Grave Surprise

I have seen a lot of death--a lot. I know death the way most people know sleep, or eating. Death is a fundamental human necessity, a solitary passage into the unknown. But Tabitha had made her passage years too early, at the end of a painful and frightening ordeal. I was sorry for the manner of her death.



And something about it had marked her during that transition, in a way I had yet to understand. I filed it away to consider later; maybe another trip to the cemetery would help. It was hardly likely I'd be in contact with the body again.



I turned onto my side and stretched back to prop a pillow against my shoulders. I turned my thoughts down a mental path so familiar that it had ruts worn in it. That path led to my sister Cameron. Her face was fuzzy in my memory now, or it took on the contours of her last school picture, which I carried in my wallet.



Somehow, discovering Tabitha's corpse in such an indirect and unexpected way gave me hope that someday I might find my sister Cameron's remains.



Cameron has been gone for six years. Like Tabitha, she was snatched out of the stream of her life, leaving her backpack behind on the shore as witness to her departure. When Cameron had become way overdue at home that day, I started looking for her. I'd roused my mother enough to feel she could watch Mariella and Gracie for at least a little while, and I'd trudged through the sweltering heat, following the route Cameron took when she walked home from the high school. It was getting to be twilight by then. Cameron had stayed at school later than I because she was helping to decorate for a dance; the senior prom, I think.



I'd found her backpack, fully loaded with the school-books, notebooks, notes passed to her in class, broken pencils, and small change. And that was all that was left of Cameron. The police had kept it for a long time, gone through its compartments, asked me about the content of every note. Then we'd asked for its return. Today, we carried that backpack in the trunk of our car.



When Tolliver came in, I was still lying on my bed. I'd rotated again, to lie flat on my back as I gazed at the ceiling, thinking about my sister.



"The car from the hotel's going to pick up Art at the airport," he said. "I got it all arranged."



"Thanks," I said, moving over to give him room. He lay on the other half of the vast king bed, shoes properly off. I let him have a pillow. Then I gave him another one.



"Looking back on the cemetery thing this morning," he began, and gave me a moment to fix my attention back on the nearer past.



"Okay," I said, to let him know I was ready to listen.



"Did you notice that man mixed in with the kids?"



"Yes, the guy who looked to be about thirty-five or so?"



"Dark brown hair, five ten, medium build."



"Right. Yes, of course I noticed him. He stood out."



"You think there was something fishy about him?"



"There was another older student," I said, not really protesting Tolliver's direction, but testing it out.



"Yeah, but she was a regular person. There was something off about this guy; he was there for a purpose, not because he had to be. You think he was some kind of professional debunker? There to spot how we did it, and expose us?"



"Well, I think that was Clyde Nunley's goal in teaching the course, don't you? Not an inquiry to stimulate students' minds to seriously consider spiritualism and the people who practice it, but to prove that it's all claptrap."



"But not as... I don't know, this guy seemed to have an agenda. He was purposeful."



"I know what you mean," I said.



"You think we've been set up?"



"Yes, I sure do think so. Unless this is most amazing coincidence in the history of coincidences."



"But why?" Tolliver turned his head to look at me.



"And who?" I countered.



The worry in his face mirrored my own.



My business would die without word of mouth. But it has to be a quiet word. If I brought a trail of newspaper and television reporters with me, half the people who use my services wouldn't want to see me coming. There are a few who'd love nothing better, but only a few. Most clients are embarrassed at hiring me at all, because they don't want to seem gullible. Some are desperate enough to be just that. But very few of them want any outside scrutiny.



So restrained coverage from time to time is okay. Once, a really good reporter wrote a story on me for a law enforcement journal, and I still get business from that exposure. Lots of officers clipped that story; when all else fails, they may get in touch with me through my website. My prices scare off some of the people who apply for my services. I'm not a lawyer, and no one asks me to do pro bono work.



Well, that's not true. People do. But I refuse.



However, I've never left a body unreported. If I find one in the course of a job, I'll report it, and I never ask for extra money for that.



If I got into the news too much, I'd be absolutely grabbing at pro bono work, just to get the good press. I didn't want to have to do that.



"Who do you think would hire such a person? Someone I didn't satisfy?" I asked the ceiling.



"We've found everyone since Tabitha," Tolliver said.



Yes, I'd had a long string of successes: cases with enough information to go on and enough persistence on my part. Bodies found, causes of death confirmed. Money in the bank.



"Maybe someone connected with the college who wanted to check on what the class was being exposed to?" I guessed.



"Could be. Or someone connected with St. Margaret's, who felt the cemetery was being used in some irreligious way."



We both fell silent, puzzled and unhappy about too many things at once.



"I'm glad I found her, though," I said. "No matter what."



My brother, who had followed my thoughts as he often did, said, "Yeah."



"Nice people," I said.



"You never thought what the police suspected--?"



"No," I said. "I never believed Joel did it. These days, everyone looks at the dad first. Did he molest her?" I did my television announcer voice. "Were there dark secrets in the house that seemed so normal?" I smiled with a twist of my mouth. People sure loved believing there were dark secrets--they love discovering happy normal families are anything but. Truly, sometimes there were plenty of secrets, more than enough to go around. But Joel and Diane Morgenstern had struck me as truly devoted parents, and I'd seen enough of the kind of parents who weren't to recognize the ones who were.



"I never believed it," I repeated. "But--here they are. In Memphis." We looked at each other. "How the hell could it have happened that her body turned up here, the city where her parents are living now? Unless there's a connection."



There was a tap at our suite door.



"The troops are here," Tolliver said.



"Well. The troop."



Art was missing a lot of his hair. What remained was curly and white. He was very heavy, but he dressed very well.



So he looked like an eminently respectable, sweet-natured grandpa--which just goes to show how deceptive appreances can be.



Art maintains the fiction that he is my father substitute.



"Harper!" he cried, throwing open his arms. I stepped in, gave him a light hug, and backed away when I could. Tolliver got a clap on the shoulder and a handshake.



We asked about his wife, and he told us what (but not how) Johanna was doing: taking art classes, keeping the grandchildren, remaining active in their church and several charities.



Not that we'd ever met Johanna.



I watched Art grope, trying to think of someone he could ask us about in return. He could hardly ask about our parents: my mother had died the previous year, in jail, of AIDS. Tolliver's mother had died years ago, of breast cancer, before we'd even met Art. Tolliver's dad, my stepfather, was in the wind since he'd gotten out of jail, having served his time on drug charges. My own father was still in big-boy prison, and would be for maybe five more years. He'd taken some money from his clients to support the drug habit he and my mother had developed. We never saw our little half sisters, Gracie and Mariella, because my Aunt Iona, my mom's sister, had poisoned the girls against us. Tolliver's brother, Mark, had his own life, and didn't much approve of ours, but we called him at least once a month.



And of course, there was never any news about Cameron.



"It's great to see you two looking so healthy," Art said in his heartiest voice. "Now, let's order some room service, and you can tell me all about this." Art loved it when we ate together. Not only did it make the meal billable, but it also reassured Art that Tolliver and I were normal people and not some kind of vampires. After all, we ate and drank like the rest of the world.



"It should be up in a minute," Tolliver said, and Art had to go on and on about how amazed he was that Tolliver had been so farseeing.



Actually, I was pretty impressed myself.



Art made notes throughout the meal as we told him everything we remembered about our previous search for Tabitha Morgenstern. My brother got out his laptop and checked our records to be sure of how much the Morgensterns had paid us for our fruitless search. We assured Art that we had no intention of charging them anything for finding her today--in fact, the idea made me sick. Art looked kind of relieved when I told him that.



"There's no way we can leave here without seeing the Morgensterns or talking to the police?" I asked, knowing I sounded cowardly.



"No way in the world," Art said. For once, he sounded as hard as he actually was. "In fact, the sooner you talk to them, the better. And you have to issue a press statement."



"Why?" Tolliver asked.



"Silence is suspicious. You have to say clearly that you had no idea that you would find Tabitha's body, that you're shocked and saddened, and that you are praying for the Morgensterns."



"We already told Channel Thirteen that."



"You need to tell everyone."



"You'll do that for us?"



"Yes. We need to write a statement. I'll read it on-camera for you. I'll take a few questions from the press, just enough to establish who you are. After that, I think questions will just muddy the water, especially since I won't be able to answer them."



I looked at Art, perhaps with a certain skepticism; he gave me big hurt eyes. "Harper, you know I wouldn't put you all in a spot hotter than the one you're in already. But we have to set the record straight while we can."



"You think we're going to be arrested?"



"Not necessarily. I didn't say that. I meant, highly unlikely." Art was backpedaling to firmer ground. "I'm saying this is our chance to get in our licks with the public, while we can."



Tolliver looked at Art for a minute. "All right," he said, when he reached his conclusion. "Art, you stay here while Harper and I go in the other room and write the press statement. Then you can look it over."



Leaving our lawyer no chance to offer another plan, we retreated to Tolliver's room, with his laptop to act as our secretary.



Tolliver settled at the desk, while I flung myself across the bed. "Dr. Nunley never said anything to you, did he, about Tabitha? When he asked us to come here?" I asked.



"Not a word. I would have told you," Tolliver said. "He just talked about the old cemetery, about how it would be a true test, since you really had no idea who was buried there and there was no way you could find out. He wanted to know if you'd be comfortable with that. Of course, he thought I'd make some excuse for you, trying to back out. Nunley was really surprised when I emailed him back, told him to expect us. He'd just had Xylda Bernardo, the psychic. She lives in this area, remember?"



I'd met Xylda once or twice, in the line of duty. "How'd she do?" I asked, out of sheer professional curiosity. Xylda, a colorful woman in her fifties, likes to dress in the traditional stage-gypsy style--lots of jewelry and scarves, long messy hair--which immediately makes people distrust her. But Xylda has a true gift. Unfortunately, like most commercial psychics, she embellishes that nugget of talent with a lot of theatrics and made-up flourishes, which she thinks lend her visions credibility.



Psychics--honest psychics--do receive a lot of information when they touch something a crime victim owned. The bad part is, quite often they receive information so vague it's almost useless ("The body's buried in the middle of an empty field"), unless you have a good idea what you're looking for to begin with. Even if there are a few psychics who can see a clear picture of, say, the house where a child's being held hostage, unless the psychic can also see the address, and the police find an identifiable suspect lives in that house, the building's appearance is almost irrelevant. There are even some psychics who can achieve all that, but then they have to get the police to believe them... since I've never met a single psychic who was also up on SWAT tactics.



"Oh, according to Nunley, Xylda did her usual," Tolliver said. "Vague stuff that sounded really good, like 'Your grandmother says to look for something unexpected in the attic, something that will make you very happy,' or 'Be careful of the dark man who comes unexpectedly, for he is not trustworthy,' and that's flexible enough to cover a lot of circumstances. The members of the class were pretty weirded out, since Xylda insists on touching the people she's reading. The students didn't want Xylda holding their hands. But that's the way it's done; for Xylda, touch is everything. You think she's for real?"



"I think most of what Xylda tells clients is bullshit. But I also think she actually has a few moments when she knows stuff."