Grave Sight Read Free Page A

was a subtle warmth in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He’d remembered he was handsome, and that I was a young woman.
    I almost said, “No, I find it lucrative.” But I know people find my earning method distasteful, and that would have been only partly the truth, anyway.
    â€œIt’s a service I can perform for the dead,” I said finally, and that was equally true.
    Edwards nodded, as if I’d said something profound. He wanted all three of us to go in his Outback, but we took our own car. We always did. (This practice dates from the time a client left us in the woods nineteen miles from town, upset at my failure to find his brother’s body. I’d been pretty sure the body lay somewhere to the west of the area he’d had me target, but he didn’t want to pay for a longer search. It wasn’t my fault his brother had lived long enough to stagger toward the stream. Anyway, it had been a long, long walk back into town.)
    I let my mind go blank as we followed Edwards northwest, farther into the Ozarks. The foliage was beautiful this time of year, and that beauty drew a fair amount of tourists. The twisting, climbing road was dotted with stands for selling rocks and crystals—“genuine Ozark crafts”—and all sorts of homemade jellies and jams. All the stands touted some version of the hillbilly theme, a marketing strategy that I found incomprehensible. “We were sure ignorant and toothless and picturesque! Stop to see if we still are!”
    I stared into the woods as we drove, into their chilly and brilliant depths. All along the way, I got “hits” of varying intensity.
    There are dead people everywhere, of course. The older the death, the less of a buzz I get.
    It’s hard to describe the feeling—but of course, that’s what everyone wants to know, what it feels like to sense a dead person. It’s a little like hearing a bee droning inside your head, or maybe the pop of a Geiger counter—a persistent and irregular noise, increasing in strength the closer I get to the body. There’s something electric about it, too; I can feel this buzzing all through my body. I guess that’s not too surprising.
    We passed three cemeteries (one quite small, very old) and one hidden Indian burial site, a mound or barrow that had been reshaped by time until it just resembled another rolling hill. That ancient site signaled very faintly; it was like hearing a cloud of mosquitoes, very far away.
    I was tuned in to the forest and the earth by the time Paul Edwards pulled to the shoulder of the road. The woods encroached so nearly that there was hardly room to park the vehicles and still leave room for other cars to pass. I figured Tolliver had to be worried someone would come along too fast and clip the Malibu. But he didn’t say anything.
    â€œTell me what happened,” I said to the dark-haired man.
    â€œCan’t you just go look? Why do you need to know?” He was suspicious.
    â€œIf I have a little knowledge about the circumstances, I can look for her more intelligently,” I said.
    â€œOkay. Well. Last spring, Teenie came out here with Mrs. Teague’s son, who was also Sheriff Branscom’s nephew—Sybil and Harvey are brother and sister. Sybil’s son was named Dell. Dell was Teenie’s boyfriend, had been for two years, off and on. They were both seventeen. A hunter foundDell’s body. He’d been shot, or he’d shot himself. They never found Teenie.”
    â€œHow was their location discovered?” Tolliver asked, pointing at the patch of ground on which we stood.
    â€œCar parked right where we’re parked now. See that half-fallen pine? Supported by two other trees? Makes a good marker to remember the spot by. Dell’d been missing less than four hours when one of the families that live out this way gave Sybil a call about the car. There were folks out searching soon after