Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [811]
“I’ll sure think about it,” I said, a little puzzled. “Um, have you seen Quinn today?”
“Glimpsed him. And I talked to Frannie for a minute. They’ve been busy getting props ready for the closing ceremonies.”
“Oh,” I said. Right. Sure. That took loads of time.
“Call him, ask him to take you out tomorrow,” Jake said.
I tried to picture me asking Quinn to take me shopping. Well, it wasn’t totally out of the question, but it wasn’t likely, either. I shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get out some.”
He looked pleased.
“Sookie, you can go,” Andre said. I was so tired I hadn’t even noticed him glide up.
“Okay. Good night, you two,” I said, and stood to stretch. I noticed the blue suitcase was still where I’d dropped it two nights ago. “Oh, Jake, you need to take that suitcase back down to the basement. They called me and told me to bring it up here, but no one’s claimed it.”
“I’ll ask around,” he said vaguely, and took off for his own room. Andre’s attention had already returned to the queen, who was laughing at the description of some wedding Dahlia had attended.
“Andre,” I said in a very low voice, “I gotta tell you, I think Mr. Baruch had something to do with that bomb outside the queen’s door.”
Andre looked as if someone had stuck a nail up his fundament. “What?”
“I’m thinking that he wanted Sophie-Anne scared,” I said. “I’m thinking that he thought she’d be vulnerable and need a strong male protector if she felt threatened.”
Andre was not Mr. Expressive, but I saw incredulity, disgust, and belief cross his face in quick order.
“And I’m also thinking maybe he told Henrik Feith that Sophie-Anne was going to kill him. Because he’s the hotel owner, right? And he’d have a key to get into the queen’s room, where we thought Henrik was safe, right? So Henrik would continue the queen’s trial, because he’d been persuaded she would do him in. Again, Christian Baruch would be there, to be her big savior. Maybe he had Henrik killed, after he’d set him up, so he could do a tah-dah reveal and dazzle Sophie-Anne with his wonderful care of her.”
Andre had the strangest expression on his face, as if he was having trouble following me. “Is there proof?” he asked.
“Not a smidge. But when I talked to Mr. Donati in the lobby this morning, he hinted that there was a security tape I might want to watch.”
“Go see,” Andre said.
“If I go ask for it, he’ll get fired. You need to get the queen to ask Mr. Baruch point-blank if she can see the security tape for the lobby outside during the time the bomb was planted. Gum on the camera or not, that tape will show something.”
“Leave first, so he won’t connect you to this.” In fact, the hotelier had been absorbed in the queen and her conversation, or his vampire hearing would have tipped him off that we were talking about him.
Though I was exhausted, I had the gratifying feeling that I was earning the money they were paying me for this trip. And it was a load off my mind to feel that the Dr Pepper thing was solved. Christian Baruch would not be doing any more bomb planting now that the queen was on to him. The threat the splinter group of the Fellowship posed . . . well, I’d only heard of that from hearsay, and I didn’t have any evidence of what form it would take. Despite the death of the woman at the archery place, I felt more relaxed than I had since I’d walked into the Pyramid of Gizeh, because I was inclined to attribute the killer archer to Baruch, too. Maybe when he saw that Henrik would actually take Arkansas from the queen, he’d gotten greedy and had the assassin take out Henrik, so the queen would get everything. There was something confusing and wrong about that scenario, but I was too tired to think it through, and I was content to let the whole tangled web lie until I was rested.
I crossed the little lobby to the elevator and pressed the button. When the doors dinged open, Bill stepped out, his hands full of order forms.
“You did well this evening,” I said,