Charlaine Harris (6 page)

“How do you do it?” she asked. “How can you tell? How can I trust you?”

These were all good questions, questions I'd been asked before.

“You don't have to believe a thing I say,” I told Helen Hopkins. “I see what I see.”

“You think God gave you this gift? Or the devil?”

I wasn't about to tell this woman what I really thought. “You believe what you want,” I said.

“I believe that you saw both my daughters get murdered,” Helen Hopkins said. Her huge brown eyes seemed to get even bigger and rounder. “I believe God sent you to find out who did this to them.”

“No,” I said immediately. “I am not a lie detector. I can find bodies. I can tell what killed 'em. But who, or why, that's beyond me.”

“How did they die?”

“You don't want to hear this,” Tolliver said.

“Shut up, mister. This is my right.”

She was little, but persistent.
Like a mosquito,
I thought.

“Your daughter Sally was drowned in her bathtub. She
was grabbed by the ankles, so that her head went under the water. Your daughter Teenie was shot in the back.”

All the strength seeped out of Helen Hopkins as we watched.

“My poor girls,” she said. “My poor girls.”

She looked over at us, without really seeing us. “I thank you for coming,” she said stiffly. “I thank you. I'm in your debt. I'll tell the girls' fathers what you've said.”

Tolliver and I got up. Helen didn't speak again.

“Now we leave,” Tolliver said, when we were outside. And after we stopped by the bank to cash Sybil Teague's check, we got in our car and drove south out of Sarne.

We pulled into our motel in Ashdown a few silent hours later. Tolliver sat in the chair in my room after we'd eaten supper, and I perched on the foot of the bed.

“Tell me about going out with the trooper,” he said. His voice was mild, but I knew that was deceptive. I'd been waiting for that shoe to drop all day.

“He came by while you were gone flirting with that waitress,” I said. “He wanted me to take a ride with him.” Tolliver snorted, but I decided to ignore that. “Anyway, he talked, and he talked, and we got a milk shake, and then I realized that he just wanted to take me out to the cemetery and get me to tell him what happened to his wife.”

I could hardly bear to look at Tolliver's face, but I sneaked a peek. To my relief, he wasn't full of anger. He hated it when people took advantage of me, and he hated it more when the person was a man. But he didn't want me to feel bad, either.

“Don't you think he liked what he saw, and that's why he came by the motel?”

I ducked my head. Tolliver's hand smoothed my hair.

“No,” I said. “I think all along he planned on getting me there to his wife's grave. I told him I had to be paid, Tolliver. So he took me by the bank and got the money.” I didn't tell Tolliver it hadn't been the full amount. “But I left it in the truck, because I felt so bad about the whole thing.” Bad and mad and guilty and hurt.

“You did the right thing,” he said, at last. “Next time, don't go anywhere without telling me, okay?”

“You going to follow me?” I asked, feeling a little spark of anger. “What should I do when
you
go off without
me
? Make the woman promise to bring you back by ten? Take her picture so I can track her down when you're late?”

Tolliver counted to ten. I could tell by the tiny movements of his head. “No,” he said. “But I worry about you. You're a strong woman, but a strong woman still isn't as strong as most men.” This was one of those simple biological truths that made me wonder what God had been thinking. “If he hadn't taken you to the cemetery, he could have taken you anywhere else. I would have been looking for you, like we track other people.”

“If anyone in this world is aware that she might be killed at any moment, Tolliver Lang, that person is me.” I pointed at my own chest, my finger rigid. “Amazingly, every day millions of women go out with men who have no ulterior motive whatsoever. Amazingly, almost all of them come home perfectly all right!”

“I don't care about them. I care about you. How you could ever trust anyone when what we see, so many times a year, is murder. . . .”

“And yet, you have no problem inviting a woman you just met into your room!”

He threw up his hands. “Okay, forget it! Forget I said anything! All I want is to know where you are, and for you to be safe!” He stomped out of my room into his, which required going outside; no connecting doors in this cut-rate motel.

I heard the television come on in the next room. What had we been quarrelling about? Did Tolliver really want me to sit in my room while he had fun? Did he really want me to turn down every invitation that came my way, in the name of safety?

I was pretty sure the answer, if you asked him, would be yes.

During the night, the phone by Tolliver's bed rang. I could hear it through the thin walls. After a moment, it stopped. I tried to imagine who could know where we were and what we were doing, and in the middle of imagining, I fell back to sleep. I ran the next morning, and in the cold crisp air it felt great. The hot shower felt even better. While I was dressing, Tolliver knocked on my door. After I let him in, I finished buttoning my blouse. I was wearing better clothes since we would be meeting the Ashdown client for the first time. This would be a cemetery job, and I wouldn't have to change. A quick in-and-out.

“The call last night,” he said.

“Yeah, who was that?” I'd almost forgotten.

“It was the police in Sarne.”

“Who in the police?”

“Harvey Branscom, the sheriff.”

I waited, hairbrush in hand.

“We have to go back.”

“Not until we do this job. Why, what happened?”

“Last night, someone went into Helen Hopkins' house and beat her to death.”

I stared at Tolliver for a minute. I was so used to death that it was hard to produce a normal reaction to news like this.

“Well,” I said finally, “I hope it was quick.”

“I told them we'd have to finish our business here first, then we'd drive back up there.”

“I'm ready.” I tucked my blouse in my gray slacks. I pulled on my matching blazer.

“Hey, the jacket matches your eyes,” Tolliver said.

“That was my intent,” I said dryly. Tolliver always seemed to think that if I looked good, it was a happy accident. The blouse I wore with the gray suit was light green, with a kind of bamboo pattern on it. I put on a gold chain that Tolliver had given me the previous Christmas, and slid into black pumps. I fluffed my hair, checked my makeup, and told Tolliver I was ready. He was wearing a long-sleeved cotton pullover sweater in a dark red. He looked very good in it. I'd given it to him.

We met the client and her lawyer at the designated cemetery, one of those modern ones with flat headstones. They're cheaper, and more convenient for the mower. Though not atmospheric, the “park” look does make for easier walking.

The lawyer, a woman in her sixties, made it clear she thought I was in the business of defrauding the desperate and grief stricken. I was getting a lot of red flags, not only from the lawyer's attitude, but from the twitchiness of the client. Following our standard procedure when I got vibes like those, I endorsed the check and handed it to Tolliver,
indicating he should go to the bank while I did the “reading.” The situation was showing all the indicators of a bad transaction.

The client, a heavy, peevish woman in her forties, wanted her husband to have died of something more dramatic than a radio falling into his bathtub. (Bathtubs had been big this month. Sometimes I got such a run of one cause of death that it made even me nervous. Last year, I had a streak of accidental drownings—five in a row. Made me scared to go swimming for a couple of months.) Geneva Roller, the client, had her own elaborate conspiracy theory about how the radio came to be in the bathtub. Her theory involved Mr. Roller's first wife and his best friend.

I love it when the location of the body is known. It was a little treat when the client led me directly to her husband's grave. Geneva Roller was a brisk walker, and I could feel the heels of my pumps sinking into the soft dirt. The lawyer was right behind me, as if I'd cut and run unless I was blocked in.

We stopped by a headstone reading
Farley Roller
. To give Geneva her emotional money's worth, I stepped onto the grave and crouched, my hand resting on the headstone.
Farley
, I thought,
what the hell happened to you?
And then I saw it, as I always did. To let Geneva know what was going on, I said, “He is in the tub. He has—um, he's uncircumcised.” That was unusual.

This convinced my client I was the real deal. Geneva Roller gasped, her hand going up to her chest. Her bright red lips formed an O. The lawyer, Patsy Bolton, snorted. “Anyone could know that, Geneva,” she said.

Right, that was the first thing I asked guys.

“He's whistling,” I said. I couldn't hear what Farley Roller was whistling, unfortunately. I could see the counter in the bathroom. “There's a radio on the counter,” I said. “I think he's whistling along with the music.” This was one of the times when I saw more than the moment of death. This was not the norm.

“He did that when he bathed,” Geneva breathed. “He did, Patsy!” The lawyer looked less skeptical and more spooked.

I said. “There's the cat. On the bathroom counter. A marmalade color cat.”

“Patpaws,” said Geneva, smiling. I was willing to bet the lawyer wasn't smiling.

“The cat's bracing to leap over the tub to the open window.”

“The window
was
open,” Geneva said. She wasn't smiling anymore.

“The cat knocked the radio into the water,” I said.

Then the cat leaped out of the window and into the yard while Mr. Roller came to his end. The bathtub was an old one, an unusual shade of avocado green. “You have a green tub,” I said, shaking my head in puzzlement. “Can that be right?”

Patsy the lawyer was gaping at me. “You're for real,” she said. “I actually believe you. Their tub is avocado.”

I got to my feet, dusting off my knees. I ignored Patsy Bolton. “I'm so sorry, Ms. Roller. Your cat killed your husband in a freak accident,” I said. I assumed this would be good news.

“NO!” Geneva Roller yelled, and even the lawyer looked astonished.

“Geneva, this is a reasonable explanation,” Patsy Bolton began, giving her client a formidable stare, but Geneva Roller had no emotional restraints.

“It was his first wife, that Angela. It was her, I know it! She went in the house while I was at the store, and she murdered him. Angela did it. Not my little Patpaws!”

I'd had disbelieving reactions before, of course, though most often these came when I'd discovered the death was a suicide. So it sure wasn't the first time I'd found that people invest a lot in their theories. In a Jack Nicholson moment, I very nearly told Geneva Roller that she couldn't handle the truth.

“I'll take my check back. I won't pay you a dime,” she hissed. I was glad I'd sent Tolliver to the bank.

Looking over Geneva's shoulder, I could see our car turning into the cemetery. Relief gave me courage.

“Ms. Roller, your cat caused an accident, quite innocently. Your husband wasn't murdered. There's no one to blame,” I said.

She launched herself at me, and the lawyer caught her by the shoulders. “Geneva, recall who you are,” Patsy Bolton said. Her cheeks were red, and her brown-and-gray streaked hair had become a mess in the breeze that had sprung up. “Don't embarrass yourself like this.”

With excellent timing, Tolliver pulled up beside me. Trying not to hurry, I climbed into the car while saying, “I'm so sorry for your loss, Ms. Roller.” We sped out of the cemetery while Geneva Roller screamed at us.

“Got the money?” I asked.

“Yep. Good thing?”

“Yeah, she didn't want it to be an accident. I guess she
was hoping for an A and E documentary. ‘Murder in Ashdown,' or something.” I deepened my voice. “ ‘The widow, however, suspected from the beginning that Farley Roller's death was a ‘not what it appeared to be,' kind of thing. Instead, all she has to blame is her stupid cat. Kind of a letdown, I guess.”

“It's a lot more interesting to be the wife of a murder victim than the owner of a killer cat,” Tolliver said, but I had to wonder about that.

WE'D
already checked out of the Ashdown motel, so we drove straight to Sarne. Tolliver went directly to the sheriff's office, and seconds after we sat down in the chairs in front of his desk, the sheriff came in, yanking his hat off and tossing it on a table behind him.

“I hear you went to visit with Helen Hopkins yesterday,” Harvey Branscom said. He bent over and switched on the intercom. “Reba, send Hollis in,” he said. A squawk came back, and in a minute Hollis Boxleitner came in, carrying a mug of steaming coffee. I could smell it from my chair, but I didn't ask for any, nor did I look him in the face. Beside me, Tolliver stiffened.

“Mr. Lang, I want you to go with Deputy Boxleitner here. I'd like to talk to Miss, Ms. Connelly.”

I turned to look at Tolliver, trying not to let my anxiety show on my face. He knew I would hate for him to say
anything out loud. I like to keep my fears to myself. He gave me a very steady look, and I relaxed just a little. Without a word, he stood and left the room with Hollis.

“How'd you make contact with Helen?” the sheriff asked me. His face was set in harsh lines. I could see the shadow of white whiskers on his face, as though his cheeks had been frostbitten. Lack of sleep made the lines across his forehead even deeper.

“She called us,” I said, biting off any color commentary. Tolliver had always advised me not to answer any extra when I talked to the police.

“What did she want?” asked the sheriff, with an air of elaborate patience.

“Us to come visit her.” I read the expression on Branscom's face correctly. “She wanted to know who'd hired me, and why.”

“Sybil hadn't told her you all were coming?” Branscom himself seemed surprised, and he was Sybil Teague's brother.

“Evidently not.”

“Was she angry about that?”

We looked at each other for a long second. “Not that she said,” I answered.

“What else did you talk about?”

I spoke very carefully. “She told us she'd had a bad life for a while, but that she'd been sober for thirty-two months. She talked about her daughters. She was proud of both of them.”

“Did she ask you about their deaths?”

“Sure. She wanted to know how I knew, if I were sure how they were killed. She said she would tell their fathers.”

Harvey Branscom had been lifting his mug to his mouth as I spoke. Now the mug was lowered back to the desk. “Say what?” he asked.

“She said she would tell the girls' fathers what I'd said.”

“The fathers of the girls. Both of them.
Plural
.”

I nodded.

“She never would tell anyone who Teenie's dad was. I always thought she just didn't know. And Sally's dad Jay left years ago, after she put the restraining order on him. Did Helen mention any names?”

“No.” I was in the clear on that one.

“What else did she talk about?” the sheriff asked. “Be sure you tell me everything.”

“She wanted to know how I do what I do, if I thought my gift had come from God or the devil. She wanted to be convinced I knew what I was talking about.”

“What did you tell her?” He seemed genuinely interested to know.

“I didn't tell her anything. She made up the answer she wanted to hear, all on her own.” My voice might have been a little dry.

“What time did you leave her house?”

I'd thought about that, of course. “We left about nine thirty,” I said. “We went by the bank on the way out of town. We got to Ashdown and checked into the motel about two, two thirty.”

He wrote that down, and the name of the motel. I handed him the receipt that I'd tucked in my purse. He copied it and made some more entries in his notebook.

“What time did she die?” I asked.

He looked up at me. “Sometime before noon,” he said.
“Hollis went over there on his lunch hour to talk to her about Teenie's funeral. He'd spoken to her for the first time in a year or two, when he went over to tell her what you'd told him about Sally. Which, by the way, I don't believe. I think you're just trying to mine for gold here, and I'm telling you, Hollis ain't a rich man.”

I was puzzled. “He gave me money, but I left it in his truck. He didn't tell you that?” Maybe Hollis just hadn't wanted to tell his superior I'd asked for it in the first place—though why, I don't know. Sheriff Branscom didn't think much of me, and it wouldn't have surprised him at all that I'd wanted to be paid (for something I do for my living!). It would have confirmed his poor opinion. Yes, I expect even poor people who want my services to pay me. So does everyone else.

“No,” the sheriff said, easing back into his creaking chair. He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jowls. “No, he didn't mention that. Maybe he was embarrassed at giving money to someone like you in the first place.”

Sometimes you just can't win. Sheriff Branscom would never join my fan club. It's lucky I'm used to meeting people like that, or I might slip and get my feelings hurt.

“Where's Tolliver?” I asked, my tolerance all used up.

“He'll be in here directly,” the sheriff said. “I guess Hollis ain't finished up his questions yet.”

I fidgeted. “I really need to go to the motel and lie down,” I said. “I really need Tolliver to take me there.”

“You've got some car keys,” the sheriff observed. “Hollis'll bring him over when they're done.”

“No,” I said. “I need my brother.”

“Don't you raise your voice to me, young woman. He'll
be through in a minute.” But there was the faintest look of alarm on the round soft face.

“Now,” I said. “I need him
now.
” I let my eyes go wide so the white showed all around the irises. My hands wrung together, over and over.

“I'll check,” said the sheriff, and he could hardly get up from behind his desk fast enough.

Most places, I would've gotten thrown in the cage or taken to the hospital, but I had gauged this man correctly. Within four minutes, Tolliver came in, moving quickly. Because Hollis was watching, he knelt at my feet and took both my hands. “I'm here, honey,” he said. “Don't be scared.”

I let tears flow down my cheeks. “I need to go, Tolliver,” I said softly. “Please take me to the motel.” I threw my arms around his neck. I loved hugging Tolliver, who was bony and hard and warm. I loved to listen to the air going in and out of his lungs, the swoosh of his heart.

He raised me up out of the chair and walked me to the front door, one arm wrapped around my shoulders. The few people in the outer office eyed us curiously as we made our way to the door.

When we were safely back in the car and on our way, Tolliver said, “Thanks.”

“Was it going bad for you?” I asked, taking my hands from my face and straightening in my seat. “The sheriff thinks I made up everything I said, but the motel receipt was pretty conclusive.”

“Hollis Boxleitner has a thing for you,” Tolliver said. “He can't decide if he wants to go to bed with you or slap you around, and he's full of anger like a volcano's full of lava.”

“Because of his wife getting killed.”

“Yep. He believes in you, but that makes him mad, too.”

“He's gonna burn himself up,” I said.

“Yes,” Tolliver agreed.

“Did he tell you anything about Helen Hopkins' murder?”

“He said he found her. He said she'd been hit on the head.”

“With something there, something already in the house?”

“Candlestick.”

I remembered the glass candlesticks flanking the Bible on the coffee table.

“Was she standing when she was hit?”

“No,” he said, “I think she was sitting on the couch.”

“So the killer was standing in front of her.”

Tolliver thought about it. “That makes sense,” he said. “But the deputy didn't say one way or another.”

“Being suspected of a murder isn't going to help business,” I said.

“No, we need to get out of here as soon as possible.” He parked in front of the motel and went in to get our rooms.

I really did want to lie down by the time we were in our rooms, and I was glad when Tolliver came through the connecting door and turned on my television. I propped up on the pillows while he slouched in the chair, and we watched the Game Show Network. He beat me at
Jeopardy!
I beat him at
Wheel of Fortune
. Of course, I would rather have won at
Jeopardy!,
but Tolliver had always been better at remembering facts than I was.

Our parents were brilliant people, once upon a time; before they became alcoholic, drug-addicted disbarred
attorneys. And before they'd decided their clients' criminal lifestyles were more appealing and adventuresome than their own. My mother and Tolliver's dad found each other on their way down the drain, having shed their original spouses. My sister Cameron and I had gone from living in a four-bedroom suburban home in east Memphis to a rental house with a hole in the bathroom floor in Texarkana, Arkansas. This hadn't happened all at once; we'd experienced many degrees of degradation. Tolliver had fallen from a lower height, but he and his brother had descended with his father, too. He'd been our companion in that hole in Texarkana. That's where we'd been when the lightning struck.

My mother and Tolliver's dad had had two more children together, Mariella and Gracie. Tolliver and I watched out for them as best we could. Mariella and Gracie had no memory of anything better than the life we were living.

What had happened to our other parents: my father and Tolliver's mother? Why didn't they save us from the terrifying turn our lives had taken? Well, by that time, my real dad had gone to jail for a long string of white-collar crimes, and Tolliver's mother had died of cancer—leaving our at-large parents to complete their own downward passage, dragging us and their own children behind them.

So here we were, Tolliver and I, in a run-down motel in a seedy Ozarks tourist town in the off-season, hoping to dodge being charged with murder.

But by golly, we were smart.

We were playing Scrabble when we heard a knock at the door.

It was my room, so I asked, “Who is it?”

“Hollis.”

I opened the door. Hollis saw Tolliver behind me and said, “May I come in?”

I shrugged and moved back. Hollis stepped in far enough to allow me to shut the door behind him.

“You're here to apologize, I assume,” I said in the coldest voice I could summon. It was pretty damn cold.

“Apologize! For what?” He sounded genuinely bewildered.

“For telling the sheriff I took your money. For implying I cheated you.”

“You did take my money.”

“I left it on the seat of the truck. I felt bad for you.” I was so angry I was almost spitting; I'd gone from cold to hot in less than five seconds.

“It wasn't on the seat of the truck.”

“Yes. It was.”

He fished his keys out of his pocket. “Show me.”

“No, you look yourself, so you can't accuse me of planting it.”

Tolliver and I followed Hollis back outside. The sky was gray, and the trees around the motel were beginning to whip in the wind. I was cold without my coat, but I wasn't going back in to put it on. Tolliver put his arm around me. Hollis opened the passenger door of his truck, began thrusting his fingers in the crack at the back of the seat, and in about ten seconds he came up with the bank envelope, still fat with money.

He stared at it in his hand, flushed red, and then went white. After a moment or two, he met our eyes. “You told Harvey the truth,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

“There now,” I said. “Are we all clear about this?”

He nodded.

“Okay, then,” I said. I spun and walked into my room. Tolliver stayed outside for a bit. Then he came in, too.