Grave Secret

by Charlaine Harris

Page 25

  "And he said?"

  "He said that was good news; he'd heard the baby had died and he was glad to know that she had survived. He said I better forget about that night, and I told him I hadn't thought about it in years. He warned me that someone else might come asking questions, and he told me whoever came would be someone who was just trying to create trouble by saying Mariah Parish was still alive. "

  "What did he tell you to do about that?"

  "He told me it would be in my best interest to keep my mouth shut. "

  "But you talked to us anyway. "

  For the first time, Tom Bowden met my eyes. "I'm tired of keeping the secret," he said, and I believed him. "I got divorced from my wife anyway. My practice isn't doing too well, and my whole life hasn't turned out like I thought it would. I date this downward slide from that night. "

  He'd told the truth that time, I was sure. "And what did this man look like?" I asked.

  "He was taller than your friend here"-Dr. Bowden nodded condescendingly toward Manfred-"and a good bit stockier, big muscles and chest. Dark hair, in his forties or fifties. Graying a little. "

  "Visible tattoos?"

  "No, he was wearing a rain jacket," Dr. Bowden said, in the tone of one pointing out the obvious. His attitude was creeping back. Evidently, crying time was over. I tried to think of more questions to ask him before the well dried up. "You really don't know the name of the man who took you out to the ranch house?" I found that hard to believe, in a little town like Clear Creek. I said so.

  He shrugged. "I hadn't been in town that long, and the ranch people keep to themselves. This man said he worked for Mr. Joyce, and he was driving a ranch truck. He may have given me a name, but I don't remember it. It was a stressful evening. Like I said, I suspected he might be Drexell Joyce. But I'd never met Drexell, so I don't know. "

  I'll bet it had been a stressful evening. Especially for Mariah Parish, whose life might have been saved if the ambulance had come for her. . . if anyone had been humane enough to call one.

  I was a little surprised that she hadn't been outright murdered, and the baby along with her. At that time Rich Joyce had still been alive, and maybe the fear of what he'd say and do if his caregiver disappeared in his absence had been the deciding factor. He'd miss Mariah, even if no one else would. And Rich Joyce wouldn't let go if he decided something strange was up.

  Maybe the child had been stowed in someone's home as a bargaining chip of some kind. Maybe one of the ranch hands was raising her. I could make up all kinds of stories in my head, but none of them was more likely than another.

  "Where was Rich Joyce that evening?" Manfred asked.

  "The man just said he was gone," Bowden said. "His truck wasn't there. "

  "He didn't know his caregiver was pregnant? He didn't notice?"

  Bowden shrugged. "That never came up. I don't know what she told Mr. Joyce. Some women just don't show that much, and if she was trying to hide it. . . "

  Manfred and I looked at each other. We didn't have any other questions.

  "Goodbye, Dr. Bowden," I said, standing. He couldn't hide his relief that we were leaving.

  "Are you going to the police?" he asked. "You know, even if they exhume poor Ms. Parish, they won't be able to tell a thing. " He was regretting having talked to us. But he was also relieved. This guy had had a hard time for the past eight years, living inside his own skin. I, for one, was glad of that.

  "I don't know," Manfred said, very thoughtfully. He'd had the same reaction. "We're considering it. If the child came to no harm, it's possible you may keep your license. "

  A horrified Dr. Bowden was staring at us as we went down the hall and out through the waiting room. There were three more patients there, and I felt sorry for them. I wondered what kind of care the doctor would give now that he was definitely on the upset side. He'd had two visits in one day about an event he must have hoped was buried forever; that would be enough to rattle any man, even one made of better stuff than Tom Bowden.

  "That guy is a human sewer," Manfred said when we were in the elevator. He was very angry, his face red with strong emotion.

  "I don't know if he's quite that bad," I said, feeling at least ten years older than my companion. "But he's weak. And he's a joke, based on the standards a doctor ought to uphold. "

  "I wouldn't be so surprised if it was the 1930s," Manfred said, surprising me. "That sounds like a story you'd read in a collection of old ghost stories. The knock on the door in the middle of the night, the stranger who comes to take you to a mysterious patient in a big house, the dying woman, the baby, the secrecy. . . "

  I was goggling at Manfred when the doors opened on the ground floor. That had been exactly what I'd been thinking. "Do you believe what he told us was the truth? If we both think he was telling us a story that sounds incredible, maybe it is. Maybe it was a pack of lies. "

  "I don't think he's a good enough liar," Manfred said. "Though some of what he told us was lies, of course. How has he made it this far? Didn't he know that someday, someone would come asking questions? He has to be at least a little smart because he's a doctor, right? Not everybody can make it through med school. And his license was there on the wall, I read it. I'm going to check up on it. Maybe we need another private eye. "

  "No, not considering what happened to the last one," I snapped, and then felt contrite. "I'm sorry, Manfred. I'm glad you went with me. It's good there was another set of ears listening and another pair of eyes seeing. Did you believe the main outline of his story? You're the psychic. "

  "I did believe him," Manfred said after a perceptible pause. "I went back over it in my head, and I think he was telling us the truth. Not all the truth; he did know who the man who came to get him was, for example. And I don't think the man hid his phone; I think he told the doctor he absolutely couldn't make a phone call, and I think he told him that in a threatening way. A really good threat would be enough to flatten a guy like Dr. Bowden. I also think the guy had warned the doctor what to expect at the house. Doctors don't go out now with big bags, like my grandmother said they did when she was little. I think Dr. Bowden knew to take medication for a woman who'd just had a difficult birth, and something for the baby, too. "

  That made a lot of sense. "You're right. So who do you think came into town to get the doctor? Who made that mysterious drive out to the empty big house? Who took the baby? Whoever took Dr. Bowden to the ranch, he was wearing a wedding ring. "

  "Oh, that's right. Good for you for remembering. Well, we know that Drexell was married for a while, and we know that Chip was, too. Could have been either one, or even someone we haven't met yet. "

  We drove back to the hotel, stopping along the way to eat a fast-food lunch. I got a grilled chicken sandwich and didn't eat the fries. I was trying to eat better; I'd feel better if I did. We didn't talk much over the food. I don't know what Manfred was thinking, but I was trying to trace the niggling feeling I'd had when I'd first seen the Joyce party get out of their trucks at the Pioneer Rest Cemetery. I'd thought I'd seen them before, at least the men. Where would I have seen them? Could they have come by the trailer when we were all living there? There had been so many people in and out. . . and I'd tried so hard to dodge them.

  I had to put that idea on the back burner when we returned to the hotel to find Tolliver in a real (and rare) snit. He'd tried to take a shower, and during the course of covering his shoulder with a plastic bag, he'd banged it against the wall, and it had hurt, and he was angry because I was gone so long with Manfred. He'd ordered lunch from room service, and then he'd had a hard time managing taking the cover off the drink and unrolling his silverware, with one good hand. Tolliver clearly had a grievance, and though I was prepared to coddle him until he was in a better frame of mind, I got into my own snit when he told me that Matth
ew had called to check on him, and when he heard Tolliver's tale, Matthew had said he was coming to visit since I'd left Tolliver all by himself.

  I was mad at Tolliver, and he was mad at me-though I knew this was all because I'd gone on an errand with someone besides him. Normally, Tolliver is not temperamental, and not irritable, and not unreasonable. Today, he was all those things.

  "Oh, Tolliver," I said, my own voice none too loving. "Couldn't you just suck it up until I got back?"

  He glared at me, but I could tell he was already sorry he'd said anything to his dad. It was too late, though. Apparently, McDonald's was being amazingly forgiving in its work schedule, because in just a few moments Matthew was knocking on the door.

  When Matthew came into the living room and walked over to his son while I was still holding the door open, my eyes followed him, and I froze with my hand still on the door. Matthew was the man I'd seen leaving Dr. Bowden's office that morning. He'd been going out the doors across the lobby as we'd been entering. Same clothes, same walk, same set of the shoulders.

  Manfred's eyes followed mine, and his widened. He asked me a silent question. After a moment, I shook my head. There was no point in having a confrontation-at least, my scrambled head couldn't instantly see any advantage.

  If Matthew admitted he'd been there, he'd simply tell us that he was visiting another doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, in the same building, for whatever reason. It would be hard to disprove. But his presence in Tom Bowden's building was more coincidence than I could bite off and chew.

  It had never occurred to me that Matthew's reappearance in his children's lives had anything to do with the Joyces.

  Instead of joining the three men, I went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed. I felt as if someone had just slammed a car door on my legs, when I was only half in. I tried hard to focus on one idea out of the dozens that were suddenly percolating in my head. My whole world had shifted, and regaining my balance in that world was almost impossible.

  Mariah Parish was dead. She had died in childbirth.

  Rich Joyce was dead. He'd been shocked to death, if you could call it that.

  Victoria Flores, whom Lizzie Joyce had hired to investigate Mariah's death, was dead, too.

  Parker Powers, who'd been investigating the case, was dead.

  My stepfather had been to the doctor's office, the doctor who was present when Mariah Parish had died.

  And what else had happened only a couple of months after the mysterious birth of the mysterious baby eight years ago?

  My sister Cameron had vanished.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I closed the toilet lid and sat on the toilet. I didn't turn on the light. I didn't want to see my reflection.

  Matthew was somehow connected to the Joyces, though I had no idea how. And he was also Cameron's stepfather. And as near as I could ascertain, not that long after Mariah Parish's baby had been born, Cameron had disappeared. It had never, ever occurred to me that anyone in our family had anything to do with Cameron's disappearance. When the police had questioned my mother and Matthew, and Mark and Tolliver and me, I had raged at them because they were wasting time that should be spent tracing the real killer or killers.

  I had suspected the boys at our high school, particularly Cameron's last boyfriend, who hadn't taken their breakup with good grace. I'd suspected Laurel and Matthew's druggie friends. I'd suspected a random stranger, any stranger, who'd seen Cameron walking home alone and decided to rob her/rape her/abduct her. I'd suspected the guys who'd sometimes blown wolf whistles at us when we'd been out together. I'd constructed hundreds of scenarios. Some of them were wildly implausible. But they all gave me a possible answer to the terrible mystery of the disappearance of my sister, an answer that didn't involve feeling even more pain from another personal loss.

  I felt a deep conviction that even if I couldn't see the connection, even if it seemed incredible, two such incidents could not happen that close together without there being some kind of connection, not if the same man was involved in both incidents.

  Was I grossly overreacting? I tried to think, though my brain was cloudy with rage. My stepfather knew something about the Joyces. He knew enough to know the name of the doctor who'd "treated" Mariah Parish.

  He knew. And I believed he also knew what had happened to my sister. All these years, he'd kept it from me.

  I felt it in my bones.

  I couldn't go into the living room and grab him by the neck. He was too strong for me. Tolliver wouldn't let me kill his father. Probably even Manfred, who had no personal stake in the matter, would feel obliged to intervene. But Tolliver was weak and injured, and Manfred would leave sooner or later.

  It took all the self-control I could muster to break away from seriously considering how to kill my stepfather.

  For one thing, it would be wrong. Maybe. For another thing, a much more important thing, I didn't know enough. I wanted to find my sister's final resting place. I wanted to be sure I knew what had happened to Cameron.

  To that end, I had to be prepared to tolerate Matthew's presence.

  I worked on it, there alone in the dark. I schooled myself to be strong. And then I got up and turned on the light and washed my face, as if I could wash the new knowledge off of it and return to what had been my happy ignorance.

  I went out into the living room, having to move slowly. I felt I'd been kicked in the ribs-fragile, and sore with the suspicion and loathing I carried inside.

  I could tell immediately that Matthew wanted Manfred to leave so he could talk to his son alone, and Manfred had not wanted to leave until he spoke to me again. He looked from Matthew to me as I came into the room, and he shuddered. Whatever Manfred saw in me, neither Tolliver nor Matthew could see. That was a good thing.