he bent forward to touch his fingers to Arlene’s neck. He knew as well as I that she was dead. There was nothing in her brain for me to register, and any shifter could smell death.
I said a very bad word. Then I repeated it a few times.
After a moment Sam said, “I never heard you say that out loud.”
“I don’t even think it that often.” I hated to enlarge on this particular piece of bad news, but I had to. “She was just here yesterday, Sam. In your office. Talking to me.”
By silent mutual consent, we moved over to the shelter of the oak tree in Sam’s yard. He’d left the Dumpster open, but the raindrops would not hurt Arlene. Sam didn’t say anything for a long moment. “I guess lots of people saw her?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t call it lots of people. We didn’t have that many customers. But whoever was in the bar had to have seen her, because she must have come through the front door.” I thought for a second. “Yeah, I didn’t hear the back door open. She came back to your office while I was working on the mail, and she talked to me for maybe five or ten minutes. It seemed like forever.”
“Why would she come to Merlotte’s?” Sam looked at me, baffled.
“She said she wanted her job back.”
Sam closed his eyes for a long moment. “Like that was going to happen.” And he opened them, looking right into mine. “I am so tempted to take her body out of here and dump it somewhere else.” He was asking me a question; though I was shocked for a split second, I understood his feelings very well.
“We could do that,” I said quietly. “It would sure . . .” Save us a lot of trouble. Be a terrible thing to do. Take the focus of any investigation away from Merlotte’s. “Be messy,” I concluded. “But doable.”
Sam put an arm around my shoulders and tried to smile. “They say your best friend will help you move a body,” he said. “You must be my best friend.”
“I am,” I said. “I’ll help you move Arlene in a New York minute—if we really decide that’s the right thing to do.”
“Oh, it isn’t,” Sam said heavily. “I know it’s not. And you know it’s not. But I hate the thought of the bar being involved in another police investigation . . . not only the bar, but us personally. We have enough to heal from already. I know you didn’t kill Arlene, and you know I didn’t. But I don’t know if the police will believe that.”
“We could put her in the trunk of my car,” I said, but I didn’t even convince myself that we were going to act on that. I could feel the impulse dying away. To my surprise, Sam hugged me, and we stood in the shade of the tree for a long moment, water dripping down on us as the rain died away to a light drizzle. I’m not sure what Sam was thinking exactly, and I was glad of that; but I could read enough from his head to know that we were sharing a reluctance to start the next phase of today.
After a while, we released each other. Sam said, “Hell. Okay, call the cops.”
With no enthusiasm, I called 911.
While we waited, we sat on the steps of Sam’s porch. The sun popped out as though it had been cued, and the moisture in the air turned to steam. This was as much fun as sitting in a sauna with clothes on. I felt sweat trickle down my back.
“Do you have any idea what happened to her, what killed her?” I asked. “I didn’t look that close.”
“I think she was strangled,” Sam said. “I’m not sure, she was so bloated, but I believe something is still around her neck. Maybe if I’d watched more episodes of CSI . . .”
I snorted. “Poor Arlene,” I said, but I didn’t sound too grieved.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t get to pick who lives and who dies, but Arlene wouldn’t have topped my list of people I’d ask mercy for.”
“Since she tried to have me killed.”
“And not just killed quick,” Sam said. “Killed slow and awful. Taking all that into consideration, if there had to be a body in my garbage, I’m not too sorry it’s hers.”
“Too bad for the kids, though,” I said, suddenly realizing there were two people who would miss Arlene for