Charlaine Harris (16 page)

“And you're paying for this?” Tolliver asked as we drove away. We went to the UPS pickup spot, which was in an auto parts store many blocks from the square. Small businesses in Sarne—in the south in general—had to diversify, but I was used to that and kind of enjoyed it. I got some mailers and followed the advice of Tolliver's friend at the lab in packing the samples I had.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I'm paying for this.”

“Why, in God's name, are you doing this?”

“I don't really know. I want to leave. I want justice done. I feel terrible that Helen lost both her daughters to a murderer.”

“Or is this all about Hollis?” Tolliver asked, his voice sharp. “Is this about you wanting to impress a law man?”

I felt like slapping Tolliver, or screaming. But I stared up at him and did neither of those things. After a long moment, he said, “Okay, I'm sorry.”

“She said it would take three days to get a preliminary answer?” I responded.

“Yes. Longer for a definitive answer, but three days for a quick yes or no. Since it's from hair follicles, and not blood samples.”

We were leaving the store when a patrol car pulled up beside ours. A deputy got out, a man I hadn't seen before. He was tall, thin, and middle-aged, his colorless hair shaved close to his head. He wore ugly glasses and he was tense as a coiled snake. He stalked to the rear of the car and looked at our Texas license plate like it was in German.

“I run your license plate,” he said. “You got a warrant out for your arrest in Montana.”

“No we don't,” I said, but Tolliver gripped my arm.

“And you got a busted out taillight back here.” He pointed, but I wasn't fool enough to get close to him to look. He waited for a reaction from us, seemed a little disappointed when he didn't get one. “You, sir, you're the legal owner of this car?”

“Yes,” Tolliver said carefully.

“Lean up against your car with your hands on the hood. I'm going to have to take you in.”

I felt a humming start up in my head, just a distant little humming. I stood frozen while my brother silently, almost casually, complied. Tolliver had seen the tension in the deputy's body, too.

“What . . .” I had to clear my throat. “What are you doing?”

“Outstanding warrants, he's got to go to jail while I clear this up.”

“What?” I couldn't understand him because the humming felt louder.

“Judge'll come to town soon. If there's any mistake, he'll be out quick as a New York minute.”

“What?”

“Ain't you understanding me?” the tall man said. “Can't you speak English, woman?”

“You're arresting my brother,” I said.

“You got it.”

“Because you say there's a Montana warrant out for him.”

“Yes'm.”

“But that's not true. The charges were dismissed.”

“That's not what the computer says. And, ma'am, aside from that, there's the matter of the taillight.” And he pointed. While Tolliver stayed where he was, I edged carefully around the car, keeping a safe distance from the deputy. The taillight was smashed.

“It was okay when we went in the store,” I said.

“You'll excuse us if we can't take your word for it,” the deputy said, smirking. He walked around the end of the car, taking care to stay as far from me as I wanted to be from him, and he patted Tolliver down. I could see shiny pieces of the broken light scattered on the street.

“When can I get him out?” I asked, pretending with all my might that the deputy didn't exist. This was sheer bullshit, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“After the judge sets the fine for the taillight, and we get this warrant thing settled,” the deputy said. “We don't have a sitting judge here; have to wait for the judge to come around.”

I gasped. I couldn't help it. Every fearful reaction I gave fed the deputy's sense of power and gloating, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was on the teetering edge of panic, and I was scrabbling around in my head for some way to put this right,
right now.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“Bledsoe,” he answered, not too happily.

“Harper,” my brother said. He was handcuffed now, and the humming level rose higher and higher as I looked at the metal around his wrists. The deputy was looking at me uneasily. He'd quit grinning. “Just call Art. He'll recommend someone.” Art Barfield was our lawyer. His office was in Atlanta, which was where we'd been the first time we needed an attorney.

The deputy looked even more jittery as he absorbed the implication that we had a high-powered lawyer at our backs (which wasn't exactly true), and he began to say something. Suddenly he thought the better of it and stopped, a word half out of his mouth. Then he made up his mind again. “Don't go crazy about this, young lady. Nothing's going to happen to your brother in our jail.”

I hadn't even thought about that. My focus had been on my own selfish need for Tolliver, my panic for fear of how I'd manage without him. I had been frightened of the wrong thing, I saw immediately. I realized Tolliver would be in the hands of this deputy, who was a fool with power.

Tolliver began trying to make his way around the car to me, and the deputy yanked him back by his cuffed wrists.

I had to pull myself together. I concentrated, completely, on pushing the terrified child inside me back into her hole. I breathed slowly, deeply. I had to focus on Tolliver now, not myself and my trembling hands. My brain began to function again; maybe not well, but it began to produce thoughts.

I looked directly into Bledsoe's eyes. “If anything happens to Tolliver in your jail, it would be very, very unfortunate.” That wasn't a threat, was it? I didn't want to give him any excuse to lock me up, too.

“I'm going to get our cell phone from my brother, now. It's in his pocket,” I said, in a voice barely above a whisper. I put my purse on the hood of the car so that I was obviously unarmed and unencumbered. No one moved as I held up my hands and walked very slowly over to Tolliver. I wanted the deputy to die. I wanted to stand on his grave. I never lowered my stare from his eyes, which were narrow and watery blue. His lids fluttered, and he looked away at his
patrol car, pretending to be fascinated by the querulous voice coming over the radio.

I slid my hand in Tolliver's pocket, pulled out the phone.

“Proud of you,” he murmured, and I smiled up at him, as much of a smile as I could manage. I lay my head against his shoulder for a second, and then I straightened, widening the smile as much as I could, while the deputy shoved Tolliver into the back of the patrol car. The policeman climbed in, and while I watched him, he backed out and drove Tolliver away.

I stood there until the man inside the auto parts store came out to ask me if I was all right.

I
drove back to the motel very slowly and carefully. I felt like my right hand had been amputated, or one of my feet. I felt exposed and as vulnerable as if a target were attached to my back, as conspicuous as a giraffe would be if it wandered down the streets of Sarne.

When I was back in my room, with the door locked, I felt how close I was to the edge. My right leg, damaged by the lightning all those years ago, was trembling and would barely take my weight. But I got a grip, if only by my fingernails. I stared into the mirror over the sink. “I'm going to hold on,” I told myself out loud. “I'm going to hold on, because I'm the only one Tolliver has to get him out of this.” I felt better after I'd stared at myself for a minute and seen my own resolve. I looked like a person who could cope.

I called Art Barfield. Art was not a nationally famous lawyer, nor was he a member of a huge firm. He was well
respected in the south for his old and wealthy family, and well known in Atlanta for his eccentricity. He was in a partnership with two other lawyers, lawyers only a bit more traditional than Art.

His secretary was a straight arrow, and she was not amused to hear me demand to be put straight through to Art. But after she checked with her boss, I heard his booming southern voice, and the dreadful tension that had gripped me eased off a fraction.

“Where are you, honeychild?” Art asked.

“Sarne, Arkansas.”

“My God almighty, what the hell are you doing there?”

I almost smiled. “We had a case here. But there were complications. When we came out of the auto parts store, there was this asshole deputy waiting to arrest Tolliver.” I explained about the open warrants and the broken taillight.

“Hmmm. So, Tolliver is in jail?”

“Yes.” That was way too close to a whine. I gripped the cell phone so tightly my fingers were white.

“You're there all by yourself, darlin'?”

“Yes.”

“That's not good. Of course Tolliver's not wanted in Montana. We got that all cleared up. He couldn't be arrested for a broken taillight, so the cop trumped up something else for some reason.”

That really wasn't the point I'd make if I were defending Tolliver, but I was glad to talk to someone who took Tolliver's innocence for granted.

“Are you going to be able to handle this, sweet thing?” Art's voice was very gentle, but also brisk, as if he expected a quick answer.

“Yes, I'll be fine,” I said, pretty sure I was lying.

“That means you're going to try real hard,” Art translated.

“Yep.”

“Good for you, darlin'. Tell you what, I know a lawyer in Little Rock who can drive up there and steer you through this. Her name is Phyllis Folliette. Write that down, now.”

There was nothing wrong with my memory, but I did write it down, along with the lawyer's phone number.

“I'm calling her as soon as I hang up the phone with you, and she'll be in touch with you right away, or at least very soon.”

“That's good,” I said. “That's real good. Listen, Art? They can't open packages we were sending via UPS, can they?”

“No,” he said. “I guess they'd have to have a warrant to do that.” Then he told me to call him if I needed anything more and hung up.

I was hoping that Bledsoe didn't know what we were doing at the auto parts store; he hadn't gone inside to enquire while I was standing there, and he hadn't asked me. So maybe sending off the hair samples hadn't been the trigger for Tolliver's arrest. Maybe there had been something else.

Harvey Branscom, while not my favorite guy, had seemed like a pretty independent fellow to me, and one who knew his business. Why would he consent to be part of the charade outside the auto parts store? Who could influence him so heavily? He had to know what his deputy was doing.

What was gained by having Tolliver in jail? That was the crucial question. What was the result of his incarceration?

Well, the first thing to pop up in my mind was that we'd have to stay in Sarne longer now. But I couldn't understand
why that would be to anyone's advantage. A wild thought crossed my mind, and I made myself consider it. Could Hollis have become so nuts about me in such a short time that he was willing to frame Tolliver to keep me here? I just couldn't swallow that. Actually, it was somewhat easier to believe a scenario in which Mary Nell sprung the same trap on Tolliver, because the phony warrant and the broken taillight seemed like such desperate and amateurish steps. But it seemed very unlikely that Mary Nell would even know we'd been in trouble in Montana once upon a time, and even if she'd learned about the episode somehow, she wouldn't be able to go on the police computer network and somehow enter a false incident.

I tried to imagine a credible progression of cause and effect, opportunity and motive, sitting in my lonely hotel room. When my mind remained persistently blank, I opened the door to Tolliver's room and went and sat there. The maid had done the beds and put fresh towels out, so there wasn't even a trace of Tolliver in his room, at least to my eyes. For a little while, though, being there made me feel a tad better; but after a bit, I felt foolish, and then I felt like an intruder, so I went back.

There was a knock at the door, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I glanced down at my watch. I'd been sitting there, with my thoughts scurrying around like hamsters in an exercise wheel, for over an hour.

At the door, Hollis said, “I'm sorry.”

“Did you . . . you didn't have anything to do with this, right?”

“No,” he said, not sounding offended. He sounded almost too gentle, the way you sound when you're afraid a dog
might turn on you. “Marv Bledsoe and Jay Hopkins, they used to drink together.”

I remembered the smug look on Jay Hopkins' face, and I felt sure he'd called Marv and told him where to catch hold of us. No wonder he hadn't minded us getting the hair samples. He hadn't believed we'd have time to get them in the mail.

“I've never trusted Jay, or Marv for that matter. Unfortunately, Harvey does, or at least he acts like he does. And the state guys are gone. They went off to check out another teen date murder they think might be related to Teenie's and Dell's. So there's no brakes on Marv, like there ought to be.”

“So, have you seen this warrant?”

“No, not me. I gather there was some problem in Montana while you worked up there, last year?”

“Yeah, but it was all resolved. There's no warrant for Tolliver's arrest. I'd know for sure. And we didn't have a busted light this morning when we got up.”

“Did you see him do it?”

“No, we didn't.”

“If Marv made all this up, he would have some way to stop you,” Hollis said, sitting down heavily on the foot of my bed. He caught my eyes, and said hesitantly, “I thought I better stop by to see how you were doing. I got the impression you depend a lot on your brother.”

“I do,” I said simply. “But I'm going to be okay. I've already called a lawyer in Little Rock. She's going to call me back.”

“That's good,” Hollis said heartily. “You're doing real good.” Again, the encouragement was too overdone.

I was well aware that I wasn't, you know, Miss Stability.
But there's a difference between knowing you have a flaw and seeing other people reacting to it. “You can't hide how weird you are,” was the unspoken message. “You require special handling and careful treatment.” I began to tense up all over again.

“Hollis,” I said, hearing my voice come out as a growl. “You make sure nothing happens to Tolliver in that jail. You hear me?”

I could see his resentment at the implication, but at the moment, that wasn't important to me. What mattered to me was that I see in his face the assurance that nothing could happen to my brother in that jail, that he would be treated fairly and guarded well.

I could not find that in Hollis's expression.

“Hollis, you listen to me,” I said, in the quietest voice I could manage. “I know you love this town and you love the life you have here. But something's going on in Sarne, there's a rotten apple somewhere spoiling things. There's a lot we don't know about these deaths. Someone you know murdered Dell Teague and Teenie Hopkins. Someone you know killed your wife Sally and beat Helen Hopkins to death. And someone you know doesn't want my brother and me to leave, for some reason. Now, we have to find out who that someone is. I came here, and I did my job, and I did it quick and I did it right. Now, Tolliver and I should be able to leave you all to solve your own damn problems.”

“You were beginning to care about me until this happened,” Hollis said, completely to my surprise. It seemed more like the kind of thing men expect women to say; if life were like a sitcom, that would have been my line.

“Yes,” I said. “I was.”

“I know someone is responsible for all the deaths,” he said. “I know that. And I realize it's someone I know. But I can't imagine why. Sally was a good woman, a nice woman, and I loved her.” Hollis was apparently having as hard a time keeping his thoughts on track as I was.

“She knew something,” I said intently. “She knew a secret, a big secret. She died first.”

We thought about that for a second.

“Can you remember anything about her, in the days before she died? Was she excited, upset, worried?”

Hollis looked profoundly depressed. I wanted to touch his hair, stroke it, but I kept my hands locked together in my lap. “She seemed like someone who had a secret,” he said heavily. “She would talk to me about almost anything, but some things about her family and the mess her mother had gotten into—I guess it's not too surprising that she didn't want to talk about their drinking and fighting and their divorce, or her mom's and dad's . . . well . . . infidelities.”

I worked my way through that sentence. “So, she'd be open and honest with you about almost anything except her family,” I said.

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally, firmly. “Anything but her family.”

“Do you think she had a secret because she had just figured something out—like, ‘Oho! Eureka!'—or because her mom or Teenie had confided in her?”

Hollis tried hard to remember, while I tried hard not to be impatient. I was sorry he had to go through even more pain, but I thought it was necessary. Actually, part of me was asking, “Why didn't he do all this before?” Of course, he'd thought his wife had died accidentally. Now that he
knew she'd been murdered, though, surely he'd been turning that time over in his head?

“I think she'd figured out something,” he said. “It's almost impossible to say what was going through someone's mind, you know? And I've been thinking maybe I didn't know Sally as well as I thought I did. If we'd been married longer, trusted each other more, she would have told me what she was worried about, thinking of. We could have worked on it together. We just hadn't been married that long. We hadn't been tested.”

This wasn't getting us anywhere. “Did anything happen right before she died?” I asked, realizing I might sound callous. “Anything that might have triggered her death?”

“Only Dick Teague dying,” Hollis said.

“When did he die?” I asked. I'd seen the newspaper stories, but I hadn't noted the date.

“I think in February. That sounds right,” Hollis said, after a moment's thought. “When Sybil found him, she couldn't cope with cleaning up everything for the funeral, so she hired Helen and Sally to clean the house. Did you know Sybil used to have Helen clean her house, before Helen began drinking so bad and all? Sybil hired Barb Happ after that. I didn't much want Sally cleaning for anyone, but Sally really enjoyed cleaning and she said she might as well do it on her day off from Wal-Mart, not only because she felt sorry for Sybil, but because she wanted some extra money for Christmas. Sally came home that day feeling real concerned about something.”

“But she didn't give you any hints?” I'd been assuming that Sally had discovered her sister's pregnancy, but Sally had died months before the event.