Grave Sight Page 0,20

He stomped out of my room into his, which required going outside; no connecting doors in this cut-rate motel.

I heard the television come on in the next room. What had we been quarrelling about? Did Tolliver really want me to sit in my room while he had fun? Did he really want me to turn down every invitation that came my way, in the name of safety?

I was pretty sure the answer, if you asked him, would be yes.

During the night, the phone by Tolliver's bed rang. I could hear it through the thin walls. After a moment, it stopped. I tried to imagine who could know where we were and what we were doing, and in the middle of imagining, I fell back to sleep. I ran the next morning, and in the cold crisp air it felt great. The hot shower felt even better. While I was dressing, Tolliver knocked on my door. After I let him in, I finished buttoning my blouse. I was wearing better clothes since we would be meeting the Ashdown client for the first time. This would be a cemetery job, and I wouldn't have to change. A quick in-and-out.

"The call last night," he said.

"Yeah, who was that?" I'd almost forgotten.

"It was the police in Sarne."

"Who in the police?"

"Harvey Branscom, the sheriff."

I waited, hairbrush in hand.

"We have to go back."

"Not until we do this job. Why, what happened?"

"Last night, someone went into Helen Hopkins' house and beat her to death."

I stared at Tolliver for a minute. I was so used to death that it was hard to produce a normal reaction to news like this.

"Well," I said finally, "I hope it was quick."

"I told them we'd have to finish our business here first, then we'd drive back up there."

"I'm ready." I tucked my blouse in my gray slacks. I pulled on my matching blazer.

"Hey, the jacket matches your eyes," Tolliver said.

"That was my intent," I said dryly. Tolliver always seemed to think that if I looked good, it was a happy accident. The blouse I wore with the gray suit was light green, with a kind of bamboo pattern on it. I put on a gold chain that Tolliver had given me the previous Christmas, and slid into black pumps. I fluffed my hair, checked my makeup, and told Tolliver I was ready. He was wearing a long-sleeved cotton pullover sweater in a dark red. He looked very good in it. I'd given it to him.

We met the client and her lawyer at the designated cemetery, one of those modern ones with flat headstones. They're cheaper, and more convenient for the mower. Though not atmospheric, the "park" look does make for easier walking.

The lawyer, a woman in her sixties, made it clear she thought I was in the business of defrauding the desperate and grief stricken. I was getting a lot of red flags, not only from the lawyer's attitude, but from the twitchiness of the client. Following our standard procedure when I got vibes like those, I endorsed the check and handed it to Tolliver, indicating he should go to the bank while I did the "reading." The situation was showing all the indicators of a bad transaction.

The client, a heavy, peevish woman in her forties, wanted her husband to have died of something more dramatic than a radio falling into his bathtub. (Bathtubs had been big this month. Sometimes I got such a run of one cause of death that it made even me nervous. Last year, I had a streak of accidental drownings - five in a row. Made me scared to go swimming for a couple of months.) Geneva Roller, the client, had her own elaborate conspiracy theory about how the radio came to be in the bathtub. Her theory involved Mr. Roller's first wife and his best friend.

I love it when the location of the body is known. It was a little treat when the client led me directly to her husband's grave. Geneva Roller was a brisk walker, and I could feel the heels of my pumps sinking into the soft dirt. The lawyer was right behind me, as if I'd cut and run unless I was blocked in.

We stopped by a headstone reading Farley Roller. To give Geneva her emotional money's worth, I stepped onto the grave and crouched, my hand resting on the headstone. Farley, I thought, what the hell happened to you? And then I saw it, as I always did. To let Geneva