Grave Sight

ten

HOLLIS slipped out at five o'clock. He whispered that he had to go home, shower, and get to work. He kissed me, and I hugged him close for a long moment, wishing he didn't have to go. Though finesse would never be Hollis's trademark, either in making love or conversation, that wasn't a bad thing. He was warm and big, and he had a delicate snore that made me feel all cozy. It was like being in bed with a giant, enthusiastic teddy bear.

I would not mind being with him for lots of nights.

That thought woke me up completely.

I almost never had sex. One reason I picked a sex partner so rarely was the sure brevity of the connection. One-night stands were about scratching an itch, and I'd rather do that by myself than enlist a human dildo. Oh yeah, I knew consenting adults could give and take a little of themselves in one night. I knew it didn't have to be tawdry and cheap. But most often it was; and it left me feeling a little nauseous and dissatisfied with myself, no matter how satisfying the physical act had been.

This was the other downside. Now, I'd been with Hollis two nights, and already I found myself wanting extended time with him. But I knew damn good and well that the nature of my life precluded more.

It seemed so much easier for Tolliver. He made eye contact with a woman, she agreed to have sex, they did it, and she left. She knew he was leaving town, of course, as suddenly as he'd blown into it. Or did some of these women think, "It'll be so good, he'll like me so much, he'll send his sister away by herself and he'll stay with me for a while." Since I didn't have any women friends, hadn't had for years, I couldn't say what other women thought. But maybe, some day, that would happen.

Despite that niggling worry, I dozed back to sleep, but by seven I was in the shower. I was dressed when Tolliver knocked carefully on the outer door to my room.

He looked around quickly when I let him in and relaxed when he saw we were alone. "How was the gospel singing?" he asked.

"Really good. You would have enjoyed it." I didn't ask him what he'd done instead. "You ready for breakfast?"

"Yeah. Let's go to the Denny's."

Maybe Denny's fruit plate would be better. Like many lightning-strike survivors, I have trouble with terrible headaches, and my right leg is much weaker than my left. I can lessen those symptoms by avoiding fried food and starches. Our lunch at McDonald's the day before had been a serious fall from grace, and my leg had twitched all night. Luckily, Hollis hadn't noticed. But I'd been too uncertain on my feet to run this morning.

"Oh, we've been invited to lunch," I told Tolliver as we buckled our seat belts. The day was cloudy and chilly. Soon there'd be a rainstorm with high winds, and it would whip all the beautiful leaves off the trees—oak and maple and gum. Sarne would roll up the few sidewalks it had left out for the leafers. Its people would put away their hillbilly costumes and close their fruit and crystal stands, and Sarne would be alone for the winter.

"Where?" Tolliver asked, drawing me back into the present.

"At Sybil Teague's." I told him about running into Sybil and Paul the night before.

"That's interesting," he said. "Before we go in the restaurant, let me tell you what I learned from Janine last night. Paul Edwards was the lawyer Helen hired to get her restraining order and then her divorce from Jay Hopkins. And he'd represented Jay and Helen before, in a lawsuit they brought against Terry Vale."

"What'd they sue the mayor for?"

"Maybe he wasn't the mayor then. He owns the local furniture and carpet sales company. Jay Hopkins said the carpet Terry sold them wasn't stain resistant, and Terry wouldn't make good on the warranty."

"Hmm," I said. "I'm not sure what that all means." And I needed a cup of coffee before I even began to figure it out.

"It means," Tolliver said, "that Paul Edwards is in a position to know all the secrets of both families."

"Like?"

"Who Teenie's father really was, for one."

"Oh."

"And maybe he knows why Teenie and Dell were out in the woods that day. What could have made them go out to that place, on land that neither family owned, to be killed?"

"Who does own that land?"

"I guess we don't know."

"Could we find that out this morning?"

"Sure. We can go to the county clerk's office. But why should we go to the effort?"

"I'd rather have something to do than go back to the motel room and work crossword puzzles."

"Yeah, me, too." We worked out a plan for the day.

First thing after breakfast, we did our laundry in the Sudsy Kleen Laundromat, owned by (not to our surprise) Terry Vale. His representative at the Laundromat was a seamed old woman with a walker who dispensed correct change for the washers and dryers. She also sold little boxes of detergent and dryer sheets from behind a dilapidated desk. We learned by observation that the old woman also washed and folded laundry upon request. Sudsy Kleen did a great drop-off business.

This stout old woman performed a great service and did a good job, we decided, but she was determined to be as unpleasant as possible while she did it.

Initially, the fluffy white hair and the crocheted white sweater suckered me into believing I should be gently polite with this old bat. But when I asked for change for a dollar bill so I could feed the dryer, she drew in her breath as if I'd made a nasty suggestion. I stood transfixed, trying to figure out what I'd done. Dumbly, I held out the money. Granny Grump fumblingly took the dollar from my hand and examined it, since I was obviously a counterfeiter, I guess. Then she very slowly counted out the correct change, casting quick glances at me all the while as if she suspected I was going to snatch the money box and run. Her glasses glinted with every glance, just a quick flash in the overhead lights, as if she had bionic eyes. When I took the coins to my brother, I was half amused and half angry.

"She's charming, you need to go meet her," I said, in a conversational tone, dumping the quarters into the slots on the machine.

Tolliver glanced her way, started to say something, tried not to smile.

"I mean, it's just adorable when she glowers," I told him. "What a character! You just can't find old ladies like that anymore!"

"Shh," he said, but not as if he meant it.

I wasn't sure if she'd heard me or not—her expression of extreme disgust never changed. Was there something personal about us that she loathed? Or did she distrust us simply because we weren't from Sarne? Hard to tell. I wasn't sure I cared.

We finished washing and folding our clothes pretty quickly, since the Laundromat had few customers early in the morning. Maybe the dragon had driven all the self-serve customers away.

Our next stop was closer to the center of town. The county clerk's office was in the old courthouse in the square. It was the first time we'd actually entered the building. The ceilings were just as high as I'd imagined, and the windows just as huge; obviously this building predated the widespread use of air-conditioning. The room we entered was so disproportional, the distance from floor to ceiling to much more than from wall to wall, that I felt a little uneasy. I couldn't imagine working in such a room.

The two women who did work there were definitely surprised to see strangers come in, but the older of the two, a very round woman with dyed brown hair, immediately rose from her desk and came to the counter. When we asked to see a map of the county, she pointed silently to the wall behind us.

"Snake," I muttered to Tolliver after we turned around. There was a huge map of Colleton County right there. He nodded, understanding that I'd meant, "If it had been a snake, it would have bit us." I tried to orient myself by following the two main roads that formed a waggly X through Sarne, but I was still working it out when Tolliver pinpointed the area where we'd gotten out of our car when we'd been searching for Teenie's body.

After some cross-referencing, we decided which parcel of land that was, and the clerk handed us the appropriate ledger. According to the ledger, Colleton County Land Development was the owner of the property, and of several other parcels on both sides of that road. I couldn't see that we were any further along than we had been. Tolliver asked the county clerk if she knew who was actually behind Colleton County Land Development.

"Oh," she said, smiling. "That's Paul Edwards, Terence Vale, and Dick Teague. They bought up quite a bit of property over the years, thinking that someday we'd become another Branson. I don't think that's ever going to happen."

"The same names keep showing up over and over," I said when we were alone in the car.

"That's going to happen in a small town with a long history," Tolliver said, logically enough. "I'm not sure it means anything. Where next?"

We got to the newspaper office about nine forty-five, where we discovered that all the past issues of the Colleton Mountain Gazette (at least for the past ten years) were on computer. We were free to look through the computer archives, all we wanted, right there at the newspaper. This unexpectedly enthusiastic reception was due to a woman about my age, a brand-new reporter, who hoped we might be good for some kind of story. She was plump and dark-haired and wearing a color I'd call mustard. I am no clotheshorse, and fashion trends aren't of much interest to me, but even I could tell it was maybe the worst color she could have picked. But she was a person who liked bright things, as attested by her gold chain and gold bracelet and shiny bronze lipstick, so maybe the mustard was part of the same syndrome. Her name was Dinah Trout, according to the plate on her desk. She offered us coffee, she strode past us about eleven more times than was necessary, and she eavesdropped on every word we said to each other. Today was our day for meeting challenging women.

In self-defense, Tolliver and I took turns sitting at the computer. The one who was not reading had the job of deflecting the extremely curious Ms. Trout. If some of the people of Sarne knew about my unusual career, they apparently hadn't shared it with Ms. Trout, and I was really grateful.

In about an hour, I was sure we'd read every article that dealt with the death of Dell Teague, the disappearance of Teenie Hopkins, and the "tragic accident" of Sally Hopkins Boxleitner. I was fascinated by pictures of the Hopkins sisters. It was a shock to see them living.

I'd been so overwhelmed by the multiplicity of pictures in Helen's living room that I hadn't taken any time to examine the subjects.

The sisters didn't look alike. Sally, Hollis's wife, had been light in coloring, with reddish-blonde hair and freckles. She had a broad face and broad shoulders and a pleasant look about her. I couldn't see anything lurking in her eyes—no hidden misery in her stance, nothing that hinted she knew she was going to die. I tracked down her wedding picture (it was eerie to see a much younger Hollis feeding her wedding cake) and an employee photograph taken at Wal-Mart, where she'd been the manager of the baby department.

Her younger sister Teenie was shown in her school picture, the saddest accompaniment to an obituary. She'd been a little over made-up for the occasion, and her hair was dramatically combed in two solid falls of darkness on either side of her face. She had her mother's narrow features and small build, and she had a sharp nose, perfectly straight. It was hard to extrapolate anything about her character from a class picture. She was smiling, of course, but it was just an arrangement of her lips. There wasn't anything genuinely happy about it. She was a deep well, and I wasn't surprised Dell Teague had been intrigued.

Dell Teague was blond like his mother. I found a shot of Dell on an old sports page, where he was shown dressed in his football uniform. It was enough to break your heart—even my heart—seeing the young man standing there smiling at the camera, full of youth and pride and strength. I wondered if he'd known what was happening to him, or if the shot had been a complete surprise—if he'd had a chance to worry about his girlfriend's fate. The feeling I'd gotten, while I stood on his grave, was that he had known what was happening. I felt sorry for that.

I looked at Dell's picture, then back at Teenie's. Then again. They shared something, these two. I checked the years the pictures had been taken. Teenie's had been taken earlier in the fall, so had Dell's. Too early for Teenie to think she might be pregnant. What secret was it they shared? I wanted to print out the articles and take them with me. Then I realized I was getting too caught up in the lives of these two teenagers who were dead and buried.

While I was getting so much good stuff, I searched the computer for any stories or pictures including Mary Nell Teague. Mary Nell was in lots of pictures; she was a cheerleader (no surprise there), she was her class president, she'd been on the homecoming court. I even took a second to look at a picture of Dick Teague, the deceased husband of Sybil. He was a medium man; medium stature, medium brown hair, light complexion, narrow shoulders, and a tentative smile, at least in the newspaper pictures. He had a definite overbite, a generous nose, and he'd died of a sudden heart attack in his home.

Nonetheless, it was sad to hear that such an abrupt end had come to a man who'd done a lot for the community, at least according to his obituary. Dick Teague had been a county judge. He'd been in the Lion's Club and the Rotary. He'd been a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and he'd been on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club. He'd even been a local leader for Habitat for Humanity. I wondered if Sybil was upholding his banner in the civic department. Somehow I doubted it.

Speaking of Sybil... I glanced at my watch.

"We need to go," I murmured to Tolliver, who was smiling at Dinah, maybe dazzled by the gleam off her many polished surfaces. "Could we print out these articles?" I asked, trying to be charming.

"Sure, for twenty-five cents a page," she said. Guess I wasn't charming enough. "We don't mind doing it, but we have to pay for the ink cartridges, of course." I could understand that, and I tried to maintain a pleasant expression as the printer slowly spit out the pages I'd designated.

Dinah Trout urged us to come back any time, which I didn't think was likely. She was wearing a wedding ring, so I knew Tolliver wouldn't ask her out, even if she sent a clear signal she would be willing.

Seeing we were slipping from her grasp, Dinah thought of a few more questions to ask us, and we dodged them more or less politely. "The Ozarks breed women of strong character," I told Tolliver. He nodded a little grimly.

The most unremarkable woman I'd talked to all day was Sybil Teague, and she was no slouch in the grooming and looks department. She was wearing a skirt and sweater set in red and white, and she looked really good. I wondered if she was the kind of mother who scoured her deceased child's room, or if she was the kind of mother who kept that room intact as a shrine. I would have put money on her being a scourer, but I was wrong. When I slipped into Dell's room after lunch, excusing myself to use the bathroom, I found it was probably neater and cleaner than a teenage boy would leave it. But the dead boy's clothes were hanging in the closet, and though he didn't have a bulletin board of pathetic souvenirs as Teenie had, a framed picture of the girl sat on his computer desk. I thought the better of Sybil that she had left it there.

It had taken some maneuvering to get a look at the house, but fortunately Sybil was egotistical enough to take my gap-mouthed admiration at face value. Tolliver and I got a tour the minute I showed interest; no "it's not in its best shape" protestations from Sybil, no "please excuse the mess." The house was in perfect order, and probably always was. Even Mary Nell's room was spick and span—no clothes tossed on the floor, no unmade bed. The bathroom was scrubbed and there were clean towels out. If Mary Nell married a local boy, he'd have a hard act to follow.

There was a maid, of course, whom I had to credit with all this cleanliness and order. She was a gaunt older woman in a snagged knit shirt and baggy stretch pants. Sybil didn't introduce her, but the woman gave us an openly curious look as we strolled through the kitchen. Through glimpses of the backyard I caught at various windows, I spotted a man raking and burning the fallen leaves. I couldn't discern his features—that was how far it was to the back fence. This was a mansion, or as close to a mansion as Sarne could offer.

I wondered again how Sybil must have felt when Dell had picked a girl from the bottom stratum of local society. Having seen her house, I knew her talk of having accepted Teenie as a potential daughter-in-law was pure bullshit. I wondered how far she would go to prevent Dell from being trapped in that relationship by fathering a child on the girl; because I was pretty sure that was how Sybil would see it. Whatever part she'd played in the death of Teenie Hopkins, Sybil had surely loved her son Dell.

Mary Nell came home while we were sitting at the dining table. She dashed in, calling, "Mom? Mom? Look at my skirt!" Mary Nell turned red when she saw us in her home. I didn't know if that was because she was upset at seeing Tolliver, or because she was appalled at facing me after what her admirer had done to get me to leave town. Maybe both.

"Mary Nell, what are you doing home?" Sybil asked, obviously surprised.

"Stupid Heather spilled her stupid drink on my skirt," Mary Nell said, after a second's pause. She held her leg out to show the splotch on her denim skirt. "I asked Mrs. Markham if I could sign out for thirty minutes and run home to change."

"Mrs. Markham is the cheerleader sponsor," Sybil explained to us, as though we cared. "Well, go change, honey," she said to Nell. She might as well have said "Shoo!" and flapped her hands. Nell darted away, her cheeks flushed. In five minutes she was back, dressed in a dark blue long-sleeved T-shirt and a khaki skirt. I was willing to bet her previous outfit was on the floor of her room. "I'm gone, Mom!" she called as she went down the hall to the kitchen. The kitchen had a door leading into the garage, and I was sure that Nell had her own car. Sure enough, within a minute I saw a Dodge Dart zipping down the graveled driveway.

"She's so active in her school," Sybil said.

"And what year is she?" I asked politely.

"Oh, I'll have her for one more year," Sybil said. "Then it'll just be me rattling around in this big empty house."

"You might remarry," I said, in a completely neutral voice.

Sybil looked startled, maybe at my offering a suggestion about a subject that was clearly none of my business. "Well, I suppose that's possible," she said stiffly. "I hadn't thought about it."

I didn't believe that for a minute. From the way the maid cut her eyes toward Sybil (she was carrying out the used plates), she didn't, either. We'd had iced tea with our salad and our chicken divan served over rice, but I'd only had one refill. I wanted to get into Nell's room, but I could hardly say I had to use the bathroom again. That would just be too suspicious. There was no way I could tell Tolliver what I needed, and he was not very good at sneaking, anyway.

A picture presided over the dining room, and I assumed the portrait was of Sybil's dead husband. I was seated opposite it, so I had forty-five minutes to stare at the painted features and look for their traces in the pictures of Dell and Mary Nell that were hanging on either side.

"Your husband?" I offered, nodding toward the picture. I thought it had been painted from a snapshot, but it was interesting. The eyes looked alive, and the tension of the seated body suggested that Teague was going to leap up at any moment.

She turned her head to look at the picture, as if she'd forgotten it was there. "He was a good man," she said softly. "He was just nuts about the kids, of course. He'd had pneumonia, one of those strains that's resistant to antibiotics, so he'd been in the hospital in Little Rock. He'd had a little heart trouble, but the doctors kept telling us it wasn't much, not to worry. They were going to do more about it when he got over the pneumonia, you see. But one afternoon, while he was recuperating, he was in his study with all the medical records from the past year. He wasn't satisfied with our insurance, or he thought that they should have paid more on his doctor bill, or something. I don't even remember now. But it had been a big year medically, you have those sometimes, I guess. Mary Nell had had a tonsillectomy, and Dell was the passenger in a car that had a little accident. The driver had a broken leg, and Dell had a little knock on the head and some stitches. Bloody, but really after it was cleaned up, he wasn't hurt too badly. And I'd had high cholesterol. So Dick had this pile of papers he was going through, and sometime in the afternoon he just... passed. When I went in to get him for supper, he had his head on the desk."

"I'm so sorry," I said. Sybil had had a lot to bear in her life, and I had to respect that, no matter how cold I found her.

"I'm curious, Sybil," my brother said, sounding as if going from one subject to another was simply logical. Sybil blinked and refocused on Tolliver. "Why didn't you ask Harper to come to Sarne earlier?"

"I'm sorry?" Sybil's attractive face was blank.

"Why didn't you ask Harper right after Teenie went missing?"

"I... well, I... of course, at first I was shocked by my son's death, and I just couldn't think about Teenie. Frankly, I just... didn't care, in the face of my own loss." Sybil gave us a noble face, telling us she was ashamed of that, but so what?

"Of course," I said. "Of course." This was just noise, to get her to continue.

"But when I heard all the rumors that were going around town, about how there was only justice for the rich, and why wasn't anyone looking for Teenie, and people seemed so sure that Dell had done something terrible to her... I was talking to Terry at Sunday lunch at the country club, and he told me what he'd heard about you. Paul was dead set against it, but I just couldn't leave a stone unturned. There had to be something I could do besides get out there and search the woods myself. You know, they should have brought in tracking dogs right away. But no one knew Teenie was out there with Dell. When he got found, it was assumed he was a suicide. By the time Helen realized Teenie was missing, too, it was late at night. It rained real heavy. When they resumed the search the next day, the scent was gone, I guess. I don't remember any of that, at all. I was far from worrying about Teenie."

"No cadaver dogs?" I asked.

"They're different from trackers, right? No, I guess not. After Helen thought about it, she said she was sure Teenie would turn up somewhere alive, and bringing in the cadaver dogs would be like saying she was dead. I thought for sure she'd back down on that one, but she said everyone was telling her it was not the right thing to do." Sybil shook her head. "Terry thought it would give the town a bad name, too, but the hell with that. If a young one's missing, you got to look for 'em. Maybe if Jay had been around... Oh, he wants you to come by the house, by the way. He called here this morning to find out more about you. Anyway, Jay and Helen's relationship wasn't all bad. Helen was more of a woman after she lay off the alcohol, you understand, but she had more backbone altogether when she was with Jay. She'd just listen to this one and that one and end up all confused after she separated from Jay."

That was totally not the impression I'd gotten of Helen Hopkins. It sounded as though Sybil and Helen hadn't communicated face to face at all.

As if she'd heard my inner comment, Sybil said, "She never wanted to sit down and talk to me, so we could work out what to do. I'd call and get someone else. I'd send a message, and she wouldn't respond." Sybil shook her head. "And now it's too late," she said dramatically, able to be insincere now that she was no longer talking about the tragedy of her son. "Poor Helen. But at least she was spared the burial of her daughter. Harvey will catch the one who did it. The son of a bitch'll try to sell something he stole from Helen, or he'll get drunk in a bar and tell some buddy of his. Harvey says that's the way it works."

Sybil Teague herself would never know how things worked, I thought. In some way I had yet to define, she was so far from the truth she wouldn't know it if it bit her in the ass.