Grave Secret

We gave each other little shrugs.

Tolliver, having decided they weren’t armed and dangerous, let the Joyce sisters inside. I pulled my jeans back on and rose to greet them.

You’d think they’d never seen a middle- of-the-road motel before. Kate and Lizzie examined the room with nearly identical slow scans. The sisters looked a lot alike. Katie was a little shorter than Lizzie, and maybe two years younger. But she’d colored her hair the same blond as Lizzie’s, and her brown eyes were narrow like Lizzie’s, and her lean build was the same, too. They were both wearing jeans, boots, and jackets. Lizzie had slicked her hair back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, while Katie’s was loose and bouncy. Between necklaces, earrings, and rings, I figured they each were wearing a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. (After a subsequent trip to a mall store, I revised that figure upward.)

Katie’s eyes were avid as she examined Tolliver. She wasn’t so enthusiastic about our paraphernalia: our clothes, his crossword puzzle book, the open laptop, his shoes put neatly by his suitcase.

“Hello, Ms. Joyce,” I said, trying to inject my voice with some warmth. “What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me again what you saw when you stood on Mariah Parish’s grave.”

It took me a second to recall. “Your father’s caregiver,” I said. “The one who had the childbirth problems. The infection.”

“Yeah, why’d you say that? She had complications after her appendectomy,” Lizzie said. She was issuing a very low-level challenge.

Oh, for goodness’ sake. This was hardly my fight. “If that’s what you’re calling it, okay,” I said. It made no difference to me. Mariah Parish wasn’t the one I’d been paid to read, anyway.

“That’s what happened,” Katie said.

I shrugged. “All right.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘all right’? She either did or she didn’t.” The Joyce sisters were not going to let go of this bone.

“Believe what you want to believe. I already told you what she died of.”

“She was a good woman. Why would you make that up?”

“Exactly. Why would I make that up?” And what was wrong with a woman having gone through childbirth?

“So who was the father?” Lizzie asked, as abruptly as she’d asked about the death.

“I have no idea.”

“Then…” Lizzie floundered to a halt. She was a woman who wasn’t used to floundering. She didn’t like it. “Why’d you say it?”

I really had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. “I said it because I saw it, and you wanted me to find your grandfather’s grave myself,” I said, with fabulous diction. “To give you your money’s worth, I went from grave to grave, as you obviously wanted me to.”

“Everything else you said was right,” Katie said.

“I know.” Had they expected me to be surprised at my own accuracy?

“So why’d you make up that one?”

If they hadn’t been so agitated, this would have been boring. My leg hurt, and I wanted to sit down. But I didn’t want to invite them to, so I felt obliged to remain standing. “I didn’t. Believe me or not. I don’t give a damn.”

“But where’s the baby?”

“How should I know?” I’d reached the end of my patience.

“Ladies,” Tolliver said, just in the nick of time, “my sister finds the dead. The baby was not in the grave she scanned. Either the baby is alive or it’s buried somewhere else. Or it might have been miscarried.”

“But if the baby was my granddad’s, that baby inherits some of what he left,” Lizzie said, and suddenly their agitation became understandable.

To hell with them. I sank down on the bed, stretching out my aching leg. “Please have a seat,” I said. “Do you want a Coke or a 7-Up?”

Tollilver sat by me so the sisters could have the two room chairs. They accepted a drink apiece, and though Katie kept looking at the laptop to see what Tolliver had been up to, they both seemed calmer and less accusatory, which was a relief to me.

“Neither of us had any idea Mariah was pregnant,” Lizzie said. “That’s why we’re so shocked. And we didn’t realize she was dating anyone. She and my grandfather were pretty good friends, and we’re imagining that maybe that became something else. Maybe not. We need to know. Aside from the legal and financial considerations, we owe any child who might be a member of the Joyce family… We want to meet that kid. Can I smoke?”

“No, sorry,” Tolliver said.

“The baby must be alive somewhere; there must be some record of its birth,” I said. “Even if it was born dead, there should still be hospital records. It’s knowing who to ask and where to ask. Maybe you can hire a private investigator, someone who can get through the records easily. I only contact the dead, myself.”

“That’s a good idea,” Katie said. “Do you know any?”

“Since you’re already here in Garland,” Tolliver said, “there’s a woman a little farther into Dallas who’s good. Her name’s Victoria Flores. She used to be a cop in Texarkana. And I know there’s at least one ex-military guy even closer to your ranch; I think he’s based in Longview. His name’s Ray Phyfe.”

“There are dozens of big agencies in Dallas, too,” I said, as if that would have been hard for them to figure out.

“We don’t want a big agency,” Lizzie said. “We just want this to be very, very private.”

That was the response I’d been waiting to hear; I’d been curious about their asking us, of all people, for a recommendation. The Joyce empire, of which RJ Ranch was only a part, surely had employed private detectives in the past. Under normal circumstances, I was sure the Joyces would go to an agency they’d used before, where they’d get the deluxe treatment they were used to.

At the moment, I didn’t care what they wanted or how they went about it. I wanted to take a lot of Advil and crawl into the bed.

Lizze was talking to Tolliver about Victoria Flores, and he was giving her Victoria ’s phone number. That name brought back some memories.

“You really saw that?” Katie asked me directly. “You’re not just making this up to jerk us around? No one paid you to play a joke on us?”

“I don’t play jokes, in case you missed that about me. I don’t take money to make fake pronouncements. Of course I really saw that. It’s not a likely thing to make up.”

Lizzie had appropriated our little pad of paper by the telephone and the cheap motel pen to write down Victoria Flores’s information.

“She switched locations recently,” Tolliver said. “This is the right number, though.” I looked down, not wanting my face to reveal how surprised I was.

After more reassurance and more repetition of the things we’d already said, the Joyce sisters were out our door and back on the road. I wondered if they’d spend the night in Dallas or try to make it back to their ranch, which would be quite a drive. They’d stay in some place more palatial if they were lingering in the area, I was sure. Probably had a Dallas apartment.

“So,” I said, when the door had closed behind them and Tolliver had reseated himself at the table to finish his computer work, “Victoria Flores.”

I didn’t need to say anything else.

“I call her from time to time,” Tolliver said. “Every now and then she hears something new. Every now and then she runs something down. She sends me a bill. I pay her.”

“And you didn’t tell me this-because?”

“You get so upset,” he said. “I just couldn’t see what purpose it served. When I used to tell you, every time she called, you’d get all upset. Every time, it would come to nothing. She doesn’t call much now, maybe twice a year, and I just couldn’t do that to you anymore.”

I took a deep breath. My impulse was to launch into him. It was my business how I reacted to possible news of my sister. It was my right to suffer for her.

Then I had a second thought. On the other hand-Tolliver’s hand-did it serve any purpose? Hadn’t I been okay, not knowing? Hadn’t I been calmer and happier, just waiting to locate Cameron in my own way? Was it not okay to have something done for you, some pain spared you, even if it meant you were ignorant about something that you considered your personal business?

Could that idea have gotten more convoluted?

But I knew what I meant, and I knew what Tolliver meant. And I thought maybe he was right. Or at least, it was okay that he had done that.

I nodded finally. He seemed relieved, because his shoulders relaxed and he blew out a breath. He sat on the bed to pull off his socks, then tossed them into our laundry bag, which reminded me that we were low on detergent.

I had ten little thoughts like this while I got ready for bed. I’d been reading through the novels of Charlie Huston and Duane Swierczynski, but it was like getting a jolt of caffeine if I read either one before bedtime; I definitely didn’t need that tonight. Instead, I opened a crossword puzzle book. I crawled into bed in my soft sleep pants and my T, and I lay on my stomach, absorbed in the crossword. Tolliver was better at them than I was, and it was hard not to ask him questions.

Another exciting night in the life of corpse-reader Harper Connelly, I thought. And I was happy that this was so.

Four

WE were scheduled to take Gracie and Mariella skating that next afternoon, Sunday, but not until two p.m. On Saturday mornings they had to pick up their rooms and do chores before they could go anywhere, and on Sundays they had church and lunch as a family. These were ironclad rules of Iona ’s. And not bad ones, I thought. I’d run and showered and was about to dress when Tolliver’s cell phone rang. He’d been lazy and was still in bed, so I answered it.

“Hey, this must be Harper.”

I recognized the voice. “Yeah, Tolliver’s not up yet, Victoria. How’s it going?”

Victoria ’s great-grandparents had been the immigrants. Victoria, born and bred in Texas, didn’t have a trace of an accent. “It’s good to talk to you,” she said. “Listen, nothing new on your sister, I’m sorry to say. I’m calling about the clients you-all referred to me. The Joyces.”

“They already got in touch?”

“Honey, they already been here in my office and wrote me a check.”

“Oh, good. But I can’t take any credit for the referral. Tolliver was the one who told them your name and gave them your phone number.”

“That’s what Lizzie said. That woman, she’s Texas all the way through, huh? And the sister, Kate? I think she’s interested in your brother.”

“He’s not my brother,” I said automatically, though I called him that myself about half the time. I took a deep breath. “In fact, we’re engaged,” I