I started cooking in my cool and empty house. I was doing my level best not to think about anything but food preparation. I'd decided to keep it simple and basic. I made a hamburger-and-sausage meatloaf, a pasta salad, and a carrot casserole for Tara and JB. The blackberries at the store had been too tempting to resist, and I made a blackberry cobbler. As long as I was cooking, I made duplicates of everything for Dermot and me. Two birds with one stone, I thought proudly.
At the little house on Magnolia Street, a smiling JB met me at the door to help me carry in the food. While I went into the kitchen to turn on the stove to warm the meatloaf and casserole a little, the proud father returned to the small, small nursery. I tiptoed in to find Tara and JB staring down at the two cribs holding these amazing tiny beings. I joined them in the admiration gallery.
Before I could even ask, Tara said, "Sara Sookie du Rone and Robert Thornton du Rone."
And I felt the bottom fall out of my heart. "You named her Sookie?"
"It's her middle name. There's only one Sookie, that's you. We'll call her Sara. But we wanted her to have your name as part of her identity."
I simply refused to cry anymore, but I admit I had to blot my eyes. JB patted my shoulder and went to get the ringing phone before it disturbed the sleepers. Tara and I hugged. The babies continued to snooze, so we sneaked out and eased into the living room. We could hardly find a seat because of the flower arrangements and baby gifts cluttering the room-in fact, the whole house. Tara was very, very happy. So was JB. It permeated their home. I hoped it was catching.
"Look what your cousin gave us a couple of weeks ago," Tara said. She lifted a brightly colored box that contained (the print said) a baby gym. The concept confused me, but Tara said it was an arched toy you laid the baby under, and the baby could bat at the bright things with little hands. She showed me the picture.
"Awww," I said. "Claude gave you that?" I simply couldn't imagine Claude selecting a gift, wrapping it, and bringing it by this house. He genuinely liked babies-though not to eat, as Bellenos might suggest. Bellenos surely wouldn't really think of ... I just couldn't go there.
She nodded. "I guess I just send the thank-you note to your address?"
Or pop it through a hole in the air in the woods. "Sure, that'll be fine."
"Sookie, is everything okay with you?" Tara said suddenly. "You don't seem quite yourself."
The last thing in the world I'd do is intrude on her happiness with my problems. And I could tell from her brain that she really didn't want to hear bad news; but she'd asked anyway, and that counted for a lot. "I'm good," I said. "I couldn't sleep last night, is all."
"Oh, did that big Viking keep you awake?" Tara gave me an elaborately sly look, and we both laughed, though it was hard for me to make it sound genuine.
Their supper should be warm by now, and they needed some privacy. They'd been lucky to bring twins home from the hospital this early. I was sure Tara ought to rest. So I said my good-byes, told Tara I'd stop by in a couple of days to pick up my dishes, and hugged JB on my way out, resolutely blocking out the memory of how he'd looked in his G-string.
Sara Sookie. Someone was named after me.
I smiled all the way home.
Dermot was there when I pulled up, and it was a real delight to know I wouldn't be alone that night. Supper was ready. All we had to do was get it out of the still-warm oven.
I told Dermot I'd "sent" the letter Bellenos had suggested, and he was so excited that he wanted to go out to the portal then and there to see if there'd been an answer. I persuaded him to wait until the next day, but he was fidgety for a good twenty minutes.
Nonetheless, Dermot was the kind of guest you want to have; he complimented the food, and he helped do the dishes. By the time we cleared away, the night outside was humming with the noise of the insects.
"I'm going to finish caulking the attic windows," Dermot said, still humming with energy.
Though before he'd begun work on the attic room he'd never caulked anything in his life, he'd watched a demonstration online and he was ready to work.
"You rock, Dermot," I said.
He grinned at me. He was really sticking to the attic renovation, despite what I felt was an increasingly weak chance that Claude would return to claim his bedroom. After he went upstairs, I cracked the kitchen window over the sink so I'd have a little breeze while I scrubbed the sink with some Bon Ami.
A mockingbird had perched outside in a photinia at the corner of the house. The stupid bird was singing to itself loud enough to wake the dead. I wished I had a slingshot.
Just as I thought that, I thought I heard a voice outside calling, "Sookie!"
I went out on the back porch. Sure enough, Bill was waiting in the backyard. "I can smell the fairy from here," he said. "I know I can't come in. Can you step out?"
"Hold on a minute." I rinsed out the sink, dried my hands on the dish towel, and shut the window to keep in the air-conditioning. Then, hoping my hair still looked decent, I went outside.
Bill had been having some vampire downtime. He was standing silent in the darkness, lost in his thoughts. When he heard me ap-proach, he stepped out into the bright security light, looking both intent and focused. It was easy to see that Bill had a list of things to tell me. "I'll start with the lesser things first," he said, rather stiffly. "I don't know if you've spared a moment to wonder about my efforts to find out who killed the young woman, but I assure you I'm trying to find out. She died while I was patrolling, and I won't be easy until I understand why it happened."
Taken aback, I could only nod slightly. "I don't know why you thought I ... oh, Eric. Well, never mind. Please tell me what you've discovered. Would you like to sit?"
We both sat in the lawn chairs. "Heidi and I went over Eric's backyard with great attention," Bill said. "You know it slopes down to a brick wall, the outer perimeter of the gated community."
"Right." I hadn't spent more than ten minutes total in Eric's backyard, but I knew its contours. "There's a gate in the brick wall."
"Yes, for the yard crew." Bill said this like having a yard crew was an exotic indulgence, like having a bunch of peacocks. "It's easier for the yard crew to gather all the yard debris and carry it out the back, rather than go uphill to the curb." His tone made it plain what he thought of people who liked to have a job made easier for them.
"It isn't kept locked?" I was startled at the idea that it might have been swinging open.