An Ice Cold Grave Read Online Free PDF Page A

only a year or two old. “I like a big car,” she said.
    We nodded. We liked it, too. We were bundled up for the weather, and Twyla looked like a ball of fudge in her dark brown coat.
    â€œDo your son and his wife know we’re here and what we’re doing?” I asked cautiously.
    â€œParker and Bethalynn do know, but they don’t believe it will lead to anything. They think I’m wasting my money. But they know it’s my money to waste, and if it makes me feel better…”
    I hoped they were as philosophical about it as Twyla made it sound. Families can give us an awful lot of trouble—which I guess isn’t too surprising, since they usually believe we’re defrauding their grieving relative. Still, we’ve had a bellyful of trouble in our lives, and we don’t want any that we can avoid. I exchanged a glance with Tolliver, who was in the back seat, and one glance said all this between us.
    â€œHave you ever had a child, Harper?” Twyla asked.
    â€œNo, I’ve never been pregnant,” I said. “But I know how you feel. My sister has been missing for eight years.”
    I didn’t normally tell people that. Of course, some of them already knew it. It had made a big splash in the papers when it happened. But I was a high school student then, not a…whatever I was now.
    â€œYou have other family?”
    I said, smiling brightly, “Well, I have Tolliver. I’ve got a half brother, Mark, and two half sisters, little ones, Mariella and Gracie. They live in Texas with our aunt and her husband.” Mark wasn’t my half brother any more than Tolliver was. He was simply Tolliver’s older brother. But I wasn’t in the mood to spell it out.
    â€œOh, I’m so sorry. Your parents already passed?”
    â€œMy mother has. My father is still living.” In jail, but living. Tolliver’s mother had died before his father met my mom, and Tolliver’s father was out of jail and drifting…somewhere. Considering my mom and dad and Tolliver’s father had all been attorneys, they’d had a long way to fall. They’d really thrown themselves into it.
    Twyla looked a little shocked. “Well, how awful. I’m so sorry.”
    I shrugged. That was just the way it was. “Thanks,” I said, but I knew I didn’t sound sincere. Couldn’t help it. When I heard that my mother had died, I was sorry, but not surprised, and not unrelieved.
    We were quiet after that until we pulled up by the side of the road. Twyla glanced down at the list she’d taken down during a quick phone call with Sandra Rockwell. Sure enough, Sandra Rockwell had a prioritized list of places to check. This was place number one.
    We were behind the high school at the football practice field, a stretch of barren level ground. One of those devices that the boys push around was still sitting by the side of the field, though football season was over. The field house was closed and locked until next year. Basketball would be the sport in play now.
    â€œThis is where his truck was,” Twyla said. “We’d just gotten it for him. It was an old second-hand Dodge.”
    Sheriff Rockwell had said less about Jeff than about any of the other boys, perhaps because she’d known we’d be talking to his grandmother. Looking around now, I didn’t see anyone. Not a soul. So an abduction at this point wasn’t out of the question, though risky. At any moment, someone might come out of the school. But there weren’t any houses nearby. The lane behind the practice field was just a bare strip of ground before a steep hill that had been sheared away to build the school.
    Though it might be a fair spot for an abduction, I seriously doubted someone had killed the boy on the spot and buried him here, but I wanted to show I was willing. I stepped out, sent out that part of me that made me unique. There was no response. I was getting the