Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [28]
From time to time I looked around me to make sure I wasn’t in anyone’s way, and I saw a woman about my own age looking at me when I raised my head when the spin cycle was almost over.
“Are you that woman?” she asked. “Are you the psychic woman who finds bodies?”
“No,” I said instantly. “I’ve heard that before, but I work at the mall.”
That’s what I always said when I was in an urban area. It had always worked before. There was always a mall, and it provided a reasonable explanation for the questioner to have seen me before.
“Which mall?” the woman asked. She was pretty, even wearing her weekend sloppy clothes, and she was persistent.
“I’m sorry,” I said, with an appropriate smile, “I don’t know you.” I shrugged, which was supposed to mean, I’m sure you’re okay, but I don’t want to discuss my personal information with you anymore.
This gal just didn’t pick up on the cue. “You look just like her,” she said, smiling at me as if that ought to make me happy.
“Okay,” I said, and began pulling clothes out of the washers. I had already appropriated one of the rolling carts.
“If you were her, your brother would be somewhere around,” the woman said. “I’d sure like to meet him; he looks hot.”
“But I’m not her.” I rolled my cart away with everything else thrown in it along with the wet clothes. I had to stay long enough to dry them. I couldn’t leave now. If there was anything in the world I didn’t want to do, it was talk to this woman about my life, my activities, and my Tolliver.
The woman watched me the rest of the time I was in the Laundromat, though she didn’t approach me again, thank God. I pretended to read while our clothes tumbled, I pretended to be absorbed in folding them when they were dry, and I made up my mind that as far as I was concerned, she simply wasn’t there. This technique had worked for me in the past.
By the time I was ready to load the clothes into the car, I figured I’d gotten clean away. But no—here she came, following me out into the parking lot.
“Don’t talk to me again,” I said, shaken and at the end of my rope.
“You are her,” she said with a smug nod of her head.
“Leave me alone,” I said, and got in the car and locked the door. I waited to drive away until after she’d reentered the Laundromat. I hoped that someone had stolen her clothes while she’d come out to look at me some more.
At least now I knew she couldn’t follow me. But I did look into the rearview mirror a few times, just to be sure, which was how I noticed the car that actually was following me. It was hard to be sure, since it was dark by now, but since the area was so urban and well lighted, I was sure I was seeing the same gray Miata in my rearview mirror. I pressed the speed dial number for Tolliver.
“Hey,” he said.
“Someone’s following me.”
“Then come straight back here. I’ll go outside and wait.”
So I did go straight to the motel, and he was standing in an empty spot right outside our room, to make sure it stayed empty. I parked, leaped from the car, and sped into the room while he waited outside.
After a minute, Tolliver called my name. I checked through the peephole. He wasn’t alone.
“It’s okay,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy.
So I opened the door, and he came in with his father in tow.
Crap.
Tolliver turned to face his dad, standing side by side with me.
“What do you want?” he asked Matthew. “Why’d you follow Harper here?”
“I just want to talk to you, son.” Matthew glanced at me, tried to look apologetic. “Alone? This is family stuff, Harper.”
He wanted me to leave my own motel room.
“Not possible,” Tolliver said. He put his arm around me. “This is my family.”
Matthew’s eyes flicked from Tolliver to me, then back again. “I understand,” he said. “Listen, I got to apologize to you. I was a terrible father. I let you down, and I let down Laurel’s kids, too. And worst of all, I let down our children that we had together.”
Tolliver and I stood together silently, our sides touching. I didn’t even need to look up at my brother,