An Ice cold Grave Page 0,41

a lot of relatives." The McGraw-Cotton family seemed pretty united. Parker loved his mom, though she'd remarried. She'd stayed loyal to him instead of going all country club with her accession to money. Twyla had said Archie Cotton's adult children were okay with the marriage.

"Nope." Tolliver didn't seem concerned. "We have enough."

I reached up with my good hand to pat him on the shoulder. "Damn straight," I said, with an overly hearty cheer, and he laughed a little.

"Listen, we need to go into town a little early."

"Why?"

"Well, the computer was down at the hospital this morning, and they wanted to check your bill again."

"You mean they let me out without you paying the total?"

"I paid it, but they wanted to be sure there weren't any later charges on it. So they asked me to drop by."

"Okay."

"You due any medicine?"

We checked, and I took a pill. I decided to take the pain medicine with me in my purse. I was able to use the bathroom by myself, but Tolliver had to help me readjust my clothes; and I let him take a swipe at brushing my hair, too. It was very awkward to attempt that one-handed. We managed to camouflage the bandage a little.

Tolliver went down the steps first, and I came down carefully after him. The gust of relatively warm air that blew in my face was a startling change. It was getting dark fast.

"And there's cold air coming down from the north?" I asked.

"Yeah, late tomorrow," he said. "And it'll be this warm here through part of tomorrow. We need to listen to the news on our way into town."

We did, and the weather prediction was discouraging. Temperatures would remain in the upper forties through tomorrow, and by the evening the hot and the cold air would collide with the strong chance of a resultant ice storm. That sounded terrible. I'd only seen such a thing one other time, in my childhood, but I still remembered the trees down across the road in our trailer park, the bitter cold, and the lack of electricity. It had been a long thirty hours before our power came back on then. I wondered if we could drive out of the area likely to be affected before the storm hit.

The hospital lobby was almost deserted, and the girl on duty at the business window was busy closing out her paperwork. She wasn't too happy to see us, though she was polite. She glanced at a yellow Post-it Note stuck to my file and picked up her telephone. Punching in some numbers, she said, "Mr. Simpson? They're here." After hanging up, she said, "Mr. Simpson, the administrator, asked to be notified when you came by. He'll be here in just a minute."

We sat in the padded chairs with the metal legs and stared at the magazines on the low Formica table in front of us. Battered copies of Field and Stream, Parenting, and Better Homes and Gardens were not likely to tempt us, and I closed my eyes and slumped down in my chair. I found myself daydreaming about Christmas trees: white ones with golden ribbon and golden decorations, green ones with red flocked cardinals stuck on the branches, trees covered with big Italian glass ornaments and artificial icicles, dripping with tinsel. It was a shock to open my eyes and see long legs in front of me, legs covered in a dark suiting material. Barney Simpson dropped into a chair opposite us. His hair looked even rougher than it had when he'd come to my hospital room. I wondered if he'd ever tried cream rinse on it, to make it a bit more tameable.

"I have to confess," he began, "I put a flag on your statement so Britta would call me when you came in."

"Why?" Tolliver asked. I sat up and tried not to yawn.

"Because I thought you might bolt without coming to the meeting tonight if I didn't catch you here and remind you to come," Simpson said with every appearance of frankness. "Britta told me the computers had been down when you were checking out this morning, so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity."

"You belong to the same church? Doak Garland's church?"

"Oh, I make an appearance every few Sundays," he said, not a bit abashed by something most southerners would be ashamed to admit. "I have to confess that I don't have a great attendance record. I like to sleep in on Sundays, I'm afraid."

He seemed to expect me