Dead in the Family

course, I’ll see what I can get. I can block a lot when I make myself, but if I let my guard down . . .” I shrugged. “This is a case where I want to know everything I can as soon as I can.”
    “Who do you think killed that dude in the grave?”
    “I’ve given it some thought,” I said gently. “I see three main possibilities. But the key to me suspecting all three is that he was buried on my land, and I have to assume that wasn’t by chance.”
    Jason nodded.
    “Okay, here goes. Maybe Victor, the new vamp leader of Louisiana, killed Basim. Victor wants to knock Eric out of his position, since Eric’s a sheriff. That’s a pretty important position.”
    Jason looked at me like I was an idiot. “I may not know all their fancy titles and all their little secret handshakes,” he said, “but I know someone in charge when I see him. If you say this Victor outranks Eric and wants him gone, I believe you.”
    I had to stop underestimating my brother’s shrewdness. “Maybe Victor thought that if I got arrested for murder—since someone tipped off the law that there was a body on my land—Eric would go down with me. Maybe Victor thought that would be enough for their mutual boss to take Eric out of his position.”
    “Wouldn’t it have been better to put the body in Eric’s house and call the police?”
    “That’s a good point. But finding a body in Eric’s house would mean bad press for all vampires. Another idea I had, maybe the killer was Annabelle, who was screwing both Basim and Alcide. Maybe she got jealous, or maybe Basim said he was going to tell. So she killed him, and since they’d just been on my land, she thought of it as a good place to bury a body.”
    “That’s a long way to drive with a body in the trunk,” Jason said. He was clearly going to play devil’s advocate.
    “Sure, it’s easy to punch holes in all my ideas,” I said, sounding exactly like his little sister. “Once I go to all the work of coming up with them! But you’re right. That’d be a risk I wouldn’t want to take,” I added, on a more mature level.
    “Alcide could’ve done it,” Jason said.
    “Yeah. He could’ve. But you were there. Did it seem to you—remotely—like he knew it was going to be Basim?”
    “No,” he said. “I thought he got a huge shock. But I wasn’t looking at Annabelle.”
    “I wasn’t, either. So I don’t know how she reacted.”
    “So you got any other ideas?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “And this is my least favorite. You know I told you that Heidi the vampire scented fairies in the woods?”
    “I did, too,” Jason said.
    “Maybe I should get you to check out the woods on a regular basis,” I said. “Anyway, Claude said it wasn’t him, and Heidi confirmed that. But what if Basim saw Claude meeting with another fairy? In the area around the house, where Claude’s scent would be natural?”
    “When would this have happened?”
    “The night the pack was on the property. Claude hadn’t moved in then, but he’d come around to see me.”
    I could see Jason trying to figure out the sequence. “So Basim warned you about the fairies he tracked, but he didn’t tell you he’d seen some? I don’t think that holds together, Sook.”
    “You’re right,” I admitted. “And we still don’t know who the other fairy would be. If there are two, and one of them isn’t Claude, and the other one is Dermot . . .”
    “That leaves one fairy we don’t know about.”
    “Dermot’s seriously messed up, Jason.”
    Jason said, “I’m worried about all of ’em.”
    “Even Claude?”
    “Look, how come he showed up now? When you have other fairies in the woods? And does that sound crazy when you say it out loud, or what?”
    I laughed. Just a little. “Yeah, it sounds nuts. And I get your point. I don’t entirely trust Claude, even if he is a little bit family. I wish I hadn’t said yes to him moving in. On the other hand, I don’t believe he means to hurt me or you. And he’s not quite as much of an asshole as I thought he was.”
    We tried to put together a few more theories about Basim’s death, but we could punch too many holes in all of our theories. It passed the time until we arrived.
    The house Alcide had moved into when his dad died was a large two-story brick home on large grounds, enhanced with impressive landscaping. The—estate? manor house?—was in a very nice area of Shreveport, of course. In fact, it wasn’t too far from Eric’s neighborhood. That