“After I talked to you about Jannalynn, I began to think about her pretty seriously,” he said. “The more I took her recent actions apart, the more I thought I should look deeper. I figured out that Jannalynn was not tel ing me the truth about a few things. I wondered if maybe she was skimming off the top at Hair of the Dog.” He shrugged. “Sometimes when she was supposed to be around, she was out of touch. I thought maybe her romance with Sam was going over the top, but when she’d tel me one thing about them, you didn’t seem to know anything about it. And Sam’s your partner, so you’d know, I figured.”
So he’d cal ed me to talk about Sam and Jannalynn’s “wedding plans,” at least in part to hear my reaction; of course, I’d been completely shocked.
“I saw her one time when she didn’t see me. She was at a bar way across town, instead of at the Hair. And she was with the rogues I had turned down. I knew she was planning something. I’d had them al over at social evenings at the house, talked to ’em. The only one worth anything was Kandace, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a pack. Didn’t like the power struggles. I got to respect that, but I thought she’d be an asset.”
I thought maybe he’d also liked Kandace’s assets, but that was his business.
“So I cal ed up Kandace, and I asked her to meet me alone. Without me even bringing it up, she volunteered to tel me what was going on, because it troubled her.”
Alcide clearly wanted me to give Kandace a virtual pat on the back, so I said, “She must be a good person.”
He smiled, gratified. “Kandace said Jannalynn wanted to chal enge me, defeat me, but first she wanted to get a good toehold in the pack by socking away some money, enlisting pack members to her side, getting some of her own muscle. Her proposal to these rogues was that they could come into the pack if they’d do her bidding; then when she beat me, she’d let them have ful benefits.”
I wondered if that included health and dental, but I wasn’t going to go down a side path while he was stil in a sharing mood. I hung up the washcloth and poured a dol op of shampoo into my hands. I began to scrub my scalp and hair. “Go on,” I said, by way of encouragement.
“So,” he said. “I got a guy she didn’t know to fol ow Jannalynn. He saw her meeting with your buddy Claude. There’s just no good reason for that.”
I stopped rinsing the shampoo from my hair. “What … why? Why was she meeting with Claude, of al people?”
“I have no idea,” Alcide said.
“So al we have to do is find Jannalynn and ask her a lot of questions,” I said. “And find Warren. And hope that Claude comes back from Faery, so I can question him. And get Felipe and his vamps to leave us alone, here in Shreveport. And get that Freyda out of here.”
Alcide looked at me, wondered whether to speak, and decided on ful disclosure. “Is it true, Sookie? Palomino told Roy that Eric’s engaged to a vampire from Oklahoma?”
“I can’t talk about it,” I said. “Or I’l get real upset, Alcide, and you just don’t want that tonight. I owe Palomino a solid favor for getting us in to rescue … a guy, but she shouldn’t be tel ing vampire business around town.”
“You owe her more of a solid than you know,” he said. “She saw you being grabbed, and she cal ed me. Right before Bil did. That was smart, Sook, getting him to cal . It was al I could do to get him to continue on his way and check back in later. I promised him I’d keep you safe.”
“So you cal ed Mustapha? You’ve known where he was al along?”
“No, but after I got your phone messages, I cal ed him. As you’d advised, when Jannalynn wasn’t around. He’d run down his last lead on Warren, and he had to talk to someone. I stil don’t know where he’s been hiding.”
“But it’s thanks to you that he found me in time.”
“Both our efforts and some guessing, too. He knows those rogues. He figured they’d head back to their house outside Fil more. Van does bad stuff to women, and he’d want to have some time with you before he handed you over to Jannalynn. The fol ow-up car was his idea, too.”
“Oh my God.” I felt sick, wondered if I was going to throw up. No. I got hold of myself.
After a little rinsing, I was as clean as I was going to get. Alcide left the bathroom so I could change into my more modest shorts and T-shirt. It was real y interesting how much difference a few covered inches could make in your self-respect. Now that I felt more like myself, I could begin to think some more.
I came out of the bathroom. Alcide was having a beer, and Mustapha was drinking a Coca-Cola. I accepted one, too, and the cold sweetness tasted wonderful going down.
“So what are you going to do with the rogues, for right now?” I asked.
“I’m going to stow them in a reinforced shed my dad built,” Alcide said. Jackson, his dad, had owned a farm outside Shreveport where the pack could run at the ful moon.
“So you have a special place to stow people,” I said. “I’m sure Jannalynn has a special place, too. You been thinking about where that might be?”
“Jannalynn’s from Shreveport,” Alcide said. “So, yeah, I’ve been thinking. She lives in the apartment above Hair of the Dog, so that’s out. No place there; besides, we’d have heard Warren if he’d been stashed there, or we’d have smel ed him.”
“If he was alive,” I said, very quietly.
“If he wasn’t, definitely we’d have smel ed him,” Alcide said, and Mustapha nodded, his face expressionless.
“So where does she have of her own, a place she could be fairly sure no one else would go?”
“Her mom and dad retired to Florida last year,” Alcide said. “But they sold their house. Our computer guy who works at the tax assessor’s office couldn’t find anything else in Jannalynn’s name.”
“You sure that house sold? In this market?”
“That’s what she told me. And the sign was down, last time I went by,” Alcide said.
