Harper Connelly [3] An Ice Cold Grave

by Charlaine Harris

  “It’s good you came in here now,” Barney said. “Let me tell you what we’ve been talking about.” Barney repeated Rain’s question. “What about it, Len?” he asked.

  “Depends on what we hear from her doctor in Tennessee,” Len Thomason said, considering. “If her doctor there is of the opinion that her death was expectable, not a surprise, no questions to be answered about it, then I think it would be reasonable to assume we didn’t need an autopsy, and that’s what I’ll recommend to the coroner. On the other hand,” he went on, raising both his hands to show us “caution,” “if that doctor isn’t satisfied—and he knew her best—we’ll have to check into it.”

  Dr. Thomason had put it in such a matter-of-fact way that you felt quite sane and reasonable after listening, and you were sure this was the right course. That manner of his must have been invaluable to his practice. It was almost enough to make me ashamed I’d suspected he might have had something to do with the boys’ deaths. Now, as I watched him smile gravely at some question of Rain’s, I could only imagine all over again how easily Len Thomason could persuade a boy to go with him anywhere. Everyone trusts a doctor. There were a hundred things he could have said to induce a young man to go off with him. Right now I couldn’t think of any, but I was sure given time I would.

  Even Barney Simpson, who didn’t seem like the most lighthearted of individuals, perked up around Dr. Thomason. I remembered he’d gone in to talk to Xylda the night before; no, he’d peeked in and gone away. He hadn’t even gone into the room.

  Doak Garland was across the hall, praying with some relatives outside a room with an “Oxygen in Use” sign on the door. Anyone would go with him, too. He was so meek and mild, so pink and polite.

  Why was I even worried about further suspects? Tom Almand had been arrested. The case was closed. It was hard to believe one man could cause so much misery. Even Almand’s own son had died of his evil. There was something about the whole thing that felt—unsealed, uncompleted.

  I was sure that Tom had had an accomplice, a partner in crime.

  Once I admitted this to myself, the idea wouldn’t go away. While Tolliver talked to Barney Simpson, and Rain discussed Manfred’s injury with Dr. Thomason, I picked out the reasons I suspected this. I had them all in my head when I looked up to meet Manfred’s eyes. I felt Manfred connect with me. Suddenly Manfred said, “Mom.”

  Startled, Rain turned to the bed. “What, honey? You feeling okay?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I won’t argue with you about the autopsy if you’ll let Harper touch Grandmother and tell us what she sees.”

  Rain looked from Manfred to me, and I could tell from her compressed lips that she was trying to hide revulsion. She not only hadn’t fully believed in her mother’s talent, she had loathed it. “Oh, Manfred,” she said, really upset, “that won’t be necessary. And I’m sure Harper wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “I’ll know how she died,” I said. “And I’m sure cheaper and less invasive than an autopsy.”

  “Harper,” she said, giving me a face full of disappointment. She struggled with herself for a minute, and I felt sorry for her. Abruptly she swung toward Dr. Thomason. “Would you mind very much, Doctor? If Harper—sees—my mother?”

  “No, not at all,” Dr. Thomason said. “We medical people long ago realized that there’s more to this earth than we see in our practice. If that would bring comfort to your son, and you’re agreeable…” He seemed sincere. But then, a sociopath like the one who’d killed the boys would seem very normal, right? Otherwise, people would have spotted him a long time ago.

  “Have you heard anything about the boy who was taken to Asheville?” I asked.

  “Yes, I have.” Thomason nodded several times. “He’s not talking, not at all. But they don’t think his life is in danger. They think he’ll recover. Most of his silence is psychological, not physical. That is, his tongue and voice box are in working order. Lungs, too. Well. Miss Connelly, the body is at Sweet Rest Funeral Home on Main. I’ll call them after I leave here, and they’ll be expecting you.”

  I inclined my head. I wasn’t looking forward to this, but I did want to know what had taken Xylda into the other world. I owed her that much. And Manfred, too.

  “How long do you think Manfred will need to stay in the hospital?” Rain asked.

  Dr. Thomason, who’d been on the point of leaving the room, turned to give Manfred an assessing look. “If all his vitals stay good, and he doesn’t run any fever or have any other symptoms that scare me, tomorrow should be good,” he said. “How about you, young lady? Your pain better?” he asked me suddenly.

  “I’m doing much better, thank you,” I said. Barney Simpson had been trying to find a break in the conversation to take his leave, and he said “See you later” to everyone in the room and strode out the door.

  Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the shock to his nerves the past week had been, but out of the blue Manfred said, “Well, when’s the wedding?”

  There was instant silence in the room. Dr. Thomason completed his own departure in a hurry, and left Rain looking from the bed to Tolliver and me, almost as astonished as we were.

  I’d known Manfred wouldn’t be happy, but I hadn’t thought he’d be angry. I told myself to bear in mind his many shocks of the past few days. Tolliver said, “We haven’t set a date yet,” which was yet another surprise I hadn’t wanted.

  Now I was mad at everyone. Rain was gaping, Manfred was looking sullen, and Tolliver was really furious.

  “I’m sorry,” Rain said in a brittle voice. “I thought you two were brother and sister. I misunderstood, I guess.”

  I took a deep breath. “We’re no relation, but we spent our teen years in the same house,” I said, trying to keep my voice gentle and level. “Now, I think, Manfred must be tired. We’ll just go over to the funeral home. Sweet Rest, I think the doctor said?”

  “Yes,” Rain said, “I think that was it.” She looked confused, and who could blame her?

  As we strode out of the hospital, Tolliver said, “Don’t let him spook you, Harper.”

  “You think Manfred saying the word ‘wedding’ is going to spook me?” I laughed, but it didn’t sound amused. “I know we’re okay. We don’t need to take any big jumps. We know that. Right?”

  “Right,” he said firmly. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

  I wasn’t in the habit of feeling so sure about that, since I spent a lot of time with surprised dead people. But I was going to let it slide for now.

  This funeral home was one of the one-story brick models, with a parking lot that would fill up way too quickly. I’ve been in hundreds of funeral homes, since lots of people don’t make up their minds until the last minute about asking me in. This would be one of the two-viewing-rooms kind, I was willing to put money on it. After we walked into the lobby, sure enough there were two doors facing us, each with a podium outside with a signing book waiting for mourners. A sign on a stand, the kind with removable white letters that stick into rows of black feltlike material, said that the viewing room on the right contained James O. Burris. The one on the left was empty. There were also rooms to our right and left; one of those would be for the owner. The other would be for a co-owner or assistant, or it would maybe be employed as a small reception room for the bereaved family.

  And here came the funeral director herself, a comfortably round woman in her fifties. She was wearing a neat pantsuit and comfortable shoes, and her hair and makeup were also on the comfortable side.

  “Hello,” she said, with a kind of subdued smile that must be her stock-in-trade. “Are you Ms. Connelly?”

  “I am.”

  “And you’re here to view the remains of Mrs. Bernardo?”

  “I am.”

  “Tolliver Lang,” Tolliver said, and held out his hand.

  “Cleda Humphrey,” she said, and shook it heartily. She led us to the back of the building, down a long central hall. There was a rear door, w
hich she unlocked, and we followed her across a bit of parking lot to a large building in the back, which was really a very nice shed that was brick, to match the main building. “Mrs. Bernardo is back here,” she said, “since she’s not going to be buried here. We keep our temporary visitors in a transition room back here.”

  “Transition room” turned out to be Cleda Humphrey’s comfort-speak for “refrigerator.” She opened a gleaming stainless steel door and a draft of cold air billowed out. In a black plastic bag on a gurney lay Xylda. “She’s still in her hospital gown, with all the tubes and so on still attached until the autopsy decision is made,” the funeral director said.

  Shit, I thought. Tolliver’s face went very rigid. “At least her soul’s gone,” I said, and I could have slapped myself when I realized I’d spoken out loud.

  “Oh,” said the cheerful, motherly woman. “You can see ’em, too.”

  “Yes,” I said, really startled.

  “I thought I might be the only one.”

  “I don’t think there are many of us,” I said. “Does it help in your job?”

  “When they’re gone like they should be,” Cleda said. “If I see one lingering, I try to call in their pastor to read a prayer. Sometimes that does the trick.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” I said faintly. “All right. Let me do my thing.” I closed my eyes, which wasn’t necessary but did help, and to get the best impression possible, I laid my hand on the bag. I could feel the chill flesh under the surface.

  I feel so bad, I’m so tired…. Where’s Manfred? What’s that man doing here? Looking at me. So tired…sleep.

  My eyes flew open to meet the funeral director’s curious blue gaze.

  “Natural death,” I said. It wasn’t murder if someone else just stood there and watched. I’d had no sense of touching, or any other kind of contact. Someone, some man, had watched Xylda in her last moments, but that was hardly surprising. It might have been the doctor or a nurse. There was no way to tell. However, the image I got was chilling—someone calmly and dispassionately watching Xylda die. Not aiding, but not preventing, either.

  “Oh, good,” Cleda said. “Well, I’m sure the family will be glad to know that.”

  I nodded.

  The black bag went back into the transition room.

  In a somber silence, we retraced our steps across the parking lot and through the corridor back to the front doors of the funeral home.

  “I guess you’re braced for a huge amount of business,” Tolliver said. “When the bodies of the—the young men—are released.” I was sure he’d been going to say “victims.”

  “We’re going to be pretty busy, yes, sir,” she said. “One of those boys was my nephew. His mama, my brother’s wife, she can’t hardly get out of bed in the morning. It’d be one thing if someone had grabbed him and killed him—that would be bad enough. But to know he lived for a while, and got hurt so bad, and got used so unnatural, that just kills her.”

  There was no possible response that would be helpful, because I thought she was exactly right. To know your loved one was cut and burned and raped would make the fact of his death much worse, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d always figured my sister Cameron had been raped before she’d been killed, without ever having proof of either. And just imagining it might have happened was pretty damn awful. I thought the act of rape itself was unnatural, regardless of the gender of the victim. But an emotional time like this was no time to debate the issue.

  “We’re really sorry,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Cleda Humphrey said with dignity, and we let ourselves out.

  “She was pretty decent,” Tolliver said as we got into the car. “Probably the most relaxed funeral home person we’ve ever dealt with.”

  That was certainly true. “She seemed to take us pretty much in stride,” I said.

  “Nice change.”

  I nodded.

  Pastor Doak Garland pulled into the parking lot in his modest Chevrolet just as Tolliver was putting the keys in the ignition. He approached the car, so Tolliver turned the key and pressed the window button.

  “Hello again,” Doak said, bending down to look at us.

  “What are you busy doing?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t ask us about our own visit to Sweet Rest.

  “Well, one of the bodies is already being released tomorrow, Jeff McGraw’s, so I’m here to talk to Cleda about the service. I think we’ll need extra traffic control, so I’ve already been to the sheriff’s department, and I think Cleda needs to be prepared for an extra visitation night.”

  “This is going to take it out of you,” Tolliver said. “There are a lot of services coming up.”

  “Well, I wasn’t the minister for all these boys,” Doak said with a gentle smile. “But the whole community will turn out for each funeral, so we’re all in for a hard time. And maybe we should be. How could this happen in our midst, and we knew nothing?”

  That was too big a question for me. “Wouldn’t some of that be due to the former sheriff, Abe, um, Madden?” I said. “Wouldn’t some of that be due to his policy of pretending the boys were runaways instead of missing and in danger? He seemed willing to shoulder his share of the blame at the memorial meeting the other night.”

  Doak Garland looked taken aback. “Maybe we shouldn’t be into pointing fingers,” he said, but he didn’t say it with any force. It was clear he wasn’t thinking about Abe Madden’s role in the terrible drama for the first time. “You really think that had a bearing?” he said.

  “Of course,” I said, surprised. I didn’t know Abe Madden. I didn’t have to be careful of his feelings or his reputation. “If his attitude toward the vanishing boys was really the one I’ve heard described, then of course it had a bearing. Possibly if the investigation had gotten under way quicker, we’d have a few more kids walking around alive.”

  “But will assigning blame make this any easier?” Doak asked rhetorically.

  I decided to take the question literally. “Yes, it will, for everyone but Abe Madden,” I said. “Assigning blame does help people feel better, in a lot of ways. At least in my experience. Plus, if you can correct the behavior that led to the problem, the problem might not repeat itself.” I shrugged. Maybe, maybe not.

  I’ll say this for Doak Garland, he didn’t just whip out a platitude, as some men of the cloth were prone to do. He mulled the idea over. “There’s a lot in that,” he said. “But really, Ms. Connelly, that’s just assigning a scapegoat to bear the sins of all of us.”

  I thought in my turn. “Okay, there’s something to that, too,” I admitted. “But there is blame to be assigned here, and the former sheriff should shoulder at least some of it.”

  “As he did,” Doak Garland said. “In fact, it would be a good idea if I dropped by to see him. He may be thinking the same way you are.”

  I wondered if the pastor was trying to make me feel guilty in turn, but I didn’t. I don’t like to see people get depressed or shunned, but I knew that in my own experience, you had to assume responsibility for your own actions before you could move along with your life.

  We didn’t have any more to say, I felt. I raised my eyebrows at Tolliver, and he said, “Pastor, we’ve got to be going.” Without further conversation, we rolled up our windows and pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Where are we going?” Tolliver asked. “I mean, I can drive around aimlessly, but since there are still patches of ice…”

  “I’m hungry, what about you?” I asked, and that was easy to answer. All the businesses in Doraville appeared to be open now, and people were going about their affairs with an air of relief. I felt relieved, too. We could get out of here just about any time now.

  “What if we just left?” Tolliver said. “We could be on the interstate going in the right direction in an hour. We could find twenty restaurants.”

  I was surely tempted. We were sitting in the parking lot of the McDonald’s again, and I stared at the golden arches, t
rying to feel something besides resignation.

  “We have to return the key,” I said, stalling.

  “Yeah, a five-minute delay.”

  “Will they let us?”

  “‘They’ being the SBI guys? Sandra Rockwell?”

  “Any of the above.”

  “What could they want us for?”

  “We haven’t signed a statement about yesterday.”

  “Yeah, true. We might need to stop by the police station for forty-five minutes and do that. Okay, let’s go get a burger, and then we’ll tie things up.”

  I wanted to leave, really I did, but there was something nagging at me, or maybe two or three things nagging at me. But I kept reminding myself I wasn’t a police officer, and I wasn’t responsible. On the other hand, if I suspected something, I should mention it to someone who’d take me seriously.

  I hardly registered standing in line with Tolliver, whom I had to stop thinking of as my brother. We were way past that now. And I realized that now I could touch him in public. Now he knew how I felt. He felt the same way. I didn’t have to hide it anymore. It was awful how strong the habit of standing away from him, not touching him, not watching him, had become once I was afraid of losing him if he realized that I loved him. Since the ice storm, I could watch him all I wanted, and he would enjoy it.

  “Do you remember us talking yesterday about what Xylda said in Memphis? That in the time of ice, we would be so happy?” I asked him.

  “She did say that. We agreed that Xylda wasn’t a fraud, at least not all of the time.”

  “I think that as she got older, she got closer to the bone,” I said.

  “I don’t know if that daughter of hers will ever believe it.”

  “Rain just wants everything to be normal,” I said. “Maybe if I’d been brought up by Xylda, with all her ups and downs and spiritual moments, I’d be the same way.”

  “I think the way we were brought up was bad enough.”

  He was right about that. Being raised by Xylda would have been a cakewalk compared to living in the trailer in Texarkana.

  I thought again of the sacrifice Chuck Almand had made as I sat alone at our table, waiting for Tolliver to bring our order. I’d gathered the napkins and straws with one hand, transported them, and returned to get the ketchup packets. I stared down at the table, which was clean, and wished I never had to go into another fast-food place in my life, before I returned to the subject of Chuck, niggling at the puzzle of his behavior.