having any more babies themselves.
'In five weeks,' Diane said, an involuntary smile curving her lips even under the circumstances. 'A healthy boy, the doctor says.'
'That's great,' Tolliver and I said, more or less in unison. I eyed Felicia Hart, who'd risen to stand behind the love seat. Felicia was looking less than ecstatic, perhaps even impatient. Maybe she thought the new baby would mean even more attention was diverted from Victor. It was also possible the childless Felicia was even more creeped out by pregnant women than I was.
'Today, we have to deal with Tabitha,' Diane said, to give us an easement back into the grim reality of the body in the cemetery. 'How… you know how she died?'
'She was suffocated,' I said, not knowing any other way to say it. Severely deprived of air? Terminally oxygenless? I wasn't trying to tell myself jokes, but there are only so many ways to talk about the COD of any individual, even a child, especially to the mother.
The couple did their best to take the news on the chin, but Diane couldn't suppress a moan of horror. Felicia looked away, her face a hard mask concealing deep emotion.
There were many worse ways to die, but that would hardly be a consolation. Suffocation was bad enough. 'It would be over in seconds,' I said, as gently as I could. 'She would be unconscious, after a tiny bit.' This was an exaggeration, but I thought Diane's condition called for as much cushioning as possible. I was terrified that she would go into labor right in front of us.
Art had the strangest expression as he looked at me. It was like he'd never seen me before; like the reality of me, of what I did, had just hit him in the portly belly he carried in front of him like an announcement of his own importance.
'We should call Vic,' Joel said, in his warm voice. 'Excuse me for a moment.' He brushed at his eyes and groped in his pocket for his cell phone. Vic, Joel's son by his first marriage, had been a sullen fifteen-year-old at the time of Tabitha's abduction. I'd glimpsed him trying hard to be tough and contained in the face of an overwhelming situation.
Diane, who had seemed very fond of the boy and in fact had largely raised him—she'd married Joel when Victor was very young—said, 'If he needs to talk to me, I'm okay,' as Joel rose to walk a few feet away, his back to the room, to punch in the number.
'How's Victor done here in Memphis?' I asked Felicia, just to be saying something. Victor and I had shared a strange moment when I'd been trying to find his half sister. The boy had come into the living room of the Morgenstern home and begun to curse a blue streak, evidently thinking he was by himself. When I'd moved, he'd clutched me, crying on my shoulder, having to bend a little to do so. People weren't given to touching me, and I'd been startled. But I knew grief, and I knew release, and I'd held him until he was through. When he'd done crying and my blouse was a blotched mess, Victor had drawn back, appalled at his breakdown. Anything I said would have been wrong, so I'd just given him a nod. He'd nodded back, and fled.
Felicia was giving a surprised look. I supposed she was astonished that I remembered Victor at all. 'He's done… middling,' she said. 'Diane and Joel have sent him to a private school. I help them out a little. He's such a fragile kid, hanging in the balance. At that age, they can go either way, you feel, at any moment. And with this new baby coming…' Her voice trailed off, as if she couldn't imagine how to finish the sentence without criticizing Joel and Diane for their ill-timed fertility.
Joel came back and sat down by his wife, and he was frowning. 'Victor isn't holding together very well,' he said to us in general. Diane's face simply looked exhausted, as if she had no energy to spare for maintaining someone else's spirits when her own were so fraught with misery. 'He came home from school early, after we called. We didn't want anyone to see it on the news at noon and tell him when they got back to campus,' he explained.
We all nodded wisely, but my mind was on something entirely different.
'We never knew you moved,' I said, wanting to get that absolutely clear, 'so we were astonished when the police said they were contacting you. You don't have anything to do with the faculty at Bingham, do you? You're not an alumna, Diane?'
'No, I went to Vanderbilt, and Joel did, too,' she said, bewildered. 'Felicia, didn't you go to Bingham? With David?'
Felicia said, 'More years ago than I care to remember. Yes, David was in my class. I don't believe you met him in Nashville, Harper. Joel's brother.'
'Felicia's parents are here in Memphis, too,' Diane said. 'They both went to Bingham. And so did Joel's. It was quite a scandal when he decided to go to Vanderbilt. Why are you asking?'
'Just trying to think of some connection between you and the school. Someone put Tabitha's… Tabitha there, and someone made sure we were hired for this job.'
The couple sat and looked at me wide-eyed. I had the uncharitable thought that this increased Diane's resemblance to a lemur. Though the pregnant woman looked as though she were about to bolt, Joel was alert and intense. The man had an overabundance of energy, and it boiled around him, even under these circumstances. Behind them, Felicia was staring at me with an incredulous face.
'Surely it's just a coincidence,' Felicia said, finally, looking at me as though I were delusional. 'You don't think… you can't imagine that someone created such an elaborate plot? How could someone have put Tabitha there, and then find you, get you here, make sure you found Tabitha? That's just incredible.'
We all spent a second or two staring at each other. Art was looking from me to Felicia, as if we were playing Ping-Pong.
'I agree,' I said. 'But I can't make sense out of any other scenario. Actually, there's not much sense in that one.'
'We have to issue some kind of statement to the press,' Art said, when he realized the conversation had reached a stalemate. 'It has to be a statement that treads a fine line. We can't rule anything out, like Diane just did. We can't make any fantastic claims, like Harper did. We have to regret everything and admit nothing about our personal feelings about what might have happened.'
Tolliver was the only one who nodded his head in agreement.
'You know, our own lawyer is downstairs,' Diane murmured.
