Grave Surprise

Page 27

"Do you know why they weren't friends anymore?"
"Clyde made some comment about David's nephew not being Bingham material," Anne said promptly. Maybe there was Sodium Pentothal in the coffee?
"Would you know why he said that? Why he thought Victor wasn't appropriate for Bingham?"
"He'd seen the boy with another young man at a cinema," Anne explained. "He was sure they were, you know, in a relationship. Gay," she elaborated. "Though of course, they're not. Gay. They're sad, is what they are."
If Victor was sad, I didn't think his gayness had much to do with it.
"Of course, that made David angry, and he told Clyde if he ever heard Clyde say anything else about Victor, he'd make sure Clyde never opened his mouth again. Clyde was mad about it, but sorry, too. David had been a friend of his, way back. So, he would have done a favor for David, too, to get him back as a friend."
Had this woman had any illusions about her husband? Surely you needed some?
Anne had found her way back to the original topic like a homing pigeon, when I'd quite lost track of it. "So," she said, "If you're asking me if I'm sure about Felicia, no, I'm not, and I don't want to be judgmental."
I bit my lip, and Tolliver looked off in another direction entirely. I didn't know if Anne was being one of the most judgmental people I'd ever met, or simply realistic, but I had a terrible impulse to laugh.
"Have you completed the funeral arrangements?" Tolliver asked.
"Oh, yes, part of Clyde's belief system was preparation for your funerary rites," she said. "He's got it all written down somewhere. I just have to find the file." She pointed to a file cabinet across the hall in Clyde's home office. "It's in there somewhere. Since he was an anthropology professor, he was really into death rituals, and he put a lot of thought into writing down what he wanted. Most funerals involve a church. And a minister of some kind. At one time, Clyde wanted a gathering of the clan elders with a feast and distribution of his goods."
"The clan elders being?"
"Professors senior to him in the anthropology and sociology departments," Anne said, as if it were quite evident.
"You would have to provide the feast, I take it?"
"Yes, dammit. Excuse me for swearing. And then all his office stuff to give out! As if anyone wanted his old pencils! But that's what he wanted, the last time I heard. Maybe he changed his mind after that. He liked to play around with ideas."
I looked across the hall. The file cabinet and desk sat in disarray with all the drawers pulled open, and files were scattered here and there on the floor. For a crazy moment, I wondered if I should offer to help search for the documents containing Clyde's last funerary wishes, but I decided that was too much. I didn't want to know what Clyde's instructions had been about the final disposition of his body and possessions.
I couldn't think of anything else to ask Anne. I glanced at Tolliver and gave a tiny shrug, to show I was finished. Tolliver thanked her for the cookies and the coffee, and then he said, "Do you know who told your husband that my sister would be a good person to invite for his course?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "I know that."
"Who was it?" I asked, thinking that at least we were getting somewhere.
"Why, it was me," she said simply. "After Felicia met you in Nashville, she talked about you at a party, and I was so interested. She really believed in your powers. So I read about you on-line, and I thought that finally someone would be able to give Clyde some of his own back. He's been teaching that course for two years now, and he just loved exposing all those people as frauds, or at least as less than reliable. It wasn't that Clyde disagreed with their beliefs, either; he just didn't want anyone to be able to do anything different. But you, I knew you were real. I read the articles and I saw some pictures. That day you found the child's body, he was just furious at you. The night he died, he went out once, and then he came back even angrier, and I gathered he'd seen you at your hotel?"
I nodded.
"So then he made a phone call or two on his cell phone, and off he went again," she said drearily. "I went to sleep in my room. And that time, he never came home."
"I'm sorry for your loss," I said after a moment, when I saw she'd said all she wanted to say. But I wasn't sure she wasn't better off without Clyde Nunley.
Anne remained seated while we showed ourselves out. She was looking down at her hands, and all her manic energy seemed to have faded away, leaving her melancholy. She shook her head when I offered to call a neighbor or friend for her. "I need to keep looking through Clyde's papers," she said. "And that Seth Koenig said he was coming over later. The federal agent."
We were both quiet for a few minutes after we got in our car.
"He was mean to her," Tolliver said. "Surely she'll be better off."
"Oh, yeah, Clyde was rat poop," I said. "But she's going to miss him, anyway."
I couldn't see any wonderful future for Anne Nunley, but I would have to put that in the file of issues I couldn't do anything about. As we drove, I mentally constructed a future for the widow in which, at Clyde's funeral, she met a wonderful and kind doctor who had a great weakness for thin, needy women who lived in big comfortable houses. He would help her struggle back to emotional health. They would never have parties.
I felt much better after that.
Chapter eighteen
WE'D learned a lot more about the professor during our strange talk with his widow, but I wasn't sure that what we'd learned would be of much help in narrowing the search for his murderer. Not that I cared a whole lot about who'd killed Nunley--but I did care who'd killed Tabitha.
There was a basketball game I wanted to watch in Texas. I wanted to be free to go to it. I wanted to look for a house in Texas, a house that wasn't too far from where my sisters lived. So I wanted to be free of this situation, both for the sake of the Morgensterns and for my own reasons.
Tolliver was outside tipping the valet as I walked through the Cleveland lobby. I was so lost in thought that I didn't even notice Fred Hart until he called my name.
"Miss Connelly! Miss Connelly!" His heavily southern voice pulled me back into the here and now, though I wasn't happy about it. Maybe the look I gave him wasn't very friendly, because he stopped in his tracks.
"Did you need to see me?" I asked, which was a stupid question, but I had to say something.
"Yes, I'm sorry to disturb you," he said. "Joel and Diane asked me to deliver something to you on behalf of the Find Tabitha Fund."
It took me a few seconds to understand what he was saying, and by that time Tolliver had caught up me and shaken Mr. Hart's hand. Standing in the middle of the lobby didn't seem to be a good place for such a conversation. I suggested Mr. Hart some up to our room with us. He wasn't very enthusiastic about accepting, but he trailed along after us into the elevator.
The close quarters made me aware that Mr. Hart had been lubricating himself with bourbon. I tried not to make a face as the all-too-familiar smell caught at my throat, and I saw Tolliver's face tighten. Tolliver's father had been very fond of bourbon. We both had a great distaste for bourbon.
"I understand that you two met my daughter before," Mr. Hart said. In the mirrored surface of the elevator wall, I stared at a man who seemed to be aging by the minute. Fred Hart was grim and gray.
"Yes," I said. "Tolliver dated her for a while."
I don't know what demon prompted me to add that, but I think I was feeling needled by Fred Hart, by his reluctance to come to our room. I decided that was because he thought there was something distasteful and shoddy about us, and I wanted to get back at him. That was a stupid thing to do.
"Did he now? Felicia is so focused on work..." his voice trailed off. He should have finished the sentence by saying "that I'm glad she found time to go out," or "that she seldom seems to date." Those were the words that would have made sense of the thought. But it was like his heart gave out before he could complete the idea. We both tried hard not to look too startled.
When we finally got into the room, I, for one, was thinking we should maybe call the older man a cab, not let him drive home. I was really concerned. He'd seemed such a nice guy at the Morgensterns' awful luncheon; very serious and sad, true, but also caring and thoughtful. What had happened to Fred Hart?
"Mr. Lang, Miss Connelly," he said ceremoniously, standing in the middle of our little temporary living room, "Joel asked me to give you this." He took an envelope out of his inner jacket pocket and handed it over to me.
I stared at the white envelope for a moment before I opened it. There was no way to do this that wasn't awkward. The envelope contained a check for forty thousand dollars. It was the reward money for finding Tabitha's body. With this money added to what we had in savings, we'd be able to buy a house. My eyes filled with tears. I hadn't wanted to earn it this particular way, but I was glad to have it.
"You're shaken, I can see," Mr. Hart said, sounding pretty shaken himself. "You may not want to accept this, Miss Connelly, but you did the work and you deserve it."
I did want to accept it, and I had every intention of accepting it. I did deserve it. But somehow his words shamed me, and I felt abruptly sick.
To my horror, I saw a tear trail down Fred Hart's cheek.
"Mr. Hart?" I said, in a very small voice. I was not qualified to deal with a weeping man, especially since I didn't know the trigger for his tears.
He sat down heavily in the closest chair, which happened to be one of the wing chairs. Tolliver settled in the other, his face unreadable, and I perched on the edge of the love seat across from them. We had just had a very strange talk with Anne Nunley; now it looked as though we were going to have one with Fred Hart.
Of course, alcohol was playing a major role in opening Fred Hart's emotional conduits.
"How are Joel and Diane?" I asked, another stupid thing to say. I was trying to divert him, since I had no idea what to do.
"Bless them, they're fine," he said. "Diane is such a good girl. It was hard to see him marry again, see someone take Whitney's place. Diane should never have married him. I never should have let Whitney marry him. Out of her league, and I knew it."
"What do you mean? Was he mean to Whitney?"
"Oh, no, he loved her! He was good to her, and he adores Victor, though he doesn't understand him at all. That happens a lot with fathers and sons, though... and fathers and daughters, too."
"You mean Joel didn't understand Tabitha?"
He looked at me with a face that was still wet, but now impatient, too. "No, of course not. No one 'understands' a girl that age, especially the girl herself. No, what I mean is... it doesn't make any difference what I mean."
My heart was pounding fast with anxiety. I felt we were close, so close, to understanding what had happened at the Morgenstern house that spring morning.
"Are you saying Joel molested Tabitha?"
I knew I'd made a terrible mistake the minute his face shut down.
"What a dreadful suggestion. Abominable. I'm sure you see a lot of that kind of thing in your work, but it's not something that's happened in our family, young lady."
I'm not sure what he was referring to when he said "my work," and I'm not sure Fred did, either, but the point was, he now felt entitled to be angry with me, and he was taking full license.
"Something awful did happen in your family, though," I said, as quietly and gently as a snowflake falling.
His face crumpled for a minute, like tissue paper. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes, it did." He heaved himself to his feet. "I have to go."
"You sure you're okay to drive?" Tolliver asked, in the most neutral voice possible.
"Actually, I don't believe I am," Fred admitted, much to my surprise. I don't think I'd ever heard a man admit he was incapable of driving, and I have watched scores of men in many states of being high. They all thought they could manage a car, or a truck, or a boat.
"I'll get him home in his car, you follow us," Tolliver said.
I nodded. I wasn't especially pleased at the prospect of getting the car back out of the hotel garage, but I didn't see anything else we could do. I stored the check in Tolliver's laptop case for safekeeping while Tolliver called downstairs about the cars. We got Mr. Hart up between us, and we went to the elevator. He kept telling us over and over how much he appreciated our help, and how sorry he was he'd spoken to me in an angry way.
I couldn't figure out Victor's grandfather. Finally I stopped trying. It was obvious to me that this man was under a nearly unbearable strain, and the weight of it was crushing him. But why Fred Hart? If our distraught caller had been Joel, I could have understood it better. After all, it was his daughter who was dead, it was his family who was under suspicion, it was his wife who was about to give birth under extremely unhappy circumstances.
With some difficulty, and a little help from the bellboy, we got the older man into the passenger's seat of his car. He was driving his Lexus hybrid, the one like his son-in-law's, and even under the circumstances I could read Tolliver's flush of pleasure at getting to drive the car. I was smiling to myself as I slid into our car, which was very humble in comparison.
Fred had given Tolliver directions, though he was speaking less and less and seemed ready to go to sleep. I followed Tolliver east, again, this time past the Bingham College area to Germantown. We turned so many times I was worried about Tolliver and me escaping from the suburb after we'd deposited Fred at his home.