Charlaine Harris (78 page)

This was not a Joyce, though the burial was within the family plot. The date was eight years and a few months before. The carved name was
Mariah Parish
. Though I sensed the two men, waiting under the scanty shade of a twisted tree, were standing much straighter, I was too intent on the connection to wonder about that.

“Oh,” I said, softly. The wind whooshed past, lifting my short dark hair and teasing it. “Oh, poor thing.”

“What?” asked Lizzie, her harsh voice sounding simply confused. “That's my grandfather's caregiver. She had a burst appendix or something.”

“She had a hemorrhage, bled out after childbirth,” I said. I put two and two together and glanced over at the two men. Drexell had actually taken a step closer. Chip Moseley was stunned; he was also furious, whether because the information was a shock to him, or because I'd said it out loud, I couldn't say. But whatever they were feeling, it was too late for Mariah. I looked away and stepped over to the right grave, the one I'd been brought to read. It was the biggest headstone in the plot, a double one. Richard Joyce's wife had predeceased him by ten years. Her name had been Cindilynn, and I discovered she'd died of breast cancer. I said so out loud, and I glimpsed Kate and Lizzie look at each other and nod. I stepped to the ground just adjacent, Rich Joyce's side of the headstone. Rich had died eight years ago, not long after his caregiver. I cocked my head as I listened to Richard's bones.

He'd seen something that startled him. I got that, but it took me a few seconds to understand that he'd stopped the Jeep and gotten out because he'd seen someone he knew.

I didn't have a picture of that person in my head. It's not like I'm watching a movie. It's like being inside the person for a moment or two, thinking the person's thoughts, feeling his emotions, in the last seconds of the person's life. So I understood from Rich Joyce that he'd stopped because he'd seen someone. I didn't go through the process of recognizing that person and reasoning that I should stop because he was standing there. As Rich Joyce, I turned off the Jeep, stepped out, and then the snake came flying through the air, the rattlesnake, giving me (Rich Joyce) such a shock that my (his) heart stopped working properly.
So hot no water can't reach phone oh my God to end like this
and then it had all gone black. With my eyes closed to see that scene more clearly, that scene visible only to me, I related what was happening.

When I opened my eyes, the four people in the Joyce party were staring at me as if I'd developed stigmata. Sometimes it grabs people that way, even when they've asked me there to do exactly what I just did.

I creep people out or I fascinate them (not always in a healthy way) . . . or both. However, the fascination thing wasn't going to be a problem today. The boyfriend was looking at me as if I were wearing a straitjacket, and the three Joyces were gaping. Everyone was silent.

“So now you know,” I said briskly.

“You could've made that up,” Lizzie said. “There was someone there? How'd that happen? No one has said they were there. Are you telling me someone threw a rattlesnake at Granddaddy? And that gave him a heart attack, and then that someone just left him? And you're saying Mariah had a baby? I didn't hire you to tell me lies!”

Okay, that pissed me off. I took a deep breath. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Tolliver had started over to me, the beginnings of alarm evident on his face. Behind them all, Chip Moseley had retreated to the Jeep and was standing with one hand braced on it, doubled over. I realized he was in pain, and I knew he wouldn't thank me if I drew attention to him.

“You brought me here to do this,” I said. I spread my hands. “There is nothing you can verify, even if you dug your grandfather up. I warned you that might be the case. Of course, you can find out about Mariah Parish, if you really are concerned. There should be a birth record, or some paper trail.”

“That's true,” Lizzie said. Her face was more thoughtful than repulsed now. “But aside from the issue of what happened to Mariah's baby, if she really had one, it makes me sick that someone would do that to Granddaddy. If you're telling us the truth.”

“Believe me; don't believe me. That's up to you. Did you know about his heart condition?”

“No, he wasn't one for doctors. But he'd had a stroke already. And the last time he went in for a checkup, he came back looking worried.” She'd thought about this many times since her grandfather's death, it was obvious.

“He had a cell phone in his Jeep, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “He did.”

“He was trying to reach it.” Some last moments are more informative than others.

I glanced quickly in Tolliver's direction, and then away. The tension was leaving his shoulders. I thought we were going to be okay.

“You believe this stuff?” Chip asked the sisters incredulously. He'd recovered from whatever had ailed him, and he was standing at Lizzie's side. He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before, when I knew from our research that he'd been her escort for the past six years.

Lizzie was too confident to be hurried. She appeared to be thinking hard as she got out a cigarette and lit it. Finally, she tilted her face up to him. “Yes, I believe it.”

“Shi-it,” Kate Joyce said and pulled off her cowboy hat. She slapped it against her lean thigh. “You'll be wanting to bring in that John Edward next.”

Lizzie shot her sister a look that was not fond. Drexell said, “I think she made all of this up, you ask me.”

We had gotten a deposit from Lizzie. We were coming to Texas anyway, but we sure wouldn't have stopped if we hadn't gotten the up-front money. Clients this rich, oddly enough, often change their mind. Poorer people don't. So, though we'd already deposited the first check from RJ Ranch, the balance was due, and a blind man could tell the whole Joyce party was dubious about what I'd accomplished. Before I could get a good start on worrying about it, Lizzie pulled a folded and creased check from her hip pocket and handed it to Tolliver, who'd gotten close enough to slide his arm around me. I was a little shaky. This hadn't been as hard as some readings, because Rich Joyce'd only had a second's surge of fear before he passed over, but direct contact with the dead is draining.

“Need candy?” he asked.

I nodded. He got a Werther's Original out of his pocket and unwrapped it. I opened my mouth and he popped it in. Golden buttery goodness.

“I thought he was your brother,” Kate Joyce said, inclining her head toward Tolliver. Though I knew she had to be in her late twenties, there were more years of experience than that in the way she walked and spoke. I wondered if this was the result of being brought up rich but practical in Texas, or if life in the Joyce household had had other sources of stress.

“He is,” I said.

“Looks more like your boyfriend.” Drexell sniggered.

“I'm her stepbrother and her boyfriend, Drex,” Tolliver said pleasantly. “We'll be on the road. Thanks for asking us to help you with your problem.” He nodded at them all. He's less than six feet, but not by much, and he's thin, but he has a set of shoulders on him.

I love him more than anything.

 

 

 

THE
sound of the shower woke me up. We see the inside of so many motel rooms that sometimes I have to spend a second or two recalling where the particular motel room is located. This was one of those mornings.

Texas. After we'd left the Joyces, we had driven most of the previous afternoon to reach this motel off the interstate in Garland, outside of Dallas. This wasn't a business trip; it was personal.

I had that consciousness when I opened my eyes, that grim awareness that I was thinking too much about the old, bad times. Whenever we visit my aunt and her husband outside of Dallas, the bad memories resurface.

It's not the fault of the state.

When I'm close to my little sisters, I start remembering the broken trailer in Texarkana, the one where Tolliver and I lived with his father, my mother, his brother, my sister, and our two mutual sibs, who were practically babies at the time that household dissolved.

The delicately balanced deception we older kids had maintained for several years had collapsed when my older sister, Cameron, vanished. Our unpleasant home life had been exposed to public view, and our little sisters had been taken away. Tolliver had gone to live with his brother, Mark, and I'd gone to a foster home.

The two little girls didn't even remember Cameron. I'd asked them the last time we saw them. The girls live with Aunt Iona and Uncle Hank, who don't like us to visit. We do, though; Mariella and Grace (called Gracie) are our sisters, and we want them to remember they have family.

I propped up on one elbow to watch Tolliver drying himself off. He'd left the bathroom door open while he showered, because otherwise the mirror became too foggy for him to use while he shaved.

We don't look unalike; we're both thin and dark haired. Our hair's even about the same length. His eyes are brown; mine are dark gray. But Tolliver's complexion is pitted and scarred from acne, because his dad didn't think of sending him to a dermatologist. His face is narrower, and he often has a mustache. He hates wearing anything besides jeans and shirts, but I like to dress up a bit more, and since I'm the “talent,” it's more or less expected. Tolliver is my manager, my consultant, my main support, my companion, and for the past few weeks he's been my lover.

He turned to look at me, saw I was watching. He smiled and dropped the towel.

“Come here,” I said.

He was quick to oblige.

 

 

 

“WANT
to go for a run?” I asked in the afternoon. “You can take another shower afterward, with me. So you won't waste water.”

We had our running clothes on in no time, and we took off after we'd stretched. Tolliver's faster than I am. Most often, he pulls away for the last half mile or so, and today was no exception.

We were pleased to find a good place to run. Our motel was on the access road right off the interstate. It was flanked by other hotels and motels, restaurants and gas stations, the usual assortment of services for road warriors. But to the rear of the motel, we found one of those “business parks”: two curving streets with careful, still-small plantings in the flower beds in front of the one-story buildings, each with a parking area. A median ran down the middle of these two streets, wide enough to support a planting of crepe myrtles. There were sidewalks, too, to give the place an inviting and friendly look. Since it was late Friday afternoon, the traffic was minimal among the rows of rectangular buildings chopped up into characterless entities like Great Systems, Inc. and Genesis Distributors, which might conduct business of any sort. Each block was marked off by a driveway running between the buildings, a narrow thing that must lead to a parking lot in back for the employees. There were almost no cars parked in front; customers were gone, the last employees were leaving for the weekend.

In such a place, the last thing I expected to encounter was a dead man. I was thinking of the ache in my right leg, which has flared up from time to time ever since the lightning ran down that side, so I didn't hear his bones calling me at first.

They're everywhere, of course, dead people. I don't hear only the modern dead. I feel the ancient dead, too; even, very rarely, the faint, faint echo of a trace of people who walked the earth before there was writing. But this guy I was connecting with here in the Dallas suburbs was
very
fresh. I ran in place for a moment.

I couldn't be sure unless I got closer to the body, but I was thinking this one felt like a suicide by gun. I pinpointed his location—he was in the back part of an office called Designated Engineering. I shook off his overwhelming misery. I've had practice. Pity him? He'd gotten to choose. If I pitied everyone I met who'd crossed over, I'd be weeping continuously.

No, I wasn't spending my time on emotion. I was trying to decide what to do. I could leave him where he was, and that was my initial impulse. The first person to come into Designated Engineering the next workday would get a rude shock, if the guy's family didn't send the police to check his office tonight when he didn't come home.

It seemed harsh, leaving him there. However, I didn't want to get involved in a long explanation to the police.

Running in place was getting old. I had to make up my mind.

Though I can't agonize over every dead person I find, I don't want to lose my humanity, either.

I looked around for inspiration. I found it in the rocks bordering the ho-hum flower bed at the entrance door. I pulled out the largest rock I could handle and hefted it. After a little experimentation, I decided I could throw it one-handed. I glanced up and down the street; no cars in sight, and no one on foot. Standing a safe distance back, I took a balanced stance and let the rock fly. I had to retrieve the rock and repeat this action twice more before the glass shattered and an alarm began to go off. I took off running. I had to take a metaphorical hat off to the police. I had barely reached the motel parking lot when I saw the patrol car turning off the access road and speeding by the motel to cruise into the business park.

An hour later, I was telling Tolliver what had happened while I put on my makeup. I'd had a long shower, and sure enough, he'd jumped in again to “help you wash your hair.”

I was leaning my clean self over the sink to peer into the mirror to apply my eyeliner. Though I was only twenty-four, I had to get closer to the mirror now, and I just knew the next time I had an exam, my eye doctor was going to tell me I needed glasses. I'd never considered myself vain, but every time I pictured myself wearing glasses, I felt a pang. Maybe contact lenses? But the thought of sticking anything in my eyes made me shudder.