"How are you feeling?" Manfred asked. He really looked anxious.
"I'm doing good," I said. "My head feels better. The arm is a pain."
"I heard you two checked out of the motel. I figured you'd be long gone."
"Tomorrow or the next day," Tolliver said. "We're just waiting to see if the state guys have anything else to ask us. Then we'll be on our way. You two?"
"I need to stay until tomorrow afternoon, at least," Xylda said in a whisper. "There are more dead people to come. And the time of ice is near."
Now, that I understood. "That's what the weather says. There's going to be an ice storm."
"We're hoping to get out of town ahead of it," Manfred said quietly. "Grandma don't need to be away from a big hospital any longer than we can help it. I'll be taking her back home as soon as I can." I looked at him sideways and read clearly the grief written on his face. It made me want to give him a big hug.
Xylda looked like she was listening to a faraway voice. I was seriously concerned about her. Before, she'd been in the likeable fake category, though she'd always had her moments of true brilliance. They'd just been too few and far between for her to make her living off of them. Now she appeared to be "on" all the time. The stretches of shrewd reality that had helped her earn a living (if fraudulent) wage seemed to be fewer and farther between.
I wondered what Manfred would do when she was gone. He was very young and he still had all his options open. He could go to college and get a regular job. He could apprentice in a circus. He could assume the hand-to-mouth existence of petty fraud and chicanery that Xylda had led. This wasn't the time or place to quiz him about his future plans, when the big stumbling block to any of them sat beside me spilling salad dressing down her blouse.
Xylda said, "That boy is going to be a murderer." Fortunately her voice was quite low. I knew she was talking about Chuck Almand.
Speaking of a young man with options open. "Not for sure, though. He could still save himself. Maybe his father will find a good therapist for him, and he'll work out all his kinks." I didn't believe it, but I should at least sound like I thought it was possible.
Manfred shook his head. "I can't believe they didn't arrest him."
"He's a minor," Tolliver said. "And there aren't any witnesses against him except his own admission. I don't think jail would do him any good, do you? Maybe just the opposite, in fact. Maybe in jail he'd find out how much he enjoyed hurting people."
"I think in jail he'd be on the other end," I said. "I think he'd get hurt a lot, and maybe come out ready to give it back with interest."
We all mulled it over. The waitress bustled up to take our orders and to ask Manfred and Xylda if they needed more to drink. They both accepted, and it was a few minutes before we could resume our conversation.
"I wonder if there's a kid like that in every community," Tolliver said. "One who likes to cause pain, likes to have the power over smaller creatures."
"There was someone like that in our school in Texarkana?" I asked. I was surprised.
"Yeah. Leon Stipes. Remember him?"
Leon had been six feet tall when he was in the sixth grade. Leon was black, and he was on the football team, and he scared the hell out of the other teams we played. I suspected he'd scared the hell out of most of the players on his own team, too.
I explained Leon to Xylda and Manfred. "He liked causing pain?"
"Oh, yeah," said Tolliver grimly. "Oh, yeah. He really did. In practice, he'd nail people he didn't have to, just to hear them yelp."
I shuddered with distaste. With one hand, I opened my purse and pulled out my bottle of vitamins. I pushed it over for Tolliver to deal with. He removed the childproof lid and shook one out. I took it.
"How are you feeling?" Manfred asked. "The arm hurting?"
I shrugged. "The pain medicine works pretty well," I said. "In fact, I'm wondering if I'll fall asleep in the memorial service."
"You'll be much better soon," Xylda said, and I wondered if she was basing that on foresight or on optimism.
"What about you, Xylda?" I looked at her curiously. "Didn't I hear you were in the hospital last month?" There's an Internet group for those of us who work in the paranormal field. I check it out from time to time.
"Yes," she said, "but it's bad for my spirit, the hospital. Too much negative there. Too many desperate people. I won't go in there again."
I started to protest, caught the warning glance Manfred gave me. I shut up.
"I don't blame you," Tolliver said. "Harper's just trailing negative thoughts, and she was only in there for a couple of days."
I could have kicked him, if I could have summoned the energy. I stuck out my tongue.
Tolliver and Manfred talked about car mileage while we ate, and Xylda and I thought our own thoughts. When Tolliver left to go to the men's room and Manfred was paying their bill, she said, "I'm going to die soon."
I was affected enough by the pain medicine to accept this calmly. "I'm sorry to hear you think so," I said, which seemed safe enough. "Are you scared?"
"No," she said, after a moment's thought, "I don't believe I am. I've enjoyed my life and I've tried to do good, for the most part. I never took money from anyone who couldn't afford it, and I loved my son and grandson. I believe my soul will enter another body. That's very comforting, knowing the essential part of me won't die."
"Yes, it must be," I said, pretty much at a loss as to how to carry my end of the conversation.
"Your questions will all be answered," she said. "My sight is clearer the closer I come to the end."
Then I said something that surprised even myself. "Will I find my sister, Xylda? Will I find Cameron? She's dead, right?"
"You'll find Cameron," Xylda said.
I bowed my head.
"I don't know," Xylda said after a lengthy pause, and I raised my face to stare at her, trying to figure out what she meant. Manfred was coming back to the table to leave a tip. Tolliver was in line at the cash register. We were in a cone of strangeness together. "But there are more important things for you to think about first," Xylda continued.
I hardly understood how anything could be more important than finding my sister's body. I slid out of the booth and started struggling into my coat, while Xylda began scooting to the outside. Manfred helped me get my right arm into its coat sleeve and draped the coat over my left shoulder. He bent slightly and gave me a kiss on the neck as he did so. He did this so casually that it seemed churlish to make a big deal out of it. In fact, it wasn't until I saw Tolliver's face that the light kiss really registered on me. Tolliver was absolutely inclined to make a big deal out of it, and I gripped his arm with my good hand and began marching toward the door, forcing him to come along.
"It was nothing," I said. "I wasn't even thinking about it. He's just a very young man with a sick grandmother." I'm not sure what sense that made, but at the moment it just slid right out of my brain and then my mouth. "We're just going to this meeting now. Come on, or we'll be late."