"Leave him alone," Barney said. His big hands, so smooth and unscarred, had fisted. "Vic's been through hell over this. He knows his dad couldn't do anything like that. But he saw the car, and he can't forget that. You don't know what it's like."
Actually, I did, pretty much.
"So, Victor, you gifted us with this information--why? So we could be disturbed, along with you?"
Victor's face couldn't have gotten any redder, and he obviously had to dredge for a reason he'd unburdened himself on us after more than a year of silence. "I thought," he said painfully, "I thought you'd know who killed her. I thought you'd be able to see it. I couldn't tell. I already said, then I'd have to say I was home when I said I wasn't, too... I was scared."
"How have you been able to live in the house with him for all these months?" I asked, out of sheer curiosity.
"I didn't see him." Victor struggled with what he wanted to say. "I saw the car. I didn't see his face, I didn't talk to him, I just saw the car. There are other Lexuses in the world, like my grandfather's. There are plenty in that neighborhood. We lived in pretty nice suburb."
"But you seem convinced that it was your father."
"Just because it was where it was. So close to our house. And at the time, I thought, 'There's Dad.' Because of course, Granddad was in Memphis, and we were in Nashville."
Tolliver sat back in his chair and gave me a quizzical look. What were we supposed to do with this? Something, some small thing, at the time had convinced this wretched boy that he was seeing his father in his father's car. He hadn't doubted it. Now, he was saying he hadn't actually seen the driver. There were other pearl-colored Lexuses--Lexi?--around, of course, as Victor had also pointed out. I almost hated the boy for giving us the burden of useless knowledge.
Victor, however, seemed to be feeling better now that he'd told us the story. I could see by the little gathering motions of his body that Victor was preparing to sweep out with his boyfriend in tow. I felt angry about that, but I struggled against it. After all, I didn't have any right to beat the boy to a pulp because he'd finally revealed a secret he should have told right off.
A sharp knock at the door made me jump. The two boys looked pretty anxious, and I knew for sure that no one in his family knew where Victor was. I was beginning to think that our suite was the home away from home for anyone remotely connected to the disappearance of Tabitha Morgenstern.
Tolliver looked out the peephole, not a normal precaution of his.
"David," he said briefly. Victor and Barney moved apart as if their inner attraction had suddenly been set on "repel." Instead of being a couple, they were transformed into a couple of guilty teenage buddies, caught somewhere they had no reason to be, by an adult who would surely scold them. "Should I let him in?"
"Why not?" I said, throwing my hands out.
David stepped into the room, his eyes flashing around to all the corners suspiciously. Vindication was written large on his face when he saw his nephew. "Victor, what the hell are you doing here?" he asked, righteous indignation practically dripping from his voice.
"Hello, David, good to see you again," I said, and David Morgenstern finally looked at me and turned red.
"You thieving bitch," he said, and Tolliver hit him.
Chapter sixteen
THE blow was not premeditated in any way. Tolliver simply drew back his arm and hit David Morgenstern in the stomach as hard as he could. As David collapsed to the carpet, choking and clutching his stomach, Tolliver closed the door so no one in the hall could observe the recovery of our guest. Barney looked scared, and Victor looked about a thousand different things--astonished, envious, and angry being the most identifiable.
Tolliver was rubbing his hand and half-smiling. He stepped away to show me he didn't intend to keep beating on David.
"Did you want something in particular, Mr. Morgenstern, or did you just come by to call me names?" I asked as Victor finally crouched by his uncle and tried to help David get up.
"I saw you talking to Victor at the house yesterday," David said, when he could speak. "And then, when Victor came up here..."
"You followed me?" Victor asked incredulously. "I don't fucking believe it, Uncle David."
"Language," wheezed the man who'd just called me a bitch.
"So, you decided I had a sexual interest in Victor?" I said, with what I thought was remarkable dignity.
"I just wanted to be sure he was okay," protested David. "Joel and Diane are so wrapped up in the situation about Tabitha, and Felicia went to work, and my parents are at home... my mother's having a bad day... so I thought someone should be watching out for what Victor was doing. He doesn't need to be around people like you."
"And you thought calling me names fell into the category of watching out for Victor?" Tolliver had come to stand beside me, and I felt like kissing the hand that had hit David.
"I thought," he began, and then he turned so red I thought his blood pressure had soared. He cleared his throat, leaned over so he could clutch the back of a chair for support, and began again. "I thought the boys had come up here for..."
I wasn't going to help him out. Tolliver and I waited obviously and patiently for David to finish his sentence. Barney and Victor exchanged glances that fully expressed how lame this idea had been, and how stupid Uncle David had been to follow Victor. Grown-ups!
"I thought they were going to hang out with you two because they think you're cool," David said weakly, which was a big fat lie.
"We are," I said. "Aren't we, Tolliver?"
"Sure," he said. He patted my hand with his bruised one.
David finally recovered enough to move around the back of the chair and sit down, though we hadn't asked him.
"Maybe you could tell us why you thought you could call me names, and that would be okay?" I asked, my voice sweet and gentle.
"I am sorry," he said finally, just when my patience was running out. "Though I don't know why your brother had to hit me."
"He's not my brother, but he is my best friend," I said, to my own amazement. "And he doesn't like it when people call me names. Wouldn't you want to hit someone who called Diane a thieving bitch?"
"She got some phone calls after Tabitha vanished," David said unexpectedly. "People called her all kinds of things. Especially after the story got out about her quarrel with Tabitha that morning. People can be so ugly, you wouldn't believe."
"Actually, I think I would," I said.
It took David a minute to get that, but when he did, the red crept over his face and shoulders like a tide rolling in. "Okay, I'm feeling pretty bad now," he said. "I did a stupid thing. I can see Victor's okay, he's got his best bud with him, everything's cool. I know I acted like an idiot. Hey, Barney," David said, with a pretty pathetic attempt at regaining his superiority. "How are you, guy?"
Barney looked embarrassed. "Fine, Mr. Morgenstern," the boy said. "You?" Then he gasped and choked back a laugh at his automatic question.
"I've been better," David said, a bit more steadily. "Victor, why don't you and Barney run along? I've got to talk to Miss Connelly and Mr. Lang."
"Okay, Uncle David, if you're sure you're going to be okay," Victor said, with false solicitousness.
David gave him such a sharp look I thought Victor would probably end up paying for his moment of fun, but Victor maintained his serious look quite well. "Come on Barney," he said. "The grown-ups want to talk." They put their letter-man jackets back on and left the room, giving each other secret grins as soon as they were out of David's eyesight.
The door closed behind them with a thunk. We might as well leave it open, we were getting so much traffic.
Tolliver and I sat on the love seat and waited for David to flounder ahead.
"Diane says you're getting the reward for finding Tabitha's body," David said.
We waited.
"Why don't you say something?" he asked, his temper flaring up again. Just when you thought the fire had been stomped out, it popped up again.
"What's to say?" I said.
"You're taking money from my brother and his wife," David said. "Money they need."
"I need it too," I pointed out reasonably. "And I earned it. I'll bet not all the money came from Joel and Diane, either."
He was taken aback. "Well, there were donations," he said. "A lot from Fred, and a chunk from our parents, of course."
I couldn't have had a better lead-in if I'd ordered it. "Was your father especially close to Tabitha?"
"Yeah, he was," David said. His blue eyes were focused on another time, and he said, "My dad is a great guy. When he and Mom would go to Nashville to visit Diane and Joel, Dad would take Tabitha all the way out to the stables for her riding lessons. He went to her softball games."
"And your mother went along?"
"No. I'm sure you noticed yesterday that she was too sick to do that much. The Parkinson's is eating her up. Sometimes she'd ride over to Nashville, but she'd just stay at the house with Diane. She's nuts about Diane. Of course, she liked Whitney, too."
"And your dad has a Lexus like Joel's?"
"Why are you asking me all this?"
I couldn't believe he'd told me this much without asking why. Maybe David was lonely within his own family. As I looked at him, I wondered suddenly if David was the reason Felicia clung so closely to a family that had little connection to hers any more. My brother was looking at me strangely, with an expression I couldn't read.
"What do you do for a living, David?" Tolliver asked. You would never have thought that ten minutes before, he'd socked this guy in the stomach like he wanted his fist to come through the back.
"I work at the Commercial Appeal," David said. "In the advertising department."
I didn't know exactly what such a job would consist of, but I was pretty sure David wouldn't make as much money as his brother, Joel. Joel was a CPA with a large firm, and he was obviously doing well at his job if his consumer goods were a reliable yardstick. And Joel had had not one wife, but two; both pretty, if the picture I'd seen the day before at the house hadn't been ridiculously touched up. Joel had a son and he'd had a daughter. I wondered what David had. A huge pile of envy? A case of jealousy?
"You drive your dad's car often, David?" I asked.
"The Buick? Why would I?" he asked.
"Wait, you said he had a Lexus."
"No I didn't. You asked me if he had a Lexus, and I asked you why you wanted to know."
Then I remembered Tolliver had said he'd been talking to Fred about his car. I'd misunderstood. And Victor had said his grandfather had a Lexus, but he hadn't specified which grandfather. I'd made a series of assumptions, and had gotten the usual result. Assumptions were dangerous things.
I'd been staring at David while I thought, and he was getting antsy. "What's up with you?" he asked. "I made a mistake coming here, and I apologized. I'm leaving now."
"Were you really following Victor?"
"No one is watching out for him," David said. "I need to."
I noticed that was yet another response that didn't really answer the question: a David Morgenstern specialty, apparently. "It seems to me that everyone says they're watching out for Victor. Certainly Felicia is, and you are. Both of his grandfathers mentioned their concern about him."
"Oh, Felicia talks about Victor a lot," David said bitterly. "But if you ask me, she's using Victor as an excuse to keep hanging around Joel... and Diane." He tacked Diane's name on hastily, as if that would mask what he was implying.
That was an interesting thought, but I stuck to my course. "Is everyone so worried about Victor because there's reason to think he had something to do with what happened to his sister?" I had caught myself considering, as Victor sat across from me ostensibly spilling his innermost fears, that he could be performing the whole scene as a cover-up for his own guilt.
"We wondered... I talked to Joel about this... Victor's so secretive. He vanishes and then he won't say where he's been... he hangs out with that kid Barney so much, and Barney's parents aren't... they're Christian, and they go to one of those churches where people wear Birkenstocks to the service. He locks his door a lot. We'd been wondering if Victor and the boy are into drugs, but his grades are good. He's on the wrestling team, and he's a strong boy, but we worry..."
"You sense there's something different and unknown about Victor," I said.
David nodded. "Do you know what it is?" he asked me baldly. "After all, for some reason he came to talk to you. If he didn't come to you for sex..."
"It's unthinkable he'd come to me for any other reason," I said gravely. "Is that it?"
David looked ashamed all over again.
"I don't have sex with teenagers," I said. "Not one of them, not two of them at once. I'm not interested in that."
Since I kept my voice cool and level, David didn't have any fuel to feed his anger, and he lapsed into his backup emotion, befuddled concern. "Then why was Victor here?"
"You'll have to ask Victor that," I said. Considering Victor had spent months thinking his father might have had something to do with Tabitha's disappearance, he was a model of mental health. He'd seemed so relieved to share the burden. He'd also seemed happy to tell someone about his sexual orientation. Victor needed a therapist. I couldn't believe he hadn't been visiting one. I said as much.