made her skin glow. 'Mr. Lang, are you Miss Connelly's manager? Have I got that right?' the shining woman said.
'Yes, you do,' Tolliver said agreeably. I knew the camera was rolling. But I had faith in my brother. He has a lot of charm when the occasion arises, especially if it arises in the presence of a pretty woman.
'Can you comment on this morning's happenings in the old St. Margaret's cemetery at Bingham College?' she asked. The microphone she'd been clutching was thrust at Tolliver's chin in what I considered a very aggressive way.
'Yes,' he said. 'We're waiting to hear if the body we discovered can be identified.' I admired the way he kept his voice so level and calm—but serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.
'Is it true the police are considering the possibility that the skeleton may be that of Tabitha Morgenstern?'
Well, that hadn't taken long to leak out.
'Our thoughts and our prayers are with the Morgenstern family. Of course, like everyone else here, we're very anxious to hear some news,' Tolliver said neutrally.
'Mr. Lang, is it true your sister stated that the body just exhumed from the cemetery is definitely that of the missing girl?'
We weren't going to get by with anything. 'We believe that to be true,' he said, indirectly.
'How do you explain the coincidence?'
'What coincidence?' Tolliver asked, which I thought was maybe a little over the top.
Even Shellie Quail looked disconcerted. But she got back on her roll. 'That your sister was hired to look for Tabitha Morgenstern months ago in Nashville, and then hired to look at the graves in the old St. Margaret's cemetery here in Memphis. And that a body reported to be that of Tabitha Morgenstern is found in that cemetery.'
'We have no idea how this came about, and we're looking forward to hearing the explanation,' Tolliver said sternly, as if we'd been mightily put-upon. Baffled, Shellie Quail paused to think of another question, and we took the opportunity to make our left turn.
three
THE Cleveland was beautiful. The Cleveland was discreet. I was not going to want to see our credit card bill when it came next month.
A valet took our car, and we rolled into the lobby in a flurry of baggage and desperation, anxious to get away from the reporters who'd actually followed us to the new hotel. The staff was as courteous as if we'd stayed at the Cleveland four times a year. We were upstairs and out of reach of anyone in the twinkling of an eye. I was so glad to have time to regroup in relative safety and privacy, I could have cried.
The suite had a central living room with a bedroom on each side. Going directly to the bedroom on the right, I took off my shoes, lay down on my very own king-size bed, and surrounded myself with pillows. That's something I love about really good hotels: the abundance of pillows.
Once I was padded and quiet and warm, I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift. Of course, they drifted right to the little girl I'd found in the cemetery.
I'd assumed Tabitha was dead from the moment I'd read about her disappearance, weeks before the Morgensterns had asked me to find her body. Based on the information in the newspaper accounts and even more on my own experience, that was a logical assumption. In fact, I'd been fairly sure the child had been dead since scant hours after her disappearance.
That didn't mean I was happy to be right. I'm not callous about death; at least I don't think I am. I think of myself as more… matter-of-fact. And I'd seen the Morgensterns' anguish first-hand. Because of my sympathy for them, I'd persisted longer in the search than I'd thought was reasonable, and certainly long enough to cut into our profit very severely. Tolliver didn't even charge them the full amount; he didn't say anything to me, but when I went over our profits and expenses at the end of the year, I'd noticed.
Since Tabitha had been dead all this time, I thought it would be better for Joel and Diane to know what had happened to their daughter.
I could only hope that the sentiment I'd sprouted so glibly to the detective was valid. I could only hope that knowing for sure what had happened to Tabitha gave the Morgensterns some relief. At least they would know she wasn't in the hands of some madman, actively suffering.
I found myself wishing I'd had longer with the body. I'd been so startled at the identity of the grave's unauthorized inhabitant that I hadn't spent enough energy evaluating the girl's last moments. I'd only seen the blue cushion, a flash of the long seconds as Tabitha slipped into unconsciousness and then passed away—as she passed from the imitation of death to death itself.
I don't believe that death and life are two sides of the same coin. I think that's bullshit. I'm not going to say Tabitha was at peace with God, because God hasn't let me know on that one. And there'd been a strange feeling to my connection with the body; a sensation I'd seldom experienced before. I tried to analyze the difference, but I didn't come up with anything. That would bother me until I understood it.
I have seen a lot of death—a lot. I know death the way most people know sleep, or eating. Death is a fundamental human necessity, a solitary passage into the unknown. But Tabitha had made her passage years too early, at the end of a painful and frightening ordeal. I was sorry for the manner of her death. And something about it had marked her during that transition, in a way I had yet to understand. I filed it away to consider later; maybe another trip to the cemetery would help. It was hardly likely I'd be in contact with the body again.
I turned onto my side and stretched back to prop a pillow against my shoulders. I turned my thoughts down a mental path so familiar that it had ruts worn in it. That path led to my sister Cameron. Her face was fuzzy in my memory now, or it took on the contours of her last school picture, which I carried in my wallet.
Somehow, discovering Tabitha's corpse in such an indirect and unexpected way gave me hope that someday I might find my sister Cameron's remains.
Cameron has been gone for six years. Like Tabitha, she was snatched out of the stream of her life, leaving her
