"No," the sheriff said, easing back into his creaking chair. He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jowls. "No, he didn't mention that. Maybe he was embarrassed at giving money to someone like you in the first place."
Sometimes you just can't win. Sheriff Branscom would never join my fan club. It's lucky I'm used to meeting people like that, or I might slip and get my feelings hurt.
"Where's Tolliver?" I asked, my tolerance all used up.
"He'll be in here directly," the sheriff said. "I guess Hollis ain't finished up his questions yet."
I fidgeted. "I really need to go to the motel and lie down," I said. "I really need Tolliver to take me there."
"You've got some car keys," the sheriff observed. "Hollis'll bring him over when they're done."
"No," I said. "I need my brother."
"Don't you raise your voice to me, young woman. He'll be through in a minute." But there was the faintest look of alarm on the round soft face.
"Now," I said. "I need him now." I let my eyes go wide so the white showed all around the irises. My hands wrung together, over and over.
"I'll check," said the sheriff, and he could hardly get up from behind his desk fast enough.
Most places, I would've gotten thrown in the cage or taken to the hospital, but I had gauged this man correctly. Within four minutes, Tolliver came in, moving quickly. Because Hollis was watching, he knelt at my feet and took both my hands. "I'm here, honey," he said. "Don't be scared."
I let tears flow down my cheeks. "I need to go, Tolliver," I said softly. "Please take me to the motel." I threw my arms around his neck. I loved hugging Tolliver, who was bony and hard and warm. I loved to listen to the air going in and out of his lungs, the swoosh of his heart.
He raised me up out of the chair and walked me to the front door, one arm wrapped around my shoulders. The few people in the outer office eyed us curiously as we made our way to the door.
When we were safely back in the car and on our way, Tolliver said, "Thanks."
"Was it going bad for you?" I asked, taking my hands from my face and straightening in my seat. "The sheriff thinks I made up everything I said, but the motel receipt was pretty conclusive."
"Hollis Boxleitner has a thing for you," Tolliver said. "He can't decide if he wants to go to bed with you or slap you around, and he's full of anger like a volcano's full of lava."
"Because of his wife getting killed."
"Yep. He believes in you, but that makes him mad, too."
"He's gonna burn himself up," I said.
"Yes," Tolliver agreed.
"Did he tell you anything about Helen Hopkins' murder?"
"He said he found her. He said she'd been hit on the head."
"With something there, something already in the house?"
"Candlestick."
I remembered the glass candlesticks flanking the Bible on the coffee table.
"Was she standing when she was hit?"
"No," he said, "I think she was sitting on the couch."
"So the killer was standing in front of her."
Tolliver thought about it. "That makes sense," he said. "But the deputy didn't say one way or another."
"Being suspected of a murder isn't going to help business," I said.
"No, we need to get out of here as soon as possible." He parked in front of the motel and went in to get our rooms.
I really did want to lie down by the time we were in our rooms, and I was glad when Tolliver came through the connecting door and turned on my television. I propped up on the pillows while he slouched in the chair, and we watched the Game Show Network. He beat me at Jeopardy! I beat him at Wheel of Fortune. Of course, I would rather have won at Jeopardy!, but Tolliver had always been better at remembering facts than I was.
Our parents were brilliant people, once upon a time; before they became alcoholic, drug-addicted disbarred attorneys. And before they'd decided their clients' criminal lifestyles were more appealing and adventuresome than their own. My mother and Tolliver's dad found each other on their way down the drain, having shed their original spouses. My sister Cameron and I had gone from living in a four-bedroom suburban home in east Memphis to a rental house with a hole in the bathroom floor in Texarkana, Arkansas. This hadn't happened all at once; we'd experienced many degrees of degradation. Tolliver had fallen from a lower height, but he and his brother had descended with his father, too. He'd been our companion in that hole in Texarkana. That's where we'd been when the lightning struck.
My mother and Tolliver's dad had had two more children together, Mariella and Gracie. Tolliver and I watched out for them as best we could. Mariella and Gracie had no memory of anything better than the life we were living.
What had happened to our other parents: my father and Tolliver's mother? Why didn't they save us from the terrifying turn our lives had taken? Well, by that time, my real dad had gone to jail for a long string of white-collar crimes, and Tolliver's mother had died of cancer - leaving our at-large parents to complete their own downward passage, dragging us and their own children behind them.
So here we were, Tolliver and I, in a run-down motel in a seedy Ozarks tourist town in the off-season, hoping to dodge being charged with murder.
But by golly, we were smart.
We were playing Scrabble when we heard a knock at the door.
It was my room, so I asked, "Who is it?"
"Hollis."
I opened the door. Hollis saw Tolliver behind me and said, "May I come in?"
I shrugged and moved back. Hollis stepped in far enough to allow me to shut the door behind him.
"You're here to apologize, I assume," I said in the coldest voice I could summon. It was pretty damn cold.
"Apologize! For what?" He sounded genuinely bewildered.
"For telling the sheriff I took your money. For implying I cheated you."
"You did take my money."
"I left it on the seat of the truck. I felt bad for you." I was so angry I was almost spitting; I'd gone from cold to hot in less than five seconds.
"It wasn't on the seat of the truck."
"Yes. It was."
He fished his keys out of his pocket. "Show me."
"No, you look yourself, so you can't accuse me of planting it."
Tolliver and I followed Hollis back outside. The sky was gray, and the trees around the motel were beginning to whip in the wind. I was cold without my coat, but I wasn't going back in to put it on. Tolliver put his arm around me. Hollis opened the passenger door of his truck, began thrusting his fingers in the crack at the back of the seat, and in about ten seconds he came up with the bank envelope, still fat with money.
He stared at it in his hand, flushed red, and then went white. After a moment or two, he met our eyes. "You told Harvey the truth," he said. "I'm sorry."
"There now," I said. "Are we all clear about this?"
He nodded.
"Okay, then," I said. I spun and walked into my room. Tolliver stayed outside for a bit. Then he came in, too.
We finished our game of Scrabble. I won.
We drove to a little town just five miles away to eat supper. Tolliver didn't seem keen on going back to the motel diner, and I didn't tease him about the waitress. We had country-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and lima beans at a near-duplicated Kountry Good Eats, and it was actually very tasty. The ambience was familiar: Formica-topped tables, cracked linoleum floor, two tired waitresses, and a man behind the counter, the manager. The iced tea was good, too.
"You know someone followed us here," Tolliver said, as the waitress took our plates and strode toward the kitchen. He fished out his wallet to pay our tab.
"A girl," I said. "In a Honda."
"Yeah. I guess she's a deputy, too? She looks awful young. Or maybe they just deputized her for this."
"She's probably cold sitting out there in that little Honda."
"Well, that's her job."
We paid, tipped, and left. The threatened rain was finally upon us, and Tolliver and I ran to the car. He'd clicked it unlocked as we left the restaurant, and I dove inside as fast as I could. I hate being wet. I hate storms. I won't talk on the phone when it's raining hard.
At least there was no thunder this time.
"I don't understand," Tolliver had said once, exasperated at not being able to call me when he was a few miles away. "Why? The worst has already happened. You've already been hit by lightning. What are the odds of that happening twice?"
"What were the odds of it happening once?" I countered, though my real reasons were probably not what he supposed.
We drove slowly, and the red Honda stuck with us. The roads around Sarne were narrow and flanked by some steep terrain, and there was the ever-present possibility a deer would dash across the road.
When we got to the motel, we had a debate about whether to stop and let the unknown girl see where we were staying (which she'd already know if she was a cop) or keep riding around until she tired of following us. Going to the police station, we agreed, felt silly. After all, she hadn't threatened us or done anything other than ride behind us.
It was my bladder that determined our course of action. We pulled in, I dashed into my room, and by the time I came out, Tolliver reported, "She's trying to make up her mind to come over and knock on the door." He was concealed behind the curtains, and he hadn't turned on a light in the room.
I joined him, and it was like watching a pantomime. The girl's car was clearly lit up by the lights in the parking lot, and she was recognizable; that is, I'd be able to pick her out in a police lineup now, though her features weren't crystal clear. She had short brown hair worn in a longer version of a standard boys' haircut, which looked cute on her, since she was a petite thing. She was maybe seventeen, maybe younger, and she had a pouting lower lip. She was wearing enough eye makeup for three ordinary women. Her small face had that look so common in teenage girls from homes where all is not well - part defiant, part vulnerable, all wary.
Cameron had worn that expression on her face all too often.
"How much are you willing to put down on this? I think she'll give up and drive away. We're too scary for her." Tolliver put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.
"Nah, she's coming in," I said with assurance. "I'd be taking your money too easily. See? She's daring herself."
Rain began to pelt down again as she made up her mind to brave us. She launched herself from the car and dashed for my door. She pounded on it twice.
Tolliver turned on the lamp beside the bed as I answered her summons.
She glared at me. "You the woman that finds bodies?"
"You know I am, or you wouldn't have been following us. I'm Harper Connelly. Come in." I stepped back, and, shooting me a suspicious look, she entered the room. She looked around carefully. Tolliver was sitting in the chair trying to look harmless. "This is my brother Tolliver Lang," I said. "He travels with me. You want a Diet Coke?"
"Sure," she said, as if turning down a soft drink was unthinkable. Tolliver got one out of the ice chest and handed it to her. She took it with her arm extended as far as she could reach, to keep her distance from him. I pushed the other chair out to indicate she should use it, and I perched on the side of the bed.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"You can tell me what happened to my brother. I'm not saying I think what you're doing is okay, or even morally defensible." She glared at me. "But I want to know what you think."
I thought she had a good civics teacher.
"Okay," I said slowly. "Maybe first you could tell me who your brother is?"
She flushed red. She was accustomed to being a notable fish in a very small pond. "I'm Nell," she said, clipping off the words. "Mary Nell Teague. Dell was my brother."
"You can't be much younger than he was."
"We were ten months apart."
Tolliver and I looked at each other briefly. This girl was not only a minor, but the sister of a murder victim. And I was willing to bet she'd never been out of Sarne for more than a two-week vacation.
"Morally defensible," Tolliver repeated, as struck by the phrase as I'd been. He rolled the words over his tongue as if he was testing the taste of them.
"I mean, I think it's wrong, all right? Telling people what happened to their dead relatives. No offense, but you could be making all this up, right?"
No offense, my ass. I was sick of people telling me I was evil. "Listen, Nell," I said, trying my best to keep my voice under strict control. "I make my living the best way I know how. For you to assume I'm not honest is an offense to me. There's no way it couldn't be."
Maybe she wasn't used to her words being taken seriously. "Um, well, okay," she muttered, clearly taken aback. "But listen, can you tell me? What you told my mom?"
"You're a minor. I don't want to get into trouble," I said.
Tolliver looked as if he were mulling it over.
"Listen, I may be a kid, you know, but he was my brother! And I should know what happened to my brother!" There was a very real anguish behind her words.
We gave each other tiny nods.
"I don't believe he killed himself," I said.
"I knew it," she said. "I knew it."
