Grave Sight Page 0,5

dotted with stands for selling rocks and crystals - "genuine Ozark crafts" - and all sorts of homemade jellies and jams. All the stands touted some version of the hillbilly theme, a marketing strategy that I found incomprehensible. "We were sure ignorant and toothless and picturesque! Stop to see if we still are!"

I stared into the woods as we drove, into their chilly and brilliant depths. All along the way, I got "hits" of varying intensity.

There are dead people everywhere, of course. The older the death, the less of a buzz I get.

It's hard to describe the feeling - but of course, that's what everyone wants to know, what it feels like to sense a dead person. It's a little like hearing a bee droning inside your head, or maybe the pop of a Geiger counter - a persistent and irregular noise, increasing in strength the closer I get to the body. There's something electric about it, too; I can feel this buzzing all through my body. I guess that's not too surprising.

We passed three cemeteries (one quite small, very old) and one hidden Indian burial site, a mound or barrow that had been reshaped by time until it just resembled another rolling hill. That ancient site signaled very faintly; it was like hearing a cloud of mosquitoes, very far away.

I was tuned in to the forest and the earth by the time Paul Edwards pulled to the shoulder of the road. The woods encroached so nearly that there was hardly room to park the vehicles and still leave room for other cars to pass. I figured Tolliver had to be worried someone would come along too fast and clip the Malibu. But he didn't say anything.

"Tell me what happened," I said to the dark-haired man.

"Can't you just go look? Why do you need to know?" He was suspicious.

"If I have a little knowledge about the circumstances, I can look for her more intelligently," I said.

"Okay. Well. Last spring, Teenie came out here with Mrs. Teague's son, who was also Sheriff Branscom's nephew - Sybil and Harvey are brother and sister. Sybil's son was named Dell. Dell was Teenie's boyfriend, had been for two years, off and on. They were both seventeen. A hunter found Dell's body. He'd been shot, or he'd shot himself. They never found Teenie."

"How was their location discovered?" Tolliver asked, pointing at the patch of ground on which we stood.

"Car parked right where we're parked now. See that half-fallen pine? Supported by two other trees? Makes a good marker to remember the spot by. Dell'd been missing less than four hours when one of the families that live out this way gave Sybil a call about the car. There were folks out searching soon after that, but like I say, it was another few hours before Dell was found. Right after that, it started raining, and it rained for hours. Wiped out the tracking scent, so the bloodhounds weren't any use."

"Why wasn't anyone looking for Teenie?"

"No one knew Teenie was with Dell. Her mom didn't realize Teenie was missing for almost twenty hours, maybe longer. She didn't know about Dell, and she delayed calling the police."

"How long ago was this?"

"Maybe six months ago."

Hmm. Something fishy, here. "How come we're just being called out now?"

"Because half the town thinks that Teenie was killed and buried by Dell, and then he committed suicide. It's making Sybil crazy. Teenie's mom's hard up. Even if she thought of calling you in, she couldn't afford you. Sybil decided to fund this, after she heard about you through Terry, who went to some mayor's conference and talked to the head honcho of some little town in the Arklatex." I glanced over at Tolliver. "El Dorado," he murmured, and I nodded after a second, remembering. Paul Edwards said, "Sybil can't stand the shame of the suspicion. She liked Teenie, no matter how wild the girl was. Sybil really assumed she'd be part of their family some day."

"No Mister Teague?" I asked. "She's a widow, right?"

"Yes, Sybil's a fairly recent widow. She's got a daughter, too, Mary Nell, who's seventeen."

"So why were Teenie and Dell out here?"

He shrugged, with a half smile. "That's a question no one ever asked; I mean, hell, seventeen, in the woods in spring... I guess we all thought it was a little obvious."

"But they parked up by the road." That was what was obvious, but apparently not to Paul Edwards. "Kids wanting to have sex, they're going to hide