"Hmmm. I guess... three days ago. He was still here when I got here to work my shift, and we said hello to each other. Oh, he told me about a party he'd been to." I tried to recall his exact words. "He said he'd been to a house where there were all kinds of sex hijinks going on."
The two men gaped at me.
"Well, that's what he said! I don't know how much truth was in it." I could just see Lafayette's face as he'd told me about it, the coy way he kept putting his finger across his lips to indicate he wasn't telling me any names or places.
"Didn't you think someone should know about that?" Bud Dearborn looked stunned.
"It was a private party. Why should I tell anyone about it?"
But that kind of party shouldn't happen in their parish. Both men were glaring at me. Through compressed lips, Bud said, "Did Lafayette tell you anything about drugs being used at this get-together?"
"No, I don't remember anything like that."
"Was this party at the home of someone white, or someone black?"
"White," I said, and then wished I'd pled ignorance. But Lafayette had been really impressed by the home - though not because it was large or fancy. Why had he been so impressed? I wasn't too sure what would constitute impressive for Lafayette, who had grown up poor and stayed that way, but I was sure he'd been talking about the home of someone white, because he'd said, "All the pictures on the walls, they all white as lilies and smiling like alligators." I didn't offer thatcomment to the police, and they didn't ask further.
When I'd left Sam's office, after explaining why Andy's car had been in the parking lot in the first place, I went back to stand behind the bar. I didn't want to watch the activity out in the parking lot, and there weren't any customers to wait on because the police had the entrances to the lot blocked off.
Sam was rearranging the bottles behind the bar, dusting as he went, and Holly and Danielle had plunked themselves down at a table in the smoking section so Danielle could have a cigarette.
"How was it?" Sam asked.
"Not much to it. They didn't like hearing about Anthony working here, and they didn't like what I told them about the party Lafayette was bragging about the other day. Did you hear him telling me? The orgy thing?"
"Yeah, he said something to me about that, too. Must have been a big evening for him. If it really happened."
"You think Lafayette made it up?"
"I don't think there are too many biracial, bisexual parties in Bon Temps," he said.
"But that's just because no one invited you to one," I said pointedly. I wondered if I really knew at all what went on in our little town. Of all the people in Bon Temps, I should be the one to know the ins and the outs, since all that information was more or less readily available to me, if I chose to dig for it. "At least, I assume that's the case?"
"That's the case," Sam said, smiling at me a little as he dusted a bottle of whiskey.
"I guess my invitation got lost in the mail, too."
"You think Lafayette came back here last night to talk more to you or me about this party?"
I shrugged. "He may have just arranged to meet someone in the parking lot. After all, everyone knows where Merlotte's is. Had he gotten his paycheck?" It was the end of the week, when Sam normally paid us.
"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.