Charlaine Harris - Grave Sight

Tolliver took my hands. We looked at each other. Finally, he said, "You've been hurt."

"Yes," I said.

His face was rigid. "Your face. Did one of them hit you?"

"No, no." I hadn't prepared a story for him. It would be stupid to try to conceal what had happened to me since he'd been in jail. I couldn't think of a lie that would cover everything, not even for Tolliver's peace of mind. "Someone shot at me from the woods," I said flatly. "I wasn't hurt, except for this scratch. I won't go back to the cemetery."

"What's going on in this town?" Tolliver was having a hard time controlling his voice. "What's wrong with these people?"

"Have you seen Scot?" I asked, trying to put a little perkiness in my voice.

"Scot the kid?"

"Yeah."

"They brought someone in last night, someone I haven't seen yet. What's he in for?"

"He was in my motel room when Hollis brought me back last night, and he..."

The expression on Tolliver's face stopped me.

"You have to calm down," I said, very quietly and intently, holding on to his hands as if they were lifelines and I was drowning. Or he was. "You have to. You just have to. You can't get into trouble in here, or they'll keep you. Now you listen, I'm going to be okay. I've called the lawyers, and a lady, Phyllis Folliette, from Little Rock, is coming tomorrow for your arraignment. She's a friend of Art's, so she's good. You'll get out, and we'll be okay." I adjusted my position in the hard chair, suppressing a wince.

"That Scot's a rat bastard," Tolliver said. His voice was misleadingly calm.

"Yeah," I said, and gave a little snort of laughter. "Yeah, that's what he is, all right. But I think someone paid him to be more of a rat bastard than he actually is."

I told Tolliver about the death of Dick Teague, the fact that Sally had been hired to clean the study, the fact that she'd seen something on Dick Teague's desk that had aroused her curiosity or her interest, so much so that she'd come home and consulted her textbook about what she'd noticed. "SO MO DA NO" didn't mean anything to Tolliver, either.

"Maybe an anagram?" he asked.

"I haven't been able to make a word of it, if so," I said. "And those aren't anyone's initials. I tried writing it backwards. I tried assigning numbers. I tried moving the letters one forward in the alphabet, and one backward. I don't think Sally Boxleitner was up to a more complex code than that."

Tolliver thought for a minute. Under my fingers, I felt his pulse, steady and vital.

"And what was on his desk?" Tolliver asked.

"Insurance forms."

"Whose?"

"According to Sybil, he was reviewing the family's medical bills for the year."

"And he really had a heart attack?"

"Yeah, that was what I was checking at the cemetery. He really did. It runs in his family; at least, Dick's father died the same way, real early—though not as early as Dick."

"I can sure give it a lot of thought, since I don't have anything else to do," Tolliver said, trying hard not to sound bitter.

I cleared my throat. "I brought one of your books. They're searching it for hidden messages, I guess, and they'll pass it on to you when you go back to your cell."

"Oh, thanks." There was a pause while he struggled not to say anything, but he lost. "You know, I ended up in here so I can't stop someone when they try to hurt you."

"I know."

"I feel as angry as I've ever felt in my life."

"I got that."

"But we have to know who wanted me in here so bad."

"Surely... surely it must be Jay Hopkins?"

"What's your figuring on that?"

"Marv Bledsoe is a good buddy of Jay Hopkins. And Marv's a cousin of Paul Edwards. Or else it was Harvey the sheriff, himself, who told Marv to arrest you."

"Of the three, I'd rather this be Jay's doing."

I nodded. Jay was the weakest of the three.

"Time's up," the jailer said, and the other two visitors stood. Tolliver and I looked at each other. I was making a huge effort not to look as anxious as I felt. I suspected Tolliver was doing the same.

"I'll see you tomorrow in the courtroom," he said, when the jailer showed signs of impatience. I let go of his hands and pushed back the chair.

Five minutes later, I was standing out in the cold, bright day, wondering what I should do next. I couldn't stop myself from wondering if anyone was looking at me, and if that anyone had a rifle in his hands. I wondered if I would live long enough to get Tolliver out of jail. I despised myself for my fear, because at least I was free; my brother was not. He was probably not any safer in jail than I was walking around, especially if our enemy turned out to be the sheriff.

I could see from the traffic that school had let out for the day. So I wasn't surprised when my new best friend, Mary Nell Teague, pulled up in her little car. "Come for a ride," she called, and I climbed in the front seat. I was surprised she was by herself, and I was also surprised that she would want to approach me so publicly.

"Have you seen him?" she asked, backing out and driving away at what I could only think was a reckless speed.

"Yes."

"They wouldn't let me, since I'm not family or a spouse." She said this with sullen amazement, as if it was extraordinarily bull-headed of the jailers not to let a lovesick teenage girl visit a prisoner. I was getting so tired of this girl, with her burdensome crush and her sense of privilege. But I also felt a certain amount of pity for her, and I hoped she could still be useful in helping us figure out what was really happening in Sarne.

And she needed to start doing that now. "Mary Nell, what do you know about Jay Hopkins?"

"He used to be Miss Helen's husband," she said, "you know that."

"Did he have any contact with Dell?"

"What difference does that make? I don't think about trashy people like him."

"This isn't going to be easy, but it's time for you to grow up a little."

"Like I haven't, this past year?"

"You've had some tragedy this year, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't matured you any."

She pulled to the side of the road, tears in her eyes. "I can't believe you," she said chokingly. "You're so mean! Tolliver deserves a better sister than you."

"I agree. But I'm what he's got, and I have to do everything I can for him. He's all I've got, too." I noticed she still hadn't answered my question. But I figured that was a kind of answer in itself.

She wiped her face with a tissue and blew her nose. "So why do you keep asking me about people?"

"Someone took a shot at me today. Someone paid your teenage admirer to beat me up, and someone let him into my room. I don't think he thought of that on his own, do you?"

She shook her head. "When I talked to Scot yesterday, he was mad at me, and mad at you, but he was going to stay away from you. Mr. Random, the football coach, he got onto Scot in front of the entire team and gave him twenty bleachers, and then Scot's dad grounded him from television or the telephone for a month."

"So what could have happened in the meantime, to make him hide in my room like he did?" Running up the bleachers and back twenty times, and no TV or telephone. Glad to know terrorizing me came with a stiff penalty.

"Did you ever think it might have been your lover-boy, Hollis, who asked him?" Mary Nell had decided to counterattack.

"No, I never did. Why do you suggest that?" Mary Nell was trying to make me angry, and she was pretty close to succeeding, but I made myself hold on to my temper with a ferocious effort.

"Well, just maybe Hollis wanted the chance to save you from something bad, so he could look like a big hero? And maybe he shot at you, too, which I have only your word for—that it ever happened, I mean."

"Why would he shoot at me?"

"To make you need him," she said. "To make you hold on to him. Now that your brother's out of the way, you need an ally, right? So maybe Hollis even got Tolliver arrested."