'I think about women. I think about them all the time.'
'No, that's not what I mean.' I tried to think of how to put it. 'He doesn't just think about wanting to fuck women, when he looks at them. I'm not saying he's gay,' I added hastily, since Tolliver was looking incredulous. 'I'm saying that he thinks about what women like.' That still wasn't quite it, but it was as close as I could come. 'He likes to please women,' I said, but that wasn't exactly right, either.
The phone rang and Tolliver picked it up. 'Yes,' he said. 'Hello, Diane. Harper just got the flowers; she says she loves them. You really shouldn't have done it. Oh, he did? Well, thank him, then.' Tolliver made a face at me, and I grinned. He listened for a few moments. 'Tomorrow? Oh, no thanks, we'd feel like we were intruding…' Tolliver looked acutely uncomfortable. 'That's too much trouble,' he said next. His tone was carefully patient. He listened. 'Then, all right,' he said reluctantly. 'We'll be there.'
He hung up and made a face. 'The Morgensterns want us to come to their house tomorrow for lunch,' he said. 'They've had a lot of people bringing food by, they can't eat it all, and they're feeling guilty that we're stuck in Memphis because of them. There'll be other people there,' he assured me when he saw my face. 'The focus won't be on us.'
'Okay, good. That would have crossed a line, after the flowers. There's such a thing as overdoing the gratitude. After all, it was an accident. And we're getting the reward. Joel said so. You should have asked me before you said yes. I really don't want to do that.'
'But you see that we pretty much have to.'
'Yes, I see that,' I said, trying not to sound resentful. I thought that my brother wanted to see Felicia Hart again.
Tolliver nodded, a sharp gesture to close the subject. I wasn't quite sure I was through whining, but he was right. No point in discussing it any longer. 'You ready to go back to the cemetery?' he asked.
'Yes. How cold is it?' I stood up, experimentally stretched the leg. Better.
'The temperature's dropping.'
When we were all bundled up, I called downstairs to have our car brought around. A few minutes later, we were making our way back to St. Margaret's. The weekday nighttime traffic in downtown Memphis was not heavy. Nothing was going on at the Pyramid, and Ellis Auditorium looked dark, too. We drove east through depressed areas, shopping areas, and old residential areas until we got to the streets around Bingham College. The few people on foot were bundled up like urban mummies.
I began to recognize a few landmarks from the morning before. This time we didn't take the main drive through the college, as we had previously. Tolliver drove around the campus to reach a small road at the back of the college property. It had those white barriers that you pull back across the entrance, and yesterday they'd been pulled shut but unlocked, he'd noticed.
The same was true tonight. Rick Goldman, private eye, should tell Bingham their security had a few holes in it.
We passed between the open barriers. The crunch of gravel under our tires sounded especially loud. After a short stretch of landscaped lawn all around us, we entered the wooded corner of the campus. Though the city lay all around us, it felt like we were miles from nowhere. We drove slowly through the trees surrounding the old site, our headlights catching on the branches and trunks as we passed. Nothing moved in the cold stillness. We reached the clearing of the church and its yard. In the small graveled parking lot, we drove up to the low posts connected with wire that kept cars from pulling onto the grass. There was a security light on a high pole at the rear of the church, and one on the far side. They provided just enough light to make the shadow of the dilapidated iron-railing fence obscure the graveyard.
'If this was a horror movie, one of us would be a goner,' I commented.
Tolliver didn't respond, but he wasn't looking any too happy. 'I thought the lighting would be better than this,' he said. We made sure our coats were buttoned and zipped, gloves on, flashlights ready. Tolliver loaded some extra batteries into his pockets, and I did, too.
There was not even a night-light on in the old church.
When we shut the car doors behind us, the slams sounded loud as gunshots. Tolliver shone his flashlight on the wire so I could step over it, and I returned the favor. Then we opened the gate, which creaked loudly in approved horror-movie fashion.
'Just great,' Tolliver muttered. I found myself smiling.
The ground, which had seemed fairly level in the daylight, was rough walking at night. At least, it was for me. I negotiated it slowly, worried about my faltering right leg. But I didn't ask Tolliver for help. I could manage.
From the entrance gate, we needed to work our way southeast to reach the secluded corner where I'd found Tabitha in Josiah Poundstone's grave. Of course, that was the darkest place in the whole cemetery.
'It feels bigger tonight,' Tolliver said. His voice was just one step up from whispering. I almost asked him why. Then I realized I didn't want to talk out loud, either. As we neared the open grave, I wondered if they'd dug up poor Josiah, too—and if so, what they'd done with him. The familiar vibrations of the dead began to sound louder and louder in my head.
'Have we ever been to a cemetery at night?' I asked, trying to shake off the uneasy, prickling feeling that was riding my shoulders. There was no definite reason for me to feel anxious. In fact, I usually felt alive, alert, and happy in graveyards.
Certainly, no one else was around. The cemetery was surrounded on two sides by thick stands of trees, on the third side by the parking area (beyond which were more trees), and on the fourth by the old church. It wasn't too far off a busy, modern street, but I'd noticed on our previous visit how isolated the graveyard felt. Bugs and birds had sense enough to keep silent and lay low.
'There was that time the couple in Wisconsin wanted you to do a reading at midnight on their son's grave,' Tolliver said in my ear. It had been so long since I'd spoken, I had to recall the question I'd asked.
I was immediately sorry to be reminded about Wisconsin. I'd been trying to forget, to stuff that night into the closet where I kept horrors. Just to add to the weirdness of the couple and their request, they'd requested Halloween night. Plus, they'd invited about thirty best friends. I guess they'd figured if they were going to pay us that much money, they were going to get some mileage out of the event. They'd been mistaken about what I could
