Charlaine Harris - Grave Secret

“I saw you at the doctor’s office,” I said to Matthew.

He was surprised again. “I went to see a doctor a couple of days ago,” he said cautiously, “about this cough I’ve had since I got out of-”

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “We know you took Mariah’s baby. What we don’t know is what happened to the real Gracie.”

There was a long moment of silence; there seemed to be no air in the cramped living room.

“That’s crazy talk, Tol,” Mark said. “Who’s this Mariah?”

“Dad knows, Mark,” Tolliver said. “Tell us all, Dad, who is the little girl living with Hank and Iona?”

“That little girl,” Matthew said, “is the daughter of Mariah Parish and Chip Moseley.”

This was so not what I’d expected. “Not Rich Joyce and Mariah,” I said, just to be sure I understood.

“Chip told me old Mr. Joyce never had sex with Mariah,” Matthew said. “Chip said the baby was his.”

Mark was looking from speaker to speaker, and he really didn’t seem to know what we were talking about.

“Chip had been buying drugs from me,” Matthew said. “He and Drex liked to come to our part of town to party. Chip was always smart and hard. He’d been raised in foster homes, and he was determined to make a place for himself with the rich people. So he started work for Rich Joyce, started out low, worked his butt off until Rich really depended on him. After his divorce, he gradually got Lizzie interested in him. He knew Mariah; she was in the foster home with him. Chip helped her get the job with the Peadens, and she learned a lot while she was there. Chip made sure Rich got to know the Peadens well enough that he was able to introduce him to Mariah. Then when old Mr. Peaden died, it was natural for Mariah to ask Rich if he had a job for her. He’d had the stroke, and he knew his family wanted him to have someone. It tickled him to have someone as young and pretty as Mariah around, even if he didn’t plan on making any moves on her. She knew his heart was weak. She knew he was fond of her. She just hoped he’d leave her some money. She liked the old man.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“She didn’t plan on getting pregnant, but when she did, she put off doing anything about it until it was too late. She wore loose clothes and overalls and such because she didn’t want the old man to know she was somebody else’s bedmate. And she was afraid he’d find out if she had an abortion. She was tough, but she wasn’t tough enough to do that. Chip went nuts when he found out. She was maybe eight months along by then. He came over to Texarkana to get some dope; he wanted to be numb for a while, not think about it. While he was at my place, Drex called on his cell to say that he was all alone in the house with Mariah, and something had gone wrong. Mariah had had the baby all by herself, but she wouldn’t stop bleeding. And by the time he’d cut the cord and wrapped up the baby-he’d helped deliver calves and foals-she was near dead. Chip bolted out and the next I heard from him was when he called me about taking the kid off his hands.”

“Chip didn’t want her at all.”

“No,” said Matthew. “He didn’t.”

“And you offered to help him out, maybe thinking that someday you might get some money out of the Joyce girls by saying that the baby was their grandfather’s.”

“I know it was pretty low,” Matthew said. His deep-set eyes looked shadowed. “I know that. But you know how I was then. It sounded like a good moneymaking scheme, one I could leave on the back burner, in case we ever needed it.”

“And your own baby was about to die because you hadn’t taken her to a doctor,” I said. “Or was she already dead when Chip called?”

“That’s where you got the different baby!” Mark said. I’d never seen so much emotion on his face. “Dad, why didn’t you tell me?”

Now it was Matthew’s turn to look confused. “You knew it wasn’t really Gracie?” he said to his son. “I never worried about you! You were hardly ever around. How’d you know?”

And all of a sudden, everything clicked into place.

“I know how,” I said. “Cameron told him. She didn’t know right away, any more than the rest of us did. It took her a while to figure it out. But when she did her senior biology project, she did it on eye color and genetics. You and my mom couldn’t have had a green-eyed child.”

Mark collapsed onto the couch. His legs simply gave out from under him. “Dad, she was going to call the police,” he said. “She was going to tell them you’d kidnapped a kid to take Gracie’s place, because Gracie had died.”

“It was you, Mark,” I said, feeling that my voice was coming from somewhere very far away. “It was you. You picked her up when she was on her way back from school. You told her-what did you tell her?”

“I told her that you’d had an accident,” he said. “I was on my motorbike that day, so I told her to leave the backpack by the road. She didn’t ask any questions. She got on. I went toward the hospital, but I pulled off at an empty gas station because I told her something was wrong with my bike. I told her to go around back to see if there was an air pump. I went after her.”

“How did you do it?” I said, very quietly.

He looked up at me with an expression I hope I never see again. He was ashamed, he was horrified, and he was pleased. “I choked her to death,” he said. “I have big hands, and she was so small. It didn’t take long. I had to leave her there, because I couldn’t get her back on the bike. I went later, with Dad’s truck. I wanted to leave her there, but I was afraid you’d find her, you freak.”

My head swam and I sat abruptly on the armchair. Tolliver hit Mark with everything he had, and Mark collapsed sideways, bleeding from the mouth. Matthew was standing exactly where he’d been, his mouth literally hanging open.

“I did it for you, Dad,” Mark mumbled. He spat out blood and a tooth. “Dad, I did it for you.”

“And then they arrested me anyway,” Matthew said, as if that was the important part of the story.

“Where is she, Mark?”

“You and your family,” he said. “You’ve been nothing but trouble. First the baby, then Cameron going to call the police on Dad, and now you getting Tolliver to marry you.”

“Where is my sister, Mark?” I wanted to bury her, finally. I wanted to know where her bones were. I wanted to recognize her one last time. Somewhere over in Texarkana, she waited for me. I just wanted a location so I could get in the car and start driving. I could call Pete Gresham and ask him to meet me there.

“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “You can’t have me arrested unless you find her, and I’m not going to tell you. My dad won’t say a word, and my brother won’t, either. Our word against yours.”

“Where is my sister?”

Matthew was still staring at Mark as if he’d never seen him before.

“Of course I’ll tell the police,” Tolliver said. “Why wouldn’t I, Mark?”

“We’re family, Tol. If you tell them about Cameron, then we’ll have to tell them about Gracie, and she won’t belong to anybody but Chip. Iona and Hank would have to give her up. You can imagine what Chip will do with her.”

“Chip’s dead, Mark. He killed himself yesterday.”

Mark looked blank for a minute. Then he said, “So then she’ll go to foster care, like Harper had to.”

“You’re trying to blackmail me into keeping quiet about my sister’s death by threatening my other sister? Mark, you are lower than a snake’s belly,” I said. “I can’t imagine you being related to Tolliver.”

“That’s the deal,” Mark said, and his mouth set in a mulish way.

There was a knock at the door. Talk about bad timing.