Charlaine Harris (17 page)

“Of course, I asked her how the job went. She said she cleaned the downstairs while her mom took the upstairs, and that's about all she said. The study was just like it had been when Dick fell over dead, and that made her feel a little funny, she said. But that night, she searched out one of her high school textbooks. The school system discontinued this book, so the students could keep it if they wanted to, and she did. Sally was interested in some things that surprised me.”

“What book was it?”

“She had several. I can't even remember now. I only recall it because she seemed so . . . like she was thinking real hard about something else, and then when Sally found the book, she studied over it for the longest time. That was unusual.”

“So, do you think you could remember?”

“Maybe. I'll look this evening, see if I can find it. Seems like I remember it had a red back cover . . .” Hollis looked distant, as if his eyes were seeing a distant scene, and I guess they were.

The phone rang. I jumped about a foot. “Hello?” I said.

“Ms. Connelly?” It was a woman's voice, heavily southern and somehow really smart.

“Yes.”

“This is Phyllis Folliette? With Huff, Moon, and Greene?”

“Right. Oh, good.” Hollis was pointing at the door, indicating he needed to leave, and I nodded and waved before returning my attention to the lawyer.

“Okay,” she said, and her voice became carefully soothing. “I hear you're in kind of a jam, over in Sarne.”

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to tell you, I called the sheriff's office and
they said your brother wouldn't be arraigned for two more days. I can't bail him out until the judge sets the bail, you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And the judge won't be there until the day after tomorrow.”

Okay, I wasn't dumb. “I understand that two days means the day after tomorrow,” I said clearly.

“Um. I get that . . . Sorry if I was talking down,” the lawyer apologized. “Occupational hazard.”

“Umm.”

“So, I'll be there in Sarne, day after tomorrow, to get your brother out of jail,” she said. “These charges sound like a bunch of crap, but I'm calling Montana first thing in the morning to get this straightened out. In the meantime, don't do anything rash, and don't worry. Art especially charged me to tell you that. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Now I'm going to switch you over to our financial office, so you can take care of that part of it.”

Everyone wants to be paid, even me—especially me, since I figure at any moment my gift could be taken from me. I want to use it while I have it, and it's really my only marketable skill. It should support me, I figure. It robbed me of a normal life.

After I fixed things with the financial office, I hung up and tried to figure out what I should do next. I packed up Tolliver's stuff and stowed it in my room, then I walked up to the motel office and told horrible old Vernon McCluskey that we wouldn't be using the second room for now. He said he was about ready for me to check out, and I said I had to stay in
Sarne a few more days. He couldn't throw me out, not legally—though today I'd had a big hint that the legal system in Sarne wasn't exactly on the up and up. If he did somehow make me leave, I'd just go to the next town, which was in a different county.

While I ran through all these contingencies, I returned to the room. I found myself shaking my hands vigorously in the air like in a children's exercise, to refocus my mind. It was time to eat, and I opened a granola bar. I needed more than that, better food, but I didn't want to go out by myself. It was one thing when I knew Tolliver was waiting for me back at the motel, or that he was somewhere in the same town: it was entirely another thing when Tolliver was locked away in a jail. I wondered what they'd fed him for supper, and when I could see him. I wondered if he had a cellmate. I wondered how ruthless his cellmate was.

The most important person I knew in Sarne, aside from the sheriff, was Sybil Teague. I didn't know if she'd even care, and I doubted she'd help, but I called her anyway.

“My brother's in jail on a trumped-up charge, Sybil,” I said, after she'd told me she was glad to hear from me.

“Paul Edwards mentioned that to me this afternoon,” Sybil said, in her cool rich-woman's voice. “I'm so sorry for your trouble.”

This didn't sound promising. “Tolliver isn't wanted by police anywhere,” I said, as calmly as I could.

“I know my brother's the sheriff, but you must realize that I can't interfere with legal matters,” Sybil said, and her voice was frosty rather than cool.

“Tolliver is my brother, and your brother's deputy set him up, for reasons best known to himself.”

“Which deputy?” Sybil said, and that did surprise me.

“The one named Bledsoe. Some coincidence, right?” I wanted Sybil to confess that she'd sicced the deputy on to me, so I'd know who my enemy was.

“That would be Marv,” she said slowly, and now she sounded distinctly unhappy, whether because I'd tried to involve her or for some other reason. “Paul's second cousin. But that doesn't mean anything.”

Was everyone involved in this case related?

Sybil wasn't willing to do a thing to help me, and I wasn't even sure I could think of anything concrete for her to do. She wasn't happy, and I definitely got the feeling she didn't think Tolliver was guilty of anything. But she also couldn't or wouldn't intercede with the sheriff. We hung up, equally unhappy with each other.

I thought long and hard. Then I called Mary Nell Teague on her cell phone. She'd given the number to Tolliver, and I'd fished it out of his jacket pocket when I packed up his stuff. She'd drawn a little curlicue under “Nell.”

Mary Nell wasn't happy at hearing my voice on the other end of the line.

“Tolliver himself can't call you,” I said, “since your uncle Harvey put him in jail.” This was not entirely accurate, but I wasn't interested in being fair.

She shrieked and carried on for a full minute while I waited patiently on the other end of the line.

“Of course, he isn't wanted by the police in Montana,” she said. “That's just crazy.”

Though Mary Nell was just basing her opinion on her sexual attraction to Tolliver rather than any factual basis, it
was nice to hear someone so positively on his side. To set the outspoken teenager on the right track, I told her that her mother had refused to help. I didn't put it as bluntly as that, but I made sure the picture got transferred. This would ensure that Sybil's life would be irritating and unpleasant for at least twenty-four hours, which was no more than she deserved. I'm not above being petty.

I called Hollis next, and got no answer. Considering his earlier exit, as if he urgently needed to be somewhere else, I wondered if he'd had to return to patrol. Or maybe he was just being a cowardly rat bastard? Possibly the sheriff had told him to stay away from me if he wanted to keep his job? Hollis probably did want to keep his job badly enough for that. I tried not to blame him, but I was miserable enough to think that it made him a rat bastard, anyway.

I considered my next course of action. The likelihood that I'd break down crying lurked just over the horizon, trembling and shivering. But that would be counterproductive, and there must be something I could do besides sit in the damn hotel room. I could go beat up Bledsoe; and at the moment I felt like I could dig out his liver with my fingernails. But surely there was something more constructive . . . I considered everything I knew, and then I had it. I called Hollis again and left a message on his machine.

“If you aren't picking up because you don't want to talk to me, that's okay, but know this: I'm going to your house right now, and I'm going to want to search your bookshelves.” I was sorry I'd been honorable enough to return his money, since I could have used that as an extra incentive if I'd kept hold of it.

I ran to Hollis's house, since I needed the exercise. It might help keep me calm for a while longer. The leg faltered a couple of times, but didn't give out utterly. There was no truck parked under the carport. I had planned on getting in whether Hollis was home or not, so I didn't care. But I didn't want to be arrested while doing it. Fortunately, the back door was fairly well screened from the neighboring small houses by thick bushes. Since it was a working day, quite possibly the neighbors were gone.

For a policeman, he sure had lousy security. I found his spare key in the third place I looked—hanging from a little nail in the roof over the porch. It was in a dark corner, and partially hidden from view, but my fingers patted around until they felt the nail, and in a second the key was in my hand. I was glad to find it; it would spare me from breaking one of the panes of glass in the back door—also a security risk, as any cop should know.

Since the day was once again gloomy and overcast, I switched on a lamp in the living room. I'd only passed through on my way to the bedroom the last time I'd been here, so I wasn't familiar with the layout. The little room was comfortable and . . . cozy, with an overstuffed love seat and matching recliner. There was the usual coffee table in front of the love seat, and an occasional table cluttered with a lamp, some magazines, and a book, plus various remotes by the recliner. Within arm's reach was a particle-board bookcase crammed with books, mostly romantic suspense-type paperbacks by Jayne Anne Krentz, Sandra Brown, Nora Roberts, and the like. There were a few adventure/mystery paperbacks—Lee Child and Thomas Cook—which more likely belonged to Hollis.

I did a quick tour of the house to make sure I was looking in the right place. The bedroom didn't have any bookshelves, and the second bedroom (used as a computer room/storeroom now) held only computer manuals and video game guides. The kitchen had a couple of cookbooks, and the bathroom a wicker basket of magazines. Back in the living room, I squatted by the jammed shelves.

Hollis had told me his wife had gotten out one of her old school textbooks. I was willing to bet he hadn't packed them away yet, and I was right. Sally Hopkins Boxleitner had kept a book of British poetry, a copy each of
Julius Caesar
and
The Merchant of Venice,
and an American history textbook. There was a basic biology textbook, too, much battered and torn.

According to Hollis, the book had had a red cover. Both the history text and the biology text were predominately red, at least on their spines.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” I guess part of me had absorbed the small sounds of Hollis arriving home, because I didn't jump. He sounded pretty mad.

“I'm looking for whatever Sally was thinking about that night,” I said. “I found your spare key in less than two minutes. Here. Here's the history book. Is this the one she had?”

“Why didn't you just wait for me to get home?” Maybe he sounded a tad bit less angry.

“I thought you were avoiding me, and I figured you wouldn't let me in.”

“So you decided right away to just break in my house? You know that's illegal?”

“So's putting a man in jail on trumped-up evidence. Is this the book she had?”

“It might be,” he said, distracted. “Is there another red one?”

“Yes, the biology book, here.”

“That might be it, too.”

“Okay. You look at the history, I'll look at the biology.”

I turned the book upside down and shook it, and a piece of paper fell out. I figured I'd discovered an old grocery list or a note she'd written the boy who sat beside her in fourth period in high school. I found it was something much less straightforward.

It was half a sheet of blank paper, and on it was written, “SO, MO, DA, NO.”

“If you'd left it in there, we'd know which section it fell from,” Hollis pointed out.

“You're absolutely right,” I said absently. “I messed up. Does this mean anything to you?”

“No, not at first glance. But that's her handwriting . . . Sally's.”

There was a new note in his voice that penetrated even my overloaded emotional system.

“I'm sorry,” I said, making a great effort. “I know this is dredging up stuff for you that you're trying to put behind you.”

“No, I'm not trying to put Sally behind me,” he said. “But I am trying to think about the rest of my life. And the ideas of the last few days, the idea that Sally was murdered, that the son of bitch who did it has been walking around this town, talking to me, free, has been curdling my gut. And the fact that every time I see you, I want to screw you so bad it hurts. You practically break in my house, my damn house, and I want to fuck you right here on the floor.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It was like he'd flipped a switch. Suddenly, I was thinking about it, too, thinking that it would feel good to forget about my problems for a few minutes, and I rolled over on my back and pulled my shirt over my head.