Charlaine Harris - Grave Surprise

The suite had a central living room with a bedroom on each side. Going directly to the bedroom on the right, I took off my shoes, lay down on my very own king-size bed, and surrounded myself with pillows. That's something I love about really good hotels: the abundance of pillows.

Once I was padded and quiet and warm, I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift. Of course, they drifted right to the little girl I'd found in the cemetery.

I'd assumed Tabitha was dead from the moment I'd read about her disappearance, weeks before the Morgensterns had asked me to find her body. Based on the information in the newspaper accounts and even more on my own experience, that was a logical assumption. In fact, I'd been fairly sure the child had been dead since scant hours after her disappearance.

That didn't mean I was happy to be right. I'm not callous about death; at least I don't think I am. I think of myself as more… matter-of-fact. And I'd seen the Morgensterns' anguish first-hand. Because of my sympathy for them, I'd persisted longer in the search than I'd thought was reasonable, and certainly long enough to cut into our profit very severely. Tolliver didn't even charge them the full amount; he didn't say anything to me, but when I went over our profits and expenses at the end of the year, I'd noticed.

Since Tabitha had been dead all this time, I thought it would be better for Joel and Diane to know what had happened to their daughter.

I could only hope that the sentiment I'd sprouted so glibly to the detective was valid. I could only hope that knowing for sure what had happened to Tabitha gave the Morgensterns some relief. At least they would know she wasn't in the hands of some madman, actively suffering.

I found myself wishing I'd had longer with the body. I'd been so startled at the identity of the grave's unauthorized inhabitant that I hadn't spent enough energy evaluating the girl's last moments. I'd only seen the blue cushion, a flash of the long seconds as Tabitha slipped into unconsciousness and then passed away—as she passed from the imitation of death to death itself.

I don't believe that death and life are two sides of the same coin. I think that's bullshit. I'm not going to say Tabitha was at peace with God, because God hasn't let me know on that one. And there'd been a strange feeling to my connection with the body; a sensation I'd seldom experienced before. I tried to analyze the difference, but I didn't come up with anything. That would bother me until I understood it.

I have seen a lot of death—a lot. I know death the way most people know sleep, or eating. Death is a fundamental human necessity, a solitary passage into the unknown. But Tabitha had made her passage years too early, at the end of a painful and frightening ordeal. I was sorry for the manner of her death. And something about it had marked her during that transition, in a way I had yet to understand. I filed it away to consider later; maybe another trip to the cemetery would help. It was hardly likely I'd be in contact with the body again.

I turned onto my side and stretched back to prop a pillow against my shoulders. I turned my thoughts down a mental path so familiar that it had ruts worn in it. That path led to my sister Cameron. Her face was fuzzy in my memory now, or it took on the contours of her last school picture, which I carried in my wallet.

Somehow, discovering Tabitha's corpse in such an indirect and unexpected way gave me hope that someday I might find my sister Cameron's remains.

Cameron has been gone for six years. Like Tabitha, she was snatched out of the stream of her life, leaving her backpack behind on the shore as witness to her departure. When Cameron had become way overdue at home that day, I started looking for her. I'd roused my mother enough to feel she could watch Mariella and Gracie for at least a little while, and I'd trudged through the sweltering heat, following the route Cameron took when she walked home from the high school. It was getting to be twilight by then. Cameron had stayed at school later than I because she was helping to decorate for a dance; the senior prom, I think.

I'd found her backpack, fully loaded with the school-books, notebooks, notes passed to her in class, broken pencils, and small change. And that was all that was left of Cameron. The police had kept it for a long time, gone through its compartments, asked me about the content of every note. Then we'd asked for its return. Today, we carried that backpack in the trunk of our car.

When Tolliver came in, I was still lying on my bed. I'd rotated again, to lie flat on my back as I gazed at the ceiling, thinking about my sister.

"The car from the hotel's going to pick up Art at the airport," he said. "I got it all arranged."

"Thanks," I said, moving over to give him room. He lay on the other half of the vast king bed, shoes properly off. I let him have a pillow. Then I gave him another one.

"Looking back on the cemetery thing this morning," he began, and gave me a moment to fix my attention back on the nearer past.

"Okay," I said, to let him know I was ready to listen.

"Did you notice that man mixed in with the kids?"

"Yes, the guy who looked to be about thirty-five or so?"

"Dark brown hair, five ten, medium build."

"Right. Yes, of course I noticed him. He stood out."

"You think there was something fishy about him?"

"There was another older student," I said, not really protesting Tolliver's direction, but testing it out.

"Yeah, but she was a regular person. There was something off about this guy; he was there for a purpose, not because he had to be. You think he was some kind of professional debunker? There to spot how we did it, and expose us?"

"Well, I think that was Clyde Nunley's goal in teaching the course, don't you? Not an inquiry to stimulate students' minds to seriously consider spiritualism and the people who practice it, but to prove that it's all claptrap."

"But not as… I don't know, this guy seemed to have an agenda. He was purposeful."

"I know what you mean," I said.

"You think we've been set up?"

"Yes, I sure do think so. Unless this is most amazing coincidence in the history of coincidences."

"But why?" Tolliver turned his head to look at me.

"And who?" I countered.

The worry in his face mirrored my own.

My business would die without word of mouth. But it has to be a quiet word. If I brought a trail of newspaper and television reporters with me, half the people who use my services wouldn't want to see me coming. There are a few who'd love nothing better, but only a few. Most clients are embarrassed at hiring me at all, because they don't want to seem gullible. Some are desperate enough to be just that. But very few of them want any outside scrutiny.

So restrained coverage from time to time is okay. Once, a really good reporter wrote a story on me for a law enforcement journal, and I still get business from that exposure. Lots of officers clipped that story; when all else fails, they may get in touch with me through my website. My prices scare off some of the people who apply for my services. I'm not a lawyer, and no one asks me to do pro bono work.

Well, that's not true. People do. But I refuse.

However, I've never left a body unreported. If I find one in the course of a job, I'll report it, and I never ask for extra money for that.

If I got into the news too much, I'd be absolutely grabbing at pro bono work, just to get the good press. I didn't want to have to do that.

"Who do you think would hire such a person? Someone I didn't satisfy?" I asked the ceiling.

"We've found everyone since Tabitha," Tolliver said.

Yes, I'd had a long string of successes: cases with enough information to go on and enough persistence on my part. Bodies found, causes of death confirmed. Money in the bank.