Mariah had had her own online trading account, and it had been a busy one. At first, she’d lost some money, but more recently, even in the financial downturns the market had taken recently, she’d held steady. The adult babysitter had been profiting from her job to a degree no one would have imagined.

“Wow,” said Tolliver with some admiration. “She was learning all the tricks of the trade.”

“I guess her ‘client’ talked in front of her, and his friends and family talked in front of her, and she profited by everything she heard.”

“Caregiver by day, stock market trader by night,” Manfred said. “You gotta admire her nerve and determination.”

“And sneakiness,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Isn’t that kind of deceptive?”

“I don’t know,” Tolliver said after a long pause. “Is it? She didn’t say that she was an uneducated, ignorant woman who couldn’t get a better job. She let her employers think so, but that’s the persona she adopted. She was really smart, and she was determined to put that to use the best way she knew how.”

“Smart,” Manfred said. He sounded approving.

“Two-faced and not really honest.”

“Ah, sour grapes,” Manfred said, smiling. “You haven’t gotten to raid the brains of your dead people to get stock tips.”

“What an opportunity I’ve missed,” I said, deadpan. “I need to find a cemetery and look for the grave of a financial wizard, see if he can give me ideas in what I see of the last few moments of his life.”

“That’s kind of what Mariah did,” Manfred said.

When I thought about it, he wasn’t too far off. “I wonder if it was a conscious plan or something that just evolved.” I looked at the picture of the young Mariah, who’d had bangs and a chin-length bob. Red hair and freckles, brown eyes, and a cute nose; all she needed was a straw hat, overalls, and an egg basket on one arm. There’d been steel under all that unsophisticated cuteness.

“I bet she talked real country,” Manfred said. “I bet she made sure she did.”

Deeper and smarter than her surface suggested, Mariah Parish had crafted a way to survive and prosper. And she’d provided good care to those who’d employed her. “Not bad, Mariah,” I said, toasting her with a coffee cup. Our sandwiches had come, and we were all eating like we’d been starved for days.

“Until she got pregnant,” Tolliver said.

“And I wish we knew the name of the father,” I said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

“Not so much who the actual dad was,” Manfred corrected, “as who thought he might be the dad.”

“I don’t suppose—?” I gestured at the picture. “Manfred, do you think you could find out anything about her, your way?”

“Nah, not without something of hers,” he said. “Since I never met her in life.”