Charlaine Harris - Grave Secret

Now Manfred’s hands were moving. It was clear he was performing some task, but I couldn’t interpret his gestures. I looked at Tolliver and raised my eyebrows in a question. Tolliver pointed at the stack of files on the coffee table. After a moment, I understood. Victoria was tamping papers into a neat stack, then closing them into a folder and stacking it on the others. Then she got a rubber band out of a drawer and worked it around the stack. “Put this in the trunk,” she whispered. “Come back, make the calls.” There were slight movements in Manfred’s feet and shoulders that suggested Victoria (through Manfred) was going outside, opening the trunk, tossing in the files, shutting the lid, moving back into the office.

This was a very strange experience. Enlightening, but strange.

“Someone’s coming,” Victoria/Manfred muttered. “Huh.”

I understood better, now, why I made people so nervous after they saw me in contact with that other part of the world, the unseen part that was so hard for most people to access. I could feel the tension in Tolliver’s hand.

Again, little twitches of Manfred’s body suggested that Victoria ’s movements were happening in his head. He made a definite yanking gesture. I was sure he was pulling open the sleeper couch to insert Mariah’s folder. She-no, Manfred-turned her head to look at something, very abruptly, and then Manfred’s eyes flew open with a look of complete terror on his face.

“I’m going to die,” he said. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die tonight.”

IT took at least fifteen minutes for Manfred to completely come out of walking Victoria through her last moments.

“Who did she see?” Tolliver asked.

“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I couldn’t see them.”

“Well, a hell of a lot of good that did us,” Tolliver said, and I put a hand on his shoulder (his good one, let me point out) and squeezed.

“It did a lot of good,” I said. “We know what Victoria was thinking, and we know someone did kill her because of the case, or at least we know that’s what Victoria thought or she wouldn’t have hidden that particular file. She was thinking something might happen to her office, thought someone was after her, so she had already put the other Joyce files in her car to keep them safe. She didn’t believe anyone would hurt her personally, but she called her former boyfriend, Rudy Flemmons, to come watch her back. He didn’t answer, or he didn’t get the message in time, and that’s why he’s all bent out of shape now.”

“We know those things, but they don’t do us any good.” Tolliver was determined to be a butthead.

“Maybe once we look at Mariah’s file, they will.”

Manfred was looking tired, and older. He seemed very alone. I felt a pang of pity for him, and then I had to tell myself not to overdo it. Pity and a vague physical attraction were not enough motivation to imperil my relationship with Tolliver. I knew without a doubt that Manfred needed to find someone else.

I found myself wondering what kind of woman would be good for Manfred, and then I realized the answer had to be Anyone besides me.

By then it was almost five o’clock, and I called room service and asked them to send up some food and some coffee before I reached down to pick up the file. I opened it to the first page, the fact sheet with Mariah’s background information, and read it carefully. Then I passed the fact sheet to Tolliver, and he began studying it. While we looked through the information Victoria had gathered on Mariah, Manfred began reading the Joyce files.

“Mariah Parish wasn’t what she seemed,” I said, which was an understatement.

Tolliver shook his head. “She sure wasn’t. If the Joyces had checked her credentials more closely, they wouldn’t have hired her.”

It wasn’t that Mariah had been deceitful. She’d been an orphan, as she’d said. She’d been taking care of another ill elderly man, Arthur Peaden, before she came to Rich Joyce. She’d done a good job, too, because there were glowing testimonials from Art Peaden’s survivors about how kind Mariah had been, how conscientious, while she was taking care of their father.

She’d also been taking college classes over the computer. Eventually, she’d gotten evenings off to attend classes in person. And in the fullness of time, she’d graduated from college with a degree in economics and business.

Mariah had had her own online trading account, and it had been a busy one. At first, she’d lost some money, but more recently, even in the financial downturns the market had taken recently, she’d held steady. The adult babysitter had been profiting from her job to a degree no one would have imagined.

“Wow,” said Tolliver with some admiration. “She was learning all the tricks of the trade.”

“I guess her ‘client’ talked in front of her, and his friends and family talked in front of her, and she profited by everything she heard.”

“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?”