Grave Surprise (7 page)

I sobered immediately. Of course, health insurance is hard to get for people like us, since we don't have what you'd call regular jobs, and the lightning strike was always classified as a pre-existing condition. That meant I couldn't claim coverage for anything that the insurance people could classify as resulting from the lightning strike. We had to pay an outrageous amount for the most basic policy. It made me angry every time I thought about it. I did everything I could to keep healthy.

“Okay, we won't wreck the car or break a bone or get sued,” I said. We did a lot of doctoring on each other for the everyday sprains and cuts, and we'd spent a week in a motel in Montana when Tolliver had had the flu. But the only persistent health issues facing us were my continuing problems from the lightning strike.

You'd think after you'd recovered from the initial effects, that would be it. Most doctors believe that, too. But that's not the truth. I talk to other strike survivors on the Internet. Memory loss, severe headaches, depression, burning sensations in the feet, ringing in the ears, loss of mobility, and a host of other effects can manifest in the years afterward. Whether these are a result of the neuroses of the victims—which is what most doctors say—or a result of the mysterious reaction of the body to an almost unimaginable jolt of electricity…well, opinions vary.

I have my own set of problems, and luckily for me they're pretty consistent.

As far as I know, there is no other strike survivor who has become able to find dead people.

I'd had plenty of time to shower and dress and wonder what we were going to do with our day, when that problem was solved for us. The police came by again, to ask more questions.

Detective Lacey had a chaperone this time, another detective named Brittany Young. Detective Young was in her thirties, and she was a narrow-faced woman with short tousled brown hair and glasses. She had a huge handbag and comfortable shoes, clothes that were no higher-end than Sears, and a gold band on her left hand. She looked around the hotel room curiously, and then she examined me with even more curiosity.

“Do you always travel in this kind of style?” she asked, while Detective Lacey was talking to Tolliver. I sensed they had a plan. Why, gee, what could it be?

“Not hardly,” I said. “We're more Holiday Inn or Motel 6 people. But we had to have the security.”

She nodded, as if she really understood that and didn't think we were pretentious. Detective Brittany Young was establishing a rapport with me. She grinned at me. I grinned back. I'd done this dance before with other partners.

“We really need all the information you can give us,” she said earnestly, still with the smile. “It's very important to our investigation to figure out how the body got here and how you came to find it.”

No shit. I tried not to look like I thought she was an idiot. I said, “Well, I'll be glad to tell you everything I know.
But I believe I covered it all yesterday.” I added more sincerely, “I'm really sorry for the Morgensterns.”

“Would you consider, say, that you and your brother are religious?”

Now she had actually surprised me. “That's a very personal question, and one I can't answer for my brother,” I said.

“But you would describe yourself as Christians?”

“We were raised Christian.” Cameron and I had been, at least; I didn't know what kind of faith education had taken place in the Lang household. Certainly by the time Tolliver's dad had married my mother, religious training for their children had not been a high priority. In fact, toward the end of our life as a family, my mother hardly knew when it was Sunday. While we'd thought of taking Gracie and Mariella to Sunday school—though they were very young—the thought of what the sharp-eyed church ladies might be able to tell about our home life had stopped us.

We tried so hard to stay together. It had all been for nothing.

“Did your parents have some reason to be prejudiced against Jews?”

“What?”
Where had that come from?

“Some Christians don't like Jews,” Brittany Young said, as if that would be news to me. But she was making a huge effort to keep her voice neutral. She didn't want to scare me off from offering her my true opinion, just in case I was a closet anti-Semite.

“I'm aware of that,” I said, as mildly as I could. “But I re
ally don't care what people are.” Then everything clicked. “So the Morgensterns are Jewish?” I said, genuinely surprised. I just hadn't thought about it, but now I recalled seeing one of those special candleholders in their home in Nashville. I might have missed a lot more symbols and signs. I don't know much about Judaism. The few Jewish kids I'd known in high school hadn't been interested in parading their differences in a Bible-belt area.

Detective Young gave me a look that was full of so much skepticism it almost stood and walked by itself.

“Yes,” she said, as if I was funning with her. “As you know, the Morgensterns are Jewish.”

“I guess I was too busy wondering where their child was to think about their religion,” I said. “Probably I had my values backward.”

Okay, maybe I'd overdone the sarcasm, or I was coming off as self-righteous. Detective Young eyed me with scorn. Or, that was the pose she was adopting, to see if it got a rise out of me.

I glanced around for Tolliver, and found that Detective Lacey had maneuvered him over to the other side of the room.

“Hey, Tolliver,” I said. “Detective Young says the Morgensterns are Jewish! Did you know that?”

“I figured they were,” he said, drifting over to us. “One of the men I met at their house in Nashville—I'm not sure you met him, you were talking to Joel—I think his name was Feldman…anyway, Feldman introduced himself as the Morgensterns' rabbi. So I knew they must be Jewish.”

“I don't remember him.” I really didn't. I still didn't get the relevance of the Morgensterns' faith. Then the lightbulb in my brain clicked on. “Oh,” I said, “does that make it worse? That she was buried in a Christian cemetery? The St. Margaret's cemetery was Catholic or Episcopal, right?” All I knew about Jewish burial customs was that Jews were supposed to be buried quicker than Christians traditionally were interred. I didn't know why.

Both the officers looked startled, as if their original baseline for questioning had been completely misinterpreted.

“I would think,” Tolliver said, “that the fact that it really was Tabitha would kind of overwhelm the religious consideration, but maybe not.” He shrugged. “That's more important to some people than others. Are the Morgensterns really religious? Because I've got to say, they've never mentioned anything about Judaism to us. Have they, Harper? Said anything to you?”

“No. All they said to me was, ‘Please find my child.' They never said, ‘Please find my
Jewish
child.'”

Tolliver sat by me on the love seat, and we presented a united front to Young and Lacey.

“Our lawyer is right next door,” I remarked. “Do you think we should call Art in here, Tolliver?”

“Do you feel you need protection?” Detective Lacey asked quickly. “Have you received any unusual messages or phone calls? Do you feel threatened?”

I raised my eyebrows, looked at my brother. “You scared, Tolliver?”

“I don't think I am,” he said, as if he were surprised by
the discovery. “Seriously,” he said to Detective Young, as if we'd just been playing up till then, “Has there been any kind of anti-Semitic demonstration against the Morgensterns? I guess I kind of thought society was past that. I love the South, don't get me wrong; but it does lag behind the times in social developments. I'm sure I could be mistaken.” We waited for her to answer, but she just looked at us, an all-too-familiar expression of deep skepticism on her narrow face. Lacey looked more disgusted than anything else.

“Detectives,” I said, getting tired of the dance, “let me point some things out.” We were on the love seat the Morgensterns had used yesterday, and the two detectives were in the wing chairs we'd occupied. Though Brittany Young was at least ten years younger than Lacey, and a woman, at the moment her expression was identical to his. I took a deep breath. “The Morgensterns hired me after their daughter had been missing for several weeks. Though I'd read the newspaper stories about Tabitha, I'd never met Diane or Joel or any other member of the family. I had no idea they'd call me to work for them. I couldn't have had anything to do with her disappearance, it stands to reason.”

I thought the atmosphere eased a little.

Detective Lacey took the lead. “Who, specifically, called you? Felicia Hart? Or Joel Morgenstern's brother, David? Or maybe Joel's father? None of them will claim responsibility.”

The direct question stopped me short.

“Tolliver?” I never talked to clients directly until we got to the site. Tolliver thought it added to my mystique. I thought it made me very anxious.

“That was a while ago,” Tolliver said. He went into his room, came back with a three-hole binder filled with computer printout pages. He'd been messing around with his computer more in the evenings, I'd noticed, and he'd designed some forms for our little business, Connelly Lang Recoveries. He'd been going back and entering all our past “cases” into the new format. This notebook was labeled “Case Files 2004” and the first page in each file (a green page) was headed “First Contact.”

He scanned the page, refreshing his memory. “Okay. Mr. Morgenstern senior called us, at the request of his wife, Hannah Morgenstern. Mr. Morgenstern…” Tolliver read the page for a couple of minutes, then looked up to tell the cops that the older Mr. Morgenstern had told Tolliver about his missing granddaughter, and had asked Tolliver if he thought his sister could help.

“I explained what Harper does, and he got kind of angry and hung up,” Tolliver said. “Then, the next day, the sister-in-law called.”

“You're saying Felicia Hart called you?”

Tolliver checked the name on the page, quite unnecessarily. “Yes, that's who called me.” He looked blank—deliberately blank. “She said no one else would face the truth, but she was sure that her niece was dead, and she wanted Harper to find Tabitha's body so the family could find some closure.”

“And what did you think of that?”

“I thought she was probably right.”

“In your experience, are families often willing to admit
that they think their missing loved one is dead?” This was addressed to me. Detective Young seemed to be simply curious.

“This may surprise you, but yes. By the time they call me in, quite a few of them are. They have to have reached some kind of realistic place to even think about hiring me; because that's what I do, I find dead people. No point asking me to come if you think your loved one's alive. Call in the tracking dogs or the private detectives, not me.” I lifted my shoulders. “That's common sense.”

I can't say the detectives looked horrified. It would take a lot more than that to horrify a homicide detective, I would think. But they did look just that little bit harder around the eyes.

“Of course,” Tolliver chimed in, “when people's loved ones are missing, most often the family isn't exactly navigating on common sense.”

“Of course,” I echoed, seeing that Tolliver was trying to dilute the bad taste I'd put in their mouths.

“Don't you care?” Detective Young blurted. She leaned forward, her hands clasped, her elbows on her knees, her face intent.

That was a difficult question. “I feel a lot of different ways about finding a body,” I said, trying to be truthful. “I'm always glad to find one I've been looking for, because I've done my job if I locate it.”

“And then you get paid,” said Detective Lacey, an edge to his voice.

“I like getting paid,” I said. “I'm not ashamed of that. I deliver a service for the money. And I give the dead some
relief.” The two detectives looked blank. “They want to be found, you know.”

It seemed so evident to me. But judging by their expressions, it didn't seem so obvious to Lacey and Young.

“You seem so normal, and then you say something just totally nuts,” Young muttered, and her older partner gave her a stare that snapped her into the here-and-now.

“I beg your pardon,” she said formally. “This is a subject I don't believe I've ever discussed with anyone, and it…strikes me as peculiar, I guess.”

“It's not the first time I've heard that, Detective,” I said matter-of-factly.

“No, I guess not.”

“We'll be going now,” said Detective Lacey, running his hand over his short hair in an absent gesture, as if he were polishing a favorite ornament. “Oh, wait, I have one more question.”

Tolliver and I looked up at him. Tolliver put his hand on my shoulder and exerted a slight pressure. But it wasn't necessary; I knew this was the crucial question.

“Have you talked to any family member since you were in Nashville to search for the Morgenstern girl?
Any
phone conversations?”