Grave Surprise Page 0,11

person? Someone I didn't satisfy?" I asked the ceiling.

"We've found everyone since Tabitha," Tolliver said.

Yes, I'd had a long string of successes: cases with enough information to go on and enough persistence on my part. Bodies found, causes of death confirmed. Money in the bank.

"Maybe someone connected with the college who wanted to check on what the class was being exposed to?" I guessed.

"Could be. Or someone connected with St. Margaret's, who felt the cemetery was being used in some irreligious way."

We both fell silent, puzzled and unhappy about too many things at once.

"I'm glad I found her, though," I said. "No matter what."

My brother, who had followed my thoughts as he often did, said, "Yeah."

"Nice people," I said.

"You never thought what the police suspected--?"

"No," I said. "I never believed Joel did it. These days, everyone looks at the dad first. Did he molest her?" I did my television announcer voice. "Were there dark secrets in the house that seemed so normal?" I smiled with a twist of my mouth. People sure loved believing there were dark secrets--they love discovering happy normal families are anything but. Truly, sometimes there were plenty of secrets, more than enough to go around. But Joel and Diane Morgenstern had struck me as truly devoted parents, and I'd seen enough of the kind of parents who weren't to recognize the ones who were.

"I never believed it," I repeated. "But--here they are. In Memphis." We looked at each other. "How the hell could it have happened that her body turned up here, the city where her parents are living now? Unless there's a connection."

There was a tap at our suite door.

"The troops are here," Tolliver said.

"Well. The troop."

Art was missing a lot of his hair. What remained was curly and white. He was very heavy, but he dressed very well.

So he looked like an eminently respectable, sweet-natured grandpa--which just goes to show how deceptive appreances can be.

Art maintains the fiction that he is my father substitute.

"Harper!" he cried, throwing open his arms. I stepped in, gave him a light hug, and backed away when I could. Tolliver got a clap on the shoulder and a handshake.

We asked about his wife, and he told us what (but not how) Johanna was doing: taking art classes, keeping the grandchildren, remaining active in their church and several charities.

Not that we'd ever met Johanna.

I watched Art grope, trying to think of someone he could ask us about in return. He could hardly ask about our parents: my mother had died the previous year, in jail, of AIDS. Tolliver's mother had died years ago, of breast cancer, before we'd even met Art. Tolliver's dad, my stepfather, was in the wind since he'd gotten out of jail, having served his time on drug charges. My own father was still in big-boy prison, and would be for maybe five more years. He'd taken some money from his clients to support the drug habit he and my mother had developed. We never saw our little half sisters, Gracie and Mariella, because my Aunt Iona, my mom's sister, had poisoned the girls against us. Tolliver's brother, Mark, had his own life, and didn't much approve of ours, but we called him at least once a month.

And of course, there was never any news about Cameron.

"It's great to see you two looking so healthy," Art said in his heartiest voice. "Now, let's order some room service, and you can tell me all about this." Art loved it when we ate together. Not only did it make the meal billable, but it also reassured Art that Tolliver and I were normal people and not some kind of vampires. After all, we ate and drank like the rest of the world.

"It should be up in a minute," Tolliver said, and Art had to go on and on about how amazed he was that Tolliver had been so farseeing.

Actually, I was pretty impressed myself.

Art made notes throughout the meal as we told him everything we remembered about our previous search for Tabitha Morgenstern. My brother got out his laptop and checked our records to be sure of how much the Morgensterns had paid us for our fruitless search. We assured Art that we had no intention of charging them anything for finding her today--in fact, the idea made me sick. Art looked kind of relieved when I told him that.

"There's no way we can leave here without seeing the Morgensterns or talking to the police?" I asked, knowing I