'And your dad has a Lexus like Joel's?'
'Why are you asking me all this?'
I couldn't believe he'd told me this much without asking why. Maybe David was lonely within his own family. As I looked at him, I wondered suddenly if David was the reason Felicia clung so closely to a family that had little connection to hers any more. My brother was looking at me strangely, with an expression I couldn't read.
'What do you do for a living, David?' Tolliver asked. You would never have thought that ten minutes before, he'd socked this guy in the stomach like he wanted his fist to come through the back.
'I work at the Commercial Appeal,' David said. 'In the advertising department.'
I didn't know exactly what such a job would consist of, but I was pretty sure David wouldn't make as much money as his brother, Joel. Joel was a CPA with a large firm, and he was obviously doing well at his job if his consumer goods were a reliable yardstick. And Joel had had not one wife, but two; both pretty, if the picture I'd seen the day before at the house hadn't been ridiculously touched up. Joel had a son and he'd had a daughter. I wondered what David had. A huge pile of envy? A case of jealousy?
'You drive your dad's car often, David?' I asked.
'The Buick? Why would I?' he asked.
'Wait, you said he had a Lexus.'
'No I didn't. You asked me if he had a Lexus, and I asked you why you wanted to know.'
Then I remembered Tolliver had said he'd been talking to Fred about his car. I'd misunderstood. And Victor had said his grandfather had a Lexus, but he hadn't specified which grandfather. I'd made a series of assumptions, and had gotten the usual result. Assumptions were dangerous things.
I'd been staring at David while I thought, and he was getting antsy. 'What's up with you?' he asked. 'I made a mistake coming here, and I apologized. I'm leaving now.'
'Were you really following Victor?'
'No one is watching out for him,' David said. 'I need to.'
I noticed that was yet another response that didn't really answer the question: a David Morgenstern specialty, apparently. 'It seems to me that everyone says they're watching out for Victor. Certainly Felicia is, and you are. Both of his grandfathers mentioned their concern about him.'
'Oh, Felicia talks about Victor a lot,' David said bitterly. 'But if you ask me, she's using Victor as an excuse to keep hanging around Joel… and Diane.' He tacked Diane's name on hastily, as if that would mask what he was implying.
That was an interesting thought, but I stuck to my course. 'Is everyone so worried about Victor because there's reason to think he had something to do with what happened to his sister?' I had caught myself considering, as Victor sat across from me ostensibly spilling his innermost fears, that he could be performing the whole scene as a cover-up for his own guilt.
'We wondered… I talked to Joel about this… Victor's so secretive. He vanishes and then he won't say where he's been… he hangs out with that kid Barney so much, and Barney's parents aren't… they're Christian, and they go to one of those churches where people wear Birkenstocks to the service. He locks his door a lot. We'd been wondering if Victor and the boy are into drugs, but his grades are good. He's on the wrestling team, and he's a strong boy, but we worry…'
'You sense there's something different and unknown about Victor,' I said.
David nodded. 'Do you know what it is?' he asked me baldly. 'After all, for some reason he came to talk to you. If he didn't come to you for sex…'
'It's unthinkable he'd come to me for any other reason,' I said gravely. 'Is that it?'
David looked ashamed all over again.
'I don't have sex with teenagers,' I said. 'Not one of them, not two of them at once. I'm not interested in that.'
Since I kept my voice cool and level, David didn't have any fuel to feed his anger, and he lapsed into his backup emotion, befuddled concern. 'Then why was Victor here?'
'You'll have to ask Victor that,' I said. Considering Victor had spent months thinking his father might have had something to do with Tabitha's disappearance, he was a model of mental health. He'd seemed so relieved to share the burden. He'd also seemed happy to tell someone about his sexual orientation. Victor needed a therapist. I couldn't believe he hadn't been visiting one. I said as much.
'Oh, he went for a while,' David said, anxious to assure me that they'd done their best by the boy. 'But Fred, he's an old-school kind of guy. He thought Victor should suck it up and get on with his life. I guess maybe he talked Joel and Diane around to his point of view, because when Victor moved here from Nashville, they never got him another therapist. Truth be told, Victor did seem a lot better once he was in Memphis.'
'So Fred didn't want him talking to anyone,' I said.
David looked surprised. 'Not to a therapist. He's just an old fashioned man, the kind who thinks you need to keep your problems to yourself and let time heal you.'
I was ready for David to be gone. In fact, I really didn't want to see any more of this extended family. In fact, I wished I'd never heard of Tabitha Morgenstern. I wished I'd never stood on the grave in the corner, but I couldn't help having the idea that I'd been herded toward that grave, I'd been asked to Memphis to find the child, and I'd done exactly what somebody wanted me to. All along, I'd been manipulated.
'Goodbye, David,' Tolliver said, and David actually looked a bit startled that we were ready for him to leave.
'Once again,' he began as he stood up.
'I know. You're sorry,' I said. I felt so tired I thought my flesh might fall off my bones. It wasn't bedtime yet, and I didn't think I'd eaten since a long-ago light breakfast.
