Charlaine Harris (38 page)

The Morgenstern house was pale brick with dark red shutters and doors, a yard that would be beautiful in the spring, and a curving doublewide driveway that already contained a few shining cars, including a pearly Lexus, a dark red Buick, a green Navigator, and a candy-apple red Mustang. We parked and got out. I don't know about Tolliver, but I felt I was on alien ground. There were Thanksgiving decorations out at some of the homes, and Diane had put a couple of hay bales in the front yard, topping them with pumpkins and squash and cornstalks and other fall paraphernalia.

Maybe, when we have a house, I'll do the same thing,
I thought, and knew right away that was total bullshit. I'd just been trying to tell myself I could live in as nice a place as the Morgensterns and not feel strange and out of place.

Tolliver smiled at me over the top of the car. “You ready?” he asked. “You look great today, you know.”

I was wearing a rust-colored long-sleeved sweater over dark brown corduroys and leather high-heeled boots. I had a dark brown suede jacket on. At the last minute, I'd thought about jewelry and added a plain gold chain. I seldom wear jewelry, but this had seemed a good time to add a little gleam. Tolliver had stretched himself to wear a button-up shirt and khakis. I wondered if he had dressed for Felicia Hart's benefit. He said he didn't want her attentions, didn't understand her…but I wondered.

I went up the sidewalk, picking up my feet with an effort. I felt more like dragging them. As I rang the doorbell, I noticed a sort of decorated plaque hanging by the right side of the door, brass and turquoise and shiny stones combined in a really interesting way, with etched symbols of doves and Stars of David. I thought it looked as though it was a door, and the depth of the case indicated there might be something inside. I raised my eyebrows at Tolliver, who shrugged. He didn't know what it was, either.

Diane answered the door. She wasn't looking good; I guess that was to be expected. Her pregnancy was laying into her hard, giving her large rings under her eyes, and she'd lost all grace, moving heavily and with ponderous deliberation. But she'd fixed a hostess smile on her face, and she said she was happy we'd come. Joel came next, and shook our hands. He looked in my eyes and told me how glad he was to see me.

Even a non–Joel fan like myself could feel a twinge. And yet, I didn't think there was anything behind his personalization of a commonplace greeting; I didn't imagine he wanted to have an affair with me. It was just his way.

“We're in the family room,” Diane said, her voice limp. “It's been the nicest quiet morning, with the telephones turned off and the computers shut down. No one's even watched the television.” Her face crumpled for a moment, then came back with a pleasant social smile. “Come say hello to everyone.”

“Everyone” turned out to be Felicia and her father, Joel's parents, Victor, and Joel's brother, David. Also on hand were a couple of friends of Diane's from Nashville, who'd driven
over for the day. The two women were named Samantha and Esther; they were about Diane's age and extremely well groomed, which made me feel sorry for Diane. There was a little conversation going on, of the low-level and subdued variety. Joel waved a hand to gather everyone's attention.

“For those of you who don't know her yet, this is the woman who found Tabitha,” Joel said, and the faces all went absolutely blank.

This was a very strange reaction, one I hadn't foreseen. I'd never been announced like this. The introduction was odd enough; especially considering the dad of the murder victim was doing the introducing. And it was like I'd done them a great and grand favor, instead of being paid for a service that (as far as I was concerned) had borne fruit months too late. Naturally, when I'd worked for them in Nashville, the Morgensterns had paid me for my time. I had a sudden notion: maybe I should turn down the reward money, or donate it to charity, since I'd taken their money before and not given them back the location of their daughter. I put that away to mull over later, but my initial reaction was “Hell, no.” I never promised anyone I'd find anything; only that if I did, my COD (cause of death) would be accurate. I'd spent days of my time and lots of my energy searching for Tabitha; she just hadn't been there to be found.

I realized another thing as I stood there in the unwanted spotlight. No one in this house knew about the body in the grave in St. Margaret's cemetery; the newest body, that is. They'd been incommunicado all morning, by Diane's own testimony. I opened my mouth to share the news, and then I
shut it. They would find out soon enough. I glanced at Tolliver, and he nodded. He'd arrived at the same point.

The older Morgensterns, who were only in their mid-fifties, rose to their feet and slowly made their way to me. Mrs. Morgenstern was the one needing the help; she had Parkinson's, I could see. Mr. Morgenstern looked as strong as his sons, and his handshake was firm. In fact, if he'd been single and he'd asked me out, I'd have thought about accepting, because Mr. Morgenstern was as good-looking as his sons, too. “We're so grateful that we can finally take care of Tabitha,” Mrs. Morgenstern said. “You've performed a great service for our family. Now that they've learned for sure about their girl, maybe Diane and Joel can welcome the little one to come with a clear mind. My name's Judy, and my husband's name is Ben.”

“This is my brother Tolliver,” I said, in turn, having shaken hands with the couple.

“This is Felicia's dad, Victor's grandfather, Fred Hart,” Ben said. Fred Hart didn't look as hale and hearty as Ben Morgenstern, but again, for a man in his fifties, he looked good: a bit thick around the waist and gray on top, but still a man you'd reckon with. He had a drink in his hand. I was pretty sure it wasn't soda or tea.

“Good to meet you, Fred,” I said, and he shook my hand without comment. Fred Hart's square face was set in an expression I thought must be habitual. He was serious and grim, and his mouth was a compressed flat line that seldom curved in a smile. Of course, he'd lost his daughter to cancer, and he had probably gone through another emotional wringer
when his step-granddaughter had been taken. He took another sip from the glass in his hand, and his gaze returned to his living daughter. Maybe he thought she would vanish, too.

The three grandparents were standing in front of built-in shelves that were clogged with framed family pictures and other memorabilia.

“Look, they still have Tabitha's menorah up,” Judy said, pointing to a candlestick. I did recognize that particular symbol of Judaism. There was another menorah right by Tabitha's, but it was radically different in concept.

“Each kid has their own?” I guessed.

“Some families do that,” Judy said in her gentle voice. She pointed with a trembling hand. “There's Victor's. Of course, his had to be different.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile that said all teenagers were difficult. Victor's menorah was like a little stage or shelf with the eight small candles on it, behind it a little backdrop, a mirror topped with an elaborately worked brass header. If both menorahs hadn't been designed to hold candles, I wouldn't have recognized them as the same religious object.

Fred Hart reached out to point at a picture. His finger was shaking. “My daughter,” he said, and I obediently looked at the snapshot, which was a happy one. A very attractive woman with short auburn hair and big brown eyes had been photographed sitting on a white-painted wrought iron chair in a garden at the height of its beauty, probably in May, I thought. She was holding a baby on her lap that must be Victor, a little boy in a sailor suit. His hair was fiery, too—not too surprising, with both parents being red-headed—and
he was grinning at the camera. I figured he was about two years old, though I'm not good at pegging baby ages. Mr. Hart touched the frame of the photo with a kind of stern tenderness, and then he silently turned away to stand at the window, looking out.

Judy and Ben took me over to meet their other son, Joel's brother, David, a slighter, less magnetic version of his brother. I'd seen David in pictures, but the man in the flesh made little impression. David had the same reddish coloring and blue eyes as Joel, but he was built along sleeker lines and his eyes didn't have the draw of Joel's. David Morgenstern didn't seem particularly glad to meet me. From the distant way he touched my hand instead of actually shaking it, I gathered that he couldn't fathom why Tolliver and I should be invited guests in his brother's home.

I was kind of wondering the same thing, so I didn't blame him for his coolness. Oddly enough, on our previous job we'd also been invited to the client's home for a lunch. But that was hardly the normal procedure. Normally, we were in and out of the town as quickly as we could manage. I didn't like this social fraternizing with clients; it seemed to lead to deeper involvement in their problems, and that meant trouble. I promised myself on the spot that I wouldn't do it again.

Though Fred Hart remained aloof from the little crowd, the older Morgensterns had decided I was in their charge. Since Ben and Judy were persistently dragging me (and Tolliver, too) around the room from guest to guest, there was no way I could dodge the next person on the route.

“This is our son Joel's former sister-in-law, Felicia Hart,” Judy said, and her voice had taken on a distinctly cool tone. “Fred's daughter.”

“Joel's first wife, Whitney, was just a dear,” Ben said, which was one way of saying Whitney's sister was not. There was definitely some bad blood there. I wondered what could have happened to make the older Morgensterns dislike Felicia so heartily.

I said, “We know Felicia,” at the same moment Felicia said, “Of course, I saw Tolliver and Harper the other day at their hotel,” and shook hands with us both with perfect aplomb. But her eyes weren't as neutral as her manner. I hadn't expected her to care about seeing me today, but I had expected her to have a strong reaction when she saw Tolliver. I'd expected that it would be a pleasurable reaction.

I'd have to classify it more as smoldering, or maybe volcanic.

Not “take me in your arms and let's jump into the volcano of love,” but more “let me push you into the molten lava.”

I began a slow burn. What was up with her? Maybe she imagined Tolliver would refer to their past relationship in front of her father, or maybe, like David, she didn't think we belonged at a family gathering (though surely she didn't have that much claim on Joel's present family). If that was the case, shame on her. If Tolliver was good enough to be her bed partner, he was good enough to break bread with her nearest and dearest. But just as I was tensing up and looking for a moment to say something barbed, Tolliver squeezed
my hand. I relaxed. He was sending me a clear message that Felicia was his problem.

After I'd chatted for a brief moment with Diane's friends Esther and Samantha, I tried to find a spot to hole up. Not only were the emotional crosscurrents a little draining, but my leg was hurting. It tingled and felt weak, as though it might decide to give way on a whim.

I found an empty chair right by that of another person who seemed to be feeling like an outsider: Victor, Joel's son by his first marriage. The boy—the young man—was hunched in a chair in a corner, defiantly apart from the rest, and he eyed me with apprehension as I walked over and sank down in the soft chair beside his. Victor gave me a brief look of acknowledgement, then fixed his gaze on his hands.

I was sure that Victor, like me, was remembering our encounter in another living room, in Nashville, and how he'd lost all his restraint and wept on my shoulder. It had made me feel good, actually, to be trusted like that.

For all I knew, Victor was recalling his breakdown with profound regret.

What I
could
be sure of was that Victor thought this gathering sucked. He was trying to get as far away from the grown-ups as he could. He'd had good manners ingrained in his character, and he'd gotten taller and more mature in the past few months—but he was still a teenager; a teenager who would far rather be out with his buds than hanging around with his family on this dismal occasion.

I didn't blame Victor for that, either.

So the room was full of people who didn't particularly
want us there; some of them were pretending to be pleased, some of them weren't. Even our host and hostess were acting sheerly out of an imagined obligation.

I could see their point of view. I could even share it. Yet here we were, with no graceful way to get out of this uncomfortable situation. The only exit laid through a blatantly transparent excuse, such as a sudden illness, a phone call summoning us elsewhere, or something equally lame. I couldn't think of how to arrange such a thing without causing even more unhappiness.

In silence, Victor and I watched Samantha carry a glass of iced tea to Joel, watched him accept it with a pleasant nod, watched the woman's eyes as she stood by him hoping for another crumb of his attention.

Victor looked at me and snorted. “My dad, the babe magnet,” he said derisively, including me in his age bracket so it would be okay to talk to me. Victor didn't sound envious, which I thought would be the case with most teenage boys. He sounded like the babes were the objects of his scorn, right along with his father. Now that he'd overcome his reluctance to speak, he seemed to feel we'd renewed our bond. He leaned closer. Victor said, “You're not Jewish, are you?”