Dead as a Doornail

his Merlotte’s T-shirt. I noticed his hands shaking as he pulled a draft beer. I wondered if he could last until dark.
    At least there weren’t many customers, if something did go wrong. Arlene drifted over to catch up with a married couple who’d come in, friends of hers. My section was almost empty, with the exception of my brother, Jason, and his friend Hoyt.
    Hoyt was Jason’s sidekick. If they weren’t both definitely heterosexual, I would have recommended they marry, they complemented each other so well. Hoyt enjoyed jokes, and Jason enjoyed telling them. Hoyt was at a loss to fill his free time, and Jason was always up to something. Hoyt’s mother was a little overwhelming, and Jason was parent-free. Hoyt was firmly anchored in the here and now, and had an iron sense of what the community would tolerate and what it would not. Jason didn’t.
    I thought of what a huge secret Jason now had, and I wondered if he was tempted to share it with Hoyt.
    “How you doing, Sis?” Jason asked. He held up his glass, indicating he’d like a refill on his Dr Pepper. Jason didn’t drink until after his workday was over, a large point in his favor.
    “Fine, Brother. You want some more, Hoyt?” I asked.
    “Please, Sookie. Ice tea,” Hoyt said.
    In a second I was back with their drinks. Terry glared at me when I went behind the bar, but he didn’t speak. I can ignore a glare.
    “Sook, you want to go with me to the hospital in Grainger this afternoon after you get off?” Jason asked.
    “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, sure.” Calvin had always been good to me.
    Hoyt said, “Sure is crazy, Sam and Calvin and Heather getting shot. What do you make of it, Sookie?” Hoyt has decided I am an oracle.
    “Hoyt, you know as much about it as I do,” I told him. “I think we all should be careful.” I hoped the significance of this wasn’t lost on my brother. He shrugged.
    When I looked up, I saw a stranger waiting to be seated and hurried over to him. His dark hair, turned black by the rain, was pulled back in a ponytail. His face was scarred with one long thin white line that ran along one cheek. When he pulled off his jacket, I could see that he was a bodybuilder.
    “Smoking or non?” I asked, with a menu already in my hand.
    “Non,” he said, and followed me to a table. He carefully hung his wet jacket on the back of a chair and took the menu after he was seated. “My wife will be along in a few minutes,” he said. “She’s meeting me here.”
    I put another menu at the adjacent place. “Do you want to order now or wait for her?”
    “I’d like some hot tea,” he asked. “I’ll wait until she comes to order food. Kind of a limited menu here, huh?” He glanced over at Arlene and then back at me. I began to feel uneasy. I knew he wasn’t here because this place was convenient for lunch.
    “That’s all we can handle,” I said, taking care to sound relaxed. “What we’ve got, it’s good.”
    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