7 - Lucky - Charlaine Harris.pdf

(94 KB) Pobierz
Charlaine Harris - Lucky
Lucky
by Charlaine Harris
Amelia Broadway and I were painting each other's toenails when my insurance agent
knocked at the front door. I'd picked Roses on Ice. Amelia had opted for Mad Burgundy
Cherry Glace. She’d finished my feet, and I had about three toes to go on her left foot
when Greg Aubert interrupted us.
Amelia had been living with me for a month, and it had been kind of nice to have
someone else sharing my old house. Amelia is a witch from New Orleans, and she was
hanging out with me because she had a magical misfortune she didn’t want any of her
witch buddies in the Big Easy to know about. Also, since Katrina, she really doesn’t have
anything to go home to, at least for a while. My little hometown of Bon Temps was
swollen with refugees.
Greg Aubert had been to my house after I’d had a fire that caused a lot of damage. As far
as I knew, I didn’t have any insurance needs at the moment. I was pretty curious about
his purpose, I confess.
Amelia had glanced up at Greg, found his sandy hair and rimless glasses uninteresting,
and completed painting her little toe while I ushered him to the wingback chair.
“Greg, this is my friend Amelia Broadway,” I said. “Amelia, this is Greg Aubert.”
Amelia looked at Greg with more interest. I’d told her Greg was a colleague of hers, in
some respects. Greg’s mom had been a witch, and he’d found using the craft very helpful
in protecting his clients. Not a car got insured with Greg’s agency without having a spell
cast on it. I was the only one in Bon Temps who knew about Greg’s little talent.
Witchcraft wouldn’t be popular in our devout little town. Greg always handed his clients
a lucky rabbit’s foot to keep in their new vehicles or homes.
After he turned down the obligatory offer of iced tea or water or Coke, Greg sat on the
edge of the chair while I resumed my seat on one end of the couch. Amelia had the other
end.
“I felt the wards when I drove up,” Greg told Amelia. “Very impressive.” He was trying
real hard to keep his eyes off my tank top. I would have put on a bra if I’d known we
were going to have company.
Amelia tried to look indifferent, and she might have shrugged if she hadn’t been holding
a bottle of nail polish. Amelia, tan and athletic, with short glossy brown hair, is not only
pleased with her looks but really proud of her witchcraft abilities. “Nothing special,” she
said, with unconvincing modesty. She smiled at Greg, though.
“What can I do for you today, Greg?” I asked. I was due to go to work in an hour, and I
had to change and pull my long hair up in a ponytail.
“I need your help,” he said, yanking his gaze up to my face.
No beating around the bush with Greg.
“Okay, how?” If he could be direct, so could I.
“Someone’s sabotaging my agency,” he said. His voice was suddenly passionate, and I
realized Greg was really close to a major breakdown. He wasn’t quite the broadcaster
Amelia was – I could read most thoughts Amelia had as clearly as if she’d spoken them –
but I could certainly read his inner workings.
“Tell us about it,” I said, because Amelia could not read Greg’s mind.
“Oh, thanks,” he said, as if I’d agreed to do something. I opened my mouth to correct this
idea, but he plowed ahead.
“Last week I came into my office to find that someone had been through the files.”
“You still have Marge Barker working for you?”
He nodded. A stray beam of sunlight winked off his glasses. It was September, and still
very warm in northern Louisiana. Greg got out a snowy handkerchief and patted his
forehead. “I’ve got my wife, Christy, she comes in three days a week for half a day, and
I’ve got Marge full-time.” Christy, Greg’s wife, was as sweet as Marge was sour.
“How’d you know someone had been though the files?” Amelia asked. She screwed the
top on the polish bottle and put it on the coffee table.
Greg took a deep breath. “I’d been thinking for a couple of weeks that someone had been
in the office at night. But nothing was missing. Nothing was changed. My wards were
okay. But two days ago, I got into the office to find that one of the drawers on our main
filing cabinet was open. Of course, we lock them at night,” he said. “We’ve got one of
those filing systems that locks up when you turn a key in the top drawer. Almost all of
the client files were at risk. But every day, last thing in the afternoon, Marge goes around
and locks all that cabinet. What if someone suspects … what I do?”
I could see how that would shiver Greg down to his liver. “Did you ask Marge if she
remembered locking the cabinet?”
“Sure I asked her. She got mad – you know Marge – and said she definitely did. My wife
had worked that afternoon, but she couldn’t remember if she watched Marge lock the
cabinets or not. And Terry Bellefleur had dropped by at the last minute, wanting to check
again on the insurance for his damn dog. He might have seen Marge lock up.”
Greg sounded so irritated that I found myself defending Terry. “Greg, Terry doesn’t like
being the way he is, you know,” I said, trying to gentle my voice. “He got messed up
fighting for our country, and we got to cut him some slack.”
Greg looked grumpy for a minute. Then he relaxed. “I know, Sookie,” he said. “He’s just
been so hyped up about this dog.”
“What’s the story?” Amelia asked. If I have moments of curiosity, Amelia has an
imperative urge. She wants to know everything about everybody. The telepathy should
have gone to her, not me. She might actually have enjoyed it, instead of considering it a
disability.
“Terry Bellefleur is Andy’s cousin,” I said. I knew Amelia had met Andy, a police
detective, at Merlotte’s. “He comes in after closing and cleans the bar. Sometimes he
substitutes for Sam. Maybe not the few evenings you were working.” Amelia filled in at
the bar from time to time.
“Terry fought in Vietnam, got captured, and had a pretty bad time of it. He’s got scars
inside and out. The story about the dogs is this: Terry loves hunting dogs, and he keeps
buying himself these expensive Catahoulas, and things keep happening to them. His
current bitch has had puppies. He’s just on pins and needles lest something happen to her
and the babies.”
“You’re saying Terry is a little unstable?”
“He has bad times,” I said. “Sometimes he’s just fine.”
“Oh,” Amelia said, and a lightbulb might as well have popped on above her head. “He’s
the guy with the long graying auburn hair, going bald at the front? Scars on his cheek?
Big truck?”
“That’s him,” I said.
Amelia turned to Greg. “You said for at least a couple of weeks you’d felt someone had
been in the building after it closed. That couldn’t be your wife, or this Marge?”
“My wife is with me all evening unless we have to take the kids to different events. And I
don’t know why Marge would feel she had to come back at night. She’s there during the
day, every day, and often by herself. Well, the spells that protect the building seem okay
to me. But I keep recasting them.”
“Tell me about your spells,” Amelia said, getting down to her favorite part.
She and Greg talked spells for a few minutes, while I listened but didn’t comprehend. I
couldn’t even understand their thoughts.
Then Amelia said, “What do you want, Greg? I mean, why did you come to us?”
He’d actually come to me, but it was kind of nice to be an “us.”
Greg looked from Amelia to me, and said, “I want Sookie to find out who opened my
files, and why. I worked hard to become the best-selling Pelican State agent in northern
Louisiana, and I don’t want my business fouled up now. My son’s about to go to Rhodes
in Memphis, and it ain’t cheap.”
“Why are you coming to me instead of the police?”
“I don’t want anyone else finding out what I am,” he said, embarrassed but determined.
“And it might come up if the police start looking into things at my office. Plus, you
know, Sookie, I got you a real good payout on your kitchen.”
My kitchen had been burned down by an arsonist months before. I’d just finished getting
it all rebuilt. “Greg, that’s your job,” I said. “I don’t see where the gratitude comes in.”
“Well, I have a certain amount of discretion in arson cases,” he said. “I could have told
the home office that I thought you did it yourself.”
“You wouldn’t have done that,” I said calmly, though I was seeing a side of Greg I didn’t
like. Amelia practically had flames coming out of her nose, she was so incensed. But I
could tell that Greg was already ashamed of bringing up the possibility.
“No,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I guess I wouldn’t. I’m sorry I said that,
Sookie. I’m scared someone’ll tell the whole town what I do, why people I insure are
so… lucky. Can you see what you can find out?”
“Bring your family into the bar for supper tonight, give me a chance to look them over,” I
said. “That’s the real reason you want me to find out, right? You suspect your family
might be involved. Or your staff.”
He nodded, and he looked wretched.
“I’ll try to get in there tomorrow to talk to Marge. I’ll say you wanted me to drop by.”
“Yeah, I make calls from my cell phone sometimes, ask people to come in,” he said.
“Marge would believe it.”
Amelia said, “What can I do?”
“Well, can you be with her?” Greg said. “Sookie can do things you can’t, and vice versa.
Maybe between the two of you…”
“Okay,” Amelia said, giving Greg the benefit of her broad and dazzling smile. Her dad
must have paid dearly for the perfect white smile of Amelia Broadway, witch and
waitress.
Bob the cat padded in just at that moment, as if belatedly realizing we had a guest. Bob
jumped up on the chair right beside Greg and examined him with care.
Greg looked down at Bob just as intently. “Have you been doing something you
shouldn’t, Amelia?”
“There’s nothing strange about Bob,” Amelia said, which was not true. She scooped up
the black-and-white cat in her arms and nuzzled his soft fur. “He’s just a big ole cat.
Aren’t you, Bob?” She was relieved when Greg dropped the subject. He got up to leave.
“I’ll be grateful for anything you can do to help me,” he said. With an abrupt switch to
his professional persona, he said, “Here, have an extra lucky rabbit’s foot,” and reached
in his pocket to hand me a lump of fake fur.
“Thanks,” I said, and decided to put it in my bedroom. I could use some luck in that
direction.
After Greg left, I scrambled into my work clothes (black pants and white boatneck T-shirt
with MERLOTTE’S embroidered over the left breast), brushed my long blond hair and
secured it in a ponytail, and left for the bar, wearing Teva sandals to show off my
beautiful toenails. Amelia, who wasn’t scheduled to work that night, said she might go
have a good look around the insurance agency.
“Be careful,” I said. “If someone really is prowling around there, you don’t want to run
into a bad situation.”
“I’ll zap ‘em with my wonderful witch powers,” she said, only half-joking. Amelia had a
fine opinion of her own abilities, which led to mistakes like Bob. He had actually been a
thin young witch, handsome in a nerdy way. While spending the night with Amelia, Bob
had been the victim of one of her less successful attempts at major magic. “Besides,
who’d want to break into an insurance agency?” she said quickly, having read the doubt
on my face. “This whole thing is ridiculous. I do want to check out Greg’s magic, though,
and see if it’s been tampered with.”
“You can do that?”
“Hey, standard stuff.”
To my relief, the bar was quiet that night. It was Wednesday, which is never a very big
day at supper time, since lots of Bon Temps citizens go to church on Wednesday night.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin