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sit down and talk to me, so we could work out what to do. I'd call and get someone else. I'd send a message, and she wouldn't respond." Sybil shook her head. "And now it's too late," she said dramatically, able to be insincere now that she was no longer talking about the tragedy of her son. "Poor Helen. But at least she was spared the burial of her daughter. Harvey will catch the one who did it. The son of a bitch'll try to sell something he stole from Helen, or he'll get drunk in a bar and tell some buddy of his. Harvey says that's the way it works."

Sybil Teague herself would never know how things worked, I thought. In some way I had yet to define, she was so far from the truth she wouldn't know it if it bit her in the ass.

Chapter 11

eleven

"WHY aren't you one of those computer hackers?" I asked Tolliver. "Then I could tell you all this, and you'd have some brilliant idea, and you'd hack into the law enforcement system, or the Teagues' home computer, and find out some critical information, and I'd put it to brilliant use."

"You need to stop reading mysteries for a while," Tolliver said, braking gently for one of the town's numerous four-way stops. "Or get a new sidekick."

"Sidekick?"

"Yeah, if you're the brilliant sleuth, I must be the slightly denser but brilliant-in-my-own-useful-way sidekick, right?"

"Yes, Watson."

"More like Sharona," he muttered.

"That'd make me Monk?"

"If the shoe fits."

Actually, that hurt a little bit, the way a joke does when it's just a tad too close to the truth.

"Of course, you're a lot cuter," he said in a judicious voice, and I felt better. A little.

"Listen, did that sound like Helen Hopkins to you, all those things Sybil said?"

"No," he said promptly. "By the way, where are we going?"

"To Helen Hopkins' house. Jay Hopkins wants to meet with us."

"Why?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, it sounded like neither of them really wanted to make the effort to talk to each other, despite the fact that one was the mother of a dead teenager, and the other was the mom of a missing teenager. And those two kids loved each other. But it must have drenched them with a bucket of ice water, finding out Teenie was pregnant."

"Yeah. And evidently, she hadn't told her mom. And Dell hadn't told Sybil, that's for sure. But he had told his little sister. Don't you think that's strange?"

"No. I'd tell you anything before I'd tell my dad or your mother."

I felt warmer immediately. "But those were our circumstances. These two were brought up normal."

"Normal? Helen was an alcoholic, and she divorced her husband because he drank and beat her. Sybil Teague is one of the coldest women I ever met, and if she didn't marry that poor guy to get his money... well, it seems to me that what she loves is one, her son Dell, two, herself, and running a long third, Mary Nell."

"Okay," I said. "Okay." Sometimes Tolliver astonished me, and this was one of those times.

We drove around town, taking in the limited sights and sounds of Sarne. With the weekend over, the town had returned to its own preoccupation with battening down for the winter. The banners were being taken down from the ornamental streetlights. No one was wearing a cute costume. Aunt Sally's had a "Closed for the Winter" sign in the window. The horses and carriages were gone from the square.

Our cell phone rang as we made our way once again to the little house on Freedom Street. I answered it since Tolliver was driving.

"Hello," I said, and a remote voice asked, "Harper?"

"Yes?"

"It's Iona. Tolliver's aunt."

"Iona," I whispered to Tolliver. I put my mouth back to the receiver. "Yes, what do you want?"

"Your sister's run off."

"Which one?"

"Mariella."

Mariella had just turned eleven. Tolliver and I had sent a card, enclosing money. Of course, we hadn't gotten a thank-you of any kind, and when we'd called - okay, I'd called - on the actual day, Iona had told me Mariella was out. I'd been sure I heard her in the background, though.

This seemed horribly like Cameron's history. I made myself say, "Did she run off with someone, or did she just disappear?"

"She ran off with a little boy who's thirteen. Some delinquent named Craig."

"And?"

"We want you to come back and look for her."

I held the phone away to give it the look of incredulous amazement her statement deserved.

"You told her for years