Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [74]
“I’m going to die,” he said. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die tonight.”
Fourteen
IT took at least fifteen minutes for Manfred to completely come out of walking Victoria through her last moments.
“Who did she see?” Tolliver asked.
“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I couldn’t see them.”
“Well, a hell of a lot of good that did us,” Tolliver said, and I put a hand on his shoulder (his good one, let me point out) and squeezed.
“It did a lot of good,” I said. “We know what Victoria was thinking, and we know someone did kill her because of the case, or at least we know that’s what Victoria thought or she wouldn’t have hidden that particular file. She was thinking something might happen to her office, thought someone was after her, so she had already put the other Joyce files in her car to keep them safe. She didn’t believe anyone would hurt her personally, but she called her former boyfriend, Rudy Flemmons, to come watch her back. He didn’t answer, or he didn’t get the message in time, and that’s why he’s all bent out of shape now.”
“We know those things, but they don’t do us any good.” Tolliver was determined to be a butthead.
“Maybe once we look at Mariah’s file, they will.”
Manfred was looking tired, and older. He seemed very alone. I felt a pang of pity for him, and then I had to tell myself not to overdo it. Pity and a vague physical attraction were not enough motivation to imperil my relationship with Tolliver. I knew without a doubt that Manfred needed to find someone else.
I found myself wondering what kind of woman would be good for Manfred, and then I realized the answer had to be Anyone besides me.
By then it was almost five o’clock, and I called room service and asked them to send up some food and some coffee before I reached down to pick up the file. I opened it to the first page, the fact sheet with Mariah’s background information, and read it carefully. Then I passed the fact sheet to Tolliver, and he began studying it. While we looked through the information Victoria had gathered on Mariah, Manfred began reading the Joyce files.
“Mariah Parish wasn’t what she seemed,” I said, which was an understatement.
Tolliver shook his head. “She sure wasn’t. If the Joyces had checked her credentials more closely, they wouldn’t have hired her.”
It wasn’t that Mariah had been deceitful. She’d been an orphan, as she’d said. She’d been taking care of another ill elderly man, Arthur Peaden, before she came to Rich Joyce. She’d done a good job, too, because there were glowing testimonials from Art Peaden’s survivors about how kind Mariah had been, how conscientious, while she was taking care of their father.
She’d also been taking college classes over the computer. Eventually, she’d gotten evenings off to attend classes in person. And in the fullness of time, she’d graduated from college with a degree in economics and business.
Mariah had had her own online trading account, and it had been a busy one. At first, she’d lost some money, but more recently, even in the financial downturns the market had taken recently, she’d held steady. The adult babysitter had been profiting from her job to a degree no one would have imagined.
“Wow,” said Tolliver with some admiration. “She was learning all the tricks of the trade.”
“I guess her ‘client’ talked in front of her, and his friends and family talked in front of her, and she profited by everything she heard.”
“Caregiver by day, stock market trader by night,” Manfred said. “You gotta admire her nerve and determination.”
“And sneakiness,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Isn’t that kind of deceptive?”
“I don’t know,” Tolliver said after a long pause. “Is it? She didn’t say that she was an uneducated, ignorant woman who couldn’t get a better job. She let her employers think so, but that’s the persona she adopted. She was really smart, and she was determined to put that to use the best way she knew how.”
“Smart,” Manfred said. He sounded approving.