Grave Secret (24 page)

“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.

I
slept that night, but not well. It was reassuring to hear Tolliver’s breathing as I tossed and turned. When light crept under the heavy curtains and I permitted myself to get out of bed, I felt used up, exhausted before the day even began. I made myself run on the treadmill again, hoping to drum up some energy with the exercise. That strategy didn’t work.

Assuming Manfred had tracked down Tom Bowden’s current office, I decided to drop in on Dr. Bowden this morning. It would probably be easy to get past the receptionist, because the mirror told me I looked anything but well. Though we hadn’t set a definite time the night before, Manfred knocked very quietly on our door just as I finished dressing.

Tolliver, just up, had woken as grouchy as a bear. He was about as much fun to be around as a bear, too. Manfred was petty enough to emphasize Tolliver’s invalid status with obnoxious cheerfulness and many wishes for Tolliver’s recovery. Manfred was glowing with health and energy. When you added the lights bouncing off his silver piercings, he practically sparkled.

Manfred liked to talk in the morning.

As we drove to the office building Manfred had scouted the night before, he told me that his grandmother’s will had left everything to him. That had surprised his mother, who was Xylda’s only daughter, but after her initial disappointment, she’d seen the justice in it, since Manfred had taken care of Xylda her last couple of years.

“Xylda had a . . . ?” Then I stopped, embarrassed. I’d been on the verge of expressing amazement that Xylda had had an estate to leave.

“She had a little cash stashed away, and she owned a house,” Manfred said. “It was my good luck that it was in the downtown area, and the school district needed the ground it stood on to build a new gym. I got a decent price. Like I told you before, I found all kinds of weird shit when I was cleaning out all the accumulated stuff. I put everything I wanted to keep into storage until I decide where to base myself.”

“So you’re going to make your living in your grandmother’s business, but do most of your work via email and phone?”

“That’s the idea. But I’m open to new adventures.” He glanced over at me and waggled his eyebrows.

I laughed, though reluctantly. “If you can make even a faint pass, given the way I look today, I think you’re nuts.”

“Didn’t sleep last night?”

“No, not a lot. Detective Powers died.”

Manfred’s cheer was wiped off his face as if he’d used an eraser. “That’s crappy. I’m sorry, Harper.”

I shrugged. There wasn’t anything to talk about; I’d thought everything there was to think during the course of the night, and Manfred had sense enough to recognize that.

 

 

 

DR.
Bowden’s office was in a four-story building, an anonymous glass and brick cube that could have held anything from an accounting firm to a crime syndicate. We ran through the pouring rain to reach the sliding glass doors on the south side of the building.

As we entered, I saw a husky gray-haired man leaving the lobby by another set of doors, his jacket held above him to avert the rain. As the automatic doors swooshed shut behind his back, I thought his walk looked familiar. I looked after him for a moment, then shrugged and joined Manfred at the lobby directory. We discovered Dr. Bowden was on the third floor. He was listed as a GP.

Dr. Bowden had a modest office in that modest building. The waiting room was small, and there was one woman behind the sliding glass panel. Her workstation was messy, almost chaotic. She seemed to be the receptionist, the scheduler, and the insurance clerk, all rolled into one. Her short hair was dyed a deep red, and she wore black glasses that tilted up at the outer corners. Maybe she was aiming for retro.

“Trying to make a fashion statement,” Manfred muttered, I hoped too low for her to hear.

“Excuse me,” I said, when she didn’t look up from her computer. She had to know we were standing right there, since there was only one other person in the waiting room, a man in his sixties who was extremely thin. He was reading a
Field and Stream
magazine.