Grave Secret

Fourteen

IT took at least fifteen minutes for Manfred to completely come out of walking Victoria through her last moments.

“Who did she see?” Tolliver asked.

“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I couldn’t see them.”

“Well, a hell of a lot of good that did us,” Tolliver said, and I put a hand on his shoulder (his good one, let me point out) and squeezed.

“It did a lot of good,” I said. “We know what Victoria was thinking, and we know someone did kill her because of the case, or at least we know that’s what Victoria thought or she wouldn’t have hidden that particular file. She was thinking something might happen to her office, thought someone was after her, so she had already put the other Joyce files in her car to keep them safe. She didn’t believe anyone would hurt her personally, but she called her former boyfriend, Rudy Flemmons, to come watch her back. He didn’t answer, or he didn’t get the message in time, and that’s why he’s all bent out of shape now.”

“We know those things, but they don’t do us any good.” Tolliver was determined to be a butthead.

“Maybe once we look at Mariah’s file, they will.”

Manfred was looking tired, and older. He seemed very alone. I felt a pang of pity for him, and then I had to tell myself not to overdo it. Pity and a vague physical attraction were not enough motivation to imperil my relationship with Tolliver. I knew without a doubt that Manfred needed to find someone else.

I found myself wondering what kind of woman would be good for Manfred, and then I realized the answer had to be Anyone besides me.

By then it was almost five o’clock, and I called room service and asked them to send up some food and some coffee before I reached down to pick up the file. I opened it to the first page, the fact sheet with Mariah’s background information, and read it carefully. Then I passed the fact sheet to Tolliver, and he began studying it. While we looked through the information Victoria had gathered on Mariah, Manfred began reading the Joyce files.

“Mariah Parish wasn’t what she seemed,” I said, which was an understatement.

Tolliver shook his head. “She sure wasn’t. If the Joyces had checked her credentials more closely, they wouldn’t have hired her.”

It wasn’t that Mariah had been deceitful. She’d been an orphan, as she’d said. She’d been taking care of another ill elderly man, Arthur Peaden, before she came to Rich Joyce. She’d done a good job, too, because there were glowing testimonials from Art Peaden’s survivors about how kind Mariah had been, how conscientious, while she was taking care of their father.

She’d also been taking college classes over the computer. Eventually, she’d gotten evenings off to attend classes in person. And in the fullness of time, she’d graduated from college with a degree in economics and business.

Mariah had had her own online trading account, and it had been a busy one. At first, she’d lost some money, but more recently, even in the financial downturns the market had taken recently, she’d held steady. The adult babysitter had been profiting from her job to a degree no one would have imagined.

“Wow,” said Tolliver with some admiration. “She was learning all the tricks of the trade.”

“I guess her ‘client’ talked in front of her, and his friends and family talked in front of her, and she profited by everything she heard.”

“Caregiver by day, stock market trader by night,” Manfred said. “You gotta admire her nerve and determination.”

“And sneakiness,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Isn’t that kind of deceptive?”

“I don’t know,” Tolliver said after a long pause. “Is it? She didn’t say that she was an uneducated, ignorant woman who couldn’t get a better job. She let her employers think so, but that’s the persona she adopted. She was really smart, and she was determined to put that to use the best way she knew how.”

“Smart,” Manfred said. He sounded approving.

“Two-faced and not really honest.”

“Ah, sour grapes,” Manfred said, smiling. “You haven’t gotten to raid the brains of your dead people to get stock tips.”

“What an opportunity I’ve missed,” I said, deadpan. “I need to find a cemetery and look for the grave of a financial wizard, see if he can give me ideas in what I see of the last few moments of his life.”

“That’s kind of what Mariah did,” Manfred said.

When I thought about it, he wasn’t too far off. “I wonder if it was a conscious plan or something that just evolved.” I looked at the picture of the young Mariah, who’d had bangs and a chin-length bob. Red hair and freckles, brown eyes, and a cute nose; all she needed was a straw hat, overalls, and an egg basket on one arm. There’d been steel under all that unsophisticated cuteness.

“I bet she talked real country,” Manfred said. “I bet she made sure she did.”

Deeper and smarter than her surface suggested, Mariah Parish had crafted a way to survive and prosper. And she’d provided good care to those who’d employed her. “Not bad, Mariah,” I said, toasting her with a coffee cup. Our sandwiches had come, and we were all eating like we’d been starved for days.

“Until she got pregnant,” Tolliver said.

“And I wish we knew the name of the father,” I said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

“Not so much who the actual dad was,” Manfred corrected, “as who thought he might be the dad.”

“I don’t suppose-?” I gestured at the picture. “Manfred, do you think you could find out anything about her, your way?”

“Nah, not without something of hers,” he said. “Since I never met her in life.”

“The dad might have been Rich Joyce himself, or Drexell, or even Chip Moseley.” I was thinking out loud.

“Or anyone else, as long as one of them thought there was a chance he was the dad,” Tolliver said.

“So she had sex with one of these guys, we’re assuming. If she had sex with Rich Joyce, think of what a coup it would be if she was going to have his child! Sure, he’d had a stroke, but he had recovered well and he was definitely active and in his right mind. This child would presumably have equal rights with the other kids, and Lizzie, Kate, and Drexell would be out millions of dollars.” I picked up another triangle of club sandwich and bit into it, then had to dust crumbs off my shirt. “Was Drexell still married nine years ago?”

“Don’t remember. I’ll have to check his file.” Manfred flipped through some pages. “Yes, he was. So was Chip.”

“So,” Tolliver said, stretching his legs out in front of him. He propped his feet on the coffee table, now littered with papers and plates and glasses. “Why now? Why did all this happen now? Mariah and Rich Joyce are both eight years in their graves. Why now?”

“Because Lizzie Joyce started reading Harper’s website after the case in North Carolina,” Manfred said, as if the answer was simple. “She wanted the latest and greatest. And what Lizzie Joyce wants, she makes happen. We don’t know how many arguments her family and friends put up against getting Harper here. We don’t know how many times they told her she was a fool.”

“If what I saw is any estimate,” Tolliver said, “she wouldn’t take real kindly to that at all. She wanted Harper to come, and she had the money to make it attractive to us. Then came the worst part, her huge mistake. She didn’t direct Harper to Rich’s grave right away. She let Harper wander and read other graves, and Harper landed on Mariah’s. Lizzie either had to believe Harper or disbelieve her, and since she’d spent good money to bring Harper, she decided to believe her. So now Lizzie knew that Mariah had been pregnant, and that her death probably could have been prevented; or at least, the birth took place under circumstances that weren’t straightforward and aboveboard, so she didn’t have as good a chance of recovering. And the baby wasn’t in the coffin with her, so something happened to it. Also, the death certificate said infection, but not what kind, so I’m wondering if the doctor who signed it was in on the secret.”

“That’s something we can look up,” I said. “We can find him and ask him questions. Is there a copy of the death certificate in Mariah’s file?”

Tolliver was looking tired, I realized, and it was Manfred who located the copy of the certificate. “Dr. Tom Bowden,” he said. I called information for the little town next to the Joyce ranch, but he wasn’t listed. Next, I tried Texarkana, but no Dr. Tom Bowden was there. Manfred went into our bedroom and came back with the huge phone book. He looked up “Physicians” in the Yellow Pages, and he told us with an air of triumph that there was a Dr. Bowden listed.

“We’ll have to go see him tomorrow,” I said. “Tolliver needs to rest.”

“Oh, gosh, sure,” Manfred said, disarmingly apologetic. “Sorry, Tolliver. I was forgetting you were on the disabled list.”

Tolliver scowled. “I’ll get better every day,” he said.

“Of course,” Manfred reassured him. “In the meantime, since I still have plenty of energy, I’ll track down this doctor’s office.”

“Are you sure you ought to do that?” I said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

“Ah, I’ll just have a look-see,” Manfred said. “I’ve got that GPS now, so I better put it to good use. Thanks for supper.” He put the cart out in the hall for me as I helped Tolliver up. For the first time in hours, Tolliver took some pain medication along with his other pills. I chided myself silently for not realizing how tired he was getting.

I helped him with the undressing process, and he was finally settled in bed, covers pulled up, with his pajama bottoms on and a full complement of medicine. I found Law and Order and settled in. Tolliver was asleep in ten minutes or less.

My brain was tired. I’d thought about the Joyces, about Mariah Parish, about poor Victoria and her daughter. Other people had filled my head all day, and I had to add Rudy Flemmons’s grief on top of that. I didn’t want to think anymore, or bear the burden of other people’s emotions. It was a sheer relief to go out into the living room area and watch the stupidest movie I could fine. I also painted my toenails and fingernails. I called my little sisters and talked to them for twenty minutes, before Iona said they had to get in the bathtub. Iona tried to steer the conversation over to my relationship with Tolliver, but I kept on course and didn’t go there. I hung up feeling pleased with myself, a good feeling to have after the unhappy events of the past few days.

Thinking of unhappy events, I called the hospital and asked about Detective Powers. The switchboard connected me to the waiting room, and I asked the man who answered if I could speak to Beverly Powers.

“She can’t come to the phone. Parker just died,” said a man’s voice, and he hung up the phone. He was crying.

No matter how often I told myself I hadn’t killed Parker Powers, I knew he would not have died if he hadn’t been trying to protect me.

There was no magic formula that I could use to make this all better. There was no philosophy that would diminish the pain his family and friends were feeling. There was no way I could erase the memory of his collapse, the blood pouring from his wound, the way I’d cowered in the shadow of the car. That was especially galling, that I’d had to hide from the man who’d done such a despicable thing.

That was pride speaking; it only made sense to hide when someone was trying to kill you. Of course it did.

I had this image I needed to conform to, though, maybe culled from the comic books I’d read as a child or the tough-woman fiction I read now. Every female private eye and cop was able to protect citizens without a second thought, able to shoot the evildoer after tracking him down. Every comic-book heroine was able to perform fearlessly, able to commit acts of heroism in the cause of protecting mankind.

I’d let myself be protected by a broken-down, none-too-bright ex-football player, and it had killed him.

He knew he was in danger. He knew that was his job. He was willing to take the risk, my common sense told me.

And I was willing to let him, I had to admit. I tried to think of something else I could have done. If I’d insisted on running by myself, would he still have followed me? Maybe. What if I’d decided to stay in the hotel? Yes, he’d still be alive. I had a terrible responsibility to Parker Powers.

I hoped I would not fail again.