Charlaine Harris (9 page)

Tolliver was caught between a rock and a hard place, and I waited to see what he'd do to get out of it. While he squirmed, I looked from young male face to young male face, trying to meet each set of eyes and smile, the squeaky non-sexual smile of a newscaster. Only two of them made the effort to nod to me; the others either evaded my gaze or scowled at me. This was not good.

“Mary Nell, I'd like to, but Harper and I have to go back to the motel and make some phone calls,” Tolliver said. I could see him casting around for something to say that would simultaneously salvage her pride, get him off the hook, and mollify the angry columns of testosterone that were glowering at us. There was nothing that would serve all three functions.

“Maybe Mary Nell would like to have supper with us tonight,” I said unwillingly. It was not so much that I was trying to show the girl some mercy; if she got angry with us, her anger would give the boys permission to attack.

I saw the conflict on Mary Nell's face pass in a flash; it was I who had asked, which negated the value of the
invitation, but it did save her face, to some extent. “That would be wonderful,” she said, giving me the barest glance. “I'll see you at six at the Ozark Valley Inn.”

I had no idea where that was, but I said, “See you then,” and Nell walked away to her car very quickly, her head held high. Just as quickly, Tolliver and I got in our car and drove away, stopping at the next light to buckle our seat belts.

Tolliver looked angry and embarrassed. “Too bad you don't want to be in a boy band,” I said, after a minute of riding in silence. “You've obviously got the charisma.”

“Oh, shut up!” he said. “How about you? You gonna be one of the Babes of Law Enforcement?”

“Well, at least Hollis is legal age. . . .” I began, but then I couldn't help smiling.

Tolliver managed a small upcurve of the lips. “Where the hell is the Ozark Valley Inn?” he said.

“I have no idea, but we better find it by six o'clock. Gosh, I have a headache. I sure hope it doesn't get so bad that I have to bow out of the dinner. . . .”

“You do and you die.”

We picked up salads for lunch, and took them back to the motel. The phone rang just as we were settling down to read. We were in my room, so I answered.

“This is Hollis. Do you want to go to supper with me?”

We could double-date with Mary Nell and Tolliver! Wouldn't that be fun?
I bit my lip to suppress the idea. “I'm busy for supper,” I said hesitantly, knowing I should turn him down flat, but tempted nonetheless.

“A drink afterward?”

“Yes,” I said cautiously, after I'd thought about it.

“I'll pick you up at the motel. Eight o'clock?”

“Okay, see you then.”

“All right. Goodbye.”

I said goodbye, too, and hung up. Tolliver was eyeing me sardonically. “Let me guess, Cop Boy?”

I nodded. “We're going to have a drink together tonight at eight, so we'll have to cut short our romantic rendezvous with Mary Nell. I'm sure you don't want to be unchaperoned.”

“If there's anywhere here it would take two hours to eat, I'd be very astonished,” Tolliver said, at his driest.

I agreed, and re-opened my book. But for a few minutes, I read the same page over and over.

When we stopped by the motel office to ask for directions to the Ozark Valley Inn, we noticed that the older man who ran the place was not too happy about helping us. We'd learned his name was Vernon, and he wore overalls and had the worn and wrinkled face of a basset. Vernon had been pleasant enough up to now, though we hadn't seen much of him. But tonight he was distant, his gaze disapproving. “You planning on moving your bags over there?” he asked, almost hopefully.

“No,” I said, surprised. “We're just meeting someone for dinner in the restaurant at the inn.”

“ 'Cause I been meaning to tell you, I'm going to need those rooms pretty soon. Hope you two wasn't planning on staying very long.”

“I'm sure you have tons of business coming in,” I agreed, maybe a little coldly. “And we won't stay a minute longer than we have to.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I guess no one's going to ask us to judge the floats in the homecoming parade,” I said to Tolliver when we were in the car.

He smiled, but it was a small smile. “The sooner we can get out of Sarne, the better,” he said.

Mary Nell came in seven minutes after we were seated at a table in the inn, which was on the southern side of the town. Her face was flushed and her cell phone was in her hand. I was willing to bet she'd lied to her mother about where she was going and whom she was going to be with. I almost hated the girl at that moment, for the trouble she might get us into.

“Sorry I'm late,” Mary Nell said, as she took a chair. “I had some things I had to do at home. My mom is so paranoid.”

“She lost your brother,” I said. “I'm sure that's made her more protective.” I wouldn't have thought even a self-absorbed teenager could have missed that point.

The girl flushed deep red. “Of course,” she said stiffly. “I just mean, she doesn't seem to know how old I am.” She'd dressed with care, in new low riders with a tight green T-shirt. She wore a soft fuzzy cardigan sweater and boots.

“That's a common thing with mothers,” I said. My own mother had forgotten how old I was, after she'd started chasing the drugs with alcohol. She'd decided I was much older and needed a boyfriend. She picked a doping buddy of hers who was willing to give her free samples for the privilege of being my first “date.” Tolliver had gone off to college by then, and I'd had to spend a day locked in my room. I had known that eventually they'd go to sleep and I'd be able to get out of the house, but I was hungry and thirsty and had no access to a bathroom. After that, I kept bottled water and a box of crackers and an old cooking pot in my room.

“Have you lived in Sarne all your life?” Tolliver asked Mary Nell.

She flushed when he spoke directly to her. “Yes,” she
said. “My dad's parents were born here, too. Dad died just before Dell.” I was startled. When Edwards had told me Sybil was a recent widow, I hadn't realized how recent. “Dell, he really missed Dad. . . . He was closer to Dad than me.” She sounded vaguely resentful.

“I want to ask you a question, Mary Nell,” I said. “I don't want to upset you any more than I have to, but when you were talking to us the other night, you paused after you said one sentence. You said something like, ‘I knew he wouldn't kill Teenie and . . .' and then you stopped. What were you going to say?”

Mary Nell eyed me. You could tell her feelings were conflicted. “Please tell us, Nell,” Tolliver said, and she crumbled when she looked into his dark brown eyes. He'd called her something special.

“Okay,” she said, leaning across the table to share her big secret. “Dell told me, the week before he and Teenie . . . the week before they died, that Teenie was gonna have a baby.” Her heavily made-up eyes were as big and round as a raccoon's. The girl was clearly shocked that her brother had been having sex with his girlfriend, and she just as clearly considered the pregnancy top-secret knowledge.

“No one knew?”

“He sure didn't tell my mom. She would've killed him.” Then, as she realized what she'd said, Mary Nell turned red as a brick, and tears filled her eyes.

“That's okay,” I said hastily, “we know your mom wouldn't really do that.”

“Well, Mom never has liked Teenie's mom too much. I don't know why. Miss Helen used to work for us a few years ago, and I thought she was great. Always singing.”

And I could tell that she suddenly remembered that Helen Hopkins had been murdered, too. There was a look on her face, a lost look, like she was drowning.

“If I'd killed everyone I didn't like, I'd be able to dress in their scalps,” Tolliver said.

Mary Nell gave a startled giggle and covered her mouth with her small hand.

After all this time, could an autopsy establish Teenie's pregnancy?

“Dell didn't tell anyone but you?” I asked.

“No one knew but me,” Mary Nell said proudly.

Mary Nell was sure her brother hadn't told anyone about the baby, but what about Teenie? Had she told someone? Her mother, maybe?

Her mother, who was . . . gee, let me think . . . dead.

AFTER
Tolliver and I had exchanged glances, we steered off the subject quickly. Mary Nell's sad, tearful face had already attracted some attention from the sparse clientele. Her coloring cleared up and her demeanor brightened as she talked about happier topics, addressing her conversation almost exclusively to my brother. Tolliver found out that Nell planned to go to the University of Arkansas the next year, that she wanted to be a physical therapist so she could help people, that she was a cheerleader and didn't like algebra. Her cheerleading sponsor was totally cool.

I was free to think my own thoughts. Mary Nell didn't seem much different from any of the girls I'd known in high school, the girls with sober parents, the girls who had enough money to ward off worry and homelessness. She was bright but not brilliant, virginal but not saintly. The loss of her sibling had left her drifting, searching for a new identity
when her old one had been shaken at its core. I could see the knowledge of her brother's secret life with Teenie had disturbed Mary Nell deeply, until that shock had been smothered by the greater trauma of Dell's death. Clearly, sharing her brother's secret had relieved the knot of tension deep inside Mary Nell Teague. It didn't seem to make a difference to Mary Nell that the people she'd shared it with were strangers.

The girl was fascinated with Tolliver. Since she was popular, pretty, and a teenager, Mary Nell was sure Tolliver would find her equally fascinating. I observed Mary Nell flounder through the conversation, trying to find the key to cajoling my brother into noticing she was a woman. Mary Nell would begin an anecdote about her homeroom teacher, realize that was a kid topic, and make a huge effort to switch to some conversational gambit she believed would appeal to an older man.

“Did you go to college?” she asked Tolliver.

“I went two years,” he said. “Then I worked for a while. After that, Harper and I started our traveling.”

“How come you don't get a regular job and stay somewhere?” Like real people do.

Tolliver looked at me. I looked back. “Good question,” he said. I looked at him askance, determined not to answer. She hadn't asked
me.

“Harper helps people,” he said. “She's one of a kind.”

“But she gets paid for it,” Nell said, outraged.

“Sure,” Tolliver said. “Why not? When you get to be a therapist, you'll get paid.”

Mary Nell ignored this royally.

“And she can do that by herself. Does she have to have help?”

Hey, sitting right here! Listening! I spread my hands, palms up. Only Tolliver noticed the gesture.

“It's not that she has to have my help. It's that I want to give it to her,” Tolliver said gently. I looked straight down at my plate. Mary Nell abruptly excused herself to go to the ladies' room. I had no intention of accompanying her—I would not be welcome—so Tolliver and I silently picked at the remnants of our food until she returned, her eyes red and her head held high.

“Thanks for dinner,” she said stiffly. We'd insisted on treating her. “I enjoyed it.” Then, holding her eyes wide and unblinking, she strode out of the dining room.

I watched her car pull out of the dark parking lot. I was a little surprised to find myself actually concerned about the girl. Her life was crashing in ruins around her, and that could make her careless. Too many things can happen to girls who don't watch where they're going. I find their corpses every year.

We got back to our motel in plenty of time for me to brush my hair and spray on a little perfume for my date. Tolliver watched without comment, his face harsh in the shadowy light of the room. “You got your cell phone?” he asked. “I'll leave mine on.”

“Okay,” I said. Tolliver went into his room, shutting the door behind him very gently.

Hollis knocked on my door right on time. When I opened it, he said, “You look pretty,” sounding unflatteringly surprised. I was wearing jeans and a black blouse and
some black heels. I wore a gold chain with a jade pendant, a gift from me to me after I'd gotten a bonus from a distraught husband who'd been looking for his wife's body for four years.

Hollis looked pretty good himself, solid and blond in a new pair of jeans and a gold-and-brown plaid shirt. He'd shaved, and he smelled of some cologne. He'd made an effort. Maybe this was a bit more of a date than I'd imagined.

We went to a small dive a little north of town. It was built of dark wood and had plastic banners on long ropes tied from the building to the trees and lamp poles around the graveled lot. If the brightly colored triangles had been fluttering in some breeze, possibly the effect would have been cheerful and festive. In the chilly, still night air, the banners were simply depressing, forlorn reminders of failed festivity.

The interior looked better than I'd imagined, given the exterior. The bar itself was polished wood and the floor had been redone recently in that fake oak flooring that actually looks pretty good. The tables and booths were clean. The décor was definitely Hunting Lodge, with deer heads and large fish mounted on the walls, interspersed with mirrors and old license plates. The jukebox was wailing country and western.

I was pleased with the place, and I smiled. Hollis asked if I wanted one of the small booths or a table, and I picked a booth. He asked me what I wanted to drink, and when I said a Coors would be fine, he went to the bar and returned with two longnecks. He also brought two napkins, one of which he solemnly placed on the heavily polyurethaned
wood in front of me before he put my mug on it. I suppressed a smile.

So much for the preliminaries.

“What do you like to do?” he asked. “While you're traveling around the country?”

Not the opening I'd expected. “I like to read,” I said. “Sometimes, we try to catch a movie. I run. I watch television. I like to watch the WNBA games, since I played a little basketball in high school. I plan my dream house.”

“Tell me about your dream house,” Hollis said, smiling.

“Okay,” I said, slowly. This was something I didn't talk about too often. “It will have to be off the beaten road, of course. I want it to look like a log cabin, but without the inconveniences of a real log cabin. I found a plan on the Internet, and I bought it. But of course, I want to alter it a little.”

“Of course,” he said, taking a sip of beer.

“It would be two bedrooms and a study, with a family room. There'd be a kitchen here, with the washroom right off of it.” I was looking down at the table, drawing with my finger. “Around back, there'd be a
porte cochere
for the cars, so you could carry groceries right into the kitchen without getting wet. There's a deck off the right side of the kitchen, see? Or maybe I'd put it off the family room. That's where the fireplace will be, and you could keep your firewood on the deck. And you could put your gas grill on the deck. For steaks.”

“Who lives in that house with you?”

I looked up at him, startled. “Well, of course—” I began. Then I shut my mouth.

“Surely your brother will get married somewhere along the line?” Hollis asked gently, his eyes steady and his face calm. “You might want to marry, yourself. Cut down on your traveling, some.”

“Yes, that might happen,” I said after a moment. “What about you?”

“I'll stay here,” he said, almost sadly. “Maybe I'll feel like trying something permanent again, who knows? I haven't been the man I was since Sally died. And before I met Sally, I was married for about ten minutes when I was just a kid. It might be hard to get some sweet thing to spend time with me.”

“I don't think that'll be the issue,” I said. Some women might be put off by Hollis, but it was hardly his fault that his second wife had been murdered. “Was being married . . . was it good? Living with someone full-time?”

He gave it some thought, staring down at his beer. Then he looked at me.

“The first time, it was heaven for two months. Then it was hell,” he said, his mouth turning up wryly. “What a mistake that was. The only thing I can say, she was as eager to make that mistake as I was. We wanted each other so bad I couldn't sleep nights. At the time we married, we looked on it as a license to screw. And boy, did we. We didn't realize there'd be a lot more to it. We found out, right quick. When we split up, it would be a toss-up as to which of us was the more relieved.”

After raising an inquiring eyebrow at me, he fetched us two more beers. “Sally, she was different,” he said. “She was as sweet as her mom and her sister were wild. She wanted to get away from them, but she felt responsible for raising her
sister, since her mom was such a lush. Then Helen kind of took a deep breath and got sober.” He shook his head from side to side. “Now they're all gone, it don't make a difference, does it? Helen might as well have kept on drinking.”

“Did the autopsy results come back on Teenie?” I asked.

His face became more guarded, cautious. “I can't talk to you about that.” He looked at me for a long minute. “Why?”

It wasn't up to me to reveal the dead couple's secret. And I suddenly wondered why I even cared. I found bodies, and then I walked away. People died, died all the time, some in bed, some in the woods, some with a gun in their mouths. The end result was always the same. Why was this time different from any other?

“What is the worst case you've ever had?” Hollis asked me out of the blue.

I wondered if some expression crossing my face had triggered the question. “Oh, the tornado one,” I said without even having to consider.

“Where was this tornado?”

“In Texas,” I said. “Went right down the main street of this little town. I can't remember if the siren had gone off or not—or if it just came so suddenly there wasn't a chance to sound the siren. For whatever reason, this woman, her name was Molly Mathers, was running from her business to her car with her baby in one of those plastic carrying things with a handle. Little bitty baby.”

“Storm took the baby?”

I nodded. “Snatched the carrier right out of Molly's hand.”

We kept a moment of silence together.

“Everyone was sure the baby hadn't survived, of course, but the mom just couldn't let go of the idea that the baby was still in the carrier, maybe in some field, and was going hungry.” I said this very evenly, because it was a hard thing to think of, a hard memory to carry around with me.

“You find the baby?”

I nodded, my lips pressed hard together.

“Deceased?”

“Sure. Up in a tree. She was still in the carrier.”

“God.”

I nodded again. Nothing you could say about that. “But mostly it's not so bad,” I said, after a long moment of allowing the memory to dissipate. “Mostly it's girls who don't come home, or older people who wander away. Sometimes abducted kids—not too often, because if someone picked them up in a vehicle, of course there's no way to guess where the body would be.”

“So you take cases where the body location is known?”

“Well, if it can be pinned down to a reasonable area. You couldn't say, ‘Hey, he was hiking somewhere in the Mojave Desert,' and expect me to find anything. Unless you had unlimited money for the amount of time it'd take me.”

“What's it like?”

“What?”

“The feeling, when a body's close.”

“It's like a buzzing. A humming. In my bones, in my brain. It almost hurts. The closer I get, the more intense it gets. And when I'm close, when I'm in the body's presence, I see the death.”

“How much of the death?”

“I see the few seconds before it. But the only person I see
is the one who died. Not any other people around. At the same time, I'm in that person, feeling it. So it can be pretty . . . unpleasant.”

“That seems like an understatement.” He took a long sip of his beer.

I nodded. “I wish I could see the face of the murderer, but I never do.”

“Couldn't prosecute on your word alone, anyway.”