claudine,” I called. Claudine came in, with an apple in her hand. She was hungry, and she looked tired. I wasn’t surprised. Presumably, she’d worked all day, and here she was, staying up all night, and grieving, to boot.

  “Can you wheel Rita in here?” I asked. “Claude, can you go get Barry?”

  When everyone was assembled in the kitchen, I said, “Everything I’ve seen and heard seems to indicate that Claudette vanished during the second show.” After a second’s consideration, they all nodded. Barry’s and Rita’s mouths had been gagged again, and I thought that was a good thing.

  “During the first show,” I said, going slow to be sure I got it right, “Claudette took up the money. Claude was onstage. Barry was onstage. Even when he wasn’t onstage, he didn’t come up to the booth. Rita was in her office.”

  There were nods all around.

  “During the interval between shows, the club cleared out.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “Barry came up to meet his clients, and I checked to make sure everyone else was gone.”

  “So you were away from the booth a little.”

  “Oh, well, yeah, I guess. I do it so often, I didn’t even think of that.”

  “And also during the interval, Rita came up to get the money pouch from Claudette.”

  Rita nodded emphatically.

  “So, at the end of the interval, Barry’s clients have left.” Barry nodded. “Claude, what about you?”

  “I went out to get some food during the interval,” he said. “I can’t eat a lot before I dance, but I had to eat something. I got back, and Barry was by himself and getting ready for the second show. I got ready, too.”

  “And I got back on the stool,” Jeff said. “Claudette was back at the cash window. She was all ready, with the cash drawer and the stamp and the pouch. She still wasn’t speaking to me.”

  “But you’re sure it was Claudette?” I asked, out of the blue.

  “Wasn’t Claudine, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Claudine’s as sweet as Claudette was sour, and they even sit different.”

  Claudine looked pleased and threw her apple core in the garbage can. She smiled at me, already forgiving me for asking questions about her.