Charlaine Harris - Grave Sight

"I guess," I said. I left the door open to the beautiful day, and the big deputy didn't protest. Hollis Boxleitner sat in one of the two chairs. I took the other one, after offering him a can of Fresca that was chilly and wet from the ice chest. He popped the tab and took a gulp. I propped my foot up on the edge of the table and continued my pedicure.

"You want to go down to the restaurant, have some chicken-fried steak?" he asked.

"No thanks." It was a little past one o'clock, so I should eat something, but I wasn't feeling too hungry.

"Not the calories, is it? You could use some more flesh on your bones."

"No, not the calories." I stroked the brush very carefully from base to end of my big toenail.

"Your brother's already down there. He's having a conversation with Janine."

I shrugged.

"What about the Sonic?" I darted a glance at him, but he only looked mildly inquiring.

"What do you want?" I asked. I don't like being maneuvered.

He looked at me, put the can of soda down. "I just want to talk to you a little bit about Monteen Hopkins. My sister-in-law. The girl you think we found today."

"I don't need to know anything else about her." It was better not to. I knew enough. I knew about her last moments on earth. That was as personal as you could get. "And I guarantee," I added, since I have professional pride, "the body we found is Monteen Hopkins."

He looked at his empty hands, big hands with golden hair on the backs. "I was afraid you'd say that," he said, falling quiet for a minute. "Come on, let's get a milk shake. I was the one who threw up at the site, and even my stomach is saying it needs something. So I know yours has got to be ready."

I looked at him for a long moment, trying to figure him out. But he was a closed door to me, since he was among the living. Finally, I nodded.

My toenails weren't quite dry, so despite the autumn bite in the air, I stepped into his truck barefoot. He seemed to find that amusing. Hollis Boxleitner was a husky man with a crooked nose, a broad face, and a smile full of gleaming white teeth, though at the moment he was far from smiling. His pale blond hair was smooth as glass.

"You always lived here in Sarne?" I asked, after we'd parked at the Sonic and he'd pressed the button to order two chocolate shakes.

"For ten years," he said. "I moved here my last two years of high school, and I stayed. I had a couple years of community college, but I commuted to class after the first year."

"Been married? Was that how Teenie was your sister-in-law?"

"Yes."

I nodded acknowledgment. "Kids?"

"No."

Maybe he'd known the marriage wouldn't last.

"My wife was Monteen's older sister," he said. "My wife is dead."

That was a shocker. I sighed. While Hollis paid for the shakes, I reflected that I was going to learn about Teenie Hopkins, whether I wanted to or not.

"I met Monteen when she was thirteen. I picked her up from outside a juke joint way out in the county, while I was on patrol. It was so obvious she was underage and had no business being there. She made a pass at me in the police car. She was totally out of hand. I met Sally when I took Monteen home to her mom's house that night." He was silent for a moment, remembering. "I liked Sally a lot, the first time I laid eyes on her. She was a regular girl, with a lot of sweetness in her. Teenie was wild as a razorback."

"So the Teagues couldn't have been that happy about their son dating her."

"You could say that. Teenie got it from her mom. At that time, Helen was drinking a lot, and not too particular about who she brought home. But Helen managed to change, finally quit drinking. When Teenie's mom settled down, Teenie did, too."

That wasn't how Sybil had tried to make it appear, at our second meeting. I filed that fact for future reference.

"How do you get hired?" he asked.

I sucked hard on the straw, thinking over the abrupt change in subject. It was a good milk shake, but it had been a mistake to get a cold drink on a brisk day when I was barefoot. I shivered.

"Lots of word of mouth. That's how I got hired here; Terry Vale heard something about me at a city government conference. Law enforcement people talk to each other, at conventions and by email. And there've been stories in a professional magazine or two."

He nodded. "I guess you couldn't advertise."

"Sometimes, we do. Hard to get the wording right."

"I can see that." He smiled reluctantly. Then he reverted to just being intense. "You just... feel them?"

I nodded. "I see the last moments. Like a tiny clip of a video. Can you please turn on the heater?"

"Yes, we'll ride." A minute later, we'd left Sonic and were cruising what there was of Sarne.

"How big is the police force here?" I was trying to be polite. There was an undercurrent here, and the water in it was moving faster and faster.

"Full-time, besides me? The sheriff, two other deputies right now."

"Stretched pretty thin."

"Not during this season. Now, we've just got leaf people. Come to see the colors change. They're pretty peaceable." Hollis shook his head over people taking time off from life to look at a bunch of leaves. "Summer tourist season, we take on six part-time people. Traffic control and so on."

Hollis Boxleitner's income would be small. He was a youngish man, and he seemed both capable and intelligent. What was he doing, stuck in Sarne? Okay, not my business: but I was curious.

"I inherited my parents' house here," he said, as if he were answering my unspoken question. "They got killed when a logging truck hit their car." He nodded in acknowledgment when I told him I was sorry. He didn't want to talk about their deaths, and that was a good thing. "I like the hunting and the fishing, and the people. In the summer, I get some hours in helping my brother-in-law; he's got a rafting business, rents 'em out to the tourists. I pretty much work around the clock for three months, but it helps me build up my bank account. What does your brother do, when he's not helping you?"

"He's always with me."

Hollis looked as if he were politely swallowing scorn. "That's all he does?"

"It's enough." The thought of managing by myself made me shiver.

"So, how much do you charge for your services?" he asked, his eyes on the road ahead of him.

I hoped there wasn't an implication there. I kept silent.

It took a while to make Hollis uncomfortable, longer than it took for most people.

"I want to hire you," he said, by way of explanation.

I hadn't expected that. "I charge five thousand dollars," I told him. "Payable on a positive identification of the body."

"What if the location of the body is known? You can tell the cause of death, too, right?"

"Yes. Of course I charge less if I don't have to find the body." Sometimes the family wants an independent suggestion about the cause of death.

"You ever been wrong?"

"Not that I know of." I looked out the window at the passing town. "When I can locate the body, that is. I don't always find it. Sometimes, there's just not enough information available to tell me where to search. Like the Morgenstern girl." I was referring to a case that had made headlines the year before. Tabitha Morgenstern had been grabbed off a suburban road in Nashville, and she'd never been seen since that day. "Just knowing the point where someone vanished isn't enough. She might have been dumped anywhere, in Tennessee or Mississippi or Kentucky. Not enough information. I had to tell her parents I couldn't do it."

Though the cemetery wasn't yet visible, I knew we were approaching one. I could tell by the buzzing along my skin. "How old is the cemetery?" I asked. "It's the newest one, I guess?"

He pulled over to the side of the road so abruptly I almost lost my grip on my milk shake. He glared at me, his face flushed. I'd spooked him.