Living Dead in Dallas

"No. Maybe he'd come in for that, but I'd have given it to him at work the next day. Today."

"I wonder who invited Lafayette to that party."

"Good question."

"You don't reckon he'd have been dumb enough to try to blackmail anyone, do you?"

Sam rubbed the fake wood of the bar with a clean rag. The bar was already shining, but he liked to keep his hands busy, I'd noticed. "I don't think so," he said, after he'd thought it over. "No, they sure asked the wrong person. You know how indiscreet Lafayette was. Not only did he tell us that he went to such a party—and I'm betting he wasn't supposed to—he might have wanted to build more on it than the other, ah, participants, would feel comfortable with."

"Like, keep in contact with the people at the party? Give them a sly wink in public?"

"Something like that."

"I guess if you have sex with someone, or watch them having sex, you feel pretty much like you're their equal." I said this doubtfully, having limited experience in that area, but Sam was nodding.

"Lafayette wanted to be accepted for what he was more than anything else," he said, and I had to agree.

Chapter 2

We reopened at four-thirty, by which time we were all as bored as we could possibly be. I was ashamed of that, since after all, we were there because a man we knew had died, but it was undeniable that after straightening up the storeroom, cleaning out Sam's office, and playing several hands of bourré (Sam won five dollars and change) we were all ready to see someone new. When Terry Bellefleur, Andy's cousin and a frequent substitute barman or cook at Merlotte's, came through the back door, he was a welcome sight.

I guess Terry was in his late fifties. A Vietnam vet, he'd been a prisoner of war for a year and a half. Terry had some obvious facial scarring, and my friend Arlene told me that the scars on his body were even more drastic. Terry was redheaded, though he was graying a little more each month, it seemed like.

I'd always been fond of Terry, who bent over backward to be kind to me—except when he was in one of his black moods. Everyone knew not to cross Terry Bellefleur when he was in one of his moods. Terry's dark days were inevitably preceded by nightmares of the worst kind, as his neighbors testified. They could hear Terry hollering on the nightmare nights.

I never, never read Terry's mind.

Terry looked okay today. His shoulders were relaxed, and his eyes didn't dart from side to side. "You okay, sweet thing?" he asked, patting my arm sympathetically.

"Thanks, Terry, I'm fine. Just sorry about Lafayette."

"Yeah, he wasn't too bad." From Terry, that was high praise. "Did his job, always showed up on time. Cleaned the kitchen good. Never a bad word." Functioning on that level was Terry's highest ambition. "And then he dies in Andy's Buick."

"I'm afraid Andy's car is kind of . . ." I groped for the blandest term.

"It's cleanable, he said." Terry was anxious to close that subject.

"Did he tell you what had happened to Lafayette?"

"Andy says it looks like his neck was broken. And there was some, ah, evidence that he'd been . . . messed with." Terry's brown eyes flickered away, revealing his discomfort. "Messed with" meant something violent and sexual to Terry.

"Oh. Gosh, how awful." Danielle and Holly had come up behind me, and Sam, with another sack of garbage he'd cleaned out of his office, paused on his way to the Dumpster out back.

"He didn't look that . . . I mean, the car didn't look that . . ."

"Stained?"

"Right."

"Andy thinks he was killed somewhere else."

"Yuck," said Holly. "Don't talk about it. That's too much for me."

Terry looked over my shoulder at the two women. He had no great love for either Holly or Danielle, though I didn't know why and had made no effort to learn. I tried to leave people privacy, especially now that I had better control over my own ability. I heard the two moving away, after Terry had kept his gaze trained on them for a few seconds.

"Portia came and got Andy last night?" he asked.

"Yes, I called her. He couldn't drive. Though I'm betting he wishes I'd let him, now." I was just never going to be number one on Andy Bellefleur's popularity list.

"She have trouble getting him to her car?"

"Bill helped her."

"Vampire Bill? Your boyfriend?"

"Uh-huh."

"I hope he didn't scare her," Terry said, as if he didn't remember I was still there.

I could feel my face squinching up. "There's no reason on earth why Bill would ever scare Portia Bellefleur," I said, and something about the way I said it penetrated Terry's fog of private thought.

"Portia ain't as tough as everyone thinks she is," Terry told me. "You, on the other hand, are a sweet little éclair on the outside and a pit bull on the inside."

"I don't know whether I should feel flattered, or whether I should sock you in the nose."

"There you go. How many women—or men, for that matter—would say such a thing to a crazy man like me?" And Terry smiled, as a ghost would smile. I hadn't known how conscious of his reputation Terry was, until now.