Charlaine Harris: Grave Secret

I wondered if Rich Joyce had ever known his granddaughter had a streak of mysticism, or maybe simply a love of the unusual. That was why Lizzie had led us to Pioneer Rest Cemetery, and why I was standing waiting for her to give me the go-ahead.

Hardheaded Lizzie wanted value for her money, so she wasn’t going to lead me directly to the grave that was her grandfather’s. She hadn’t even told me the purpose of my search until I’d gotten out of my car thirty minutes before. Of course, I could wander around to read all the headstones until I found one with appropriate dates. There weren’t that many Joyces under the dirt and rocks. But I’d spin this out, give her some freebies, because she hadn’t flinched at my fee.

I’d taken off my shoes for the reading, though I had to watch where I put my feet. There are thorns hidden in the grass in Texas, no matter how pretty it looks. I cast a final glance across the panorama of rolling ground and trees and emptiness. This little cemetery might as well have been on the moon, the landscape was such a contrast from the thickly clustering housing developments and settled communities we’d seen as we drove to our last job in North Carolina. We’d ended up in a small town, but it hadn’t had the isolated feel that I got from the landscape here. There’d always been the awareness that another settlement was within a few minutes’ drive.

At least it wasn’t as cold here, and at least we could be almost certain there wouldn’t be any snow. My feet stung in the chilly air, but nowhere near as much as my whole body had ached in freezing, wet North Carolina.

The Joyces were buried close to the live oak. I could see a large boulder that had been chiseled smooth on one side, and the name JOYCE was carved in it in huge letters. It would have looked willfully naïve to have ignored that clue. I stopped at the first grave I reached in that plot, though it was clearly not the one I’d come to read. But what the hell, I had to start sometime. The tombstone read, Sarah, Beloved Wife of Paul Joyce . I took a deep breath, and I stepped on top of it. The connection with the bones beneath my feet was electric and immediate. Sarah was waiting, like all of them, the longtime dead and the recently dead, those buried neatly in graves and those tossed aside like debris. I sent that extra sense I had down into the ground. Connected. Learned.

“Woman in her sixties, aneurysm,” I said. I opened my eyes and stepped to the next grave. This was an older one, much older. “Hiram Joyce,” I said. I stood there, trying to get a firm fix on the few remaining bones in the ground under my feet. “Blood poisoning,” I said finally. I walked to the next one, rested for a moment until the buzzing impelled me: that was the call of the bones, the remains. They wanted me to know about them, what had killed them, what their final moments had been like. I looked at the headstone. No point in reinventing the wheel.

This was not a Joyce, though the burial was within the family plot. The date was eight years and a few months before. The carved name was Mariah Parish . Though I sensed the two men, waiting under the scanty shade of a twisted tree, were standing much straighter, I was too intent on the connection to wonder about that.

“Oh,” I said, softly. The wind whooshed past, lifting my short dark hair and teasing it. “Oh, poor thing.”

“What?” asked Lizzie, her harsh voice sounding simply confused. “That’s my grandfather’s caregiver. She had a burst appendix or something.”

“She had a hemorrhage, bled out after childbirth,” I said. I put two and two together and glanced over at the two men. Drexell had actually taken a step closer. Chip Moseley was stunned; he was also furious, whether because the information was a shock to him, or because I’d said it out loud, I couldn’t say. But whatever they were feeling, it was too late for Mariah. I looked away and stepped over to the right grave, the one I’d been brought to read. It was the biggest headstone in the plot, a double one. Richard Joyce’s wife had predeceased him by ten years. Her name had been Cindilynn, and I discovered she’d died of breast cancer. I said so out loud, and I glimpsed Kate and Lizzie look at each other and nod. I stepped to the ground just adjacent, Rich Joyce’s side of the headstone. Rich had died eight years ago, not long after his caregiver. I cocked my head as I listened to Richard’s bones.

He’d seen something that startled him. I got that, but it took me a few seconds to understand that he’d stopped the Jeep and gotten out because he’d seen someone he knew.

I didn’t have a picture of that person in my head. It’s not like I’m watching a movie. It’s like being inside the person for a moment or two, thinking the person’s thoughts, feeling his emotions, in the last seconds of the person’s life. So I understood from Rich Joyce that he’d stopped because he’d seen someone. I didn’t go through the process of recognizing that person and reasoning that I should stop because he was standing there. As Rich Joyce, I turned off the Jeep, stepped out, and then the snake came flying through the air, the rattlesnake, giving me (Rich Joyce) such a shock that my (his) heart stopped working properly. So hot no water can’t reach phone oh my God to end like this and then it had all gone black. With my eyes closed to see that scene more clearly, that scene visible only to me, I related what was happening.

When I opened my eyes, the four people in the Joyce party were staring at me as if I’d developed stigmata. Sometimes it grabs people that way, even when they’ve asked me there to do exactly what I just did.

I creep people out or I fascinate them (not always in a healthy way)… or both. However, the fascination thing wasn’t going to be a problem today. The boyfriend was looking at me as if I were wearing a straitjacket, and the three Joyces were gaping. Everyone was silent.

“So now you know,” I said briskly.

“You could’ve made that up,” Lizzie said. “There was someone there? How’d that happen? No one has said they were there. Are you telling me someone threw a rattlesnake at Granddaddy? And that gave him a heart attack, and then that someone just left him? And you’re saying Mariah had a baby? I didn’t hire you to tell me lies!”

Okay, that pissed me off. I took a deep breath. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Tolliver had started over to me, the beginnings of alarm evident on his face. Behind them all, Chip Moseley had retreated to the Jeep and was standing with one hand braced on it, doubled over. I realized he was in pain, and I knew he wouldn’t thank me if I drew attention to him.

“You brought me here to do this,” I said. I spread my hands. “There is nothing you can verify, even if you dug your grandfather up. I warned you that might be the case. Of course, you can find out about Mariah Parish, if you really are concerned. There should be a birth record, or some paper trail.”

“That’s true,” Lizzie said. Her face was more thoughtful than repulsed now. “But aside from the issue of what happened to Mariah’s baby, if she really had one, it makes me sick that someone would do that to Granddaddy. If you’re telling us the truth.”

“Believe me; don’t believe me. That’s up to you. Did you know about his heart condition?”

“No, he wasn’t one for doctors. But he’d had a stroke already. And the last time he went in for a checkup, he came back looking worried.” She’d thought about this many times since her grandfather’s death, it was obvious.

“He had a cell phone in his Jeep, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “He did.”

“He was trying to reach it.” Some last moments are more informative than others.