Charlaine Harris (40 page)

“Oh, yeah. It was intense. They questioned me, Dad had to get me a lawyer.” He was a little proud of that. “They couldn't get that I wouldn't have anywhere to put her. Why would I take her? Where would I take her? We fought, but even real brothers and sisters fight. You fight with your brother, right?”

“We grew up in the same house,” I said, “but he's not really my brother. My mom married his dad.” I was surprised at my own words. Sentences just kept coming out of my mouth.

“That would be freaking weird, living in the house with someone your own age you weren't even related to. Especially if you're not the same, you know, sex.”

“It took some getting used to,” I admitted. It hadn't taken long before Cameron and I and Mike and Tolliver had bonded against the common enemy. I took a deep breath. “Our parents used drugs,” I said. “They used a lot of cocaine. Weed. Vicodin. Hydros. Whatever they could buy. They used alcohol to fill in the cracks. Did your parents ever have a problem like that?”

His mouth literally dropped open. Not as sophisticated as he'd thought himself, Victor. “Geez,” he said. “That's awful. Kids use drugs, not parents.”

If that wasn't the most naïve thing I'd ever heard, it was pretty damn close. But it was kind of nice, too, that he still had illusions like that. I waited for a direct answer.

“No,” he said, having gathered himself. “My folks would never. Never. Use drugs. I mean, they hardly even drink.”

“That's good,” I said. “I wish all parents were like that.”

“Yeah, Dad and Mom are okay,” he said, trying to sound tough and careless. But he'd been shaken. “I mean, you can't tell them stuff. They don't know anything. But they're there when you need them.”

He even called Diane “Mom,” and that reminded me how young Victor had been when Diane had married Joel.

“You've been around a lot,” Victor said, running a hand through his auburn hair. “You've had a real life.”

“I've had more than my share of real life,” I said.

“But you would know…” His voice trailed off, just when the dialogue was turning in an interesting direction.

I didn't try to prod Victor to pick up the conversational thread. I'd covered all the bases I could with this kid, with
out getting into the realm of questions too strange to ask him. I hadn't initiated this conversation, but I'd learned a lot from it. I knew, as I watched Victor check out the dishes left on the kitchen counter that he hadn't yet sampled, that this boy had a secret. It might be a big secret, it might be a small one, but I needed to know it, too. I thought maybe he would come to me with it; though teenagers could spin on an emotional dime.

The kitchen had one of those little televisions mounted below the cabinet, presumably so the cook could watch
Ellen
or
Oprah
while she did her job. Though Diane had boasted that televisions were off and phones were off the hook, someone had turned this one on, maybe to catch the weather or some sports scores.

Though the sound was turned down in deference to the occasion, something caught Victor's attention, and he stood squarely in front of it, plate still in hand. The expression on his face grew startled, puzzled, alarmed, all at once.

It wasn't hard to figure out what he was seeing.

Well, we'd known the news would reach the Morgensterns sooner or later, and the moment was now.

“Dad!” said Victor, in a voice that brought his father to his side at a good pace. “Dad! They found that college guy dead, in Tabitha's grave!”

I sighed, and looked down at my plate. I hadn't thought of it quite that way. After all, it had been Josiah Poundstone's for much longer. It was a much-used grave.

Quite a hubbub ensued, with the big television in the family room getting switched on, and everyone gathering in
front, plates still in hand or discarded where the eater had been perching. I consulted Tolliver silently. He looked at the food regretfully, so I guess he hadn't filled up while he could. He nodded. We needed to be gone.

So as not to be hopelessly rude, we quietly thanked Diane, who hardly knew we were speaking to her. That done, we let ourselves out of the house. I wondered if they even realized we'd slipped out.

“If we go back to the hotel, someone'll want to come talk to us,” Tolliver predicted gloomily.

“Let's go to the river.”

I don't know why moving water is soothing, but it is, even on a cold day in November in Tennessee. We went to a riverfront park, and even though I was wearing my high-heeled boots, we enjoyed strolling through the nearly empty area. The Mississippi flowed silently past the Memphis bluffs, as it would do long after the city crumbled, I supposed—if the world didn't get destroyed altogether. Tolliver put his arm around me because it was so chilly, and we didn't talk.

It was good to be silent. It was good to be away from the crowd at the Morgenstern house, and alone with Tolliver. I discounted the two middle-aged homeless guys that passed a bottle back and forth when they didn't think we were looking. They were as happy avoiding us as we were avoiding them.

“That was a strange interlude,” Tolliver said, his voice careful and precise.

“Yes. Pretty house. I loved the kitchen,” I said.

“I had a talk with Fred. He's got an outstanding lease on the Lexus.” Tolliver is jonesing for a new car. Ours is only three years old, but it does have a lot of miles on it. “Saw you talking to Felicia,” he continued.

“Felicia brought up the fact she'd seen you socially,” I said, which was the nicest way I could put it. “She seemed to think you all had had a conversation about not seeing each other.”

“Interesting, since she keeps calling me,” he said, after a moment. “I can't figure her out. No house in the burbs for us.”

Though his voice was light and ironical, I realized he'd been at least taken aback. A woman he'd been to bed with, a woman who'd actively pursued him, had shown no desire to speak to him when she was with her family. Yeah, that would make anyone feel pretty bad, whether or not the relationship was desirable. My ill feeling against Felicia Hart began to congeal into something quite solid. I changed the subject.

“Victor has a secret,” I said.

“Maybe he's got jerk-off magazines under his bed. Babes with big boobs.”

“I don't think that's his secret. At least, not the secret that interests me.”

We walked a moment in silence.

“I think he knows something about one of his family members, something he's trying
not
to connect to the murders.”

“Okay, confused.”

“He's a pretty innocent kid, all things considered,” I said. I was trying hard not to sound overly patient. “And he's had some big blows in his life.”

“Working hard not to draw parallels, here.”

“Me, too. But the point is, I think Victor can connect some member of that family to…”

“What, exactly? His half sister's death? Clyde Nunley?”

“Okay, I don't know. Not exactly. I'm just saying, he knows something, and that's not healthy for him.”

“So what can we do about it? They won't let him hang around with us. They won't believe us. And if he's not talking…besides, what if the subject of the secret is one of his parents?”

Another silence, this one a little huffy.

“Speaking of Joel,” Tolliver said, “how come you're not panting like all the other women?”

“All the other women are panting?”

“Didn't you notice that the woman detective practically drooled whenever she said his name?”

“No,” I said, quite surprised.

“Didn't you see the doe eyes his wife makes at him?”

“Ah…no.”

“Even Felicia sits up and takes notice when he speaks. And his own mom looks at him about twice as much as she looks at her other son, David.”

“So, I gather you've been watching Joel pretty closely,” I said cautiously. Understatement.

“Not so much Joel himself, as the way people react to him. Except you.”

“I see that he's a man that women like to be around,” I said, by way of acknowledgment. “But he doesn't really do anything for me. The snapdragons, I knew those were his
idea, and I did tell you then that he was the kind of man who noticed women, who knew how to please them. But I don't think he's really interested in anyone but Diane. I don't think he really understands his own magnetism, to tell you the truth. Or maybe he just accepts it as part of his world, like if he had green eyes or a great singing voice, or something.”

“So, he's got charisma for women that he doesn't use,” Tolliver said.

“More or less.”

“And you're saying it doesn't affect you, like it does other women.” Mr. Skeptical.

“I'm saying…yes, that's what I'm saying.”

“If he weren't married to Diane, if he asked you out, you wouldn't jump at the chance?”

I gave that more thought than it deserved.

“I don't think so.”

“You're impervious?”

“It's not that. It's that I don't trust men who don't have to work for what they get.”

Tolliver stopped, and turned me to him with a hand on my arm. “That's ridiculous,” he said. “You mean a man should have to work for the love of a woman?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I'm saying that Joel has probably come to accept this automatic king position as the norm, as his due. Without working for it.”

“You don't think he's a virtuous man?”

“I think he is. I don't think he's a crook, or a secret addict, or a cheater.”

“So, your sole objection is that he doesn't have to work for love?”

“I'm saying, there's something wrong about getting so much invested in you without setting out to earn it.”

Tolliver shrugged. “I'm still not sure I understand,” he said.

I couldn't explain it any better. I'm not real good at explaining things, especially emotional things. But I knew what I meant. And I didn't entirely trust Joel Morgenstern.

WHEN
we got back to the hotel, Rick Goldman was waiting for us, sitting in the same chair in the lobby he'd used before.

“I should've figured he'd show up, considering the scene last night,” I told Tolliver. “I wonder if he's told the cops yet.”

I introduced Rick to Tolliver as politely as if Rick had come to ask us to tea. But there was a muscle jumping in the private detective's jaw, and his whole body was tense.

“Can we have this talk somewhere a little more private?” he growled at me.

Tolliver said, “That would be best, I think. Come with us.”

The ride up in the elevator was silent and ominous.

The maids had been in, and the room looked clean and welcoming, I was glad to see. There's something kind of
seedy in having guests in your hotel room when the evidence of your stay is strewn all around you in disorderly heaps; room service cart, crumpled newspapers, discarded books, a shoe here and there. I'd been enjoying having a sitting room at this hotel, though I never forgot I was paying for it through the nose.

“You didn't have to kill Nunley,” Rick Goldman said. “I know he was an obnoxious drunk, but he didn't hurt you.” He switched his level gaze to Tolliver. “Or were you so angry he manhandled your sister that you tracked him down after I left?”

“I might just as well suspect you,” I retorted, not a little pissed off. “You're the one laid hands on him. You can leave right now if you're going to sit there and accuse us of stuff without having the slightest bit of evidence that we ever saw the man again.”

I took my jacket off and walked over to the door of my room, tossing it inside. Tolliver unbuttoned his more slowly. “I take it you've been to the police already with your little story about what happened in the lobby,” he said.

“Of course,” said Rick. “Clyde Nunley was an asshole, but he was a professor at Bingham. He had a family. He deserves to have his murder solved.”

“I saw he was married, on the news,” I said. “Though, come to think of it, he didn't wear a wedding ring.”

“Lots of men don't,” Rick said.

“Not in my experience,” I said, surprised.

“He had a metal allergy,” Rick said.

“You knew him a little better than I thought.”

“I read his personnel file,” the private detective admitted.

“I'm betting the weird content of Clyde Nunley's classes wasn't the only reason he was being investigated,” Tolliver said. “I'm betting he had some affairs, maybe with a student or two? And the college decided they'd better check him out. Am I right?”

“There was a certain amount of talk on campus.”

“His wife wasn't so amazed when he didn't come home at night,” I said. “She didn't even call the police until the next morning.” I sat on the couch and crossed my legs, lacing my fingers together in my lap. Tolliver was still hovering around the room, too restless to perch. Our guest had thrown himself down into one of the wing chairs without waiting for us to ask him to be seated.

“Rick, do you still have a lot of friends on the force?” Tolliver asked.

“Sure.”

“So you won't mind when they ask the staff what they saw last night?”

“Of course not.”

“Even when they tell your former colleagues that they watched you throw a guy out of the lobby, while my sister was absolutely passive?”

I made my eyes look all big and tearful. I look frail anyway, no matter how tough I actually can be.

“I wonder who they'll remember being violent and forceful, you or Harper?”

“Damn. And I was helping her out.” Rick Goldman looked at us as if he could not believe people like us were walking the earth unjudged. “You people!”

“I did appreciate your helping me, right up until the time you insulted me,” I said. “But Clyde Nunley was a pest, not a danger. Now he's dead, and I had nothing to do with it. We were just over at the Morgensterns', and they heard the news while we were there. Pretty upsetting.”

“They asked you to their house?” This, again, got a big reaction.

I said, “Some people don't treat us as if we were frauds and murderers.”

He threw up his hands, as if I'd stepped over a dearly held boundary. “I give up,” he said.

A little drama on the part of the old Rickster.

“You two are no better than scam artists,” he said. “It makes me crazy that I can't figure out how you do it. You were right on the money about those deaths, right on the money. How'd you get the documents ahead of time? I really want to know how you did it!”

There's no convincing someone who's not open to reason, or to anything else, for that matter.

“You're not going to believe I'm the real thing, anytime soon,” I said. “There's no point in talking to you. Besides, the police will be coming, and I want to shower before they get here.” That wasn't true. I'd already showered. I just wanted Rick Goldman to leave, right away.