Grave Secret

Thirteen

I ran in place on the treadmill in the “exercise room,” the hotel’s token nod to fitness. At least it was in an enclosed area, which right now meant “safe.” I’d woken up early, and I could tell by his breathing that Tolliver was deep in dreamland.

I had a better picture of why all these awful things were happening around me, but I didn’t have any idea what to do about it. I had nothing to take to the police, nothing, and the Joyces were rich and connected. I didn’t know if all of them were involved, or if the shooter and the murderer (I considered both the deaths of Mariah Parish and Rich Joyce to be murders) were one and the same and acting alone. The three Joyces and the Joyce boyfriend were all capable people with guns, almost undoubtedly. Maybe I was stereotyping, but I didn’t think a western rancher like Rich Joyce would teach his granddaughters how to ride rodeo and neglect to teach them how to shoot, and Drex would have to learn as a matter of course. The boyfriend, too. I knew the least about Chip Moseley. He looked like a good match for Lizzie; he was just as lean and weather-beaten, and he looked competent and down-to-earth. He was skeptical of my claims, but he could join most of the people I met in that respect.

I was drenched with sweat when I began my cooldown. I walked for ten more minutes, then I dried my face with a towel and went back to the room. I was beginning to hate hotel rooms. I wouldn’t have thought there was much of a domestic gene in me, but I wanted a home, a real home. I wanted a bedspread that wasn’t synthetic. I wanted sheets that only I had slept on. I wanted to keep my clothes folded in a drawer; I didn’t want to fish them out of a suitcase. I wanted a bookcase, not a cardboard box. We had those things in our apartment, but even the apartment didn’t have any air of permanency. It was just a nicer rental than the hotel rooms.

In the elevator, I took a deep breath and shoved all those thoughts into a bucket in the corner of my mind. I put a heavy lid on the bucket and weighted that lid down with a rock. Lots of imagery, but I wanted to be sure I wasn’t distracted at this crucial time when someone was gunning for us. I had to be extra strong with Tolliver sidelined.

Rudy Flemmons was standing outside the room, raising his hand to knock.

“Detective,” I called, “hold on a minute.”

He stayed in position, one hand raised in a fist, and I knew from the way he was standing that something was very wrong.

I came up to him and examined his face, or at least his profile. He didn’t turn to look at me.

“Oh, no,” I breathed. “Listen, let’s go in the room.” I reached past him to unlock the door, and we entered. I flicked on the light, hoping I wasn’t waking Tolliver, but then I saw that the light was on in the bathroom and I knew he was up. I knocked on the door. “Hey, you okay in there? We’ve got company.”

“This early?” he asked, and I knew he’d had a bad night.

“Honey, just get out here,” I said, and hoped he got the message.

He did, and in thirty seconds he’d come out and made his way over to the seating area. I could tell by the way he was moving that he wasn’t feeling good. I hurried to bring him some orange juice from the little refrigerator. There wasn’t any point in offering some to Rudy Flemmons, who was sunk in a state that I assumed to be misery or extreme apprehension. I didn’t know him well enough to tell exactly; I just knew it was bad.

It must have been an unpleasant way for Tolliver to start the day, but he eased back on the couch.

“Tell us why you’re here,” Tolliver said.

“I think Victoria ’s dead,” Rudy Flemmons said. “Her car was found this morning, in a cemetery in Garland. Her purse was in it.”

“But you haven’t found her body?” I said.

“No. I was wondering if you would come take a look.”

This was sad, and it was also professionally awkward. In view of his obvious misery and our friendship with Victoria, I wasn’t even thinking about money. I was thinking about the rest of the cops out there who would decide that my arrival on the scene was Rudy Flemmon’s anxiety taking an extreme form.

But there wasn’t much I could say except, “Give me ten minutes.”

I jumped into the shower, soaped up and rinsed off, brushed my teeth, and pulled on my clothes. I put on boots; not high-heeled fashion boots, but flat, waterproof Uggs. The weather had been intermittently rainy, and I didn’t want to get caught by surprise. Though I hadn’t watched the forecast that morning or checked the paper, I noticed Rudy was wearing a heavy jacket, and I bundled up accordingly.

There was no question of Tolliver coming. That idea suddenly hit me in the face when I was ready to go out the door. Sloppy weather, cemetery conditions: not ideal for someone recovering from a gunshot wound.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, with a terrible pang of anxiety. “You don’t do anything. I mean, get back in bed and watch TV. I’ll call you if anything happens, all right?”

Tolliver was as stricken by the belated realization that I was going out on a work call alone as I was. “Get some candy out of my jacket pocket,” he said, and I did. “Don’t do anything that’s going to hurt you,” he said severely.

“Don’t worry,” I said, and then I told Rudy Flemmons I was ready to go, though that was far from the truth.

On the ride through the misty rain, in the heavy morning traffic, we were silent. Rudy called someone on the radio to tell them we were on the way, and those were the only words spoken in fifteen minutes.

“I know you charge for this,” he said suddenly, as he pulled in behind a long line of cars on a road through a huge cemetery, the modern kind that forbids headstones. I was being bombarded by the vibrations of the corpses, coming from all directions. They were all intense, since this was a relatively new burial ground. I thought the oldest was maybe twenty years in the ground.

“Not an issue. Please don’t mention it again,” I said, and got out of the car. The last thing I wanted to do was debate prices while I was looking for this sad man’s girlfriend.

You would think that if I knew the person it would be easier, but it isn’t. Otherwise, I would have found my sister long ago. The dead clamor for attention with equal intensity, and if Victoria was out here somewhere, she was simply part of the chorus. It was hard to avoid the graves that called for my attention, and it was incredibly painful to be here without Tolliver. I had no anchor.

Common sense, I told myself. I went as close to the abandoned car as I could. One technician was peering at the tire treads, in a desultory way that told me the major work had been done. There were cops searching the landscaped graveyard, which was on rolling ground. It was a common layout for a modern place: there were areas defined by the tall statue in the middle, like an angel garden or a cross area, to help visitors navigate to the correct gravesite. I had no idea what method was used, whether the plots radiated out from the central sculpture or if you got to pick your site within that area. The place was looking pretty full-lying room only. There was a care-taker’s shed in the distance and a chapel in the middle, a sizable marble structure that probably held a mausoleum and a columbarium. Across the width of the grounds I could see a funeral taking place as the search for Victoria Flores went on around me.

Hoping profoundly that no one would notice me, I closed my eyes and reached out. So many signals to sort through, so many clamoring to be recognized; I shuddered, but I persevered.

Freshest. Freshest. I needed something brand spanking new. That is, someone who’d passed over yesterday or even a few hours ago. There, out in front of me. I opened my eyes and walked to a grave still strewn with funeral flowers. I closed my eyes again, reached down.

“No,” I muttered. “Not her.” I was not surprised to find the detective at my elbow. “This is Brandon Barstow, who died in a car wreck,” I told him. I reached out again. I felt the pull coming from the care-taker’s shed. Very fresh.

“Here we go,” I said, to the air in front of me, and I began walking. I watched my feet, because when I was tracking, it was easy to forget where my feet were going. Rudy Flemmons was right behind me, but he didn’t know how to help me. That was okay; I could make it by myself.

The grass was wet and the pine needles made the ground slick in some spots. I knew where I was going; now there was no more uncertainty.

“They looked over here already,” the detective said.

“Someone’s here, though,” I said. I already knew the bottom line on this search. “They’re going to try to say I knew this somehow,” I muttered, “and they’ll try to keep me here.”

The body wasn’t in the shed itself, or right behind it. The ground behind the shed sloped down to a drainage ditch, where earth and grass thinly covered a culvert. Victoria was in the culvert; her body had been stuffed up inside, and it wasn’t visible at all. But I could tell she was there, and I could tell she’d been shot and had bled out.

Rudy looked down uncomprehendingly, and I pointed to the mouth of the culvert. There was nothing for me to say. He scrambled down the slope and fell to his knees. He bent over and peered inside.

And he yelled.

“Here! Here!” he bellowed, and they all came running, every law enforcement person on the scene, including the guy who’d been examining the vehicle. Rudy was thinking, I suppose, that there was a chance she was still alive, but he was just dreaming or staving off the truth. I can’t find the living.

I got out of their way, and went back to Victoria ’s abandoned car.

The trunk was standing open. I found myself staring down into it, trying to look uninterested. There were file folders, lots of loose ones and some in a bundle bound together with a huge rubber band. The top one was labeled Lizzie Joyce, and before I could think about what I was doing I picked up the bundle and tossed it in Rudy’s car. There were still plenty of file folders left, I told myself-and I also told myself that we owed it to ourselves to find out about our enemies.

I saw afterward that this had been the wrong action to take, incidentally. I should have left things to the police. But at the moment, it seemed a natural, even clever, tactic. That’s all I can say in my own defense. One of these people was shooting at us; I had to find out which one was the most likely.

I got into Rudy’s car. He had an old jacket tossed into the backseat, and I pulled it into the front and bundled it around me as though I were cold, which wasn’t far from the truth. After a few minutes, a uniformed guy came up and said he was supposed to take me back to the hotel. I had put on the jacket and zipped it up with the files inside, by that time. I got out of Rudy’s car and climbed into the squad car.

The uniform, a man in his thirties, had a shaven head and a grim face-not too surprising, considering the circumstances. He said exactly one thing to me on our drive. “As far as we’re concerned, we found her during our search,” he said, and he gave me a look that was supposed to make me quake in my boots. It was easy to nod in agreement. I must have looked cowed, because he didn’t speak after that.

I made a clumsy job of getting out of the car because of the files. He must have wondered if I was physically disabled in some way, but it didn’t soften his attitude any. With my arms wrapped across my middle I strode into the hotel, blessing the automatic doors that allowed me to keep my hands in place, my contraband secure, as I made my way to the elevator.

My hands were cold, and I had a hard time fishing out my plastic key card and putting it in the lock the right way, but the door opened and I almost leaped into the room.

“What happened?” Tolliver called instantly, and I hurried into the bedroom. The maid had been in, and the bed had been made; he was in clean pajamas and lying on top of the bedspread, with the blanket from the foldout couch spread over him. The curtains were open on the dismal gray day. It had begun raining while I was in the elevator. That would complicate things at the cemetery. Raindrops were sliding down the window glass. I went up to the bed, leaned over it, and pulled the bottom of Rudy Flemmons’s old jacket open. The files landed on the bedspread with a thud.

“What have you done?” Tolliver asked, not in an accusatory way, but more as if he was simply interested. He clicked off the television and reached out for the bundle, but I was there ahead of him. I pulled off the rubber band, putting it aside for future use, and I handed him the top file, the one labeled Lizzie Joyce.

“So she was there,” he said. “Dammit, she loved her little girl. This is getting worse and worse. Did it take long to find her?”

“Ten minutes,” I said. “A patrolman brought me back.”

“You stole the files?”

“Yeah. Out of her trunk.”

“How likely are they to come looking?”

“Don’t know how hard they’d looked before everyone scrambled to see if she could be revived. Maybe they’d already taken pictures.” I shrugged. I couldn’t undo it now.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“We’re trying to find out which one of these people is most likely to be the one who shot you.”

“Then you have my undivided attention,” he said.

I took off my wet, muddy boots, climbed up on the bed with him, and started in on Kate’s file while he tackled Lizzie’s.

An hour later I had to take a break and call room service for some coffee and some food. Neither of us had had breakfast, and it was now almost eleven.

We’d learned a lot.

“She was really good,” I said. I’d never appreciated Victoria before, but I did now. In a very short time, she’d amassed a lot of information and interviewed quite a few people.

Tolliver was grateful to get a cup of coffee, and he was also glad to get a bran muffin. I slathered it with butter for him, an unusual indulgence. He chewed and swallowed and took another sip of coffee. “God, that tastes good after hospital food,” he said. “Lizzie Joyce is a colorful woman, even more colorful than she seemed that day at the cemetery. She really is a barrel-riding champion, several times over, and she’s won a lot of other rodeo titles. She was rodeo queen in her teens, all over the state, looks like, and she was also an honor graduate from high school and ranked thirtieth in her class at Baylor.”

I didn’t know how many people were in a Baylor class, but that sounded pretty damn good to me. “What was her major, just out of curiosity?”

“Business,” he said. “Her dad was already grooming her to take over from him. The Joyces own a huge ranch, but the bulk of his money came from oil in the big boom, and it’s since been invested, a lot of it overseas. There is a corps of accountants who just look after Joyce holdings. Victoria says they all keep watch over each other, too, so no one can embezzle; or at least, they won’t get away with it if they do. The Joyces also have a big interest in a law firm founded by an uncle.”

“So, what do they do?” I asked.

Tolliver understood what I meant, which was kind of amazing. “They donate a lot of money to cancer research; that’s what took Rich Joyce’s wife. They maintain a ranch for disabled children. That’s their big charity. It’s open five months a year, and the Joyces pay the salaries of the staff, though they accept donations, too. Then they have the main ranch, which the boyfriend, Chip Moseley, is in charge of running. They live there, when they aren’t in the Dallas apartment or the Houston apartment. I haven’t read the boyfriend’s file yet.”

“I’ll get to it next,” I said. “Kate, also known as Katie, is not as smart as her sister. She flunked out of Texas A &M, after majoring in partying, sounds like. In her teens, she had a couple of arrests for driving under the influence, and she smashed the windows on a boyfriend’s car when they broke up. Since then, she’s grown up a little, apparently. She works on the small ranch set up for the disabled children, she organizes fund-raisers for that ranch, and she shops. Oh, she did a stint as a volunteer at the zoo.”

That just sounded boring.

Chip Moseley was more interesting. He’d come up from the rank and file. His parents had died when he was little, and he’d gone into a foster home, which happened to be on a working ranch. He’d learned to rodeo and made a name for himself. Right out of high school, he’d gotten a job on the Joyce ranch. He’d gotten through one marriage and fell in with Lizzie. He’d worked his way up and taken night courses, and now he managed the cattle operations at the ranch and he’d been “dating” Lizzie for six years. Aside from a minor brush with the law when he was in his twenties, he was clean. He’d been arrested in a bar brawl in a dive in Texarkana. To my surprise, I recognized the name of the place. My mother and stepfather had gone there from time to time.

I was tired of reading by then. I flopped back on my pillow. Tolliver told me what was in Victoria ’s file on Drex, though I had surmised most of it after ten minutes in Drex’s company. The only male Joyce had been a disappointment all the way around. He’d gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant and they’d had a runaway marriage, followed by a divorce in six months. Drex supported the baby and its mother. Drex had joined the Marines right after he’d turned eighteen (take that, Dad!) and he’d made it through basic until he’d developed ulcers. Or maybe the ulcers he’d already had had gotten worse. Anyway, he’d left the service honorably, and gone on to drift around, doing this and that on his father’s big ranch. He’d also worked with the disabled kids from time to time, and he’d worked in one of his dad’s friend’s businesses for a couple of years in an office job. It wasn’t clear exactly what he’d done there.

“Probably not much, and probably not well,” Tolliver said. “I don’t think he’s ever gone to college.”

“I feel sorry for him,” I said. I yawned. “I wonder how old Victoria ’s mom is. I wonder if she can bring the kid up on her own. Who’s the dad? Did Victoria ever say?”

“I wondered if it was my father,” Tolliver said, and I froze in the middle of another yawn.

“You’re not kidding,” I said. “You mean it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “ Victoria was around a lot after Cameron disappeared, you know. But when I figured it out, the timing was wrong. I think he was already in jail by the time the baby was conceived. I never could figure out why women thought he was so attractive.”

“I sure don’t,” I said, with absolute sincerity.

“Well, good thing. You like men taller and thinner, right?”

“Oh, you bet, bay-bee. I love those string beans!”

Our hands clasped, and I snuggled closer to Tolliver on the bed. There was a little silence while we watched the rain hit the window of the room. The skies had decided to let go in earnest. I felt sorry for everyone who might still be out at the crime scene, and I decided they should be grateful to me for finding Victoria earlier, in time to get her body out of the culvert. I thought about the Joyce family, the kids who had grown up to be typical rich adults, as far as I could tell. They did some things that were quite good, but it was the bad things I was interested in. I thought it was significant that none of them had managed to sustain a happy marriage-though they were all in the prime age range, and one of them might make it yet. I was just about to shake my head over the truism that being rich didn’t mean being happy, when I had the unpleasant realization that Mark, Tolliver, Cameron, and I had hardly turned out to be fulfilled citizens, either. Cameron was in some unknown place, Mark had never had a serious girlfriend that I knew of, and Tolliver and I…

“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.”