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after she'd started chasing the drugs with alcohol. She'd decided I was much older and needed a boyfriend. She picked a doping buddy of hers who was willing to give her free samples for the privilege of being my first "date." Tolliver had gone off to college by then, and I'd had to spend a day locked in my room. I had known that eventually they'd go to sleep and I'd be able to get out of the house, but I was hungry and thirsty and had no access to a bathroom. After that, I kept bottled water and a box of crackers and an old cooking pot in my room.

"Have you lived in Sarne all your life?" Tolliver asked Mary Nell.

She flushed when he spoke directly to her. "Yes," she said. "My dad's parents were born here, too. Dad died just before Dell." I was startled. When Edwards had told me Sybil was a recent widow, I hadn't realized how recent. "Dell, he really missed Dad... . He was closer to Dad than me." She sounded vaguely resentful.

"I want to ask you a question, Mary Nell," I said. "I don't want to upset you any more than I have to, but when you were talking to us the other night, you paused after you said one sentence. You said something like, 'I knew he wouldn't kill Teenie and...' and then you stopped. What were you going to say?"

Mary Nell eyed me. You could tell her feelings were conflicted. "Please tell us, Nell," Tolliver said, and she crumbled when she looked into his dark brown eyes. He'd called her something special.

"Okay," she said, leaning across the table to share her big secret. "Dell told me, the week before he and Teenie... the week before they died, that Teenie was gonna have a baby." Her heavily made-up eyes were as big and round as a raccoon's. The girl was clearly shocked that her brother had been having sex with his girlfriend, and she just as clearly considered the pregnancy top-secret knowledge.

"No one knew?"

"He sure didn't tell my mom. She would've killed him." Then, as she realized what she'd said, Mary Nell turned red as a brick, and tears filled her eyes.

"That's okay," I said hastily, "we know your mom wouldn't really do that."

"Well, Mom never has liked Teenie's mom too much. I don't know why. Miss Helen used to work for us a few years ago, and I thought she was great. Always singing."

And I could tell that she suddenly remembered that Helen Hopkins had been murdered, too. There was a look on her face, a lost look, like she was drowning.

"If I'd killed everyone I didn't like, I'd be able to dress in their scalps," Tolliver said.

Mary Nell gave a startled giggle and covered her mouth with her small hand.

After all this time, could an autopsy establish Teenie's pregnancy?

"Dell didn't tell anyone but you?" I asked.

"No one knew but me," Mary Nell said proudly.

Mary Nell was sure her brother hadn't told anyone about the baby, but what about Teenie? Had she told someone? Her mother, maybe?

Her mother, who was... gee, let me think... dead.

Chapter 6

six

AFTER Tolliver and I had exchanged glances, we steered off the subject quickly. Mary Nell's sad, tearful face had already attracted some attention from the sparse clientele. Her coloring cleared up and her demeanor brightened as she talked about happier topics, addressing her conversation almost exclusively to my brother. Tolliver found out that Nell planned to go to the University of Arkansas the next year, that she wanted to be a physical therapist so she could help people, that she was a cheerleader and didn't like algebra. Her cheerleading sponsor was totally cool.

I was free to think my own thoughts. Mary Nell didn't seem much different from any of the girls I'd known in high school, the girls with sober parents, the girls who had enough money to ward off worry and homelessness. She was bright but not brilliant, virginal but not saintly. The loss of her sibling had left her drifting, searching for a new identity when her old one had been shaken at its core. I could see the knowledge of her brother's secret life with Teenie had disturbed Mary Nell deeply, until that shock had been smothered by the greater trauma of Dell's death. Clearly, sharing her brother's secret had relieved the knot of tension deep inside Mary Nell Teague. It didn't seem to make a difference to Mary Nell that the