Grave Sight

nine

WE talked about approaching Vernon McCluskey when we were back at the motel. I was redoing my fingernails in a deep brown, and Tolliver was working a puzzle in a New York Times Sunday crossword collection. I knew what I was getting Tolliver for Christmas: some book containing the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrew alphabet was a major feature of crossword puzzles, at least according to Tolliver, and he was totally ignorant about it. I might get him a world atlas, too. That way, if the question was "river in Siberia" he could damn well look it up, instead of asking me.

"Why are we talking to this asshole?" Tolliver asked. "He's made it clear he wants us out of here. Do we really need to find out about Helen Hopkins' relationship to her ex-husband? Why don't we just lie low until the sheriff lets us go? How long can he actually keep us here? Not long. One phone call to a lawyer, and we're out of here."

I looked at Tolliver, the polish brush suspended over my little fingernail. "We don't want to be remembered here as people who were released because they couldn't find anything to pin on us, do we? You know how we operate. People will be calling Branscom to find out what kind of job we did. They'll ask him how cooperative we were. We need to look as though we're taking him seriously, that we're trying to get to the bottom of these deaths, too. That we care."

"Do we care?" He tossed his pencil on top of the crossword puzzle book. "I think you do."

I hesitated, taken aback by what sounded very much like an accusation. "It bothers you?"

"That depends on what you care about."

"I kind of liked Helen Hopkins," I said at last, very carefully. "So, yeah, I'm upset that someone cracked her skull. I care that two young people were shot, that they died out in the woods, that people think the boy killed her and then himself. That's not what happened."

"Do you feel like they're asking you to investigate?"

"They?"

"The dead people."

I felt a big light bursting behind my eyeballs. "No," I said. "Not at all. Nobody knows better than I do that dead is dead. They're not wanting anything. Well, maybe Helen Hopkins was, but now she's released."

"You don't feel an obligation?"

I polished my little fingernail. "Nope. We did what we were paid for. I don't like thinking about someone getting away with murder, but I'm not a cop, either." I wished immediately that I hadn't added the last phrase.

Tolliver got to his feet, suddenly in a hurry. "I'm going to go wash the car. I'm pretty sure there's an Easy Klean right off Main Street. But I'll stop by the office to ask the McCluskey guy for the location. It'll give me an excuse to talk to him. I'll be gone about an hour, more or less."

"Sure, that sounds good. You don't want me to talk to McCluskey?"

"No. He thinks you're the great Satan, remember? I'm just Satan's assistant."

I smiled at him. "Okay, thanks. You want me to tell Hollis you're coming with us, tonight?"

"No, Harper. You go enjoy being a girl for a while."

He didn't sound like he meant it. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Did you ever stop to think we could settle down in a town like this? We could quit what we're doing? We could get regular jobs?"

Of course I'd thought of it. "No," I said. "It's never crossed my mind."

"Liar. You could date some guy like Hollis for real. You could work in a department store, or in an office. Somewhere with live people."

I looked away from his face. "You could date a hundred Janines, or even wait for Mary Nell Teague to grow up," I countered. "You could get a job at a Home Depot. You'd be manager in no time."

"Could we do that?" he asked. He didn't mean, could we do it if we had the option; we had the option, all right. He meant, was it possible for us to settle down to being regular citizens.

"It would be pretty hard," I said, after a pause, in a noncommittal voice.

"Getting a house might be the first step," he said.

I shrugged. "Could be."

He shut the door behind him very quietly.

We didn't talk much about the future.

Of course, I'd had plenty of opportunities to think about it. We spent a lot of time driving. Though we listened to audiobooks and the radio, inevitably there were long periods of silence.

Though I didn't want to tell Tolliver this, I thought way too much about our past. I tried not to dwell on the squalor of daily life in that house in Texarkana. Maybe if I hadn't been raised so gently to start with, it wouldn't have bothered me quite so much. But the descent from pampered princess to virgin pussy peddled for drug money had been too shocking, too abrupt. I hadn't seasoned slowly enough. I'd acquired a hard brittle shell instead of toughening all the way through.

"Bullshit," I said out loud. "To hell with this." I pushed introspection right out of my brain and turned on the television. My nails were beautiful by the time I finished with them.

Tolliver returned about four o'clock, a lot later than I'd expected. When he came in, I smelled a whiff of beer and sex. Okay, I told myself. Steady. Tolliver almost never drank much, and he wasn't drunk now. But the fact that he'd had a beer during the day, and the fact that he'd stayed away to have sex when he knew I'd be anxious—those were significant facts.

"Well, the car is clean," he said, "and I talked to former police officer McCluskey, who is without a doubt one of the most repellent people I've ever had a conversation with."

"That's good, about the car," I said. I was pleased with how level my voice was. "What did McCluskey have to say? Anything interesting?"

"It took me forever to get him soothed down and to the point," Tolliver said.

"This is part of your build-up, to let me know what a tedious job I gave you?"

"Damn straight. I worked for this information."

"Um-hmmm."

"And I expect you to appreciate that."

"Oh, believe me, I do."

"Do I hear some sarcasm in your voice?"

"God forbid."

"Then I'll finish what I was saying."

"Please do."

Tolliver sprawled on my bed, lying on his back with his arms flung out on either side.

"McCluskey—did I mention how nasty the man is? McCluskey's decided I'm your bodyguard, and he wanted to know how I managed to stay around you, since surely you were marked by the devil."

"Oh, yeah? And I thought I'd showered real well."

"You probably missed some Satan behind the ears."

"Sorry about that."

"Well, he thinks anything to do with contacting the dead, or seeing the dead, is a big church no-no, and anyone who claims to be able to do that is—"

"Let me guess—Evil?"

"How'd you know? Amazing! You're right!"

"Just lucky."

"Anyway." Tolliver yawned. "He heard about the boys this morning, and though he thought young men shouldn't hurt women, he also thought putting a scare in you was a good thing."

"Oh, gee, thanks."

"I told him it wasn't." Tolliver sounded suddenly sincere. "I told him if anything happened like that again, I'd be forced to display some of my amazing bodyguard skills, learned at the Special Forces camp."

"What Special Forces camp?"

"Obviously, the one that exists to train specially vicious and lethal bodyguards."

"Oh, that one."

"Right. Anyway, he swallowed some of that story, and he said that he was sure nothing else like that would happen to you here in Sarne, since Sheriff Branscom was so put out about your being threatened."

"Well, actually, that's nice to know."

"That's what I thought. Do you think it's safe for you to go out tonight?"

I stopped looking at my fingernails and started looking at Tolliver.

"I'm not trying to stop you," he said hastily. "You go on with Officer Friendly, if you want to. I'm just reminding you, this is a fundamentalist community and they don't admire your ability."

I held my tongue for a long minute, trying to think through Tolliver's advice. But I heard myself saying, "It's okay for you to go out and get laid while you're getting the car washed, and it's not okay for me to go to a gospel singing?"

Tolliver's skin reddened. "I just don't want anything to happen to you," he said steadily. "You remember what happened in West Virginia."

In West Virginia, the entire populace of a tiny hamlet had thrown rocks at our car.

"I remember," I said. "But it was a smaller place, and it had a strong leader who hated the whole idea of me."

"You're saying there's no united front here in Sarne?"

I nodded.

"You may be right," he said, after a long moment. "But I just hate that anything..." his voice trailed off.

"I don't want to be the target of any kind of attack," I said, after a pause. "I do not. But I also don't want to cower in this hotel room."

"And you want to see Hollis again."

"Yes."

He looked away for a second. "Okay." He made himself nod. "It'll be good to go to something different. Have a good time."

I definitely didn't want to stand out, but I also thought it might be disrespectful to under-dress. I had a hard time imagining what you'd wear to an al fresco gospel concert. I picked what I thought of as neutral clothes: good slacks, a sweater set, loafers. I snatched up a heavier jacket when Hollis picked me up. He was wearing new jeans and a corduroy shirt—the softest narrow-wale corduroy I'd ever seen. He had a jacket, too. And he was wearing cowboy boots, which surprised me.

"Nice footwear," I said.

He looked down, as if he'd never seen his boots before. "I used to do a little riding," he said. "I got to like 'em."

He asked me how I was feeling after the incident of the morning, and I told him I was fine. That wasn't entirely accurate, but close enough. I didn't want to think about it anymore, and that was the truth.

There were cars parked all around the square, and the pretty streetlights that had been put up for the tourists lent the area an air of prosperity and quaintness. The broad courthouse lawn was strewn with folding chairs of all kinds. Little children were dashing through the gathering crowd, shrieking and excited in the chill evening air. Since I was an outsider, I couldn't tell the leafers from the locals, but Hollis told me the ratio was about forty to sixty.

The stage that had been thrown up at the base of the old courthouse was not very high, and it was crowded with the equipment of the first group to perform. A woman in a long full skirt and a wide turquoise belt was tuning a guitar. Her gray hair fell to her waist, and her face was deeply lined, intent and calm. The men behind her were in their forties and fifties, and they all shared her air of professionalism.

"This here's Roberta Moore and her Sons of Grace," Hollis said. "They're from over to Mountain Home."

"How many groups will play?"

"We just see who shows up," he said. "Sometimes six or seven, but tonight I only see three others. Bobby Tatum, he sings by himself." Bobby Tatum was a very young man in a cowboy hat and a very elaborate cowboy shirt and boots. His jacket was Western-tailored, of course, and his clean-shaven face gleamed with eagerness. He was chatting with a cluster of girls who looked about Mary Nell's age, and they were giggling at everything he said.

The other entertainers seemed to be groups like Roberta Moore's. I eyed the amount of expensive equipment piled up behind the stage and was taken aback. This wasn't slapdash and amateurish. These people knew their stuff.

As the darkness gathered closer, Hollis got a blanket from the truck and moved his chair right by mine so we could share its warmth. Terry Vale, the mayor, made some public service announcements. He was far from the anxious man I'd met at the sheriff's office. He was happy, relaxed. "The tan Chevy Venture blocking the driveway to Martin's Pharmacy, be advised you've blocked Jeb Martin in, and he sure wants to go home. Unless you want him to call the tow truck, you better get over there with an apology on your lips," Terry Vale said, and the crowd laughed. A very young man with a sparse mustache got up, abashed, and headed for the pharmacy. After a couple more public service announcements, including a reminder to pick up trash when the concert was over, Terry Vale introduced Roberta Moore and the Sons of Grace to a big round of applause. The gray-haired woman nodded absently at the crowd and continued tuning her guitar. When she felt she was ready, Roberta Moore gave her band a signal, and she began to sing.

It was just great. I was sure these people were pharmacists and pest control sprayers and farmers by day, but by night they were talented musicians, and I was enthralled. I didn't know any of the songs, though I had a vague feeling that when I was very young I'd heard one or two of the spirituals. The voices, twangy and plangent, rose through the clear night air. From time to time, one of the singers would say, "Now we're gonna do an old favorite, and if you know it, you sing along." But it was not an old favorite of mine or my parents, or even my grandparents, as far as I knew, and I realized how ignorant I was. It wasn't the first time I'd reflected on that, and it wouldn't be the last.

Hollis sang along with "The Old Rugged Cross." To my surprise he had a nice baritone.

Just when I was thinking I was getting too cold to enjoy any more singing, Hollis produced a thermos of hot chocolate, and I was glad to drink some. I felt so relaxed. No one was paying me any attention, and that was just fine. Hollis's hand was warm and dry when he held mine, and the hot chocolate was good.

The singing drew to an end after a couple of hours, and people began to pack up their blankets and chairs. Children were carried to cars, their sleeping heads resting on parental shoulders. I gathered up the blanket and the thermos while Hollis toted the chairs. I was surprised to cross the path of Sybil Teague. She was doing exactly the same thing; the man in charge of her chairs was Paul Edwards.

It was a draw as to which one of us was the more astonished. "I didn't know you were in town," Sybil said. She looked a bit more expensive than anyone else in the crowd. So did Paul, for that matter.

"The sheriff doesn't want us to go just yet," I said. I thought Sybil had certainly known we were in town. I thought Sybil had to have heard about the incident this morning, especially since the boy who was the ringleader was such a follower of Mary Nell's. I thought Sybil was just surprised to see me here on the courthouse lawn. Paul Edwards didn't make any effort to charm or greet me, he just stood behind Sybil with their two chairs slung across his back.

"I don't understand why," Sybil said. "I'm sorry you're being, ah, inconvenienced this way." She looked at me as if she had no idea how to end the encounter, and I was petty enough to leave her in the lurch. "Why don't you come to lunch with me tomorrow?" she suggested, I guess since she couldn't think of anything else to say. "You and your brother. Noon okay? Do you know how to get to my house?"

"Thanks. I expect we can find it." I gave her a very small smile and nod, and then Hollis and I moved on to his pickup.

Hollis made a choked noise, and I realized he was trying not to laugh out loud. "What's up with you?" I asked, smiling a little myself.

"She couldn't get out of that one," he said.

"Nope. She feels obliged to the hired help."

"You could have helped her out some," he said, but not as if he were too worried about Sybil's social dilemma.

"Nah. I figured she'd come up with an idea. And she did."

We deposited our burdens in the bed of the pickup and climbed into the cab. Hollis put his hands on my waist and gave me an unnecessary but pleasant boost.

When we got to the motel, I asked him in.

He said, "I always did want to make love to someone in a motel."

"That's my goal... expanding your horizons."

The motel bed was much nicer with someone else in it.