Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse #5)(18)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I opened her walk-in closet. I spotted exactly what I needed right away. Hanging in the middle of the rear rack was a knit suit. The jacket was black with creamy pink facings on the lapels, meant to be worn over the matching pink shell on the hanger beneath it. The black skirt was pleated. Tara had had it hemmed up; the alteration tag was still on the plastic bag covering the garment. I held the skirt up to me and looked in Tara’s full-length mirror. Tara was two or three inches taller than I, so the skirt fell just an inch above my knees, a fine length for a funeral. The sleeves of the jacket were a little long, but that wasn’t so obvious. I had some black pumps and a purse, and even some black gloves that I’d tried to save for nice.

Mission accomplished, in record time.

I slid the jacket and shell into the plastic bag with the skirt and walked straight out of the house. I’d been in Tara’s place less than ten minutes. In a hurry, because of my ten o’clock appointment, I began getting ready. I French braided my hair and rolled the remaining tail under, securing everything with some antique hairpins my grandmother had stashed away; they’d been her grandmother’s. I had some black hose, fortunately, and a black slip, and the pink of my fingernails at least coordinated with the pink of the jacket and shell. When I heard a knock on the front door at ten, I was ready except for my shoes. I stepped into my pumps on the way to the door.

Jack Leeds looked openly astonished at my transformation, while Lily’s eyebrows twitched.

"Please come in," I said. "I’m dressed for a funeral."

"I hope you’re not burying a friend," Jack Leeds said. His companion’s face might have been sculpted from marble. Had the woman never heard of a tanning bed?

"Not a close one. Won’t you sit down? Can I get you anything? Coffee?"

"No, thank you," he said, his smile transforming his face.

The detectives sat on the couch while I perched on the edge of the La-Z-Boy. Somehow, my unaccustomed finery made me feel braver.

"About the evening Ms. Pelt vanished," Leeds began. "You saw her in Shreveport?"

"Yes, I was invited to the same party she was. At Pam’s place." All of us who’d lived through the Witch War – Pam, Eric, Clancy, the three Wiccans, and the Weres who had survived – had agreed on our story: Instead of telling the police that Debbie had left from the dilapidated and abandoned store where the witches had established their hideout, we’d said that we’d stayed the whole evening at Pam’s house, and Debbie had left in her car from that address. The neighbors might have testified that everyone had left earlier en masse if the Wiccans hadn’t done a little magic to haze their memories of the evening.

"Colonel Flood was there," I said. "Actually, it’s his funeral I’m going to."

Lily looked inquiring, which was probably the equivalent of someone else exclaiming, "Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!"

"Colonel Flood died in a car accident two days ago," I told them.

They glanced at each other. "So, were there quite a few people at this party?" Jack Leeds said. I was sure he had a complete list of the people who’d been sitting in Pam’s living room for what had been essentially a war council.

"Oh, yes. Quite a few. I didn’t know them all. Shreveport people." I’d met the three Wiccans that evening for the first time. I’d known the werewolves slightly. The vampires, I’d known.

"But you’d met Debbie Pelt before?"

"Yes."

"When you were dating Alcide Herveaux?"

Well. They’d certainly done their homework.

"Yes," I said. "When I was dating Alcide." My face was as smooth and impassive as Lily’s. I’d had lots of practice in keeping secrets.

"You stayed with him once at the Herveaux apartment in Jackson?"

I started to blurt out that we’d stayed in separate bedrooms, but it really wasn’t their business. "Yes," I said with a certain edge to my voice.

"You two ran into Ms. Pelt one night in Jackson at a club called Josephine’s?"

"Yes, she was celebrating her engagement to some guy named Clausen," I said.

"Did something happen between you that night?"

"Yes." I wondered whom they’d been talking to; someone had given the detectives a lot of information that they shouldn’t have. "She came over to the table, made a few remarks to us."

"And you also went to see Alcide at the Herveaux office a few weeks ago? You two were at a crime scene that afternoon?"

They’d done way too much homework. "Yes," I said.

"And you told the officers at that crime scene that you and Alcide Herveaux were engaged?"

Lies will come back to bite you in the butt. "I think it was Alcide who said that," I said, trying to look thoughtful.

"And was his statement true?"

Jack Leeds was thinking that I was the most erratic woman he’d ever met, and he couldn’t understand how someone who could get engaged and unengaged so adeptly could be the sensible hardworking waitress he’d seen the day before.

She was thinking my house was very clean. (Strange, huh?) She also thought I was quite capable of killing Debbie Pelt, because she’d found people were capable of the most horrible things. She and I shared more than she’d ever know. I had the same sad knowledge, since I’d heard it directly from their brains.

"Yes," I said. "At the time, it was true. We were engaged for, like, ten minutes. Just call me Britney." I hated lying. I almost always knew when someone else was lying, so I felt I had LIAR printed in big letters on my forehead.

Jack Leeds’s mouth quirked, but my reference to the pop singer’s fifty-five-hour marriage didn’t make a dent in Lily Bard Leeds.

"Ms. Pelt object to your seeing Alcide?"

"Oh, yes." I was glad I’d had years of practice of hiding my feelings. "But Alcide didn’t want to marry her."

"Was she angry with you?"

"Yes," I said, since undoubtedly they knew the truth of that. "Yes, you could say that. She called me some names. You’ve probably heard that Debbie didn’t believe in hiding her emotions."

"So when did you last see her?"

"I last saw her…" (with half her head gone, sprawled on my kitchen floor, her legs tangled up in the legs of a chair) "Let me think…. As she left the party that night. She walked off into the dark by herself." Not from Pam’s, but from another location altogether; one full of dead bodies, with blood splashed on the walls. "I just assumed she was starting back to Jackson." I shrugged.

"She didn’t come by Bon Temps? It’s right off the interstate on her return route."