Charlaine Harris - Grave Secret

“How is he?” she said, nodding toward the silent figure on the bed. No hug, no handshake, no preliminaries. Victoria went straight to business.

“He’s hurt pretty bad,” I said. “He has a broken bone.” I tapped my own collarbone by way of illustration. “But the doctor who was just in here, he said Tolliver would be okay if he did physical therapy. If nothing changes.”

Victoria snorted. “So, what happened?”

I told her.

“What was your last case?” she asked me.

“The Joyces were.”

“I’m meeting with them later this morning.”

I didn’t describe the reading I’d gotten at the cemetery, because the Joyces hadn’t given me permission, but I did give Victoria an outline of the time we’d spent with them. And she knew they’d visited us at the motel.

“That has to be the most likely cause of the shooting,” Victoria said. “What about the case before this one?”

“You remember the serial killer, the boys killed in North Carolina? All buried in the same place?”

“That was you-you found them?”

“Yeah. That was awful. Also, we did get a lot of publicity, most of it the wrong kind.” I’d found that quiet word of mouth was better for getting actual paying jobs. Publicity might prompt a flare of interest, but that interest was mostly from people who wanted to explore the unexplained and lurid, not people who wanted to pay a lot of money to have it displayed in their neighborhood.

“So this shooting incident might be a fallout of the North Carolina case?”

“Now that I’ve said it out loud, that doesn’t sound very likely.” Tolliver needed a shave. I should do that, and then I had to comb his hair. I couldn’t think of anything else I could do to help him.

He looked so helpless. He was so helpless. I was the only defense he had. I had to man up.

“The North Carolina murders really, really upset a lot of people,” Victoria said, her voice thoughtful. She clearly believed Tolliver’s shooting must be related to the only case of mass murder we’d ever discovered.

“But the bad guys got caught. Why would anyone want to shoot us because we helped to catch who did it?”

“You sure there weren’t any more in on it? The two men were the only killers?”

“I’m sure, and what’s more, the police are sure. Believe me, that was one thorough investigation. They haven’t gone to trial yet, but the prosecutor’s pretty damn sure they’re going to get a conviction.”

“Okay.” Victoria looked down at Tolliver for a few seconds. “Then either you’ve got a stalker or it’s something to do with the Joyces.” She paused for a moment. “There hasn’t been anything new about your sister for a long time. I am assuming the trail’s too cold for Cameron’s abduction to have any relation to what’s happening to you now.”

I nodded. “I agree. I think the Joyce case is the most likely. If they okay me talking to you, I’ll be glad to tell you all about it. There’s really not much to tell.”

Victoria whipped out her cell phone and made a call, which I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do in a hospital. She started talking. A few seconds later, she handed the phone to me.

“Hello,” I said.

“This is Lizzie Joyce.”

“Hi. Did you want me to talk to Victoria?”

“That’s real ethical of you. You have my permission.” Did she sound amused ? I didn’t think my morality was funny at all. “I’m sorry about your manager,” Lizzie continued. “I understand it happened at that same motel where we visited you. My God! What do you think happened? Was it just a random shooting?”

A memory surfaced. “One of the cops did tell me there was another shooting a couple of blocks away. So it’s possible. But that’s pretty hard to believe.”

“Well, I’m real sorry. If there’s anything I can do, you just let me know.”

I wondered how sincere the offer was. For one wild minute, I considered saying, “This hospital stay is going to be really expensive, because our insurance is shitty. Can you take care of the bill? Oh, and pick up the tab for his rehab, too, while you’re at it?” But I simply thanked her and handed the phone back to Victoria.

I’d been too preoccupied to think about the financial crunch we were going to face until that moment. I thought unhappy thoughts, while Victoria Flores wound up her conversation with Lizzie Joyce. For the first time, I saw the full scope of the problem in front of me. I realized Tolliver’s injury meant the end of our dream of buying a house, at least in the foreseeable future.

It was possible for me to be more depressed, which I would not have believed ten minutes earlier.

I told Victoria about the visit to Pioneer Rest Cemetery. She asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer, but finally she seemed satisfied that she’d wrung every last bit of knowledge and conjecture out of me.

“I hope I can perform like they want me to,” she said, having her own down moment. “I can’t believe they came to me instead of some big agency, but now that I know the details, I can see why they called someone like me.”

“It’s been hard, the move to this area?” I asked.

“Yeah, there’s a lot more business, but a lot more competition,” Victoria said. “It’s good to be close to my mother; she helps with my daughter. And the school MariCarmen’s in here is better than the one in Texarkana. Plus, the driving distance isn’t bad, and I still have business and a lot of contacts back there. It just takes me two and a half, three hours, depending on traffic and weather.”

“We’re never going to find Cameron, are we?” I said.

Victoria ’s mouth opened, as if she was going to tell me something. Then she closed it. “I wouldn’t say that. You never know when a lead will pop up. I wouldn’t string you along. You know that’s true.”

I nodded.

“It’s always in the back of my mind,” Victoria said. “All those years ago, when I came by your trailer and talked to Tolliver… I was just a rookie cop. I thought I could find her quick, and make a name for myself. That didn’t happen. But now that I’m out on my own, I still look for her, everywhere I go.”

I closed my eyes. I did, too.

AFTER Victoria left, I sat down on the chair next to the hospital bed. My right leg felt wobbly. It’s the leg the lightning traveled down that afternoon in the trailer when the thunder was rumbling outside. I’d been getting ready for a date; it was a Saturday, or a Friday. I discovered I no longer remembered all the circumstances, which was a real shock.

I did recall I’d been looking in the bathroom mirror while I used a hair curling rod, which was plugged into the socket by the sink. The lightning came in through the open bathroom window. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, half in and half out of the little room, and Tolliver was performing CPR, and the EMTs were taking over, and Matthew was yelling at them in the background. Mark was trying to shut him up.

My mom was passed out in their bedroom. I could see her sprawled across the bed if I turned my head to the left. One of the babies was screaming, probably Mariella. Cameron was standing pressed to the wall in the hall, her face soaked with tears and her expression distraught. There was a strange smell in the air. The hairs on my right arm were little crispy flakes. Nothing about me seemed to work.

“Your brother saved your life,” the older man bending over me said. His voice sounded far away and it buzzed.

I tried to respond, but my mouth wouldn’t work. I managed a tiny nod.