Read Online Shakespeare's Counselor by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online Page B

down to the bare bones.”
    I had no idea Carrie employed a medical whatever, and from his face Claude had either been ignorant of it, too, or had forgotten; he wasn’t happy with himself. I was probably the only one present who knew him well enough to tell, though.
    â€œYou live here in Shakespeare?” Claude said.
    â€œRight over on Compton.” Cliff Eggers’s big hand smoothed Tamsin’s hair in a cherishing gesture.
    I was about to ask Tamsin if she’d heard anyone leave the building before our group had broken in, when I heard a voice calling, “Lily! Lily!”
    I peered around the parking lot, trying to find its source. Full dark had fallen now, and the lights of the parking lot were busy with insects. The people buzzed around below them, looking as patternless as the bugs. I was hoping all the police were more purposeful than they appeared. Claude was no fool, and he’d sent everyone in his department through as much training as he could afford. No wonder he was so quick to snap up a detective from a big force, one who was sure to have more experience than anyone he could hire locally. And though he’d never spoken to me of it, I was aware that Claude had quotas he had to meet, and his force was probably always trying to catch up on the minority percentage, especially since Shakespeare had had some racial troubles about eighteen months ago.
    â€œLily!”
    And there he was; the most handsome young man in Shakespeare, prom king, and thorn in my side, Bobo Winthrop. My heart sank, while another part of me reacted in a far different way.
    I turned a hose on myself mentally.
    â€œBobo,” I said formally.
    He disregarded my tone and put his arm around me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Claude’s bushy eyebrows escalate toward his hairline.
    â€œYou okay?” Bobo asked tenderly.
    â€œYes, thank you,” I said, my voice as stiff as I could make it.
    â€œIs this your friend, Lily?” Tamsin asked. She’d recovered enough to try to slip back into her therapist role, and the neutral word friend suddenly seemed to have many implications.
    â€œThis is Bobo Winthrop,” I told her. “Bobo: Tamsin Lynd, Cliff Eggers.” I had done my duty.
    â€œWhat happened here?” Bobo asked, giving Tamsin and Cliff a distracted nod. I was glad to see that Detective Stokes had drawn Claude away to huddle with him on real police business.
    I wanted to be somewhere else. I started walking to my car, wondering if anyone would stop me. No one did. Bobo trailed after me, if a six-foot-tall blond can be said to trail.
    â€œA woman got killed in there tonight,” I said to my large shadow when we reached my car. “She was stabbed, or stuck through somehow.”
    â€œWho was she?” Bobo loomed over me while I pulled my keys out of my pocket. I wondered where the rest of my therapy group had gone. The police station? Home? If Melanie didn’t tell the police the identity of the corpse herself, they’d find it out pretty quick. She’d look bad.
    â€œI didn’t know her,” I said accurately, if not exactly honestly. Bobo touched my face, a stroke of his palm against my cheek.
    â€œI’m going home,” I said.
    â€œJack there tonight?”
    â€œNo, he’s on the road.”
    â€œYou need me to be there? I’ll be glad—”
    â€œNo.” Clipped and final, it was as definite as it was possible to be. Dammit, when would Bobo find a girlfriend or stop coming home during the summer and the holidays? There must be a special word for someone you were fond of, someone who aroused a deep-rooted lust, someone you would never love. There was nothing as idiotic, as inexplicable, as the chemistry between two people who had almost nothing in common and had no business even being in the same room together. I loved Jack, loved him more than anything, and reacting to Bobo this way was a constant