Dead as a Doornail

took me a while to think it through.”
    I’d never considered the possibility.
    “I don’t think I would’ve picked up on it if I hadn’t known her so well,” he offered. “I certainly didn’t pick up a whiff anywhere else in the house.”
    So all my scrubbing had been to some avail. I was just lucky Jack and Lily Leeds weren’t two-natured. “Do you want to know what happened?”
    “I don’t think so,” he said after an appreciable pause. “Knowing Debbie, I’m guessing you only did what you had to do. After all, it was her scent at your house. She had no business there.”
    This was far from a ringing endorsement.
    “And Eric was still at your house then, wasn’t he? Maybe it was Eric?” Alcide sounded almost hopeful.
    “No,” I said.
    “Maybe I do want the whole story.”
    “Maybe I’ve changed my mind about telling it to you. You either believe in me, or you don’t. Either you think I’m the kind of person who’d kill a woman for no good reason, or you know I’m not.” Truly, I was hurt more than I thought I’d be. I was very careful not to slip into Alcide’s head, because I was afraid I might pick up on something that would have been even more painful.
    Alcide tried several times to open another conversation, but the drive couldn’t end soon enough for me. When hepulled into the clearing and I knew I was yards away from being in my own house, the relief was overwhelming. I couldn’t scramble out of that fancy car fast enough.
    But Alcide was right behind me.
    “I don’t care,” he said in a voice that was almost a growl.
    “What?” I’d gotten to my front door, and the key was in the lock.
    “I don’t care.”
    “I don’t believe that for one minute.”
    “What?”
    “You’re harder to read than a plain human, Alcide, but I can see the pockets of reservation in your mind. Since you wanted me to help you out with your dad, I’ll tell you: Patrick Whatsisname plans to bring up your dad’s gambling problems to show he’s unsuitable as packleader.” Nothing more underhanded and supernatural than the truth. “I’d read his mind before you asked me to. I don’t want to see you for a long, long, long time.”
    “What?” Alcide said again. He looked like I’d hit him in the head with an iron.
    “Seeing you . . . listening to your head . . . makes me feel bad.” Of course, there were several different reasons they did, but I didn’t want to enumerate them. “So, thanks for the ride to the funeral.” (I may have sounded a bit sarcastic.) “I appreciate your thinking of me.” (Even a higher probability of sarcasm here.) I entered the house, shut the door on his startled face, and locked it just to be on the safe side. I marched across the living room so he could hear my steps, but then I stopped in the hall and waited to listen while he got back in the Lincoln. I listened to the big car rocket down the driveway, probably putting ruts in my beautiful gravel.
    As I shed Tara’s suit and bundled it up to drop at the drycleaner’s, I confess I was mopey. They say when one door shuts, another one opens. But they haven’t been living at my house.
    Most of the doors I open seem to have something scary crouched behind them, anyway.

Chapter 7
    S AM WAS IN the bar that night, seated at a corner table like a visiting king, his leg propped up on another chair cushioned with pillows. He was keeping one eye on Charles, one eye on the clientele’s reaction to a vampire bartender.
    People would stop by, drop down in the chair across from him, visit for a few minutes, and then vacate the chair. I knew Sam was in pain. I can always read the preoccupation of people who are hurting. But he was glad to be seeing other people, glad to be back in the bar, pleased with Charles’s work.
    All this I could tell, and yet when it came to the question of who had shot him, I didn’t have a clue. Someone was gunning for the two-natured, someone who’d killed quite a few and wounded even more. Discovering the identity of the shooter was imperative. The police didn’t suspect Jason, buthis own people did. If Calvin Norris’s people decided to take matters into their own hands, they could easily find a chance to take out Jason. They didn’t know there were more victims than those in Bon Temps.
    I probed into minds, I tried to catch people in unguarded moments, I even tried to think of the most promising candidates for the role of assassin so I wouldn’t waste time listening to