"I do," I said simply. "But I'm going to be okay. I've already called a lawyer in Little Rock. She's going to call me back."
"That's good," Hollis said heartily. "You're doing real good." Again, the encouragement was too overdone.
I was well aware that I wasn't, you know, Miss Stability. But there's a difference between knowing you have a flaw and seeing other people reacting to it. "You can't hide how weird you are," was the unspoken message. "You require special handling and careful treatment." I began to tense up all over again.
"Hollis," I said, hearing my voice come out as a growl. "You make sure nothing happens to Tolliver in that jail. You hear me?"
I could see his resentment at the implication, but at the moment, that wasn't important to me. What mattered to me was that I see in his face the assurance that nothing could happen to my brother in that jail, that he would be treated fairly and guarded well.
I could not find that in Hollis's expression.
"Hollis, you listen to me," I said, in the quietest voice I could manage. "I know you love this town and you love the life you have here. But something's going on in Sarne, there's a rotten apple somewhere spoiling things. There's a lot we don't know about these deaths. Someone you know murdered Dell Teague and Teenie Hopkins. Someone you know killed your wife Sally and beat Helen Hopkins to death. And someone you know doesn't want my brother and me to leave, for some reason. Now, we have to find out who that someone is. I came here, and I did my job, and I did it quick and I did it right. Now, Tolliver and I should be able to leave you all to solve your own damn problems."
"You were beginning to care about me until this happened," Hollis said, completely to my surprise. It seemed more like the kind of thing men expect women to say; if life were like a sitcom, that would have been my line.
"Yes," I said. "I was."
"I know someone is responsible for all the deaths," he said. "I know that. And I realize it's someone I know. But I can't imagine why. Sally was a good woman, a nice woman, and I loved her." Hollis was apparently having as hard a time keeping his thoughts on track as I was.
"She knew something," I said intently. "She knew a secret, a big secret. She died first."
We thought about that for a second.
"Can you remember anything about her, in the days before she died? Was she excited, upset, worried?"
Hollis looked profoundly depressed. I wanted to touch his hair, stroke it, but I kept my hands locked together in my lap. "She seemed like someone who had a secret," he said heavily. "She would talk to me about almost anything, but some things about her family and the mess her mother had gotten into - I guess it's not too surprising that she didn't want to talk about their drinking and fighting and their divorce, or her mom's and dad's... well... infidelities."
I worked my way through that sentence. "So, she'd be open and honest with you about almost anything except her family," I said.
He hesitated. "Yes," he said finally, firmly. "Anything but her family."
"Do you think she had a secret because she had just figured something out - like, 'Oho! Eureka!' - or because her mom or Teenie had confided in her?"
Hollis tried hard to remember, while I tried hard not to be impatient. I was sorry he had to go through even more pain, but I thought it was necessary. Actually, part of me was asking, "Why didn't he do all this before?" Of course, he'd thought his wife had died accidentally. Now that he knew she'd been murdered, though, surely he'd been turning that time over in his head?
"I think she'd figured out something," he said. "It's almost impossible to say what was going through someone's mind, you know? And I've been thinking maybe I didn't know Sally as well as I thought I did. If we'd been married longer, trusted each other more, she would have told me what she was worried about, thinking of. We could have worked on it together. We just hadn't been married that long. We hadn't been tested."
This wasn't getting us anywhere. "Did anything happen right before she died?" I asked, realizing I might sound callous. "Anything that might have triggered her death?"
"Only Dick Teague dying," Hollis said.
"When did he die?" I asked. I'd seen the newspaper stories, but I hadn't noted the date.
"I think in February. That sounds right," Hollis said, after a moment's thought. "When Sybil found him, she couldn't cope with cleaning up everything for the funeral, so she hired Helen and Sally to clean the house. Did you know Sybil used to have Helen clean her house, before Helen began drinking so bad and all? Sybil hired Barb Happ after that. I didn't much want Sally cleaning for anyone, but Sally really enjoyed cleaning and she said she might as well do it on her day off from Wal-Mart, not only because she felt sorry for Sybil, but because she wanted some extra money for Christmas. Sally came home that day feeling real concerned about something."
"But she didn't give you any hints?" I'd been assuming that Sally had discovered her sister's pregnancy, but Sally had died months before the event.
"Of course, I asked her how the job went. She said she cleaned the downstairs while her mom took the upstairs, and that's about all she said. The study was just like it had been when Dick fell over dead, and that made her feel a little funny, she said. But that night, she searched out one of her high school textbooks. The school system discontinued this book, so the students could keep it if they wanted to, and she did. Sally was interested in some things that surprised me."
"What book was it?"
"She had several. I can't even remember now. I only recall it because she seemed so... like she was thinking real hard about something else, and then when Sally found the book, she studied over it for the longest time. That was unusual."
"So, do you think you could remember?"
"Maybe. I'll look this evening, see if I can find it. Seems like I remember it had a red back cover..." Hollis looked distant, as if his eyes were seeing a distant scene, and I guess they were.
The phone rang. I jumped about a foot. "Hello?" I said.
"Ms. Connelly?" It was a woman's voice, heavily southern and somehow really smart.
"Yes."
"This is Phyllis Folliette? With Huff, Moon, and Greene?"
"Right. Oh, good." Hollis was pointing at the door, indicating he needed to leave, and I nodded and waved before returning my attention to the lawyer.
"Okay," she said, and her voice became carefully soothing. "I hear you're in kind of a jam, over in Sarne."
"Yes."
"I just wanted to tell you, I called the sheriff's office and they said your brother wouldn't be arraigned for two more days. I can't bail him out until the judge sets the bail, you understand?"
"Yes, I understand."
"And the judge won't be there until the day after tomorrow."
Okay, I wasn't dumb. "I understand that two days means the day after tomorrow," I said clearly.
"Um. I get that... Sorry if I was talking down," the lawyer apologized. "Occupational hazard."
"Umm."
"So, I'll be there in Sarne, day after tomorrow, to get your brother out of jail," she said. "These charges sound like a bunch of crap, but I'm calling Montana first thing in the morning to get this straightened out. In the meantime, don't do anything rash, and don't worry. Art especially charged me to tell you that. Okay?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Now I'm going to switch you over to our financial office, so you can take care of that part of it."
Everyone wants to be paid, even me - especially me, since I figure at any moment my gift could be taken from me. I want to use it while I have it, and it's really my only marketable skill. It should support me, I figure. It robbed me of a normal life.
After I fixed things with the financial office, I hung up and tried to figure out what I should do next. I packed up Tolliver's stuff and stowed it in my room, then I walked up to the motel office and told horrible old Vernon McCluskey that we wouldn't be using the second room for now. He said he was about ready for me to check out, and I said I had to stay in Sarne a few more days. He couldn't throw me out, not legally - though today I'd had a big hint that the legal system in Sarne wasn't exactly on the up and up. If he did somehow make me leave, I'd just go to the next town, which was in a different county.
While I ran through all these contingencies, I returned to the room. I found myself shaking my hands vigorously in the air like in a children's exercise, to refocus my mind. It was time to eat, and I opened a granola bar. I needed more than that, better food, but I didn't want to go out by myself. It was one thing when I knew Tolliver was waiting for me back at the motel, or that he was somewhere in the same town: it was entirely another thing when Tolliver was locked away in a jail. I wondered what they'd fed him for supper, and when I could see him. I wondered if he had a cellmate. I wondered how ruthless his cellmate was.
The most important person I knew in Sarne, aside from the sheriff, was Sybil Teague. I didn't know if she'd even care, and I doubted she'd help, but I called her anyway.
"My brother's in jail on a trumped-up charge, Sybil," I said, after she'd told me she was glad to hear from me.
"Paul Edwards mentioned that to me this afternoon," Sybil said, in her cool rich-woman's voice. "I'm so sorry for your trouble."
This didn't sound promising. "Tolliver isn't wanted by police anywhere," I said, as calmly as I could.
"I know my brother's the sheriff, but you must realize that I can't interfere with legal matters," Sybil said, and her voice was frosty rather than cool.
"Tolliver is my brother, and your brother's deputy set him up, for reasons best known to himself."
"Which deputy?" Sybil said, and that did surprise me.
"The one named Bledsoe. Some coincidence, right?" I wanted Sybil to confess that she'd sicced the deputy on to me, so I'd know who my enemy was.
"That would be Marv," she said slowly, and now she sounded distinctly unhappy, whether because I'd tried to involve her or for some other reason. "Paul's second cousin. But that doesn't mean anything."
Was everyone involved in this case related?
Sybil wasn't willing to do a thing to help me, and I wasn't even sure I could think of anything concrete for her to do. She wasn't happy, and I definitely got the feeling she didn't think Tolliver was guilty of anything. But she also couldn't or wouldn't intercede with the sheriff. We hung up, equally unhappy with each other.
I thought long and hard. Then I called Mary Nell Teague on her cell phone. She'd given the number to Tolliver, and I'd fished it out of his jacket pocket when I packed up his stuff. She'd drawn a little curlicue under "Nell."
Mary Nell wasn't happy at hearing my voice on the other end of the line.
"Tolliver himself can't call you," I said, "since your uncle Harvey put him in jail." This was not entirely accurate, but I wasn't interested in being fair.
She shrieked and carried on for a full minute while I waited patiently on the other end of the line.
"Of course, he isn't wanted by the police in Montana," she said. "That's just crazy."
Though Mary Nell was just basing her opinion on her sexual attraction to Tolliver rather than any factual basis, it was nice to hear someone so positively on his side. To set the outspoken teenager on the right track, I told her that her mother had refused to help. I didn't put it as bluntly as that, but I made sure the picture got transferred. This would ensure that Sybil's life would be irritating and unpleasant for at least twenty-four hours, which was no more than she deserved. I'm not above being petty.
I called Hollis next, and got no answer. Considering his earlier exit, as if he urgently needed to be somewhere else, I wondered if he'd had to return to patrol. Or maybe he was just being a cowardly rat bastard? Possibly the sheriff had told him to stay away from me if he wanted to keep his job? Hollis probably did want to keep his job badly enough for that. I tried not to blame him, but I was miserable enough to think that it made him a rat bastard, anyway.
I considered my next course of action. The likelihood that I'd break down crying lurked just over the horizon, trembling and shivering. But that would be counterproductive, and there must be something I could do besides sit in the damn hotel room. I could go beat up Bledsoe; and at the moment I felt like I could dig out his liver with my fingernails. But surely there was something more constructive... I considered everything I knew, and then I had it. I called Hollis again and left a message on his machine.
"If you aren't picking up because you don't want to talk to me, that's okay, but know this: I'm going to your house right now, and I'm going to want to search your bookshelves." I was sorry I'd been honorable enough to return his money, since I could have used that as an extra incentive if I'd kept hold of it.
I ran to Hollis's house, since I needed the exercise. It might help keep me calm for a while longer. The leg faltered a couple of times, but didn't give out utterly. There was no truck parked under the carport. I had planned on getting in whether Hollis was home or not, so I didn't care. But I didn't want to be arrested while doing it. Fortunately, the back door was fairly well screened from the neighboring small houses by thick bushes. Since it was a working day, quite possibly the neighbors were gone.
