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.
Finally David was out the door, and Tolliver said, "We're getting food right now." He called room service and placed an order, and though we'd called at a strange time, our food arrived quickly.
As we ate silently, I thought. We have a lot of thinking time, since we're on the road so much. Somehow when we're in a town, when we're not moving, we do anything but think.
I went back over everything I knew.
Tabitha Morgenstern. Eleven. The much-loved child, as far as I could tell, of upper-class professional Jewish parents. Abducted in Nashville, to end up interred in an old Christian cemetery in Memphis. Neither of her parents, the papers had told me, had ever been arrested for anything. Her older half brother, either. But that half brother thought he'd seen his father's car close to the house the day Tabitha had disappeared.
Tabitha had grandparents who lived in Memphis, but had visited in Nashville frequently. Her grandfather and grandmother Morgenstern seemed to adore her. In fact, Victor had told us her grandfather often took her places by himself. Did I have to suspect Ben Morgenstern of fooling with the child? I sighed. And Tabitha had a sort of step-grandfather, Fred Hart, who seemed to have remained close to his former son-in-law. Fred Hart, a Bingham alumnus, owned a pearl Lexus, like the one that Victor had seen in the neighborhood the morning of the abduction. Victor had assumed he was seeing his dad, because it would have been reasonable to see his dad in that location, but what if he'd seen his grandfather's Lexus instead?
Tabitha had a step-aunt, too, Felicia Hart, and an uncle, David Morgenstern. Both had gone to Bingham. David seemed to resent his brother's successes, though as far as I could tell he also seemed to have cared for his niece. The attractive Felicia seemed to have quite an appetite for the male gender. There was nothing wrong with that. She was also very protective of her nephew, and there was nothing wrong with that, either.
I rubbed my face with both hands. There had to be something I could glean from this information, something that would help me lay Tabitha to rest. Being shut up with Tolliver, now that I'd had so many thoughts I shouldn't have had, was becoming intolerable. I dropped my hands to the table and looked over at him. He happened to look up at that moment, and our eyes locked. He put down his fork.
"What are you thinking?" he asked. His voice was very serious. "Whatever it is, I think you'd better tell me."
"No," I said, equally seriously.
"Then what are you willing to talk about?"
"We have to find out who did this, and we have to leave this place," I said. Movement would bring relief, being on the road again. "Don't you think a random stranger is completely ruled out?"
"Yes, because of where the body was found," Tolliver said. "It's impossible that it was a random act."
"Do you think I was meant to find the body?"
"Yes, I think that was why you were called here."
"Then it has to follow that Clyde Nunley was killed because he knew who'd suggested I be the next guest in the series."
"Maybe," Tolliver said slowly, "the key was finding of the priest's records."
I mulled that over.
"After all, it was the finding of the records that made St. Margaret's such a good subject for a reading. It was a controlled experiment."
"Sure. Dr. Nunley had to know if I was getting it right or not, and there was a way to prove that. There usually isn't."
"So she was put there for me to find. Maybe months ago, when the records were discovered." I groped my way through the thought. "Someone wanted her to be found."
"And that someone had to be the killer."
I combed over that one, too.
"No," I said at last. "Why would that have to follow?"
Tolliver was taken aback. "Who would know and do nothing?"
"Someone you loved. You might not do anything, if the killer was someone you loved."
"Not just someone you loved. A member of your family." Tolliver's face was very grim. "Your mom or dad or wife or husband or sister or brother… that's the only way you'd hide it."
"So we have a couple of ways to go," I said. "We can sit here and wait for the police to work their way around to the solution. They'll probably get it, sooner or later. Or we can skip out on this."
"Let's try to find out who could have put your name in Clyde Nunley's ear," Tolliver said.
seventeen
MRS. Clyde Nunley was certainly not Jewish. She was aggressively Christian. There were crosses and crucifixes in every room in the Nunley home, and a painting of a saint on every other wall. Anne Nunley was thin and dry and hollow, and she had few friends. She was even glad to see us.