Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [92]
“All right.” The dark feeling grew inside me.
“So she tells me it was her, getting into the truck with her boyfriend, who she wasn’t supposed to be seeing because he was in his twenties.”
“It wasn’t my sister.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was that Missy Klein, and now she brings me Meals on Wheels.”
“You never saw my sister.”
“No, I didn’t. And Missy, she tells me that the backpack was sitting there when she came along and got in his truck.”
I felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me. “Have you told the police?” I said finally.
“No, I don’t go calling the police. I suppose I should have, but—well, they come by to see me every so often, take me back over that day. Peter Gresham, he comes by. I figured I’d tell him the next time he stopped in.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I wish I’d known this before. But thank you for telling me.”
“Well, sure. I thought you’d be mad at me,” she said, which I thought was kind of amazing.
“I’m glad I called. Goodbye,” I said. My voice was as numb as my heart. Any minute now, the feeling would come back. I wanted to be off the phone with this woman when that happened.
Ida Beaumont was saying something else about Meals on Wheels when I clicked my phone shut.
Lizzie Joyce called me then, before I could think through the implications of what I’d just heard. “Oh, my Lord,” she said, “I can’t believe Victoria is dead. You were a friend of hers, right? You-all went way back? Harper, I’m so sorry. What do you think happened to her? You think it had anything to do with looking for the baby?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said, though that wasn’t the truth. I didn’t think Lizzie Joyce had anything to do with Victoria’s murder, but I thought someone close to her was involved. I found myself wondering why she’d called me. Lizzie Joyce, wealthy beyond imagining, didn’t have a BFF to call? Where was the sister, and the boyfriend, and the brother? Why didn’t she call all the people she sat on boards with, the people who worked for her, the people who did her hair and polished her nails when she was going somewhere fancy, the people who set up the barrels for her competition practice?
After I’d listened for a minute, I realized Lizzie wanted to talk to someone she didn’t have to brief, someone who had known Victoria; and I was the person who fit the bill.
“I guess I’m going to the firm of detectives my granddad’s company always uses,” she said. “I thought it would be helpful to talk to a woman out on her own, someone who wasn’t up on our business, not involved in the family saga. But I think I caused her death. If I’d gone to our usual firm, she’d still be alive.”
There was no rebuttal to offer on that. “How come you have a private detective firm on call?” I asked instead.
“Granddaddy started that when he became the head of a big enterprise. More than a rancher. He liked to know who he was hiring, at least for key positions.” Lizzie sounded surprised that I needed to ask.
“So why didn’t he get them to check out Mariah Parish?”
“Granddaddy had met her when she worked for the Peadens, and when he needed someone, and she was free, it seemed like a natural fit. I guess he felt like he knew her and didn’t need to have her investigated. After all, she wasn’t going to be writing checks on our account or anything.”
He wouldn’t have trusted her with his checkbook, but he would trust her to cook his food without poisoning him, and he would trust her to clean his house without stealing his possessions. Even suspicious rich people have their blind side. Given what we’d learned about Mariah from reading her file, I found that ironic.
I hadn’t known that Rich Joyce had actually met Mariah before she moved into his house. Drexell hadn’t mentioned that at our dinner with Victoria. Maybe Rich had seen a good way to sneak a mistress into his house under his kids’ eyes. Maybe his friend who’d first employed Mariah had told Rich he’d been bedding her. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Here’s a good woman who can cook, count your pills, and warm up your sheets, Rich. And she can stay right