Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse #5)(13)
Author: Charlaine Harris

When I assembled the hot water and a tea bag, I put a saucer with a couple of lemon slices on the tray, too. No fairies around to offend.

"Are you Sookie Stackhouse?" he asked when I returned with his tea.

"Yes, I am." I put the saucer gently on the table, right beside the cup. "Why do you want to know?" I already knew why, but with regular people, you had to ask.

"I’m Jack Leeds, a private investigator," he said. He laid a business card on the table, turned so I could read it. He waited for a beat, as if he usually got a dramatic reaction to that statement. "I’ve been hired by a family in Jackson, Mississippi – the Pelt family," he continued, when he saw I wasn’t going to speak.

My heart sank to my shoes before it began pounding at an accelerated rate. This man believed that Debbie was dead. And he thought there was a good chance I might know something about it.

He was absolutely right.

I’d shot Debbie Pelt dead a few weeks before, in self-defense. Hers was the body Eric had hidden. Hers was the bullet Eric had taken for me.

Debbie’s disappearance after leaving a "party" in Shreveport, Louisiana (in fact a life-and-death brawl between witches, vamps, and Weres), had been a nine days’ wonder. I’d hoped I’d heard the end of it.

"So the Pelts aren’t satisfied with the police investigation?" I asked. It was a stupid question, one I picked out of the air at random. I had to say something to break up the gathering silence.

"There really wasn’t an investigation," Jack Leeds said. "The police in Jackson decided she probably vanished voluntarily." He didn’t believe that, though.

His face changed then; it was like someone had switched on a light behind his eyes. I turned to look where he was looking, and I saw a blond woman of medium height shaking her umbrella out at the door. She had short hair and pale skin, and when she turned, I saw that she was very pretty; at least, she would have been if she had been more animated.

But that wasn’t a factor to Jack Leeds. He was looking at the woman he loved, and when she saw him, the same light switched on behind her eyes, too. She came across the floor to his table as smoothly as if she were dancing, and when she shed her own wet jacket, I saw her arms were as muscular as his. They didn’t kiss, but his hand slid over hers and squeezed just briefly. After she’d taken her chair and asked for some diet Coke, her eyes went to the menu. She was thinking that all the food Merlotte’s offered was unhealthy. She was right.

"Salad?" Jack Leeds asked.

"I have to have something hot," she said. "Chili?"

"Okay. Two chilis," he told me. "Lily, this is Sookie Stackhouse. Ms. Stackhouse, this is Lily Bard Leeds."

"Hello," she said. "I’ve just been out to your house."

Her eyes were light blue, and she had a stare like a laser. "You saw Debbie Pelt the night she disappeared." Her mind added, You’re the one she hated so much.

They didn’t know Debbie Pelt’s true nature, and I was relieved that the Pelts hadn’t been able to find a Were investigator. They wouldn’t out their daughter to regular detectives. The longer the two-natured could keep the fact of their existence a secret, the better, as far as they were concerned.

"Yes," I said. "I saw her that night."

"Can we come talk to you about that? After you get off work?"

"I have to go see a friend in the hospital after work," I said.

"Sick?" Jack Leeds asked.

"Shot," I said.

Their interest quickened. "By someone local?" the blond woman asked.

Then I saw how it might all work. "By a sniper," I said. "Someone’s been shooting people at random in this area."

"Have any of them vanished?" Jack Leeds asked.

"No," I admitted. "They’ve all been left lying. Of course, there were witnesses to all of the shootings. Maybe that’s why." I hadn’t heard of anyone actually seeing Calvin get shot, but someone had come along right afterward and called 911.

Lily Leeds asked me if they could talk to me the next day before I went to work. I gave them directions to my house and told them to come at ten. I didn’t think talking to them was a very good idea, but I didn’t think I had much of a choice, either. I would become more of an object of suspicion if I refused to talk about Debbie.

I found myself wishing I could call Eric tonight and tell him about Jack and Lily Leeds; worries shared are worries halved. But Eric didn’t remember any of it. I wished that I could forget Debbie’s death, too. It was awful to know something so heavy and terrible, to be unable to share it with a soul.

I knew so many secrets, but almost none of them were my own. This secret of mine was a dark and bloody burden.

Charles Twining was due to relieve Terry at full dark. Arlene was working late, since Danielle was attending her daughter’s dance recital, and I was able to lighten my mood a little by briefing Arlene on the new bartender/bouncer. She was intrigued. We’d never had an Englishman visit the bar, much less an Englishman with an eye patch.

"Tell Charles I said hi," I called as I began to put on my rain gear. After a couple of hours of sprinkling, the drops were beginning to come faster again.

I splashed out to my car, the hood pulled well forward over my face. Just as I unlocked the driver’s door and pulled it open, I heard a voice call my name. Sam was standing on crutches in the door of his trailer. He’d added a roofed porch a couple of years before, so he wasn’t getting wet, but he didn’t need to be standing there, either. Slamming the car door shut, I leaped over puddles and across the stepping-stones. In a second or two, I was standing on his porch and dripping all over it.

"I’m sorry," he said.

I stared at him. "You should be," I said gruffly.

"Well, I am."

"Okay. Good." I resolutely didn’t ask him what he’d done with the vampire.

"Anything happen over at the bar today?"

I hesitated. "Well, the crowd was thin, to put it mildly. But…" I started to tell him about the private detectives, but then I knew he’d ask questions. And I might end up telling him the whole sorry story just for the relief of confessing to someone. "I have to go, Sam. Jason’s taking me to visit Calvin Norris in the hospital in Grainger."

He looked at me. His eyes narrowed. The lashes were the same red-gold as his hair, so they showed up only when you were close to him. And I had no business at all thinking about Sam’s eyelashes, or any other part of him, for that matter.

"I was a shit yesterday," he said. "I don’t have to tell you why."