Grave Sight Page 0,69

Then I reminded myself she'd lost her brother and her father in a very short period, and I forced myself into a more hospitable mode.

"Would you like some coffee, or a soda?" I asked.

"Sure," she said, going over to the ice chest and pulling out a Coke. I brewed a little pot of coffee from the motel coffeemaker, and poor coffee it was, but it was hot and contained caffeine. I looked at my visitor. Mary Nell's face was bare of makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a very short ponytail. She looked her age, no more. She should be at home working on her English composition paper, or on the phone with one of her friends about last night's date, rather than in a motel room with a woman like me.

"You said you called another lawyer," I said. "Why not Paul Edwards?"

She said suddenly, "I think my mom might marry Mr. Edwards."

"You don't like him?" I was groping around for what to say.

"We get along okay," Mary Nell said. "He's always been around. He and my dad were friends, and my mom always got his opinion on everything. Dell never liked Mr. Edwards much, and they had a big argument before Dell died."

"What was that about?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"I don't know. Dell wouldn't tell me. He'd found out something, and he went to Mr. Edwards to talk about it, but Dell didn't like whatever Mr. Edwards said."

"Something he'd found out about Paul?"

"I don't know if it was about Mr. Edwards, or someone else. Dell just thought Mr. Edwards would be able to help him out with it, give him an answer."

"Oh." None of the letters had been a P or an E, assuming the letters Sally had written referred to a person. Damn, why didn't people just write what they meant? To hell with shorthand.

"I thought you and Dell were so close," I said, which was tactless and stupid. "I'm surprised he didn't tell you what he was mad about."

She gave me an outraged stare. "Well, for brother and sister we were close."

"What does that mean?"

"There's stuff brothers and sisters don't talk about," she said, as if she'd been requested to explain snow to an Eskimo. "I mean, there's stuff you and Tolliver don't talk about, right? Oh, I forgot. You're not really his sister. So you wouldn't know."

Touché.

"Brothers and sisters don't talk about sex, I bet not even when they're grown up," she instructed me. I remembered how shocked she'd been when she'd told me her brother had said Teenie was pregnant. "Brothers and sisters don't talk about which of their friends are doing it, either. But other stuff, that's what they talk about."

"Did you and Scot talk about him coming here to beat me up?" I asked.

She flinched. "What are you talking about?"

So the Sarne grapevine hadn't gotten in gear yet, and she didn't know. "Someone paid Scot to come here and hide in my room last night. He was supposed to beat me up. It was just like the other morning, except this time he was by himself. If Hollis Boxleitner hadn't been with me, I could be in the hospital by now."

"I didn't know," she said, and again I felt guilty. But there's no gentle way to tell someone a tale like that. And I couldn't minimize it any more than I had. "What's happening to our town? We were okay until you came!"

That was a fine turnaround. "Your mother invited me," I reminded her. "All I did was find Teenie's body, like I was supposed to."

"It would have been better if you'd never found her," Nell said childishly, as if I could have predicted this outcome.

"That was my job. She shouldn't have been lying out there in the woods, waiting to be found. I did my job, and it was the right thing to do." I said this as calmly as I could.

"Then why is all this happening?" she asked, like I was supposed to supply her with an answer. "What's going on?"

I shook my head. I had no idea. When I got one, one that would release my brother, I was never going to put foot in Sarne again.

Nell left to go to school, looking stunned and very young.

I stopped in the police station to give a statement about the incident of the night before and ask when I could see Tolliver. I was almost scared to ask the desk clerk, the round woman who'd been there the