Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris [93]
“And you didn’t even think about investigating her the way you would any other employee?”
“Well,” Lizzie said, clearly uncomfortable, “she and Granddaddy had everything worked out by the time we knew about it. He was sure in his right mind, so we didn’t say anything.”
All the Joyce grandchildren had been scared of the patriarch. “You didn’t have her checked out afterward?”
“Well, he would have known. That was when I should have hired an outside source. I gotta tell you the truth, at the time, I didn’t think too much about it. That was years ago. I was younger, and less confident, and of course, I expected Granddaddy to live forever.” Lizzie stopped short, probably realizing she’d been oversharing. “Well, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your friend. And how’s your brother doing? This whole thing just keeps getting messier and messier.”
“Do you wish you’d never contacted me?”
A moment of silence. “Truthfully, yes, that’s what I wish,” she said. “Seems like a lot of people have died and they didn’t need to. What’s changed? What more do I know? Nothing. My grandfather saw a rattlesnake and died. We don’t know if anyone else was there for sure. He’s still dead. Mariah’s dead, and in my head she’s not resting in peace anymore, now that I know she died in childbirth. Where’s that baby? Is the baby an aunt or uncle of mine? I still don’t know. Maybe I’ll never know.”
“Someone’s sure trying to make sure you don’t,” I said. “Goodbye, Lizzie.” And I hung up.
Manfred stopped in, and I was glad to see him, but I wasn’t in a mood for talking. He asked me about the backpack.
“It’s my sister’s,” I said. “She left it the day she vanished.”
I turned away to answer Tolliver’s call. He’d woken up briefly and asked for a pain pill. He drifted back to sleep before he even took it.
When I came back in the living room, Manfred was withdrawing his hand from the backpack. He looked sad. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Harper.”
“Well, thanks for the kind thought, Manfred, but it happened to my sister. I was just caught up in the aftermath.”
“I’ll see you soon. Don’t worry if I don’t call for a couple of days. I’ve got a job to do.”
“Oh . . . okay, Manfred.” I hadn’t thought about worrying. He gave me a peck on the cheek when he left, and I was glad to shut the door behind him. I sat and thought about my sister.
It was a long night. I finally fell asleep after midnight.
Eighteen
TOLLIVER woke up the next morning feeling much better. He’d slept for twelve hours straight, and when he woke me up he let me know that he was full of energy. We had to be careful, but with me on top, sex was doable. Very doable. An absolute delight, in fact. And I thought the top of his head was going to fly off, he enjoyed it so much. He lay there panting afterward, as if he’d done the work, and I collapsed beside him, laughing in a breathless kind of way.
“Now I feel like myself,” he said. “Somehow it makes you feel even less like a man, when you’re bedridden and then you can’t even stand the physical part of having sex. Reduces you to a kid.”
“Let’s just get in the car and go,” I suggested. “Let’s go to the apartment. We could be in St. Louis in a day. You could ride that long, I bet.”
“What about staying here to visit more with the girls? What about finding out if my father was connected to the Joyces and Cameron?”
“Maybe you were right. Maybe we need to leave the girls to Iona and Hank. They’re stable, in every sense. We travel so much. We’ll never be a constant in their lives. And your dad? He’s going to hell anyway. If we drop all this, it’ll just take him a little longer. We could be free of him.”
Tolliver looked thoughtful. “Come here,” he said, and I put my head on his good shoulder. He didn’t wince, so that was all right. I stroked the part of his chest not covered with a bandage. Looking back on the time between my discovery that I loved him as a man and the time I found out he felt the same and we acted on it, I wondered how I had survived. We were incredibly lucky, and I knew there was a part of