WE turned on the television in the living room of the suite to watch Art meet the news cameras. There were three stations in Memphis, and all three had sent representatives to the press conference, which was held on the sidewalk outside the Cleveland. By that time, the Morgenstern family lawyer, a chic fortyish woman named Blythe Benson, had arrived on the scene. Joel and Diane had told us that Benson had insisted on the Morgenstern family issuing their own separate-but-equal statement. The local lawyer and Art made an impressive duo. Art had that older-man gravitas thing going, and Blythe was cool and blond and WASP-y to the nth degree.
Blythe had consulted with the Morgensterns at their home about what she was going to say on their behalf, Diane told us. Felicia shot me a glance as Diane said this, and I wondered what was coming. Felicia Hart, as I’ve said, seemed way smarter than Diane. It made me wonder what Felicia’s sister, Joel’s first wife, had been like.
Downstairs and outside, Blythe Benson prepared to make the first statement. The family was most important, we had all agreed.
“Diane and Joel Morgenstern are devastated at the news that the body that may be that of their child, Tabitha, has been found in St. Margaret’s cemetery. Though closure is something they have sought for many months, Diane and Joel Morgenstern had hoped that closure would come with the return of their living daughter. Instead, they have recovered what may well be her body.” The blonde lawyer paused for effect. The newscasters were fairly quivering with the desire to ask questions, but Blythe plowed on. “The Morgenstern family would like to urge anyone who may have knowledge of the disappearance of Tabitha to come forward at this time. Though the reward for the discovery of her body is most likely out of consideration now, there is still a reward standing for the submission of facts about Tabitha’s abduction.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I hadn’t known there was a reward, since we hadn’t maintained contact with the Morgensterns (naturally) after our failure to locate their daughter in Nashville.
Thinking that was the end of the statement, I’d turned to look at Tolliver to get his reaction when I heard Blythe Benson’s precise voice continue. I looked back at the screen.
“As to what police have termed an ‘amazing coincidence’—that the psychic Diane and Joel Morgenstern hired to find Tabitha’s body actually did find the body, though in a different location…”
She’s losing control of that sentence, I thought.
“The fact remains that there are coincidences in life, and this is one of them. Diane and Joel Morgenstern did not hire Harper Connelly to come to Memphis. They have not seen her or her manager since Miss Connelly arrived in Memphis. They did not know that Miss Connelly was scheduled to give a demonstration at the old cemetery of St. Margaret’s this morning. Neither of the Morgensterns attended Bingham College. Neither has ever been connected with the college department that arranged Harper Connelly’s visit to St. Margaret’s cemetery. In fact, no member of the Morgenstern family has contacted Harper Connelly or her brother and manager, Tolliver Lang, since her unsuccessful attempt to find Tabitha over eighteen months ago. Thank you.”
Though Art hadn’t moved physically, the cameras caught him staring at Blythe Benson as though she’d just sprouted horns, and I didn’t blame him for the look.
Just for openers, Benson’s voice had emphasized “psychic” and “giving a demonstration” as if they were words for something far nastier and more disreputable. Then she’d gone on to sever her clients from us in every possible way. She’d all but said we were implicated somehow in the death of the girl.
We’d been hung out to dry.
As one, Tolliver and I turned to look at the couple on the couch. The Morgensterns seemed oblivious to the implications of the speech Blythe Benson had just read. They were staring at the television, waiting for Art’s speech, in a kind of numb silence. Behind them, Felicia gave us a significant look that meant, “Ha! I told you so!” I exchanged a look with Tolliver, a look of sheer incredulity. He half-opened his mouth, and I reached over to touch his arm. “Not now,” I said, very quietly.
I wasn’t sure why I chose to be quiet, rather than confront Joel and Diane. God knows, even Diane was smart enough to realize that they’d just dumped us publicly, while sitting in our very own (temporarily) living room. They’d said, in effect, “Whatever these people claim, we’re not responsible for it. We don’t know them, we haven’t seen them, we’d never collaborate with them, and they failed the first time we asked them to find our child.”
Art took his place before the microphones. It’s just strange seeing someone you know on television, not that it’s an experience I’ve had often. The fact that the person who was just in the room with you is now on-camera, for the moment an icon, is weird and unsettling. It’s as if they’ve become translated by the screen into another being—someone less flawed and more knowledgeable, someone smoother and smarter.
Art had our statement, the one Tolliver and I had written, but he was doing yet another rewrite in his head at just this minute; a hasty and public one. I could see it in the long downward focus of his eyes before he began speaking.
“My client, Harper Connelly, is astounded and grieved by the events of the day. At this moment Ms. Connelly is with Tabitha’s parents, who came here to thank Harper, from their hearts, for her part in the discovery of a body we believe to be that of their missing daughter.”
Ha! Ball in your court, Blythe!
“Ms. Connelly is deeply saddened by the tragic end to her search for Tabitha Morgenstern. Though she did not maintain any contact whatsoever with the family during the months since her original employment, and though she had no knowledge that the Morgenstern family had moved to Memphis, Ms. Connelly is glad that circumstances brought about the discovery of the long-lost child the Morgensterns have been seeking. Perhaps, thanks to my client, the Morgensterns’ long time of uncertainty has come to an end.”
“When will Harper Connelly meet with us?” said a reporter, in a voice that was not awfully loud, but extremely piercing.
Art gave the reporter a wonderful look; it combined reproof with resignation. “Ms. Connelly does not talk to reporters,” he said, as if that were a well-known fact. “Ms. Connelly lives a very private life.”
“Is it true…” began a familiar voice, and the camera swung around to frame the shining Shellie Quail.
“For God’s sake,” I said. “She’s everywhere.”
Tolliver smiled. He thought the reporter’s doggedness was a little funny, maybe even admirable.
“…that Miss Connelly charges a fee for finding bodies?”
“Ms. Connelly is a professional woman with an unusual gift,” Art said. “She does not like to be in the spotlight of media attention, something she has never sought.”
That’s true enough, I thought. Evasive, but true.
“Is it true that your client will be claiming the reward for finding Tabitha’s body?” asked Shellie Quail, and Tolliver’s smile vanished in the blink of my eye.
“That’s not a subject we’ve discussed,” Art concluded. “I have no more to say at this time. Thank you for coming.” And he turned to pace back inside the Cleveland’s front door. The Morgensterns’ lawyer was nowhere to be seen. Blythe Benson had slipped away in the preceding moments, apparently.
I hoped she didn’t plan on coming up to the suite.
The cameras cut back to the scheduled program, and in a moment Art returned to the room, in actual reality. Again, I felt that curious jolt.
“That went well,” Joel said without a touch of irony. Tolliver and I had to struggle to keep our faces neutral. “And of course, you’ll get the reward.” Joel got up, checked his watch. “Diane, we have to get home. We have people to call. I wonder how long it will take for them to be sure they’ve got…Tabitha’s remains. When we can have them.”
Felicia picked up her purse and Diane’s, ready to help the pregnant woman return to their car.
With a heave, Diane got to her feet. She was absently rubbing her hand across her gravid stomach, as if to keep its contents calm. I remembered my own mother’s pregnancies with Mariella and Gracie. I also couldn’t help recalling Rosemary’s Baby; Tolliver and I had watched it the week before on an old-movie channel.
“Thanks, Felicia,” Diane said.
“Let us know how Victor’s doing,” Tolliver asked out of the clear blue sky.
“What?” Felicia turned, and her eyes pinned Tolliver to the wall. “Why, of course.” There was a bite to her voice that I simply didn’t understand. I looked from her to Tolliver, but didn’t get an explanation.
“This has been harder on Victor than just about anyone,” Joel said. “Kids can be so cruel.”
“Victor’s what, now? Sixteen?” I asked brightly, trying to ease the atmosphere. I don’t know why. I should have stood in absolute silence until the party left.
“He’s just turned seventeen,” Diane said. Suddenly her face lost its Madonna-like sweetness. She had struck me, even when I’d first met her after the abduction, as a woman fed up to the teeth with her stepson’s moody teenage behavior, and now her jaw had a certain set that gave her simple words a real edge. “I love that boy, but everything they say about teenagers is true, as far as Vic’s concerned: he’s been secretive and sullen or talking back for the past three years. When Tabitha began to show signs she was entering the same phase, I just wasn’t ready for it. I overreacted.”
Victor had been a spotty—but athletic and attractive—boy eighteen months before. I remembered him always skulking on the edge of any group of adults in the Morgenstern home, his face tight with suppressed—rage? Fear? I hoped for the boy’s sake that his complexion and his attitude had cleared up now. I was willing to believe Victor had feelings and thoughts that were complicated and dealt with something besides himself, but only because I tried to believe that of all people.
“How can you say that, Diane?” Felicia asked, but without much real indignation. “He’s been yours since he was a baby. You have to love him, like I do.”
“I do love him,” Diane said, sounding as surprised as an emotionally exhausted pregnant woman can. “I’ve always loved him, at first for his mother’s sake, but then because I raised him as my son. You, of all people, should know that. Even if he were my own biological child, I’d be having a hard time with him right now. It’s not him, it’s his stage of life.”
“He doesn’t like school here very much,” Joel said. He sounded just as tired as his wife, as if dealing with Victor wore him out. “But he’s great on the tennis team.”
“Poor Victor,” my brother said, somewhat to my surprise.
“Yes, the whole thing’s been very hard on him, too,” Joel said. “Of course, he was sure he was going to be arrested and executed instantly, the drastic way teenagers decide things, when the police questioned him very…persistently.”
“They thought he might resent his little sister, the attention she got as the child of the second marriage.” Then Diane went absolutely still, and I had a moment of panic, thinking something was happening with the baby. But it was just one of the moments when anguish comes sweeping down like an eagle from the air, to tear at you with cruel talons.
“Oh, Tabitha,” Diane said, in a low voice that contained profound grief. “Oh, my girl.” Large tears began to roll from her beautiful dark eyes.
Her husband put his arm around her and together they left to return to their new home. Felicia trailed after them, her face heavy with unhappiness.
I looked at the closed door a few minutes after they’d passed through it. I wondered if the baby’s room was ready yet. I wondered what they’d done with all Tabitha’s things.
With their departure, the tension eased out of the room. Art, Tolliver, and I looked at each other with some relief.
“That’s great news, about the reward. Last I heard, it was up to twenty-five thousand dollars. Before taxes, of course.” Art was reviewing the afternoon mentally, I could tell from the way he was drumming his fingers on the occasional table. “I’m glad I went second, after all,” Art said next. “I’ve heard of Blythe Benson. She said a few things I took issue with.”
“Yeah, we noticed.” Tolliver got a crossword puzzle book out of his laptop bag and began rummaging around in the bottom of the pocket for his pencil.
Art looked irritated. “You think I could have handled it differently, Tolliver, you say so.”
Tolliver looked up, apparently surprised. “No, Art, no problem. You, Harper?”
“I noticed you didn’t say Tolliver was your client, too, Art,” I said.
Art did his best to seem surprised; though I thought his only real surprise was that we’d noticed the omission. “Tolliver’s name hadn’t been brought into the mix at that point, I was just trying to keep it that way,” he said. “You want me to call all the reporters and correct myself?”
“No, Art, that’s fine,” I said. “Just, for future reference, be more thorough and include that little detail.”
“Message received,” Art said brightly. “It’s been a long day for an old man, kids. I’m going to my room, call the office, catch up on my work.”
“Sure, Art,” Tolliver said, his attention on the puzzle open before him. “If you’re not flying back to Atlanta until tomorrow, you’ll have to join us for dinner.”
“Thanks, we’ll see how much work I have to do tonight. I may just get room service. But give me a call when you’re ready to head out.”
“See you later,” I said.
When he was safely gone, I said, “What do you think he’s heard?”
“I was trying to figure it out. Maybe the police think I had Tabitha’s body all this time and moved it into the cemetery to prove you were a genuine sensitive.”
I gaped at him and then laughed. It was just too ridiculous.
Tolliver put down his pencil and focused on me. “Yeah, right. I don’t know where I’m supposed to have stowed the poor girl’s body for eighteen months, or whatever.”
“The trunk,” I said, deadpan, and after a second he smiled at me. It was a real smile, something he didn’t give me that often, and I enjoyed seeing it. Tolliver hadn’t been struck by lightning, and his mom hadn’t tried to sell him to one of her drug buddies for sexual use, it’s true, but Tolliver has his own scars, and he’s not any more fond of talking about them than I am.
“Tabitha was somewhere for eighteen months,” Tolliver pointed out. “That is, her body was either in that grave, or in some other hiding place.”
“Was she there all the time?” I asked, but I was just thinking out loud. “I don’t think so. The earth was disturbed. The rest of the ground in the cemetery was smooth, but this ground had an uneven feeling, and there wasn’t any grass on the grave.”
“Well, we know she was buried somewhere during the last eighteen months,” Tolliver pointed out reasonably.
“No, she could have been alive for part of that time. Or she could have been dead in a freezer, or a meat locker, or a morgue. Or buried somewhere else, as you say.” I thought about the possibilities I’d raised. “But I don’t think so. I still believe she’s been dead since she was abducted, or very nearly the whole time. But she wasn’t lying in St. Margaret’s all that time. I just don’t understand why she was put there, and how it happened that I was the one to find her. It’s so strange.”
“In fact, it’s almost…unbelievable,” Tolliver said, his voice quiet and thoughtful.