Grave Sight Page 0,72

across the cut on my cheekbone detracted from the effect, but I had to use them. I put the blood-spotted jacket and glove in the bathtub to soak in cold water and I got out a black leather jacket.

On the drive to the jail, I caught myself checking my surroundings every few seconds. I tried not to feel ridiculous. No one was going to try to kill me in broad daylight in a busy town, I told myself. But then, I'd thought I'd seen the last of Scot, too; that he was a basically harmless teenage lunk whose punishment I could safely leave to his football coach. Ha.

I'd visited jails before. Being searched and having to let the jailer keep my purse was nothing new or extraordinary. It was far from pleasant, though. The sudden movements I'd made at the cemetery had reawakened the painful bruises from the night before. I was just a mass of misery, and I hated being so needy.

Seeing Tolliver enter the room in an orange jail jumpsuit made my brain flicker. When a jailer ushered him in, I had to cover my mouth with my hand. Two other prisoners entered the room with him (neither of them Scot), and they went to their visitors at their little separate tables. The rules at the Sarne jail were: Keep your hands on the table so they're visible at all times. Do not pass anything to the inmates unless you'd had it cleared with the jailers first. Do not speak loudly or rise suddenly from your chair until the prisoners have left the room.

Tolliver took my hands. We looked at each other. Finally, he said, "You've been hurt."

"Yes," I said.

His face was rigid. "Your face. Did one of them hit you?"

"No, no." I hadn't prepared a story for him. It would be stupid to try to conceal what had happened to me since he'd been in jail. I couldn't think of a lie that would cover everything, not even for Tolliver's peace of mind. "Someone shot at me from the woods," I said flatly. "I wasn't hurt, except for this scratch. I won't go back to the cemetery."

"What's going on in this town?" Tolliver was having a hard time controlling his voice. "What's wrong with these people?"

"Have you seen Scot?" I asked, trying to put a little perkiness in my voice.

"Scot the kid?"

"Yeah."

"They brought someone in last night, someone I haven't seen yet. What's he in for?"

"He was in my motel room when Hollis brought me back last night, and he..."

The expression on Tolliver's face stopped me.

"You have to calm down," I said, very quietly and intently, holding on to his hands as if they were lifelines and I was drowning. Or he was. "You have to. You just have to. You can't get into trouble in here, or they'll keep you. Now you listen, I'm going to be okay. I've called the lawyers, and a lady, Phyllis Folliette, from Little Rock, is coming tomorrow for your arraignment. She's a friend of Art's, so she's good. You'll get out, and we'll be okay." I adjusted my position in the hard chair, suppressing a wince.

"That Scot's a rat bastard," Tolliver said. His voice was misleadingly calm.

"Yeah," I said, and gave a little snort of laughter. "Yeah, that's what he is, all right. But I think someone paid him to be more of a rat bastard than he actually is."

I told Tolliver about the death of Dick Teague, the fact that Sally had been hired to clean the study, the fact that she'd seen something on Dick Teague's desk that had aroused her curiosity or her interest, so much so that she'd come home and consulted her textbook about what she'd noticed. "SO MO DA NO" didn't mean anything to Tolliver, either.

"Maybe an anagram?" he asked.

"I haven't been able to make a word of it, if so," I said. "And those aren't anyone's initials. I tried writing it backwards. I tried assigning numbers. I tried moving the letters one forward in the alphabet, and one backward. I don't think Sally Boxleitner was up to a more complex code than that."

Tolliver thought for a minute. Under my fingers, I felt his pulse, steady and vital.

"And what was on his desk?" Tolliver asked.

"Insurance forms."

"Whose?"

"According to Sybil, he was reviewing the family's medical bills for the year."

"And he really had a heart attack?"

"Yeah, that was what I was checking at the cemetery. He really did. It runs in his family; at least, Dick's