"We'll get a very preliminary identification in a couple hours, if it's the Morgenstern girl. The dental records have been faxed from Nashville. Of course, a solid ID will have to wait on a full exam of the body. Well, what's left of the body." Detective Lacey set his own personal coffee mug on the battered table with unnecessary force. "Nashville police are sending the X-rays by car, and the car should be here in a couple of hours. The local FBI office is sending someone to witness the full autopsy. The Fibbies are offering their lab for the trace stuff. You are not to say anything about this to anyone until we've talked to the family."

I nodded again.

"Good," Tolliver said, just to goose the silence.

Corbett Lacey gave us a steady glare. "We've had to call her parents, and if this isn't her, I don't even like to think about what they'll feel. If you hadn't broadcast her name to the whole group standing there, we could have kept this quiet until we had something solid to tell them. Now, we've had to talk to them because it looks like the damn television will have it on the air soon."

"I'm sorry about that. I just wasn't thinking." I should have kept my mouth shut. He had a good point.

"Why do you even do this, anyway?" He gave me a puzzled face, as if he really couldn't figure me out. I didn't think he was completely sincere, but I was.

"It's always better to know. That's why I do it."

"You seem to make quite a bit of money, too," Corbett Lacey observed.

"I have to make a living, same as anybody else." I wasn't going to act ashamed of that. But, truly, I sometimes wished I worked at Wal-Mart, or Starbucks, and let the dead lie un-found.

"So, I guess Joel and Diane started out right away," Tolliver said. He was right; a change of subject was in order. "It'll take them how long to get here?"

Detective Lacey looked puzzled.

"The Morgensterns. How long a drive is it, Nashville to Memphis?" I said.

He gave us an unreadable look. "Like you didn't know."

Okay, I wasn't getting this at all. "Know… ?" I looked at Tolliver. He shrugged, as bewildered as I was. A possibility occurred to me. "Tell me they're not dead!" I said. I'd liked them, and I didn't often have feelings for clients.

It was Lacey's turn to look uncertain. "You really don't know?"

"We don't understand what you're talking about," Tolliver said. "Just tell us."