Club Dead

back door. By the time Sam and Bubba returned, bringing a gust of cold air in their wake, I had mopped the hall and the men’s bathroom (as I would if there really had been an overflow). I sprayed some air freshener in the hall to improve the environment.
    It was a good thing we’d acted quickly, because Kevin was pushing open the door as soon as I’d unlocked it.
    “Everything okay back here?” he asked. Kevin is a runner, so he has almost no body fat, and he’s not a big guy. He looks kind of like a sheep, and he still lives with his mom. But for all that, he’s nobody’s fool. In the past, whenever I’d listened to his thoughts, they were either on police work, or his black amazon of a partner, Kenya Jones. Right now, his thoughts ran more to the suspicious.
    “I think we got it fixed,” Sam said. “Watch your feet, we just mopped. Don’t slip and sue me!” He smiled at Kevin.
    “Someone in your office?” Kevin asked, nodding his head toward the closed door.
    “One of Sookie’s friends,” Sam said.
    “I better get out there and hustle some drinks,” I said cheerfully, beaming at them both. I reached up to check that my ponytail was smooth, and then I made my Reeboks move. The bar was almost empty, and the woman I was replacing (Charlsie Tooten) looked relieved. “This is one slow night,” she muttered to me. “The guys at table six have been nursing that pitcher for an hour, and Jane Bodehouse has tried to pick up every man who’s come in. Kevin’s been writing something in a notebook all night.”
    I glanced at the only female customer in the bar, trying to keep the distaste off my face. Every drinking establishment has its share of alcoholic customers, people who open and close the place. Jane Bodehouse was one of ours. Normally, Jane drank by herself at home, but every two weeks or so she’d take it into her head to come in and pick up a man. The pickup process was getting more and more iffy, since not only was Jane in her fifties, but lack of regular sleep and proper nutrition had been taking a toll for the past ten years.
    This particular night, I noticed that when Jane had applied her makeup, she had missed the actual perimeters of her eyebrows and lips. The result was pretty unsettling. We’d have to call her son to come get her. I could tell at a glance she couldn’t drive.
    I nodded to Charlsie, and waved at Arlene, the other waitress, who was sitting at a table with her latest flame, Buck Foley. Things were really dead if Arlene was off her feet. Arlene waved back, her red curls bouncing.
    “How’re the kids?” I called, beginning to put away some of the glasses Charlsie had gotten out of the dishwasher. I felt like I was acting real normal until I noticed that my hands were shaking violently.
    “Doing great. Coby made the All-A honor roll and Lisa won the spelling bee,” she said with a broad smile. To anyone who believed that a four-times married woman couldn’t be good mother, I would point at Arlene. I gave Buck a quick smile, too, in Arlene’s honor. Buck is about the average kind of guy Arlene dates, which is not good enough for her.
    “That’s great! They’re smart kids, like their mama,” I said.
    “Hey, did that guy find you?”
    “What guy?” Though I had a feeling I already knew.
    “That guy in the motorcycle gear. He asked me was I the waitress dating Bill Compton, since he’d got a delivery for that waitress.”
    “He didn’t know my name?”
    “No, and that’s pretty weird, isn’t it? Oh my God, Sookie, if he didn’t know your name, how could he have come from Bill?”
    Possibly Coby’s smarts had come through his daddy, since it had taken Arlene this long to figure that out. I loved Arlene for her nature, not her brain.
    “So, what did you tell him?” I asked, beaming at her. It was my nervous smile, not my real one. I don’t always know when I’m wearing it.
    “I told him I liked my men warm and breathing,” she said, and laughed. Arlene was occasionally completely tactless, too. I reminded myself to reevaluate why she was my good friend. “No, I didn’t really say that. I just told him you would be the blond who came in at nine.”
    Thanks, Arlene. So my attacker had known who I was because my best friend had identified me; he hadn’t known my name or where I lived, just that I worked at Merlotte’s and dated Bill Compton. That was a little reassuring, but not a lot.
    Three hours dragged by. Sam came out, told me in a whisper