Grave Sight

Since it was his cousin who had arrested my brother, I was pretty sure there would be a conflict of interest there, but I thanked him politely. He hinted that he wanted to come over and hang around with me. I turned him down, much less tactfully.

He was handsome, and he was a lawyer, and I could probably use a handsome lawyer friend, but Paul Edwards didn't offer to come hang around with a woman for no reason at all. He wanted something, and maybe it wasn't sex. He didn't seem to be a constant lover. The relationship between the lawyer and Sybil Teague wasn't clandestine, yet here he was with his ulterior motives.

I got a few hours' sleep that night, which was more than I expected. I drank coffee in the room. It wasn't good, but I didn't have to face anyone to drink it. I couldn't have eaten anything, so a restaurant was a waste of time.

I'd arranged to meet Phyllis Folliette at the courthouse. I didn't know what the lawyer would look like, but she proved to be very easy to pick out. The second I saw her I knew she wasn't from Sarne. Phyllis Folliette was a tall woman in a dark green suit and bronze silk blouse, with beautiful cordovan leather pumps that matched her bag and her briefcase... even her hair. Somewhere in her forties, Folliette exuded confidence and intelligence. That was what we needed.

I felt almost embarrassed to approach someone who was so obviously a star. I think few women would feel very well groomed or attractive when they looked at this woman, and I was no exception. I was all too aware of my messy hair and my wrinkled pantsuit. I'd made the effort to pull "meet the client" clothes out of my suitcase, but I'd lacked the energy to iron them. With Phyllis Folliette so ably making a great impression, I regretted not having stuck with jeans.

"I'm glad to meet you," she said. "You've impressed Art Barfield, and that's saying something." She shook my hand and began to tell me what she'd learned in talking to the law enforcement people in Sarne. "I've been over to the jail," she said. "Something is up. For one thing, if they were taking the story about Montana warrants seriously, Mr. Lang would be appearing before a different court. I don't know how much you know about the legal system in Arkansas." She raised her eyebrows.

"Assume I'm ignorant," I said, which was pretty much the truth.

"They would never have arrested him for a broken taillight unless he did something else, like shove a cop or try to evade arrest, something like that. What gave the patrolman the juice to arrest Tolliver was the allegation that he had open warrants in Montana." That's what Art had said, too. "Now, if they were sticking by that story, your brother would be appearing in circuit court. But he's not. He's going to appear in the Sarne District Court, which only handles misdemeanors. You'll see when we get in there. We'll have to wait our turn, so you'll listen to lots of other charges against other people." Her brown eyes summed me up while she spoke.

"Harper, honey, you're very wired up," she said after a moment or two. "You need to try to relax."

"You don't know how bogus this is!" I whispered. I was trying hard to keep my voice down, because we were in a public hallway and the people who went by were eyeing us curiously, but I was so anxious I thought my frayed nerves would snap. "Are you telling me that the Montana thing is just going to go away?"

She glanced down at her watch. "I think it just might. We have a while before they bring him in. Let's find a quiet place. I think you need to tell me the whole story."

I didn't think it would be possible to tell Phyllis Folliette everything that had happened in Sarne, but I did manage to arrange enough of it in a coherent narrative to bring it to a conclusion with Tolliver's arrest.

"It's definite that some force in this town is against you," she said, after a silence. "It's evident you're being hounded. No matter what I think of the way you make your living, Miss Co

"Well, yes. This guy threw a rock at me. Tolliver got upset. Of course."

"Of course," she said, as if she routinely spoke to clients who'd been literally stoned. "Tolliver was upset enough to put the man in the hospital?"

"Hey, those charges were dismissed."

"Um-hm. I think you had some luck with the judge on that one."

"You have a sister?"

"Uh... yes."

"Someone throws a rock at her, you'd go after the rock-thrower, right?"

"I think I'd probably be taking care of my sister. I'd let the cops arrest the rock-thrower."

"Look at it from the guy point of view."

"Okay, I see your drift."

"You talked to Tolliver about this, right?"

"Yes, they let me see him this morning. He mentioned the incident, but didn't give any details."

I smiled. "That's Tolliver."

"You two are close," she observed. "Why the different names? You've been married?"

"No," I said. "His father married my mother when we were both in our teens." I didn't like explaining this.

She nodded, giving me a sideways look. She excused herself to go to the ladies' room, and I stared at my feet for a while. When Phyllis emerged, she did a lot of meeting and greeting on her way back to our bench, in particular with a man with graying hair, probably in his early fifties, who was wearing glasses and a nice suit.

After he went into the courtroom, Phyllis Folliette made her way back to me, giving me a brisk nod. "Time to go in or we won't get a seat," she said, and we joined a stream of people passing through massive double doors to the courtroom.

The ceiling was somewhere in the clouds over our heads. There was no telling how many words were buzzing around under that high ceiling, trapped there over the years. Phyllis and I sat quietly, and people began filing in. The jailers brought a line of prisoners in, and I got to see Tolliver.

I stood up, so he could see me right away, and he gave me a serious look. I sat down in the folding wooden seat. "He looks all right," I said to the lawyer, trying to reassure myself. "Don't you think he looks all right?"

"He does," she agreed. "I don't think orange is his color, though."

"No," I said. "No, it isn't."

As all the people in the courtroom seemed to be sorting themselves out, Phyllis said, "While we have a minute, I'm just curious. Are you any relation to the Cameron Co

"Yes, it makes sense," I said, though I can't say I was totally focused on the conversation. "I was named for my father's mother's family, Cameron for my mother's mother's family. She was my sister."

"I notice you use the past tense. Was she ever found? Once the media stopped covering it..."

"No. But someday I'll find her body."

"Ah... okay."

After a beat, I noticed the peculiar tone to the lawyer's voice. "You know," I said more directly, "that when people are gone that long, they're dead."

"There was that girl in Utah, Elizabeth Smart."

"Yes. There was that girl in Utah. She turned up alive. But mostly, when people have been gone for more than a couple of days, and no ransom's been asked, they're dead. Or they wanted to go. I know Cameron didn't want to leave. So she's dead."

"You hold no hope?" She sounded incredulous.

"I hold no false hope." I knew my business.

The bailiff told us the judge was coming in, and we rose. A spare gray-haired man (in a suit, instead of a robe) took his seat before us. I wasn't surprised to recognize the man with whom Phyllis had been chatting earlier. The city attorney (at least I guessed that was what he was) was already in his seat facing the judge, a huge pile of files in front of him, and the proceedings began.