"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."

"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.