Charlaine Harris (99 page)

“Do you really want to get married?” I asked him.

“Yes, I really do,” he said without a second's hesitation. “I'd do it tomorrow, if we could. There's no doubt, is there? Do you have any worries about us being right for each other?”

“No,” I said. “I don't. You're sure far from the commitment-phobic guys in the magazines, Tolliver.”

“You're not anything like the women in the men's magazines, either. And that's a compliment.”

“We sure know each other,” I said. “We've probably seen the worst of each other. I can't imagine trying to get through life without you. Does that sound too clingy? I can try to be more independent.”

“You are independent. You make a lot of decisions, every day,” he said. “It's just easier for me to make the practical arrangements. Then you do your specialty. Then we leave, and it's my turn again.”

Somehow that didn't sound completely even.

“Where's Manfred?” he asked, suddenly, as if someone had poked him with a needle.

“Gosh, I don't know. He told me to call him if I needed him. He didn't say where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there.”

“He really has a crush on you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“How about it? If I was to vanish, would you take up with the Pierced Wonder?”

He said that in a teasing voice, but he wanted a reply. I wasn't foolish enough to actually ponder the question and answer it seriously. “Are you kidding? That'd be like having hamburger after having steak,” I said loyally. I admitted to myself that there were days when I sure craved a hamburger, and I didn't doubt there would be times when Tolliver eyed other women with appreciation. If he could just keep that urge to the eyeing level, I could do the same. I knew who I loved.

“So, after reading the files, which one do you favor in the role of shooter?” he said more cheerfully.

“Any of them could have done it,” I said. “It's depressing to think that. But faced with losing a substantial hunk of a fortune, I imagine any of them could have decided hell no. Even Chip Moseley. He's got to have hopes of marrying Lizzie, after all these years of being together. And it wouldn't be human, not to count on all that money. He'd have a better idea of the size of the Joyce estate than most boy-friends might have, since he runs the big ranch. I'll bet he sees a lot of other financial papers, too, on the various Joyce businesses.”

“Yes, I'm sure he does. I'm inclined to dismiss the idea that it's Lizzie, since she was the one who called you in. She had to know that there was a chance you were really able to do what you say you can, so if she was the killer, she'd never have risked it. She'd know that her granddad's death—well, it wasn't an out-and-out murder, but the snake triggered the heart attack and the snake wasn't flying through the air by accident. Someone pitched it at him. Maybe they thought it would bite him, and that would be all she wrote, but instead Rich had a heart attack, which was even better. All the person watching had to do was prevent him from getting to his cell phone. Mission accomplished.”

“That was cold,” I said, “and the person able to do something like that is really vicious.”

“Do you think that the shooter was aiming at me, or at you?” Tolliver asked. “I realize there's no real way to know, but that would sure be interesting.”

“Especially for you.”

He laughed, just a little, but it was a sound I'd missed.

A knock at the door interrupted me as I'd started to frame an answer.

We both sighed. “I'm tired of having people knock at our door and come in to tell us bad stuff,” I said. “We're sitting targets, here in a hotel.” I didn't know how it'd be any different if we had our own home, but somehow I felt it would be.

I used the peephole, and to my surprise I saw Manfred. Since we'd just been talking about him, I felt a little self-conscious when I opened the door to let him in. And he flashed a very aware look at me, a look that said he knew he was on my mind.

“How's the invalid?” he said. Tolliver came out of the bedroom then, and Manfred said, “Hey, bro! How's getting shot?”

“Overrated,” Tolliver said. We all sat. I offered Manfred a Coca-Cola or a bottle of water, and he took the Coke.

“I heard about the private eye,” Manfred said. “She was working for you-all after your sister got taken, right?”

I was surprised that he knew that; I couldn't remember having mentioned it in his hearing. “Yes,” I said. “She was. How'd you hear that?”

“It was on the news. About her book.” I looked at him questioningly. “Did you know Ms. Flores was writing a book? She didn't tell you?”

“No,” I said, though Tolliver was silent.

“Yeah, it was going to be called
Private Eye in the Lone Star State,
and she had gotten an offer on it.”

“For real?” I was thunderstruck.

“Yeah, for real. Cameron's case was the one that made her decide to quit the force and become a private eye. Her continuing search for Cameron is the big story in the book.”

I didn't know what to think of that, how to react. There was no real reason I should feel betrayed, but I did. It's particularly unpleasant to think that, for the price of a book, anyone who's inclined is going to be privy to the most agonizing event in your life.

“Did she tell you this last night?” I asked Tolliver.

He nodded. “I was going to tell you, but then Rudy Flemmons came to get you,” he said.

“You've had time since.”

He hesitated. “I wasn't sure how you would take it.”

“I wish I'd stolen a manuscript instead of the files,” I said, and Manfred's eyes turned to me with interest.

“What files did you steal? Do the police know you have them? Who are they about?”

“I stole some files out of her trunk,” I said. “The police would probably make me into mincemeat if they knew I'd taken them. They're about the Joyce family.”

“There's not one on Mariah Parish?”

“No,” Tolliver said. “Should there be?”

“Actually, no,” Manfred said, “since I have it right here.” With a typical Bernardo flourish, he opened his jacket and pulled out a file. He'd carried his exactly like I'd carried mine, but he just had the one.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Tolliver sat forward on the couch. He was looking at Manfred as if Manfred had revealed he had a baby hidden in his coat, with a mixture of horror and admiration.

“Late last night, I went by her office, and the door was open,” Manfred said. “My inner sense had told me it was important to talk to her. But I was too late. I'm assuming this was before she was reported missing. I went inside, and I asked the spirits if there was something there I should find, something that pertained to . . . anyone I know.”

We were both gaping at him by that time, and not because of the “spirits” reference. “Victoria's office had been rifled?” I said, thinking that was an unfortunate word to spring to my mind.

“Yes,” he said. “It had been searched really thoroughly. But not thoroughly enough.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I was drawn to her couch,” he said, and the moment was somewhat ruined by Tolliver's snort. “Well, I was,” said Manfred, looking very young for a moment. “Someone had tossed the cushions off, but it was a sofa bed like the one I slept on at Grandma's, and I pulled it up, and the file was stuck down in there. Like maybe someone had been knocking at the door, and she'd pulled up on the handle just a little and slid the file inside.”

“And I notice you had no trouble making off with it.” Tolliver's voice was so dry it could have been toast.

“No,” Manfred admitted. He had a sunny smile, the only sunny thing about this day.

“We've robbed a dead woman,” I said, abruptly appalled at what I'd done. “And we've taken some clues away from the police.”

“We're trying to save your life,” Manfred said.

Tolliver gave the psychic a hard, sharp look, and I thought he would say something, but he only nodded. “The more important question is, who was at her office door?” he said. “Manfred, can you help us with that?”

Manfred looked smug. “As it happens, I may be able to. While I was in her office, I took a nail file from her pencil caddy. That's a personal thing, has some skin cells still on it. I'm going to use that for a reading, and see what I can get. May be helpful, may not. You can't count on it; that's why so often those of us in the business are less than honest.”

We didn't disagree. Most “psychics” were frauds, even the real ones who had a genuine gift. Psychics have to make a living, and if you have to earn your money by sitting in a storefront telling Mrs. Sentimental that Fluffy is purring in paradise, that's what you do when your gift is giving you nothing to go on.

“What do you need to do to get ready?” I asked. Every practitioner I've encountered has his or her own process.

“Not much,” he said. “No loud sounds. Close your eyes for a while, till I get into it.”

That was easy enough. Tolliver and I closed our eyes, and his hand came over to cover mine. It was possible to drift away, wondering where Manfred was in the stream of otherness, the state between waking and sleeping, between this world and the next world. That was the place I inhabited when I looked down at the bones in the earth, and that was the place Manfred was exploring now. It's not too hard to get there, but sometimes it can be hell getting back.

The room was silent except for the low rush of warm air coming from the heating system. After a minute or two, I was sure it was all right to open my eyes. Manfred's head lolled back. He was so relaxed he seemed boneless. I'd never seen Manfred in action. It was interesting and spooky.

“I'm worried,” Manfred said suddenly. I had opened my mouth to tell him everything was okay, when I realized Manfred was not making conversation. He was interpreting Victoria. “I'm sitting in front of the computer. I've gotten lots of information in a very short time, and it's going to give me enough to go on. I have lots of ideas. If Mariah died by accident, and that's what Harper said, then the baby has a much better chance of being alive. Who would place the baby? Where would that person take a baby? Drop it off at an orphanage? So I'll call all the orphanages in Dallas and Texarkana and in between. I can ask them if they received a baby Doe around Mariah's death date. Maybe I can call a few tonight.”

Wow, Victoria really had been a good investigator.

“I'm worried,” Manfred said, and his head moved restlessly. “I've talked to all the Joyces and to the boyfriend. I've compiled a list of the rest of the household staff who worked for Rich Joyce while Mariah was there. But I don't know how far I'll get. I can't do any more tonight. I think someone followed me to the office. Rudy?” Manfred pantomimed someone holding a cell phone. “I hate to leave a message, I haven't talked to you in so long. But I think there's someone following me, and when you're lucky enough to have a cop as your friend, you should call them when you're in a fix like this. I don't want to lead them to my mom's when I pick up MariCarmen. Well . . . 'bye. I'm leaving the office in about ten minutes. I got some phone calls to make.” Half the time Manfred was telling us, though in the first person, what Victoria had been thinking, and half the time he seemed to be speaking as if he were in Victoria's body.

Now Manfred's hands were moving. It was clear he was performing some task, but I couldn't interpret his gestures. I looked at Tolliver and raised my eyebrows in a question. Tolliver pointed at the stack of files on the coffee table. After a moment, I understood. Victoria was tamping papers into a neat stack, then closing them into a folder and stacking it on the others. Then she got a rubber band out of a drawer and worked it around the stack. “Put this in the trunk,” she whispered. “Come back, make the calls.” There were slight movements in Manfred's feet and shoulders that suggested Victoria (through Manfred) was going outside, opening the trunk, tossing in the files, shutting the lid, moving back into the office.

This was a very strange experience. Enlightening, but strange.

“Someone's coming,” Victoria/Manfred muttered. “Huh.”

I understood better, now, why I made people so nervous after they saw me in contact with that other part of the world, the unseen part that was so hard for most people to access. I could feel the tension in Tolliver's hand.

Again, little twitches of Manfred's body suggested that Victoria's movements were happening in his head. He made a definite yanking gesture. I was sure he was pulling open the sleeper couch to insert Mariah's folder. She—no, Manfred—turned her head to look at something, very abruptly, and then Manfred's eyes flew open with a look of complete terror on his face.

“I'm going to die,” he said. “Oh, my God, I'm going to die tonight.”