“Getting away from Katrina,” the boy said. “My sire was staked by a human when we ran out of bottled blood substitute after the flood. I stole a car outside of New Orleans, changed the license plates, and got out of town. I reached here at daylight. I found an empty house with a FOR SALE sign and a windowless bathroom, so I moved in. I’ve been going out with a local girl. I take a sip every night. She’s none the wiser,” he sneered.
“What’s your interest?” Bill asked me.
“Have you two been going into her dad’s office at night?” I asked.
“Yeah, once or twice.” He smirked. “Her dad’s office has a couch in it.” I wanted to slap the shit out of him, maybe smacking the jewelry in his nose just by accident.
“How long have you been a vampire?” Bill asked.
“Ah . . . maybe two months.”
Okay, that explained a lot. “So that’s why he didn’t know to check in with Eric. That’s why he doesn’t realize what he’s doing is foolish and liable to get him staked.”
“There’s only so much excuse for stupidity,” Bill said.
“Have you gone through the files in there?” I asked the boy, who was looking a little dazed.
“What?”
“Did you go through the files in the insurance office?”
“Uh, no. Why would I do that? I was just loving up the girl, to get a little sip, you know? I was real careful not to take too much. I don’t have any money to buy artificial stuff.”
“Oh, you are so dumb.” Amelia was fed up with this kid. “For goodness’ sake, learn something about your condition. Stranded vampires can get help just like stranded people. You just ask the Red Cross for some synthetic blood, and they dole it out free.”
“Or you could have found out who the sheriff of the area is,” Bill said. “Eric would never turn away a vampire in need. What if someone had found you biting this girl? She’s under the age of consent, I gather?” For blood “donation” to a vampire.
“Yeah,” I said, when Dustin looked blank. “It’s Lindsay, daughter of Greg Aubert, my insurance agent. He wanted us to find out who’d been going into his building at night. Called in a favor to get me and Amelia to investigate.”
“He should do his own dirty work,” Bill said quite calmly. But his hands were clenched. “Listen, boy, what’s your name?”
“Dustin.” He’d even given Lindsay his real name.
“Well, Dustin, tonight we go to Fangtasia, the bar in Shreveport that Eric Northman uses as his headquarters. He will talk to you there, decide what to do with you.”
“I’m a free vampire. I go where I want.”
“Not within Area Five, you don’t. You go to Eric, the area sheriff.”
Bill marched the young vampire off into the night, probably to load him into his car and get him to Shreveport.
Amelia said, “I’m sorry, Sookie.”
“At least you stopped him from breaking my neck,” I said, trying to sound philosophical about it. “We still have our original problem. It wasn’t Dustin who went through the files, though I’m guessing it was Dustin and Lindsay going into the office at night that disturbed the magic. How could they get past it?”
“After Greg told me his spell, I realized he wasn’t much of a witch. Lindsay’s a member of the family. With Greg’s spell to ward against outsiders, that made a difference,” Amelia said. “And sometimes vampires register as a void on spells created for humans. After all, they’re not alive. I made my ‘freeze’ spell vampire specific.”
“Who else can get through magic spells and work mischief?”
“Magical nulls,” she said.
“Huh?”
“There are people who can’t be affected by magic,” Amelia said. “They’re rare, but they exist. I’ve only met one before.”
“How can you detect nulls? Do they give off a special vibration or something?”
“Only very experienced witches can detect nulls without casting a spell on them that fails,” Amelia admitted. “Greg probably has never encountered one.”
“Let’s go see Terry,” I suggested. “He stays up all night.”
The baying of a dog announced our arrival at Terry’s cabin. Terry lived in the middle of three acres of woods. Terry liked being by himself most of the time, and any social needs he might feel were satisfied by an occasional stint of working as a bartender.
“That’ll be Annie,” I said, as the barking rose in intensity. “She’s his fourth.”
“Wife? Or dog?”
“Dog. Specifically, a Catahoula. The first one got hit by a truck, I think, and one got poisoned, and one got bit by a snake.”
“Gosh, that is bad luck.”
“Yeah, unless it’s not chance at all. Maybe someone’s making it happen.”
“What are Catahoulas for?”
“Hunting. Herding. Don’t get Terry started on the history of the breed, I’m begging you.”
Terry’s trailer door opened, and Annie launched herself off the steps to find out if we were friends or foes. She gave us a good bark, and when we stayed still, she eventually remembered she knew me. Annie weighed about fifty pounds, I guess, a good-sized dog. Catahoulas are not beautiful unless you love the breed. Annie was several shades of brown and red, and one shoulder was a solid color while her legs were another, though her rear half was covered with spots.
“Sookie, did you come to pick out a puppy?” Terry called. “Annie, let them by.” Annie obediently backed up, keeping her eyes on us as we began approaching the trailer.
“I came to look,” I said. “I brought my friend Amelia. She loves dogs.”
Amelia was thinking she’d like to slap me upside the head because she was definitely a cat person.
Annie’s puppies and Annie had made the small trailer quite doggy, though the odor wasn’t really unpleasant. Annie herself maintained a vigilant stance while we looked at the three pups Terry still had. Terry’s scarred hands were gentle as he handled the dogs. Annie had encountered several gentleman dogs on her unplanned excursion, and the puppies were diverse. They were adorable. Puppies just are. But they were sure distinctive. I picked up a bundle of short reddish fur with a white muzzle, and felt the puppy wiggle against me and snuffle my fingers. Gee, it was cute.
“Terry,” I said, “have you been worried about Annie?”
“Yeah,” he said. Since he was off base himself, Terry was very tolerant of other people’s quirks. “I got to thinking about the things that have happened to my dogs, and I began to wonder if someone was causing them all.”
“Do you insure all your dogs with Greg Aubert?”
“Naw, Diane at Liberty South insured the others. And see what happened to them? I decided to switch agents, and everyone says Greg is the luckiest son of a bitch in Renard Parish.”
The puppy began chewing on my fingers. Ouch. Amelia was looking around her at the dingy trailer. It was clean enough, but the furniture arrangement was strictly utilitarian, like the furniture itself.
“So, did you go through the files at Greg Aubert’s office?”
“No, why would I do that?”
Truthfully, I couldn’t think of a reason. Fortunately, Terry didn’t seem interested in why I wanted to know. “Sookie,” he said, “if anyone in the bar thinks about my dogs, knows anything about ’em, will you tell me?”
Terry knew about me. It was one of those community secrets that everyone knows but no one ever discusses. Until they need me.
“Yes, Terry, I will.” It was a promise, and I shook his hand. Reluctantly, I set the puppy back in its improvised pen, and Annie checked it over anxiously to make sure it was in good order.
We left soon after, none the wiser.
“So, who’ve we got left?” Amelia said. “You don’t think the family did it, the vampire boyfriend is cleared, and Terry, the only ot
her person on the scene, didn’t do it. Where do we look next?”
“Don’t you have some magic that would give us a clue?” I asked. I pictured us throwing magic dust on the files to reveal fingerprints.
“Uh. No.”
“Then let’s just reason our way through it. Like they do in crime novels. They just talk about it.”
“I’m game. Saves gas.”
We got back to the house and sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Amelia brewed a cup of tea for herself, while I got a caffeine-free Coke.
I said, “Greg is scared that someone is going through his files at work. We solved the part about someone being in his office. That was the daughter and her boyfriend. So we’re left with the files. Now, who would be interested in Greg’s clients?”
“There’s always the chance that some client doesn’t think Greg paid out enough on a claim, or maybe thinks Greg is cheating his clients.” Amelia took a sip of her tea.
“But why go through the files? Why not just bring a complaint to the national insurance agents’ board, or whatever?”
“Okay. Then there’s . . . the only other answer is another insurance agent. Someone who wonders why Greg has such phenomenal luck in what he insures. Someone who doesn’t believe it’s chance or those cheesy synthetic rabbits’ feet.”
It was so simple when you thought about it, when you cleared away the mental debris. I was sure the culprit had to be someone in the same business.
I was pretty sure I knew the other three insurance agents in Bon Temps, but I checked the phone book to be sure.
“I suggest we go from agent to agent, starting with the local ones,” Amelia said. “I’m relatively new in town, so I can tell them I want to take out some more insurance.”
“I’ll come with you, and I’ll scan them.”
“During the conversation, I’ll bring up the Aubert Agency, so they’ll be thinking about the right thing.” Amelia had asked enough questions to understand how my telepathy worked.
I nodded. “First thing tomorrow morning.”
We went to sleep that night with a pleasant tingle of anticipation. A plan was a beautiful thing. Stackhouse and Broadway swing into action.
The next day didn’t start exactly like we’d planned. For one thing, the weather had decided to be fall. It was cool. It was pouring rain. I put my shorts and tank tops away sadly, knowing I probably wouldn’t wear them again for several months.
The first agent, Diane Porchia, was guarded by a meek clerk. Alma Dean crumpled like a fender when we insisted on seeing the actual agent. Amelia, with her bright smile and gorgeous teeth, simply beamed at Ms. Dean until she called Diane out of her office. The middle-aged agent, a stocky woman in a green pantsuit, came out to shake our hands. I said, “I’ve been taking my friend Amelia around to all the agents in town, starting with Greg Aubert.” I was listening as hard as I could to the result, and all I got was professional pride . . . and a hint of desperation. Diane Porchia was scared by the number of claims she had processed lately. It was abnormally high. All she was thinking of was selling. Amelia gave me a little hand wave. Diane Porchia was not a magical null.
“Greg Aubert thought he’d had someone break into his office at night,” Amelia said.
“Us, too,” Diane said, seeming genuinely astonished. “But nothing was taken.” She rallied and got back to her purpose. “Our rates are very competitive with anything Greg can offer you. Take a look at the coverage we provide, and I think you’ll agree.”
Shortly after that, our heads filled with figures, we were on our way to Bailey Smith. Bailey was a high school classmate of my brother Jason’s, and we had to spend a little longer there playing “What’s he/she doing now?” But the result was the same. Bailey’s only concern was getting Amelia’s business, and maybe getting her to go out for a drink with him if he could think of a place to take her that his wife wouldn’t hear about.
He had had a break-in at his office, too. In his case, the window had been shattered. But nothing had been taken. And I heard directly from his brain that business was down. Way down.
At John Robert Briscoe’s we had a different problem. He didn’t want to see us. His clerk, Sally Lundy, was like an angel with a flaming sword guarding the entrance to his private office. We got our chance when a client came in, a little withered woman who’d had a collision the month before. She said, “I don’t know how this could be, but the minute I signed with John Robert, I had an accident. Then a month goes by, and I have another one.”
“Come on back, Mrs. Hanson.” Sally gave us a mistrustful look as she took the little woman to the inner sanctum. The minute they were gone, Amelia went through the stack of paperwork in the in-box, to my surprise and dismay.
Sally came back to her desk, and Amelia and I took our departure. I said, “We’ll come back later. We’ve got another appointment right now.”
“They were all claims,” Amelia said, when we were out of the door. “Every one of them.” She pushed back the hood on her slicker since the rain had finally stopped.
“There’s something wrong with that. John Robert has been hit even harder than Diane or Bailey.”
We stared at each other. Finally, I said what we were both thinking. “Did Greg upset some balance by claiming more than his fair share of good luck?”
“I never heard of such a thing,” Amelia said. But we both believed that Greg had unwittingly tipped over a cosmic applecart.
“There weren’t any nulls at any of the other agencies,” Amelia said. “It’s got to be John Robert or his clerk. I didn’t get to check either of them.”
“He’ll be going to lunch any minute,” I said, glancing down at my watch. “Probably Sally will be, too. I’ll go to the back where they park and stall them. Do you just have to be close?”
“If I have one of my spells, it’ll be better,” she said. She darted over to the car and unlocked it, pulling out her purse. I hurried around to the back of the building, just a block off the main street but surrounded by crepe myrtles.
I managed to catch John Robert as he left his office to go to lunch. His car was dirty. His clothes were disheveled. He slumped. I knew him by sight, but we’d never had a conversation.
“Mr. Briscoe,” I said, and his head swung up. He seemed confused. Then his face cleared, and he tried to smile.
“Sookie Stackhouse, right? Girl, it’s been an age since I saw you.”
“I guess you don’t come in Merlotte’s much.”
“No, I pretty much go home to the wife and kids in the evening,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of activities.”
“Do you ever go over to Greg Aubert’s office?” I asked, trying to sound gentle.
He stared at me for a long moment. “No, why would I do that?”
And I could tell, hear from his head directly, that he absolutely didn’t know what I was talking about. But there came Sally Lundy, steam practically coming out of her ears at the sight of me talking to her boss when she’d done her best to shield him.
“Sally,” John Robert said, relieved to see his right-hand woman, “this young woman wants to know if I’ve been to Greg’s office lately.”
“I’ll just bet she does,” Sally said, and even John Robert blinked at the venom in her voice.
And I got it then, the name I’d been waiting for.
“It’s you,” I said. “You’re the one, Ms. Lundy. What are you doing that for?” If I hadn’t known I had backup, I would’ve been scared. Speaking of backup . . .
“What am I doing it for?” she screeched. “You have the gall, the nerve, the . . . the balls to ask me that?”
John Robert couldn’t have looked more horrified if she’d sprouted horns.
“Sally,” he said, very anxiously. “Sally, maybe you need to sit down.”
“You can’t see it!” she shrieked. “You can?
??t see it. That Greg Aubert, he’s dealing with the devil! Diane and Bailey are in the same boat we are, and it’s sinking! Do you know how many claims he had to handle last week? Three! Do you know how many new policies he wrote? Thirty!”
John Robert literally staggered when he heard the numbers. He recovered enough to say, “Sally, we can’t make wild accusations against Greg. He’s a fine man. He’d never . . .”
But Greg had, however blindly.
Sally decided it would be a good time to kick me in the shins, and I was really glad I was wearing jeans instead of shorts that day. Okay, anytime now, Amelia, I thought. John Robert was windmilling his arms and yelling at Sally—though not moving to restrain her, I noticed—and Sally was yelling back at the top of her lungs and venting her feelings about Greg Aubert and that bitch Marge who worked for him. She had a lot to say about Marge. No love lost there.
By that time I was holding Sally off at arm’s length, and I was sure my legs would be black-and-blue the next day.
Finally, finally, Amelia appeared, breathless and disarranged. “Sorry,” she panted, “you’re not going to believe this, but my foot got stuck between the car seat and the doorsill, then I fell, and my keys went under the car. . . . Anyway, Congelo!”
Sally’s foot stopped in midswing, so she was balancing on one skinny leg. John Robert had both hands in the air in a gesture of despair. I touched his arm, and he felt as hard as the frozen vampire had the other night. At least he wasn’t holding me.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I thought you knew!” she said. “We’ve got to get them off thinking about Greg and his luck!”
“The problem is, I think Greg’s used up all the luck going around,” I said. “Look at the problems you had just getting out of the car here.”
She looked intensely thoughtful. “Yeah, we have to have a chat with Greg,” she said. “But first, we’ve got to get out of this situation.” Holding out her right hand toward the two frozen people, she said, “Ah—amicus cum Greg Aubert.”