Page 110 of Deeper Than the Dead

Eve turned her head toward Vera now. “Keeping me and Mama out of trouble?”

A dry chuckle erupted from Vera’s lips. “No.” She turned her head as well, so her and her sister’s faces were only a dozen or so inches apart. “I would do anything anytime to protect you and Mama. Daddy and Luna too. I meant keeping secrets is exhausting.”

“No kidding.” Eve breathed a laugh that held even less humor than Vera’s had. “It’s so much easier to just tell the truth.”

“Except,” Vera offered, “sometimes it’s too painful to tell, or it creates a domino effect that ultimately will help no one.”

“Especially Luna,” Eve said, facing forward once more.

Especially Luna. Vera sighed. She didn’t want to think about their secrets anymore.

Eve tugged out her cell phone and distracted herself.

Vera considered doing the same but preferred not to risk seeing her name attached to any lead stories.

“We have three potential sugar daddies,” she said, thinking out loud in hopes of doing something constructive. “Dr. Higdon, Sheriff Fraley, and Daddy.”

“My money’s on Higdon,” Eve said without looking up from her phone. “I never liked him. He was always so mean, even when he pretended to be nice.”

“I thought you liked him,” Vera countered, “since he works with the dead too.”

Eve’s face contorted into an expression of disgust that looked slightly blue in the light from her cell phone. “Not the same as what I do at all. Besides, he has always been like this sneaky old man who did things you couldn’t see but that hurt just the same. All smiles and wearing those little bow ties.”

A laugh popped out of Vera.

“What?” Eve shot a curious look at her.

“Every time I see him,” Vera admitted, “I think of that old Porky Pig cartoon.”

They both burst into laughter, the full-belly kind, until they had to stop to breathe.

“Oh my God,” Eve said as she wiped away tears from laughing so hard, “me too.”

Vera swiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. “Then I guess that makes his wife Petunia.”

They dissolved into laughter once more. Vera laughed until it hurt. She understood that it was the exhaustion and the stress driving the moment, but she needed the relief and felt thankful for it, no matter the form.

“Oh shit.” Eve stared at her phone.

Vera straightened up. “What?”

Eve turned the screen toward her. The image was of her and Eve sitting on the bench at their mother’s grave. Vera grabbed the phone and tapped on the screen. There was another image, this one of their mother’s coffin being exhumed. Fury lit in her belly. The accompanying story was about the exhumation ... from the Memphis ABC affiliate and that damned Patricia Patton.

The ruthless reporter had gotten her story. Vera wasn’t surprised, just pissed off.

Headlights bobbed in the darkness, jerking Vera’s attention forward. She passed the phone back to Eve and collected herself. “Maybe this is the Fraleys.”

Eve tossed the device onto the console. “I hope so. I’m starving.”

As if the reminder had flipped some switch, Vera’s stomach rumbled. “We’ll stop at the Jack’s pickup window before going home.”

“You can have Jack’s,” Eve grumbled. “I’ll take KFC.”

Vera didn’t argue. Who knew if either of them would still have an appetite when this was done. She refused to think about the images that went with that damned story of Patton’s.

The truck Vera had seen parked in the drive the last time she visited Beatrice came to a stop now. As if the driver considered turning around and driving away, the vehicle sat for a moment, motor running, lights blaring into Vera’s SUV, before shutting down and going dark.

“Beatrice is getting out,” Eve said, peering toward the truck, which was parked on her side of the driveway, maybe ten feet away.

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