"Right, thanks," Tolliver said. After their car had left, we paid our part of the bill and left the diner. "What was that all about?" Tolliver asked when we were in the car and trying to make a left turn into traffic to go back to the Cleveland.
I told him the questions I'd been asking myself.
"I can see where that's interesting, and I would like to know the answers, too," he said. "But from now on, you should have your thinking sessions when you're safe in bed, or something. You had a pretty strange expression on your face."
"Did I look weird?" I asked, oddly hurt.
"Not strange-ugly," he said instantly. "Strange, as in, 'not there.'"
"Oh," I said.
Finally, he took advantage of a hole in the ever-swelling traffic going out of downtown. We were headed back toward the river before I spoke again. "You know who I'd like to talk to again?"
"Who?"
"Victor. But you talk about peculiar, it would seem real peculiar if we called him and asked him to come to see us."
"Yeah. No way we can do that."
"You think since they treated us to a meal, we could invite them to a meal at a restaurant?"
Tolliver thought it over. "They're in mourning right now, and they've probably got all kinds of arrangements to make. Plus, what reason would we give? Yeah, we could insist we owe them a meal, but what are we gonna talk about? The only connection we have is the death of their daughter. That's just not enough to carry an evening, Sis."
He hadn't called me that in a long time. I wondered if Young's comment had shaken him up, too.
"Maybe not," I admitted. "But as long as we're stuck here, and I guess we are… hey, I wonder what would happen if we left?" There was a moment of silence. "We'd probably get called right back," I concluded, "until they've decided what happened to Clyde Nunley. Why would he get killed? I just don't understand. The only thing he knew was—what could he have known?"
"What's the only connection between Clyde Nunley and Tabitha Morgenstern?" Tolliver asked. He was definitely guiding me to a conclusion. I hate it when he does that.
"They shared a grave."
"I mean, besides that."
"There was no connection."
"Yes, there was."
It was almost full dark now, and the mass of lights in the eastbound lanes was almost bumper-to-bumper. We had much easier going in the westbound lanes. It began to rain again, and Tolliver turned on our windshield wipers.
"Okay, I give." I threw up my hands in exasperation. "What was the connection?"
"You."
fourteen
THIS hit me with an impact about equal to a bag of cement.
"So you're saying Clyde Nunley was murdered because he knew who had recommended me for this little gig at the college." I felt cold all over. I may be used to death, and I may know better than anyone how inevitable and ordinary a state it is, but that doesn't mean it's easy to feel you contributed to it. It's like sleet; you know if the atmospheric conditions warrant, there's going to be sleet, but you don't have to be happy about it.
"That's what I think—and I thought about this a lot, last night. I couldn't accept the giant coincidence that Tabitha's body was here. If it wasn't a coincidence, we were steered to find it. We were used. And the person who did that had to be the person who killed Tabitha. Clyde Nunley asked you to read this cemetery. So someone must have whispered your name in Clyde Nunley's ear. I don't know if that person held something over Clyde, or made a friendly suggestion. 'Hey, you're having this class about the occult, you have this cemetery just laying there, let's get a weird woman who specializes in finding the dead to come have a look.' "
"So, you think that Clyde balked when Tabitha's body was found?"
"I think he did. Or else he couldn't swallow the coincidence any more than we can, and he figured that whoever had talked him into inviting you to Memphis had to have some kind of inside knowledge about the girl's death. Just because he was a jerk doesn't mean he was dumb."
"True," I said absently. "Well, I guess that narrows down the field, right?"
"How do you figure that?"
"Couldn't be Victor."
"Why not? I'll bet he's pre-enrolled at Bingham. This is his senior year in high school, right?"
"Oh. Well, could be. That seems kind of thin, but okay. What I was thinking—both Felicia and David went to Bingham. And the older Morgensterns, Judy and Ben, would surely know a lot of people who went there, if they didn't themselves, since they live in the city and paid for David's tuition for four years. I bet the same holds true for Fred Hart."
After all, the older Morgensterns weren't so darn old. "Judy has Parkinson's too badly to have gotten Tabitha to the grave, but her husband is really fit," I said. "Fred Hart looks pretty strong, too." and talk to Iona, we did Rock, Scissors, Paper. As always, I made the wrong choice, which is pretty funny when you come to think of it. If I were actually psychic, as I'm so often accused of being, I think I could manage to win a simple game like that.
I speed-dialed Iona's number. Iona Gorham (née Howe) was my mother's only sister. She'd been married to Hank Gorham for twelve years, twelve long and childless and God-fearing years. She'd taken charge of Mariella and Gracie when my mother and stepfather went to jail, after the investigation into Cameron's abduction exposed some of their worst faults as parents. I'd had nothing to say about it, because I was underage then. I'd gone into a foster home myself. Iona and Hank hadn't wanted me, which was probably just as well, I guess. At seventeen, they thought my lifelong association with my mother would have irrevocably tainted me. I had a senior year in the high school I'd been attending, a year that was weirdly pleasant despite my shattered emotional system. For the first time since my childhood, I lived in a clean house with regular meals I didn't always have to cook myself. I could do my homework in peace. No one made suggestive comments, no one used drugs, and my foster parents were simple, nice, strict people. You knew where you were. They had two other foster kids, and we got along if we were very careful.
Tolliver, who was twenty then, moved in with his brother, Mark, so he was okay. He came by as often as he could, as often as the Goodmans would let him.
"Hello?" The man's voice yanked me back to the here and now.
"Hank, hello, it's Harper," I said, making sure that my voice was even and level and uninflected. You had to be Switzerland to talk to Iona and Hank. Neutral, I told myself repeatedly. Neutral.
"Hello," he said, with a total lack of welcome or enthusiasm. "Where are you, Harper?"
"I'm in Memphis, Hank, thanks for asking."
"I guess Tolliver's with you?"
"Oh, you bet," I said, cheerful as all get-out. "It's cold and wet here. How about in Dallas?"
"Oh, can't complain. In the fifties today."
"Sounds good. I'd like to talk to Mariella, if she's around, and then Gracie."
"Iona's gone to the store. I'll see if I can track the girls down."
What a stroke of luck. I held the phone to my chest while I told Tolliver, "The Wicked Witch isn't there." Iona had a deep fund of excuses to keep us from talking to the girls. Hank was not as resourceful, or as ruthless.
"Hey," said Mariella. She was nine now, and she was a lot of trouble. I never told myself she'd be an angel if she lived with us, because I knew better. For their first few years, Mariella and Gracie had never had the care and attention of parents who were in their right minds. I'm not saying my mother and stepfather didn't love their girls, but it wasn't the kind of love that would prompt them to become sober and responsible. At least we older kids had had that, once upon a time. We knew what was right and proper. We knew what parents should be like. We knew about fresh sheets and home-cooked meals and clothes that only we had worn.