Dead as a Doornail

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 amore 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 andtwitched 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