call to express their feelings, even though I’d been in jail and it had been possible I’d never get to hear their encouraging messages. I wondered if I should write a thank-you note to each caller. My grandmother would have.
As I listened to Kennedy Keyes’s voice telling me Sam had said I shouldn’t come in today and I should rest, I could see by the counter that I had only one more message. A man’s voice came on. I didn’t recognize it. He said, “You had no right to take away my last chance. I’m going to make sure you pay for it.” I looked at the number. I didn’t recognize it, either. Was I shocked at the determination in his voice? Yes. But I wasn’t surprised. I know how people really are. I can hear their thoughts. I couldn’t read the brain of someone who’d left a phone message, but I know intent when I hear it. My anonymous caller had meant every word he’d said.
Now it was my turn to make a phone call. “Andy, I need you to come out here and listen to something,” I said when he picked up his cell. “You may not want to, but if I’m in danger, you gotta protect me, right? I didn’t lose that when I got arrested?”
“Sookie,” Andy said. He sounded massively tired. “I’m on my way.”
“And do me a favor, okay? This is weird, and I know you won’t want to do it, but you tell Alcee Beck to clean out his car. I’m pretty sure there’s something in his car that shouldn’t be there.” I’d had so much time to think in jail that I’d remembered a little flash of memory: Alcee’s car parked by the woods. The odd flicker of movement I’d seen from the corner of my eye. The fact that Alcee was so insanely determined I be arrested and charged that I’d thought, It’s almost like he’s under a spell.
That seemed like such a good fit, I was sure it was true.
Chapter 10
Though Sam hadn’t wanted me to come in the day I was released from jail, I went in to work the next morning. On one level, it was such a normal thing to do that my preparations felt quite ordinary. On another level, since I’d spent part of my jail time thinking I might never get to walk back into Merlotte’s again, I was nervous about making a public appearance after facing such an ugly allegation.
Andy Bellefleur had listened to the threat on my answering machine and taken the little tape with him. I’d wished I’d been smart enough to make a copy before he drove off. I hadn’t needed to ask him if he’d conveyed my request to Alcee Beck. I heard from his thoughts that he hadn’t, that he was already in bad with Alcee because Andy’d maintained they shouldn’t arrest me, while Alcee had bulled ahead with the charges. So there was something I’d have to take care of myself.
After Jason’s account of Sam’s agitation at my arrest, I’d expected a big welcome back to the bar. In fact, I’d expected Sam would call me the night before, but he hadn’t. Now, seeing him behind the bar, I smiled and started over to give him a hug.
Sam looked at me for a long moment, and I felt the conflict rolling off him. If fireworks had been exploding out of his brain, he couldn’t have been more lit up. But then his whole face shut down, and he turned his back to me. He began polishing a glass furiously. I was surprised it didn’t shatter in his fingers.
To say I was hurt and bewildered would be understating by about a ton. I didn’t think Sam was exactly angry with me for being arrested, but he was angry about something. Though I got hugs from all the bar staff and at least six customers, Sam avoided me like I was Typhoid Mary.
“Jail isn’t catching,” I said tartly, the third time I had to pass him to pick up plates from the serving hatch. He had turned away to examine the list of emergency phone numbers as if there were some new information on it that had to be memorized in the next five minutes.
“I . . . I know that,” he said, biting off whatever he’d been about to say. “Good you’re back.” An Norr came up to get a pitcher of beer, and that cut our conversation off at