Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [83]
I had to put that idea on the back burner when we returned to the hotel to find Tolliver in a real (and rare) snit. He’d tried to take a shower, and during the course of covering his shoulder with a plastic bag, he’d banged it against the wall, and it had hurt, and he was angry because I was gone so long with Manfred. He’d ordered lunch from room service, and then he’d had a hard time managing taking the cover off the drink and unrolling his silverware, with one good hand. Tolliver clearly had a grievance, and though I was prepared to coddle him until he was in a better frame of mind, I got into my own snit when he told me that Matthew had called to check on him, and when he heard Tolliver’s tale, Matthew had said he was coming to visit since I’d left Tolliver all by himself.
I was mad at Tolliver, and he was mad at me—though I knew this was all because I’d gone on an errand with someone besides him. Normally, Tolliver is not temperamental, and not irritable, and not unreasonable. Today, he was all those things.
“Oh, Tolliver,” I said, my own voice none too loving. “Couldn’t you just suck it up until I got back?”
He glared at me, but I could tell he was already sorry he’d said anything to his dad. It was too late, though. Apparently, McDonald’s was being amazingly forgiving in its work schedule, because in just a few moments Matthew was knocking on the door.
When Matthew came into the living room and walked over to his son while I was still holding the door open, my eyes followed him, and I froze with my hand still on the door. Matthew was the man I’d seen leaving Dr. Bowden’s office that morning. He’d been going out the doors across the lobby as we’d been entering. Same clothes, same walk, same set of the shoulders.
Manfred’s eyes followed mine, and his widened. He asked me a silent question. After a moment, I shook my head. There was no point in having a confrontation—at least, my scrambled head couldn’t instantly see any advantage.
If Matthew admitted he’d been there, he’d simply tell us that he was visiting another doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, in the same building, for whatever reason. It would be hard to disprove. But his presence in Tom Bowden’s building was more coincidence than I could bite off and chew.
It had never occurred to me that Matthew’s reappearance in his children’s lives had anything to do with the Joyces.
Instead of joining the three men, I went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. I felt as if someone had just slammed a car door on my legs, when I was only half in. I tried hard to focus on one idea out of the dozens that were suddenly percolating in my head. My whole world had shifted, and regaining my balance in that world was almost impossible.
Mariah Parish was dead. She had died in childbirth.
Rich Joyce was dead. He’d been shocked to death, if you could call it that.
Victoria Flores, whom Lizzie Joyce had hired to investigate Mariah’s death, was dead, too.
Parker Powers, who’d been investigating the case, was dead.
My stepfather had been to the doctor’s office, the doctor who was present when Mariah Parish had died.
And what else had happened only a couple of months after the mysterious birth of the mysterious baby eight years ago?
My sister Cameron had vanished.
Sixteen
I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I closed the toilet lid and sat on the toilet. I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to see my reflection.
Matthew was somehow connected to the Joyces, though I had no idea how. And he was also Cameron’s stepfather.