Charlaine Harris (39 page)

“No,” I said. That was easy.

“Victor, honey!” Judy Morgenstern called. “Go out to the Buick and get my cane, please.” The boy looked at me intently. I wondered if there was something specific he wanted to say to me. He gave me a dark glance as he heaved himself up out of his chair and strode off to fetch the cane. I thought I might have a little recovery time, but no. To my surprise,
Felicia took his place. I have to admit, I was curious. Not only did I wonder what she wanted to talk about, after her chilly greeting earlier, but also I wanted to discover why Tolliver had ever been attracted to this woman.

At the moment, my brother was talking to David, and he shot me a questioning glance, a little on the concerned side, when Felicia seated herself beside me. But he was too far away to hear our conversation, so I could say what I liked.

“You live here in Memphis, also?” I asked politely. I rubbed my right leg, which was aching, then forced my hand to be still.

“Yes, I have a condo in midtown,” she said. “Of course, you have to have security there. My dad had a cow when I bought in the Towers. ‘It's midtown, you're going to get attacked and mugged!'” She smiled at me in a conspiratorial way, as if the concern of one's parent was a silly thing. “The parking garage is completely enclosed; you can only get in if you have a sticker. And there's no pedestrian walk-in; entrance only through the building. There's a guard at the car exit, twenty-four/seven. It's expensive, but I couldn't live with my father anymore. Way past the age to move away.” Her dad had a fresh drink in his hands; I'd watched him disappear into the kitchen and return with it. He resumed staring out the window. Felicia followed my gaze and flushed.

“You're very security conscious,” I said, to deflect the moment.

“You have to be, when you're by yourself,” she said. “Joel is always trying to get me to move out to east Memphis somewhere.” She shook her head with a smile, inviting me
to share her amusement with Joel's concern. The implication was that she and Joel were close; I got that. “And my dad would like me to move back with him. He lives in this huge house, all alone.” Again, message received; her background was stuffed with money. “But as this family's situation proves, you can be in much more danger in the suburbs than you have to be in midtown, if you take precautions.”

“Of course, they were in Nashville then,” I said.

“Same difference. Everyone feels too safe in the suburbs. They take security for granted.”

Diane, Samantha, and Esther left the room, and I figured they were heading to the kitchen for food preparation. I wondered if I should volunteer, but I decided they'd be much more comfortable with each other if I wasn't there. I turned back to Felicia.

“I'm sure they don't take security for granted anymore,” I said, very quietly, and a shadow crossed Felicia's narrow, elegant face.

“No, not anymore. I'm afraid they'll always be looking over their shoulders, with this baby that's coming. Victor is old enough to take care of himself, at least to some extent. Vic is a typical teenager.” She shook her head, smiling. Typical teenagers, evidently, were stupid. “They think they're immortal.”

“Victor, of all teenagers, should know that's not true.”

Felicia looked abashed. But she plowed ahead with the conversation. “It's strange; Victor's physically healthy as a horse, like I am. His mom—my sister, Whitney—she was
the sickly one in our family. Whitney had all these allergies when we were kids. My parents would have to sit up with her all night, she'd be wheezing and coughing.” Felicia's face looked grim. I wondered what kind of nurturing Felicia had gotten while Whitney's heath crises were front and center in the Hart household. “She got pneumonia when we were in junior high, and mono, and tonsillitis, and when she was in college she had a ruptured appendix, after she'd started dating Joel. I've never been in a hospital.” She looked over at her former brother-in-law. “You should have seen the care Joel took of her. He'd hardly let anyone else in the room during the final stages of her last illness. He wanted her all to himself. Second in hovering was my dad.” She looked across the room at Fred Hart, who'd suddenly decided to talk to Joel. I didn't know what the conversation covered, but Joel was looking politely bored.

“I guess Victor was too young to visit the hospital much.”

“Yeah, we didn't want him to remember Whitney like she looked toward the end. I stayed at their house and took care of Victor. He was so little, so cute.”

“He's a handsome young man,” I said politely.

“I still keep an eye on him for my sister's sake. It's been great, having them here in Memphis. Victor stays with me sometimes if things get too tense at home.”

She was dying for me to ask her why things would be tense at home. Surely, the abduction and disappearance of a little girl was reason enough? “He's lucky to have such a conscientious aunt,” I said, selecting the least weighted of responses.

“I saw your brother a couple of times,” Felicia said suddenly, as though tossing a pebble into a pool to see what happened.

“That's what he told me,” I told her in a completely neutral voice.

She seemed stymied when I didn't continue. After a pause, Felicia said, “I think he took it a bit hard when the distances between us made me think we'd be better off apart.”

I had no response to that, but I was angry, you can bet on it. This was totally not the story Tolliver had told me. So, of course, she was lying.

“It must be difficult to find someone to date, when you're at that in-between age,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed.

“I mean,” I continued, “men are either married, or they're on their first divorce, and they may have kids and all kinds of entanglements.”

“I haven't found that a problem,” she said through clenched teeth. “But I suppose since you travel all the time, it's very hard to meet
eligible
men.”

Oh, ouch—not. If she thought it would bother me to be reminded that I was always in Tolliver's company, she was wrong. Besides, why should I cross swords with this woman? Tolliver was an adult, and he could handle her mixed signals, all on his own.

“Do you know Clyde Nunley?” I said, looking anywhere but at her face.

“Well, we went to Bingham together,” she said, which
gave me a jolt. I'd been so sure she'd say she'd never met him. “He's a couple of years older, but we know each other. Clyde and David are actually fraternity brothers.”

She nodded at David. He looked questioning, and when she smiled at him, he came over, though a bit reluctantly. David Morgenstern would not want to be president of my fan club. But he shook my hand civilly, and when Felicia said, “Harper was asking about Clyde Nunley.”

David rolled his eyes. “What an asshole,” he said. “He was a wild guy in college, lots of fun, but he decided he was the establishment as soon as he became a professor. Smarter than mere mortals, cooler than dry ice. I don't see him socially, but I do catch a glimpse of him at alumni meetings.”

Not any more.

“Look, Diane wants us to come into the dining room,” Felicia said, and I rose to follow the others. David excused himself and went down the hall to a door I assumed was a bathroom's. Tolliver was having a serious talk with the older Morgensterns, but from the few words I caught, he was talking about the Memphis city government. I thought they looked a little relieved, maybe glad not to have to be talking about Tabitha, just for a few minutes. I trailed in the direction Felicia indicated. We were both glad to have an end to our tête-à-tête, I think. I didn't know what Felicia had thought she needed to convey to me, but I'd missed it. “Why'd you ask about Clyde?” Felicia asked suddenly.

“He came to our hotel last night, kind of irate,” I said, after a moment.

She looked astonished. “What on earth about?”

“I don't know,” I said, not wanting to talk about it any longer.

Diane had simply made a buffet out of all the food the neighbors had brought over. She and her two Nashville friends had arranged the dishes on a long counter in the spotless kitchen. There was an eat-in area at one end of the room, and the gray winter sky loomed through the large windows around that table in an unpleasant way. There was also a breakfast bar with high stools forming a right angle to one end of the counter, and I'd passed through a formal dining room. This house was focused on eating.

Some of the dishes were hot, some were cold, and there were a lot of casseroles. Some of the flowers and plants the family had received were arranged in with the food and on the two dining tables, formal and informal. This attractive presentation was a talent of Diane's I hadn't expected. I wondered if her friends had done it all, and then chided myself for not giving her enough credit. I'd never seen the unstressed side of the woman.

While the guests were milling around, I eyed the room. The kitchen was simply beautiful, like something that could be photographed for a magazine. White cabinets, dark marble counters, a center island. Beautiful china stacked at the beginning of the spread, and shining silver. The sinks and appliances gleamed with stainless steel—not a fingerprint in sight. If the Morgensterns had a maid, she was invisible. Maybe Diane was the kind of woman who cleaned when she got upset.

At Diane's urging, Joel's parents went through the line
first, with Diane herself holding Mrs. Morgenstern's plate while the older woman selected what she wanted to eat. Diane got them settled at the table in the formal dining room and told the rest of us to please go ahead. I lined up behind Felicia and David.

As I waited, I watched Fred Hart shake his head when Diane urged him to get in line. Felicia observed the encounter with a curiously blank face, as if she had no emotion left for her father. After a long moment, she went over to him and said something to him in a low voice. He flinched away from her and left the room. As I picked up a plate and silverware, I wondered if I should go out searching for a happy family. Maybe it was my line of work that threw me in the path of so many unhappy ones.

Esther attracted my attention with a little wave of her hand. It was my turn to begin serving myself, and I'd been standing immobile, holding up the line. I gave myself a mental shake.

Some generous soul had brought a thinly sliced roast, but I passed it by, and instead got some broccoli, a fruit casserole baked in some kind of curry sauce, a roll, and a cold three-bean salad. There was the dining table in the dining room, a set of barstools at the kitchen counter, an informal family table, or we could go back in the living room, Diane told us. I got my utensils (rolled up in a bright napkin) and sat at the kitchen counter, since I was spry enough to climb up onto the high stool. When I'd been settled there approximately ten seconds, Esther put a glass of tea by my plate, her bright toothy smile as ferocious as a shark's.
“Unsweetened,” she said. “Okay?” Her voice hinted that it better be.

“Good, thanks,” I said, and she swam away.

To my surprise, Victor sat beside me. I assumed he'd gotten his grandmother's cane and delivered it. His plate was invisible beneath a truly amazing array of food, very little of it involving vegetables, I noted. He had a can of Coke that he popped open with a defiant hiss.

“So, what you do, it's just weird, right?” was his opening conversational gambit.

“Yes, it is.”

Maybe he'd meant to offend me. If so, my matter-of-fact reply took him off base. I was actually glad to get a dose of sincerity.

“So, you travel all the time?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I wish I had a nice house like this.”

He glanced around him contemptuously. He could dismiss the value of a beautiful and cared-for home, since he'd never lacked it. “Yeah, it's okay. But no house is good when you're not happy.”

An interesting and true observation—though in my experience, comfort never hurt whether you were depressed or whether you were cheerful.

“And you're not happy.”

“Not much.”

This was a pretty intense conversation to be having with someone I didn't know at all.

“Because of Tabitha's death?” Since we were being blunt.

“Yeah, and because no one here is happy.”

“Now that she's been found and she can be buried, don't you think things will get better?”

He shook his head doubtfully. He was eating all the while we were having this incredibly doleful conversation. At least he shut his mouth when he chewed. Suddenly I realized I was closer in age to this boy than anyone else in the house, and I knew that was why he'd sought me out.

“Maybe,” he said grudgingly. “But then we gotta get ready for the baby to come, and it'll cry all night. Tabitha did,” he added, almost inaudibly.

“You really were fond of her,” I said.

“Yeah, she was okay. She bugged me. But she was okay.”

“The police gave you a hard time when she was taken.”