Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [26]
“What happened?” Iona asked. To my astonishment, she didn’t seem angry, only worried.
“My dad showed up at the rink,” Tolliver said, plunging right in. “I don’t know how long he was watching before we knew he was there.” He shrugged. “He wasn’t high; he wasn’t hostile. But the girls were shaken up.”
“We were having a good time until we saw him,” I said, realizing that sounded weak. But it was a point I felt obliged to make.
“We got a letter from him last week,” Hank said. “We didn’t answer him. I never thought he’d do this.”
So they were shouldering their own share of guilt, for not warning us they knew Matthew was out of jail.
Though I was reluctant to lose the advantage, I said, “He’s been out of jail for a while. When we had dinner with Mark, he told us that much. But he didn’t say any more than that Matthew had a job and was straight.”
“Oh, Mark’s in contact with his dad?” Iona frowned and sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. Cautiously, we sat down, too. We were surprised that the Gorhams weren’t throwing us out and blaming us for the whole incident. “That Mark, he’s too tender-hearted where his dad’s concerned,” Iona said.
I secretly agreed. Or maybe not so secretly—Tolliver gave me a look. He could read me almost too easily.
“Could you tell what he wanted?” Iona asked me suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“With your whatever sense?” Iona waved a hand in front of her like she was waving off a gnat.
“I’m not psychic, Iona, or I’d be glad to uncover what Matthew wants. I wish I knew myself. All I can do is find corpses.” Too late, I saw Mariella over Iona’s shoulder. She’d come in from the hall to the bedrooms. Her eyes were open wide. But this couldn’t be too big a shock to her, right? What on earth had Iona and Hank been telling her? She spun and ran out of the kitchen.
Well, that just made the day perfect.
“Well, what is that sense telling you?” Iona was nothing if not persistent.
“Nothing helpful, right at the moment,” I said. “There’s not a dead person around here, if that’s what you’re asking. The nearest corpse is so old it probably predates statehood, and it’s way under the soil of your neighbor’s front yard. Indian, probably. I’d have to get closer to be sure.”
I had finally shut them up. My aunt and uncle simply gaped at me. This was not moving us forward in our discussion. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with Matthew showing up at the rink today,” I reminded them. “Should you get a court order against him? I mean, he doesn’t have any legal rights over the girls anymore, am I right?”
“That’s correct,” Hank said, recovering much more quickly than his wife. “We’ve adopted them. He gave up his rights.”
“And I don’t want to call the police,” Iona said. “We’ve talked to the police enough to last us the rest of our lives.”
“So you want him to show back up again? Scare the girls again?”
“No! But we had enough to do with the police when your sister was taken! We don’t want them coming around here again.”
I understood what it felt like to want to glide below the police radar, though most of the law-enforcement people I’d met had simply been human beings trying to do a tough job with less money than they needed. But I also understood that, aside from Iona and Hank’s revulsion at the prospect of having police cars parked in front of the house again, my sisters were seriously upset. Maybe seeing the police arrive would make the girls fear they were in more danger than Matthew actually represented. After all, he had no reason to harm Mariella and Gracie. Maybe Iona and Hank were right, though for the wrong reason.
“Then there’s nothing else we can do,” Tolliver said, having reached the same conclusion I had. “We’ll be on our way.”
“How long are you going to be in town?” Iona said, sounding a little desperate. “Do you have another job to go to?”
She’d never been anxious for us to stick around before. In fact, she couldn’t get us to leave fast enough, every other time we’d visited.
“We could be here a few more days,” I said, after a glance at Tolliver.