“Yes, because she always expected her to come back,” he said unsteadily. “Sally and Teenie shared that room until Sally married Hollis, and then Teenie had it all to herself. What are you wanting to know?”

“May I see it?”

“You said you weren’t psychic. What are you hoping to find out?” Jay Hopkins was sharper than I’d given him credit for. Maybe he hadn’t started drinking for the day.

I hesitated. “I want to see if some of her hair is left in her hairbrush,” I said finally.

“For what reason?” He lit another cigarette. It was his house, I reminded myself.

“I want to have it tested,” I said.

“To find out what?”

Now he’d asked one question too many.

“I think you know,” Tolliver said unexpectedly. “I think you wonder, too.”

Jay stubbed out the cigarette with vicious jabs. “What’re you talking about, mister?”

“You wonder who her father was.”

Jay froze in position, I guess amazed that someone had actually been rude enough to say it out loud. “She was my daughter,” he said finally, in a final voice.

“Yes, in every way that mattered. But we need to know whose daughter she was in the biological way,” Tolliver said.

“Why? I’m burying that child. You can’t take that away from me.” This was the voice of a man who had lost many things, though I was sure he’d tossed some of it away himself.

“If her father hasn’t made a sound toward claiming her yet, he’s not going to now,” I said reasonably.

“There’s every chance I could be Teenie’s father. I don’t want anyone thinking bad of Helen.”

Too late for that. “I think everyone knows Helen was human,” I said gently. “I think the shame would be on the father, for not owning up to his responsibility.” I was thinking, Tolliver can hold him down and I’ll run back to the room . . .

“All right, then,” Jay Hopkins said. He sounded defeated, beaten down, and I knew caving in to my request was one more item in a line of items that marked his unmanning. But at the moment, his sense of self was not too high on my list of things to preserve. I doubted he had much self left, anyway.

“What’ll you do with her hair?” he asked.

“Send it to a lab, have it tested for her DNA.”

“How?”

I shrugged. “Via UPS, I guess.”

“Her room’s on the left.” His elbows were propped on his bony knees, and he bent his head over his clasped hands. There was something smug about him, now. I should have been warned.