Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

pressing at the windows loomed at my back in a very nerve-racking fashion.
    “Mr. de Castro, Mr. Friedman, Ms. Witherspoon,” Ambroselli said. “You’re all three visiting from—Vegas, is that right?” The three vampires, wearing identical approving smiles, nodded in chorus. “Mr. de Castro, you have a business in Las Vegas … Mr. Friedman is your assistant … and Ms. Witherspoon is your girlfriend.” Her eyes went from Eric, Pam, and me to the Las Vegas trio, drawing a definite parallel.
    “Right,” Felipe said, as if he were encouraging a backward child.
    Ambroselli gave him a look that told Felipe he was permanently on her shit list. She turned to the next trio.
    “So, Mr. Rexford, Ms. Dodson, Ms. Bates. Tell me again how you came to be here? You met up with Mr. de Castro and his party in the bar of the Trifecta?”
    “I been dating T-Rex here for a while,” Cherie said. The massive wrestler put an arm around her. “And Viveca is my best buddy. Wethree were having a drink, and we met up with Felipe and his friends in the bar. We got to talking.” She smiled to show off her dimples. “Felipe said they were coming over to visit Eric, here, and they invited us to come along.”
    “But the dead woman wasn’t with you at the bar at the casino.”
    “No,” said T-Rex, now grave. “We never seen her at the Trifecta, or anywhere else, before we came in this house.”
    “Was anyone else inside when they got here?” Detective Ambroselli asked Eric directly.
    “Yes,” Eric said. “My daytime man, Mustapha Khan.” I fidgeted at his side, and he cast me a quick glance.
    Ambroselli blinked “What’s a daytime man?”
    “It’s sort of like having another assistant,” I said, leaping into the conversation. “Mustapha does the things that Eric can’t, things that require going out in the daylight. He goes to the post office; he picks up stuff from the printer; he goes to the dry cleaner; he gets supplies for this house; he gets the cars serviced and inspected.”
    “Do all vampires have a daytime man?”
    “The lucky ones,” Eric said with his most charming smile.
    “Mr. de Castro, do you have a daytime man?” Ambroselli asked him.
    “I do, and I hope he is hard at work in Nevada,” Felipe said, radiating bonhomie.
    “What about you, Mr. Compton?”
    “I’ve been fortunate enough to have a kind neighbor who will help me out with daytime errands,” Bill said. (That would be me.) “I’m hiring someone so I won’t tax her goodwill.”
    The detective turned to the patrol officer behind her and issued some commands that the vampires could surely hear, but I could not. However, I could read her mind, and I knew that she was telling theofficer to also search for a man named Mustapha Khan who seemed to be missing, and that the victim’s name was probably Kym Rowe and he should check the missing-persons list to see if she was on it. A plainclothes guy—another detective, I guessed—came in and took Ambroselli out on the front porch.
    While he whispered in her ear, I was sure all the vampires were trying hard to hear what he was telling her. But I could hear it in her brain. Pam touched my arm, and I turned to face her. She raised her eyebrows in a question. I nodded. I knew what they were talking about.
    “I need to talk to all of you separately,” Ambroselli said, turning back to us. “The crime-scene team needs to go through the house, so if you could come down to headquarters with me?”
    Eric looked angry. “I don’t want people going through my house. Why would they?” he asked. “The woman died outside. I didn’t even know her.”
    “Well, you took her blood quick enough,” Ambroselli said.
    Valid point, I thought, tempted to smile for just a nanosecond.
    “We won’t know where she died until we look at your house, sir,” Ambroselli continued. “For all I know, you’re all covering up a crime that took place inside this very room.” I had to repress an impulse to glance around in a guilty way.
    “Eric, Sookie, and I were together from the time this Rowe woman left the bedroom until we came out here to talk to Felipe and his friends,” Pam said.
    “And we were all together until Eric and Pam and Sookie came out here from the bedroom,” Horst said promptly, which was simply not true. Any of the Nevada vampires or their human pickups could have slipped outside and disposed of Kym.
    At least Pam was telling the truth.
    Then I remembered that I’d been shut in the