Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [2]
The Jeep came to a stop at the foot of the gentle slope leading up to the back porch, and two men climbed out and came in.
“Harper, this is the manager of RJ Ranch, Chip Moseley. And this is our brother, Drexell.”
Tolliver and I shook hands with the men.
The manager was rugged, weathered, and skeptical, green eyed and brown haired, and he was as ready to leave as the brother. Both of them were only here because Lizzie wanted them to be. Chip Moseley gave Lizzie a casual kiss on the cheek, and I realized he was her man as well as her manager. That might be awkward.
The brother, Drexell, was the youngest of the Joyces and the most anonymous looking. Lizzie and Katie both had a certain hawk-nosed flamboyance, but Drexell’s round face was still a bit babyish. He didn’t meet my eyes as his sisters had.
I had a niggling feeling that I’d seen both men somewhere before. Since the huge Joyce ranch wasn’t too far from Texarkana, and I’d grown up there, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that I’d met Chip and Drexell—but the last thing I wanted to do was bring up my previous life. I hadn’t always been the mysterious woman who could find bodies because she’d been fried by lightning.
“I’m so glad you could find time to come here,” Lizzie said.
“My sister likes to collect the unusual,” Katie told Tolliver. She definitely had her eye on him.
“Harper is one of a kind,” he said, and he glanced at me. He looked a little amused.
“Well, you better give Lizzie a good show for her money,” Chip said, his weathered, handsome face giving me a big dose of warning. I looked at him more closely. I didn’t want to be seen showing interest in someone else’s honey, but there was something for me in Chip Moseley, something that spoke to my special talent. He was moving and breathing, which normally meant disqualification.
My business is with the dead.
Since Lizzie Joyce had found a website that followed my travels, she apparently hadn’t been able to rest until she thought of a job for me to do. She’d finally decided she wanted to know what had killed her grandfather, who’d been found far away from the main ranch house, collapsed by the side of his Jeep. Rich Joyce had a skull injury, and the presumption was that he’d slipped and fallen when he was getting into or out of his ride; or maybe the Jeep had hit a rock and tossed him sideways, cracking his skull against the Jeep’s frame, though no evidence of such an impact had been found. Anyhow, the Jeep’s ignition had been switched off, and Rich Joyce had been dead, and no one else was within miles; so his death had been attributed to heart failure, and he’d been put in the ground years ago. Since Rich’s only son and his son’s wife had died in a car accident some years before, his three grandchildren had inherited, though not equally. Lizzie was legally in charge of the family’s fortunes now, Tolliver’s research had indicated, but the other two had shares that were slightly less than a third apiece; just enough to keep Lizzie in the driver’s seat. Easy to tell who Rich Joyce had trusted.
I wondered if Rich Joyce had ever known his granddaughter had a streak of mysticism, or maybe simply a love of the unusual. That was why Lizzie had led us to Pioneer Rest Cemetery, and why I was standing waiting for her to give me the go-ahead.
Hardheaded Lizzie wanted value for her money, so she wasn’t going to lead me directly to the grave that was her grandfather’s. She hadn’t even told me the purpose of my search until I’d gotten out of my car thirty minutes before. Of course, I could wander around to read all the headstones until I found one with appropriate dates. There