“Braz thought Arnie ought not to sell it so fast, get it appraised first. But Arnie always says that a quick dime’s better than a slow dollar. He’d rather make his profit and move on to the next lot. Braz, now, he always put a reserve on his stuff. He didn’t mind sitting on it till he got the price he thought it ought to bring.”

I listened to her talk some more about the odd things people abandon in self-storage lockers, everything from bicycles and surfboards to clothing and family photo albums, even wedding gifts still in their original gift boxes. All the time, though, I couldn’t help noticing her likeness to other members of my family—the way she held her head like Robert, the unconscious hand gestures Reese and Lee always use, the curve of her lips when she smiled and the sweep of her eyelashes that were both like Herman’s Annie Sue and Haywood’s Jane Ann.

Several of the kids were probably out there on the midway right now, squealing on the Tilt-A-Whirl, throwing darts at a balloon board. I wasn’t sure if all of them knew that Andrew had fathered a child before he married April, that A.K. and Ruth had a half-sister none of them had ever seen. Hell, I wasn’t even sure A.K. and Ruth knew.

And to learn that she existed in one breath and then hear in the next that it was her son who’d been murdered last night?

One thing was certain. I couldn’t tell any of them till I’d talked to Daddy.

As I stood up to go, Tally said, “You sure it’s going to be cool with your dad if we put Braz there?”

“I’m sure. We’ll have to tell the others, though. And as soon as they hear, they’re all going to want to meet you.”

“Do you have to do that right now?”

I couldn’t blame her for hesitating. It’s one thing to spend an hour or two in the courthouse uncovering paper facts about a grandfather, father, stepmother, half siblings, ten uncles, one aunt, and a yardful of first cousins who are no more than names in a database. It was quite another to think of meeting that many kinfolks in the flesh.

“How about we start with Daddy, Andrew, and April?” I said.

She took a deep breath. “I’ve handled drunks and crazies, even talked a cokehead out of trying to rape me after Hartley died, but I gotta tell you, Deborah, this scares me more than anything else.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Any thoughts of when you want the funeral?”

“Well, we’re booked here through next Saturday night and it’d cost us a bunch to breach the contract. We were planning to tear down that night and lay over at the farm a couple of days, then jump to Kinston. We don’t open till five on weeknights, so maybe one day this week, okay?” Tally looked suddenly bereft. “Only I don’t know when they’ll let us have him—his body back.”