Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse #5)(19)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"I can’t imagine why she would. She didn’t knock on my door." She’d broken in.

"You didn’t see her after the party?"

"I have not seen her since that night." Now, that was the absolute truth.

"You’ve seen Mr. Herveaux?"

"Yes, I have."

"Are you engaged now?"

I smiled. "Not that I know of," I said.

I wasn’t surprised when the woman asked if she could use my bathroom. I’d let down my guard to find out how suspicious the detectives were, so I knew she wanted to have a more extensive look at my house. I showed her to the bathroom in the hall, not the one in my bedroom; not that she’d find anything suspicious in either of them.

"What about her car?" Jack Leeds asked me suddenly. I’d been trying to steal a glimpse of the clock on the mantel over the fireplace, because I wanted to be sure the duo were gone before Alcide picked me up for the funeral.

"Hmm?" I’d lost track of the conversation.

"Debbie Pelt’s car."

"What about it?"

"Do you have any idea where it is?"

"Not an idea in the world," I said with complete honesty.

As Lily came back into the living room, he asked, "Ms. Stackhouse, just out of curiosity, what do you think happened to Debbie Pelt?"

I thought, I think she got what was coming to her. I was a little shocked at myself. Sometimes I’m not a very nice person, and I don’t seem to be getting any nicer. "I don’t know, Mr. Leeds," I said. "I guess I have to tell you that except for her family’s worry, I don’t really care. We didn’t like each other. She burned a hole in my shawl, she called me a whore, and she was awful to Alcide; though since he’s a grown-up, that’s his problem. She liked to jerk people around. She liked to make them dance to her tune." Jack Leeds was looking a little dazed at this flow of information. "So," I concluded, "that’s the way I feel."

"Thanks for your honesty," he said, while his wife fixed me with her pale blue eyes. If I’d had any doubt, I understood clearly now that she was the more formidable of the two. Considering the depth of the investigation Jack Leeds had performed, that was saying something.

"Your collar is crooked," she said quietly. "Let me fix it." I held still while her deft fingers reached behind me and twitched the jacket until the collar lay down correctly.

They left after that. After I watched their car go down the driveway, I took my jacket off and examined it very carefully. Though I hadn’t picked up any such intention from her brain, maybe she’d put a bug on me? The Leeds might be more suspicious than they’d sounded. No, I discovered: she really was the neat freak she’d seemed, and she really had been unable to withstand my turned-up collar. As long as I was being suspicious, I inspected the hall bathroom. I hadn’t been in it since the last time I’d cleaned it a week ago, so it looked quite straight and as fresh and as sparkly as a very old bathroom in a very old house can look. The sink was damp, and the towel had been used and refolded, but that was all. Nothing extra was there, and nothing was missing, and if the detective had opened the bathroom cabinet to check its contents, I just didn’t care.

My heel caught on a hole where the flooring had worn through. For about the hundredth time, I wondered if I could teach myself how to lay linoleum, because the floor could sure use a new layer. I also wondered how I could conceal the fact that I’d killed a woman in one minute, and worry about the cracked linoleum in the bathroom the next.

"She was bad," I said out loud. "She was mean and bad, and she wanted me to die for no very good reason at all."

That was how I could do it. I’d been living in a shell of guilt, but it had just cracked and fallen apart. I was tired of being all angst-y over someone who would have killed me in a New York minute, someone who’d tried her best to cause my death. I would never have lain in wait to ambush Debbie, but I hadn’t been prepared to let her kill me just because it suited her to have me dead.

To hell with the whole subject. They’d find her, or they wouldn’t. No point in worrying about it either way.

Suddenly, I felt a lot better.

I heard a vehicle coming through the woods. Alcide was right on time. I expected to see his Dodge Ram, but to my surprise he was in a dark blue Lincoln. His hair was as smooth as it could be, which wasn’t very, and he was wearing a sober charcoal gray suit and a burgundy tie. I gaped at him through the window as he came up the stepping-stones to the front porch. He looked good enough to eat, and I tried not to giggle like an idiot at the mental image.

When I opened the door, he seemed equally stunned. "You look wonderful," he said after a long stare.

"You, too," I said, feeling almost shy.

"I guess we need to get going."

"Sure, if we want to be there on time."

"We need to be there ten minutes early," he said.

"Why that, exactly?" I picked up my black clutch purse, glanced in the mirror to make sure my lipstick was still fresh, and locked the front door behind me. Fortunately, the day was just warm enough for me to leave my coat at home. I didn’t want to cover up my outfit.

"This is a Were funeral," he said in a tone of significance.

"That’s different from a regular funeral how?"

"It’s a packmaster’s funeral, and that makes it more… formal."

Okay, he’d told me that the day before. "How do you keep regular people from realizing?"

"You’ll see."

I felt misgivings about the whole thing. "Are you sure I should be going to this?"

"He made you a friend of the pack."

I remembered that, though at the time I hadn’t realized it was a title, the way Alcide made it sound now: Friend of the Pack.

I had an uneasy feeling that there was a lot more to know about Colonel Flood’s funeral ceremony. Usually I had more information than I could handle about any given subject, since I could read minds; but there weren’t any Weres in Bon Temps, and the other shifters weren’t organized like the wolves were. Though Alcide’s mind was hard to read, I could tell he was preoccupied with what was going to happen in the church, and I could tell he was worried about a Were named Patrick.

The service was being held at Grace Episcopal, a church in an older, affluent suburb of Shreveport. The church edifice was very traditional, built of gray stone, and topped with a steeple. There wasn’t an Episcopal church in Bon Temps, but I knew that the services were similar to those of the Catholic church. Alcide had told me that his father was attending the funeral, too, and that we’d come over from Bon Temps in his father’s car. "My truck didn’t look dignified enough for the day, my father thought," Alcide said. I could tell that his father was foremost in Alcide’s thoughts.