housework they have to do, how their jobs are going. They worry about their kids . . . a lot. They brood over issues with their bosses and their spouses and their coworkers and other members of their churches.
On the whole, 95 percent of what I hear is nothing anybody’d want to write down in her diary.
Every now and then the guys (less often, the women) think about sex with someone they see in the bar—but honestly, that’s so common I can brush it aside, unless they’re thinking about me. That’s pretty disgusting. The sex ideas multiply with the drinks consumed; no surprise there.
The people thinking about Crystal and her death were the law enforcement people charged with finding out who’d killed her. If one of the culprits was in the bar, he was simply not thinking about what he’d done. And there had to be more than a single person involved. Setting up a cross was not something a man on his own could handle; at least not without a lot of preparation and some elaborate arrangement of pulleys. You’d have to be some kind of supernatural to pull it off by yourself.
This was Andy Bellefleur’s train of thought while he waited for his crispy chicken salad.
I had to agree with him. I’d bet Calvin had already considered that scenario. Calvin had sniffed the body, and he hadn’t said he’d smelled another wereanimal of any kind. But then I recalled that one of the two men who’d been wheeling the body out had been a supe.
As far as learning anything new, I was drawing a blank until Mel came in. Mel, who lived in one of Sam’s rental duplexes, looked like a reject from the cast of Robin Hood, the Musical tonight. His longish light brown hair, neat mustache and beard, and tight pants gave him a theatrical air.
Mel surprised me by giving me a half hug before he sat down, as if I were a good buddy of his.
If this behavior was because he and my brother were both panthers . . . but that still didn’t make a lot of sense. None of the other werepanthers got cozy with me because of Jason—far from it. The Hotshot community had been a lot warmer toward me when Calvin Norris had been thinking of asking me to be his mate. Did Mel have a secret yearning to go out with me? That would be . . . unpleasant and unwelcome.
I took a little trip into Mel’s head, where I saw no lusty thoughts about me. If he’d been attracted, he’d have been thinking them, since I was right in front of him. Mel was thinking about the things Catfish Hennessy, Jason’s boss, had been saying about Jason in Bon Temps Auto Parts that day. Catfish’s tolerance balloon had burst, and he’d told Mel he was thinking about firing Jason.
Mel was plenty worried about my brother, bless his heart. I’d wondered my whole life how someone as selfish as my brother could attract such faithful friends. My great-grandfather had told me that people with a trace of fairy blood were more attractive to other humans, so maybe that explained it.
I went behind the bar to pour some more tea for Jane Bodehouse, who was trying to be sober today because she was trying to compile a list of the guys who might have given her chlamydia. A bar is a bad place to start a sobriety program—but Jane had hardly any chance of succeeding, anyway. I put a slice of lemon in the tea and carried it to Jane, watched her hands shake as she picked up the glass and drank from it.
“You want something to eat?” I asked, keeping my voice low and quiet. Just because I’d never seen a drunk reform in a bar, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
Jane shook her head silently. Her dyed brown hair was already escaping the clip that held it back, and her heavy black sweater was covered with bits of this and that. Her makeup had been applied with a shaky hand. I could see the lipstick caked in the creases in her lips. Most of the area alcoholics might stop in Merlotte’s every now and then, but they based themselves at the Bayou. Jane was our only “resident” alkie since old Wil lie Chenier had died. When Jane was in the bar, she always sat on the same stool. Hoyt had made a label for it when he’d had too