Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [107]
Thanks, but no.
“We went to see the Joyces yesterday,” I said. “Chip and Drex were talking about you.”
I wasn’t imagining the alarm that flashed across Matthew’s face then. “Oh, what did they have to say? That’s that rich family, right? On the ranch?”
“You know who they are,” Tolliver said. “You know they came by the trailer.”
Mark looked from his brother to his father. “Those rich guys?” he said. “They’re who you and Harper went to work for last week?”
“We’ve had conversations with quite a few people recently,” I said. “Including Ida, remember her?”
“The old woman who saw your sister getting into a blue truck,” Matthew said.
“Except she didn’t,” I said. “Turns out it wasn’t Cameron.”
The surprise on their faces seemed more or less genuine. That is, they were surprised about something.
“I saw you at the doctor’s office,” I said to Matthew.
He was surprised again. “I went to see a doctor a couple of days ago,” he said cautiously, “about this cough I’ve had since I got out of—”
“Oh, shut up,” I said. “We know you took Mariah’s baby. What we don’t know is what happened to the real Gracie.”
There was a long moment of silence; there seemed to be no air in the cramped living room.
“That’s crazy talk, Tol,” Mark said. “Who’s this Mariah?”
“Dad knows, Mark,” Tolliver said. “Tell us all, Dad, who is the little girl living with Hank and Iona?”
“That little girl,” Matthew said, “is the daughter of Mariah Parish and Chip Moseley.”
This was so not what I’d expected. “Not Rich Joyce and Mariah,” I said, just to be sure I understood.
“Chip told me old Mr. Joyce never had sex with Mariah,” Matthew said. “Chip said the baby was his.”
Mark was looking from speaker to speaker, and he really didn’t seem to know what we were talking about.
“Chip had been buying drugs from me,” Matthew said. “He and Drex liked to come to our part of town to party. Chip was always smart and hard. He’d been raised in foster homes, and he was determined to make a place for himself with the rich people. So he started work for Rich Joyce, started out low, worked his butt off until Rich really depended on him. After his divorce, he gradually got Lizzie interested in him. He knew Mariah; she was in the foster home with him. Chip helped her get the job with the Peadens, and she learned a lot while she was there. Chip made sure Rich got to know the Peadens well enough that he was able to introduce him to Mariah. Then when old Mr. Peaden died, it was natural for Mariah to ask Rich if he had a job for her. He’d had the stroke, and he knew his family wanted him to have someone. It tickled him to have someone as young and pretty as Mariah around, even if he didn’t plan on making any moves on her. She knew his heart was weak. She knew he was fond of her. She just hoped he’d leave her some money. She liked the old man.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“She didn’t plan on getting pregnant, but when she did, she put off doing anything about it until it was too late. She wore loose clothes and overalls and such because she didn’t want the old man to know she was somebody else’s bedmate. And she was afraid he’d find out if she had an abortion. She was tough, but she wasn’t tough enough to do that. Chip went nuts when he found out. She was maybe eight months along by then. He came over to Texarkana to get some dope; he wanted to be numb for a while, not think about it. While he was at my place, Drex called on his cell to say that he was all alone in the house with Mariah, and something had gone wrong. Mariah had had the baby all by herself, but she wouldn’t stop bleeding. And by the time he’d cut the cord and wrapped up the baby—he’d helped deliver calves and foals—she was near dead. Chip bolted out and the next I heard from him was when he called me about taking the kid off his hands.”
“Chip didn’t want her at all.”
“No,” said Matthew. “He didn’t.”
“And you offered to help him out, maybe thinking that someday you might get some money out of the Joyce girls by saying that the baby was their grandfather’s.”
“I know it was pretty low,