Grave Surprise
Page 19

While the guests were milling around, I eyed the room. The kitchen was simply beautiful, like something that could be photographed for a magazine. White cabinets, dark marble counters, a center island. Beautiful china stacked at the beginning of the spread, and shining silver. The sinks and appliances gleamed with stainless steel--not a fingerprint in sight. If the Morgensterns had a maid, she was invisible. Maybe Diane was the kind of woman who cleaned when she got upset.
At Diane's urging, Joel's parents went through the line first, with Diane herself holding Mrs. Morgenstern's plate while the older woman selected what she wanted to eat. Diane got them settled at the table in the formal dining room and told the rest of us to please go ahead. I lined up behind Felicia and David.
As I waited, I watched Fred Hart shake his head when Diane urged him to get in line. Felicia observed the encounter with a curiously blank face, as if she had no emotion left for her father. After a long moment, she went over to him and said something to him in a low voice. He flinched away from her and left the room. As I picked up a plate and silverware, I wondered if I should go out searching for a happy family. Maybe it was my line of work that threw me in the path of so many unhappy ones.
Esther attracted my attention with a little wave of her hand. It was my turn to begin serving myself, and I'd been standing immobile, holding up the line. I gave myself a mental shake.
Some generous soul had brought a thinly sliced roast, but I passed it by, and instead got some broccoli, a fruit casserole baked in some kind of curry sauce, a roll, and a cold three-bean salad. There was the dining table in the dining room, a set of barstools at the kitchen counter, an informal family table, or we could go back in the living room, Diane told us. I got my utensils (rolled up in a bright napkin) and sat at the kitchen counter, since I was spry enough to climb up onto the high stool. When I'd been settled there approximately ten seconds, Esther put a glass of tea by my plate, her bright toothy smile as ferocious as a shark's.
"Unsweetened," she said. "Okay?" Her voice hinted that it better be.
"Good, thanks," I said, and she swam away.
To my surprise, Victor sat beside me. I assumed he'd gotten his grandmother's cane and delivered it. His plate was invisible beneath a truly amazing array of food, very little of it involving vegetables, I noted. He had a can of Coke that he popped open with a defiant hiss.
"So, what you do, it's just weird, right?" was his opening conversational gambit.
"Yes, it is."
Maybe he'd meant to offend me. If so, my matter-of-fact reply took him off base. I was actually glad to get a dose of sincerity.
"So, you travel all the time?"
"Yeah."
"Cool."
"Sometimes. Sometimes I wish I had a nice house like this."
He glanced around him contemptuously. He could dismiss the value of a beautiful and cared-for home, since he'd never lacked it. "Yeah, it's okay. But no house is good when you're not happy."
An interesting and true observation--though in my experience, comfort never hurt whether you were depressed or whether you were cheerful.
"And you're not happy."
"Not much."
This was a pretty intense conversation to be having with someone I didn't know at all.
"Because of Tabitha's death?" Since we were being blunt.
"Yeah, and because no one here is happy."
"Now that she's been found and she can be buried, don't you think things will get better?"
He shook his head doubtfully. He was eating all the while we were having this incredibly doleful conversation. At least he shut his mouth when he chewed. Suddenly I realized I was closer in age to this boy than anyone else in the house, and I knew that was why he'd sought me out.
"Maybe," he said grudgingly. "But then we gotta get ready for the baby to come, and it'll cry all night. Tabitha did," he added, almost inaudibly.
"You really were fond of her," I said.
"Yeah, she was okay. She bugged me. But she was okay."
"The police gave you a hard time when she was taken."
"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 naive 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, without 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 Pound-stone'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."