"You think since they treated us to a meal, we could invite them to a meal at a restaurant?"

Tolliver thought it over. "They're in mourning right now, and they've probably got all kinds of arrangements to make. Plus, what reason would we give? Yeah, we could insist we owe them a meal, but what are we gonna talk about? The only connection we have is the death of their daughter. That's just not enough to carry an evening, Sis."

He hadn't called me that in a long time. I wondered if Young's comment had shaken him up, too.

"Maybe not," I admitted. "But as long as we're stuck here, and I guess we are… hey, I wonder what would happen if we left?" There was a moment of silence. "We'd probably get called right back," I concluded, "until they've decided what happened to Clyde Nunley. Why would he get killed? I just don't understand. The only thing he knew was—what could he have known?"

"What's the only connection between Clyde Nunley and Tabitha Morgenstern?" Tolliver asked. He was definitely guiding me to a conclusion. I hate it when he does that.

"They shared a grave."

"I mean, besides that."

"There was no connection."

"Yes, there was."

It was almost full dark now, and the mass of lights in the eastbound lanes was almost bumper-to-bumper. We had much easier going in the westbound lanes. It began to rain again, and Tolliver turned on our windshield wipers.

"Okay, I give." I threw up my hands in exasperation. "What was the connection?"

"You."

fourteen

THIS hit me with an impact about equal to a bag of cement.

"So you're saying Clyde Nunley was murdered because he knew who had recommended me for this little gig at the college." I felt cold all over. I may be used to death, and I may know better than anyone how inevitable and ordinary a state it is, but that doesn't mean it's easy to feel you contributed to it. It's like sleet; you know if the atmospheric conditions warrant, there's going to be sleet, but you don't have to be happy about it.

"That's what I think—and I thought about this a lot, last night. I couldn't accept the giant coincidence that Tabitha's body was here. If it wasn't a coincidence, we were steered to find it. We were used. And the person who did that had to be the person who killed Tabitha. Clyde Nunley asked you to read this cemetery. So someone must have whispered your name in Clyde Nunley's ear. I don't know if that person held something over Clyde, or made a friendly suggestion. 'Hey, you're having this class about the occult, you have this cemetery just laying there, let's get a weird woman who specializes in finding the dead to come have a look.' "

"So, you think that Clyde balked when Tabitha's body was found?"