Jazz Funeral

under, or around the table, but a voice, strong and authoritative—chilling, probably, to Ti-Belle—said, “Miss Thiebaud! Police!”
    Turning from the tableau on the floor, Nick saw Langdon, the oversized cop, bearing down; not running, just walking very fast, very purposefully. The servants had obviously let her in.
    “Let him go,” she said. If she’d had a megaphone, she couldn’t have sounded more official, more threatening.
    Nick couldn’t take his eyes off her. But Ti-Belle shouted, “Fuck!” and he saw that she too was staring at Langdon, hands still around Proctor’s throat.
    “Goddamn you!” Ti-Belle yelled. “Goddamn you, Proctor Gaither!” She went back to choking him, more methodically if anything. Nick didn’t understand why Proctor couldn’t fight her off.
    The cop grabbed her arms: “Let go!”
    Ti-Belle didn’t. Her face just got redder and more intense. Nick wondered if he should do something, but it was only a moment before the big cop wrenched Ti-Belle’s hands off Proctor, whose hands instandy went to his own throat, as if to reassure himself it was his again. Nick was about to jump over the table and help Proctor up, but before he could budge, Ti-Belle, wriggling away from Langdon, stepped in Proctor’s face.
    Then she turned on the cop, raking at her with open hands. Claws, Nick thought later. Langdon feinted, saving her face from certain laceration. She said, “Calm down, Ti-Belle.” No more Miss Thiebaud. “Calm down or I’m going to have to hit you.”
    Ti-Belle went for her again, a noise coming out of her throat that could have been a growl. She not only sounded like a cat, she behaved like one; moved gracefully, sure-footedly. She was beautiful even now, even doing what she was doing. Nick felt a surge of love for her, and pity. He wondered later where the fear had been; it should have been there.
    Perhaps the threat threw her off her stride; Nick wasn’t sure. Either she lost steam or the cop moved faster than he’d thought she could. She didn’t hit Ti-Belle after all, instead managed to catch her, turn her, and cuff her, so fast Nick found that later on he couldn’t reconstruct it in his mind.
    “You have the right to an attorney,” she said. “You have the right to remain silent …”
    Somehow that was more shocking to him than Ti-Belle’s attack, the sound of her being arrested.
    Doradale, Alabama, according to Skip’s two-year-old almanac, had a population of 10,919. She’d had to track down the county sheriff, a job she knew wouldn’t be easy on a Saturday. But she had to try anyway, had woken up early with Johnny Murphy’s tale of Lacey Longtree binning in her brain. Seven o’clock was too early. She waited till eight, figured out what the county seat was, and tried the sheriff’s department there. The watch commander said he’d try to get the sheriff but he just didn’t see much chance, it being a weekend and all. “Can I tell him what it’s about?” he asked, almost as an afterthought.
    Skip hated telling one person and then the next, running the risk of getting everything garbled; she usually didn’t do it. But without planning it, she answered this time. “It’s about somebody who used to live in Doradale—woman named Lacey Longtree.”
    “Lacey Longtree! Oh shit, do you have her?”
    And Skip had known the sheriff would be calling back soon.
    Now she had Ti-Belle Thiebaud in an interview room, looking raw and gaunt, her makeup having dissolved in floods of tears that started as soon as they walked out the door of Nick Anglime’s house. Floods and floods and floods of tears, maybe some of them for Ham, Skip thought.
    Even if you’d killed somebody, you’d miss him. You’d be sorry he was dead and sorry you’d done it at least some of the time.
    When the sheriff called, he didn’t stand on ceremony, just asked the same question the other cop had: “You got Lacey Longtree?”
    “Not in custody. Why—should I? Who is she?”
    “Well, she’s Doradale’s answer to Lizzie Borden, is Ms. Lacey. I knew she’d turn up sooner or later.”
    “Are you saying she killed her parents?”
    “No, I’m not sayin’ that. She ain’t really Lizzie. Just close to it.”
    Skip waited.
    “Just like those big-city murderers that get all the ink too. Lacey was the last one you’d think done it. Done anything, for that matter. Mousy little fat thing. Kind of reminded you of the Dormouse. Then one day she came home from school and gave