be here in a couple of hours. The local FBI office is sending someone to witness the full autopsy. The Fibbies are offering their lab for the trace stuff. You are not to say anything about this to anyone until we've talked to the family."
I nodded again.
"Good," Tolliver said, just to goose the silence.
Corbett Lacey gave us a steady glare. "We've had to call her parents, and if this isn't her, I don't even like to think about what they'll feel. If you hadn't broadcast her name to the whole group standing there, we could have kept this quiet until we had something solid to tell them. Now, we've had to talk to them because it looks like the damn television will have it on the air soon."
"I'm sorry about that. I just wasn't thinking." I should have kept my mouth shut. He had a good point.
"Why do you even do this, anyway?" He gave me a puzzled face, as if he really couldn't figure me out. I didn't think he was completely sincere, but I was.
"It's always better to know. That's why I do it."
"You seem to make quite a bit of money, too," Corbett Lacey observed.
"I have to make a living, same as anybody else." I wasn't going to act ashamed of that. But, truly, I sometimes wished I worked at Wal-Mart, or Starbucks, and let the dead lie un-found.
"So, I guess Joel and Diane started out right away," Tolliver said. He was right; a change of subject was in order. "It'll take them how long to get here?"
Detective Lacey looked puzzled.
"The Morgensterns. How long a drive is it, Nashville to Memphis?" I said.
He gave us an unreadable look. "Like you didn't know."
Okay, I wasn't getting this at all. "Know... ?" I looked at Tolliver. He shrugged, as bewildered as I was. A possibility occurred to me. "Tell me they're not dead!" I said. I'd liked them, and I didn't often have feelings for clients.
It was Lacey's turn to look uncertain. "You really don't know?"
"We don't understand what you're talking about," Tolliver said. "Just tell us."
"The Morgensterns left Nashville about a year after the little girl was abducted," Lacey said. He ran a hand over his thinning blond hair. "They live here in Memphis now. He manages the Memphis branch of the same accounting firm, and his wife's pregnant again. Maybe you didn't know that he and his first wife were both from Memphis, and since Diane Morgensterns family lives overseas, back here was where they needed to be if they wanted the support of family during the pregnancy and birth."
I suspected my mouth was hanging open, but for the moment I didn't care. I had so many thoughts I couldn't a minute. "It's only a matter of time before they come up to the room and knock on the door."
I should have thought of that already. "This will generate a lot of publicity," I said, and the ambivalence was clear in Tolliver's face, as I'm sure it was in mine.
"You think we need to call Art?" Art Barfield was our attorney, and his firm was based in Atlanta.
"That might be a good idea," I said. "Would you talk to him?"
"Sure." Tolliver pulled out his cell phone and dialed, while I went to the sink to wash my face. After I turned off the water, I could hear him talking. I was combing my hair in the mirror--my hair was almost as dark as Tolliver's--when he hung up.
"His secretary says he's with a client, but he'll call soonest possible. Of course, he'll charge an arm and a leg if we ask him to come. That is, if he can get away."
"He'll come, or he'll recommend someone local. We've only asked him once before, and we're his most... lurid clients," I said practically. "If he doesn't come, we'll be swamped."
Art called us back about an hour later. From Tolliver's end of the conversation, you could tell Art was not too excited about the prospect of leaving home--Art was not young, and he liked his home comforts--but when Tolliver told Art about the reporters gathered at the police station, the lawyer allowed himself to be persuaded to get on a plane right away.
"Corinne'll call you with my plane information," Art said to Tolliver, but I could hear him clearly. Art has one of those carrying voices, which is really useful if you're a trial lawyer.
Art likes publicity almost as much as he loves his remote control and his wife's cooking.