Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris Page A

Sarne for more than a two-week vacation.
    â€œMorally defensible,” Tolliver repeated, as struck by the phrase as I’d been. He rolled the words over his tongue as if he was testing the taste of them.
    â€œI mean, I think it’s wrong, all right? Telling people what happened to their dead relatives. No offense, but you could be making all this up, right?”
    No offense, my ass. I was sick of people telling me I was evil. “Listen, Nell,” I said, trying my best to keep my voice under strict control. “I make my living the best way I know how. For you to assume I’m not honest is an offense to me. There’s no way it couldn’t be.”
    Maybe she wasn’t used to her words being taken seriously. “Um, well, okay,” she muttered, clearly taken aback. “But listen, can you tell me? What you told my mom?”
    â€œYou’re a minor. I don’t want to get into trouble,” I said.
    Tolliver looked as if he were mulling it over.
    â€œListen, I may be a kid, you know, but he was my brother! And I should know what happened to my brother!” There was a very real anguish behind her words.
    We gave each other tiny nods.
    â€œI don’t believe he killed himself,” I said.
    â€œI knew it,” she said. “I knew it.”
    For someone who’d been so sure I was a fraud, she was taking my word without a second thought.
    â€œSo if he didn’t kill himself,” she said, talking faster and faster, “then he didn’t kill Teenie, and if he didn’t kill Teenie, then he didn’t . . .” She stopped with an almost comic expression of panic, her eyes popping wide and her mouth clamped together to block the crucial word in, whatever it might have been.
    A pounding at the door startled Tolliver and me; we’d been staring at Nell Teague as if we could pry the end of the sentence out of her with our eyes.
    â€œWonderful,” I said after I looked through the peephole. “It’s Sybil Teague, Tolliver.”
    â€œOhmigod,” said our visitor, who suddenly looked even younger than her age.
    I cursed very thoroughly but silently, wishing that Sybil had arrived five minutes earlier. I had a fleeting idea that we could sneak Nell out through Tolliver’s room, but as sure as we tried that, we’d be caught. After all, we hadn’t done anything wrong. I opened the door, and Sybil came in like a well-groomed goddess of wrath.
    â€œIs my child here?” she demanded, though we were making no move to conceal Nell, who was sitting in plain view. It was like she’d preplanned the moment.
    â€œRight here,” Tolliver said gently, with an edge of sarcasm to his voice. Sybil flushed, her natural color warring with the carefully applied tints of rose and cream.
    Sybil took in the sight of Nell sitting in the chair,unmolested and with a Diet Coke clutched in her hand, and she seemed to deflate. “Where have you been, young lady?” she asked, rallying almost instantly. “I expected you home two hours ago.”
    Fortunately for us, Nell decided to come clean. “I followed them. They went to Flo and Jo’s for supper,” the teenager told her mother. “They took their time. I followed them here, and then I asked them if I could come in.”
    â€œYou drove back in the rain from that place, with the roads slick, in the dark?” Sybil Teague’s face went even paler. “I’m glad I didn’t know about it.”
    â€œMom, I’ve driven in rain plenty of times.”
    â€œOh, yes, in the two years you’ve been driving. You have nowhere near enough experience . . .” Sybil took a deep breath and made herself relax. “All right, Nell, I know you wanted to talk about what happened to your brother. God knows, I’ve wanted to find out, too. And I thought this woman would give me answers. I just have more questions than I started out with,