Sookie 05 Dead As A Doornail by Charlaine Harris Page A

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