"Why don't you say something?" he asked, his temper flaring up again. Just when you thought the fire had been stomped out, it popped up again.

"What's to say?" I said.

"You're taking money from my brother and his wife," David said. "Money they need."

"I need it too," I pointed out reasonably. "And I earned it. I'll bet not all the money came from Joel and Diane, either."

He was taken aback. "Well, there were donations," he said. "A lot from Fred, and a chunk from our parents, of course."

I couldn't have had a better lead-in if I'd ordered it. "Was your father especially close to Tabitha?"

"Yeah, he was," David said. His blue eyes were focused on another time, and he said, "My dad is a great guy. When he and Mom would go to Nashville to visit Diane and Joel, Dad would take Tabitha all the way out to the stables for her riding lessons. He went to her softball games."

"And your mother went along?"

"No. I'm sure you noticed yesterday that she was too sick to do that much. The Parkinson's is eating her up. Sometimes she'd ride over to Nashville, but she'd just stay at the house with Diane. She's nuts about Diane. Of course, she liked Whitney, too."

"And your dad has a Lexus like Joel's?"

"Why are you asking me all this?"

I couldn't believe he'd told me this much without asking why. Maybe David was lonely within his own family. As I looked at him, I wondered suddenly if David was the reason Felicia clung so closely to a family that had little connection to hers any more. My brother was looking at me strangely, with an expression I couldn't read.

"What do you do for a living, David?" Tolliver asked. You would never have thought that ten minutes before, he'd socked this guy in the stomach like he wanted his fist to come through the back.

"I work at the Commercial Appeal," David said. "In the advertising department."

I didn't know exactly what such a job would consist of, but I was pretty sure David wouldn't make as much money as his brother, Joel. Joel was a CPA with a large firm, and he was obviously doing well at his job if his consumer goods were a reliable yardstick. And Joel had had not one wife, but two; both pretty, if the picture I'd seen the day before at the house hadn't been ridiculously touched up. Joel had a son and he'd had a daughter. I wondered what David had. A huge pile of envy? A case of jealousy?

"You drive your dad's car often, David?" I asked.

"The Buick? Why would I?" he asked.

"Wait, you said he had a Lexus."

"No I didn't. You asked me if he had a Lexus, and I asked you why you wanted to know."