by Jeff Abbott
Her beaded necklace jangled as she left. I watched her leave, the faint smell of her citrusy perfume lingering on the air. I thought that seeing my bruised eye would elicit shock from Lorna. What I wasn’t expecting was the absence of a cop car in front of our house, and then seeing Lorna and Candace sitting in my living room, in front of a laptop computer that appeared to be hooked up to my phone in some crazy way, and Lorna crying while Candace handed her tissues and patted her shoulder-a bit reluctantly, I thought. After exchanging a “what the hell happened to your eye?” and “why the hell are you carrying on so?” I sat down with a Dr Pepper and heard what they’d been up to. “I feel like an utter fool,” Lorna wailed, blowing her nose loudly and liquidly into a tissue. Candace gave her another reassuring pat but frowned at me. I know Candace has a big, sweet heart, but she looked right then like she’d rather be swallowing glass than comforting my ex-girlfriend. “Why?” Not to ask would have been anticlimactic. “You’re right. Greg must’ve been a huge fraud.” Lorna gestured at the laptop. “Candace was kind enough to bring over this computer from the Mirabeau Historical Society. It’s got a modem, so I tried to dial into Intraglobal’s files in the Boston office from here.
I wanted to go through all Greg’s home-office files and see what I could find out-see if maybe there was something that’d point us to Doreen Miller or to how he was planning on unloading the land he was going to buy here. But nothing. I’m locked out of everything! Files that used to be there are gone, and files I used to be able to get into are locked.” “When was this done?” I asked. “Who knows?” She sat back from the computer, a disgusted look on her face. “Greg must’ve done it after he and I came down here-or maybe Doreen did it after Greg got killed and she heard about it from the Boston cops. She must’ve wanted to be sure we couldn’t find out about the land fraud.
She must’ve not known about the files on Greg’s laptop down here.” “I don’t even know if the Boston police have found Doreen, Lorna,” I said. If they had, I didn’t know if they’d examined Greg’s computer files-but surely they would have gone through his office. If Doreen Miller was a partner in the fraud, she could have destroyed the files to cover Greg’s tracks. I bit my lip. “Could someone have done this from Greg’s laptop? Was it hooked up with a modem?” I asked. I became aware that Candace was staring at me, a pensive look on her face. “I suppose,” Lorna said slowly. “His did have a modem. I didn’t have a laptop down here. But his machine’s at the police station, and how would anyone here know the passwords?” She shot the finger at the machine. “This is so frustrating!” “Would you mind telling me where your guard is?” I asked. “I thought someone was going to be here to relieve Franklin.” Candace cleared her throat. Lorna stopped frowning for a moment and looked at my knees, standing next to her at the table. “I decided I didn’t need a guard. Not with you here. So I sent him on his way. You’re not mad, are you?” “Lorna, honey, what you need is some nice, relaxing chamomile tea. Jordy, don’t y’all have some in the kitchen? I know your mama likes a cup now and then.” “Uh, yeah, I think so.” “Good, we’ll make Lorna some tea. Come help me find it.”
Candace seized my wrist in a death grip and pulled me along into the kitchen. I glanced back at Lorna; she was staring intently at the uncooperative screen. I pulled free from Candace after she’d dragged me into the kitchen. She rattled the teapot under the faucet, turning the water on full blast. She jerked her head toward the living room and whispered, “She did it.” “Excuse me?” I wondered why we were whispering. “She did it,” Candace repeated. “She destroyed those files.” “Pardon me? What the hell are you talking about?” “I saw her do it,” Candace hissed. “I saw her select a bunch of files and delete them. I was getting us Cokes from the kitchen while she was trying to get into that Boston computer, and when I came back, there was this box on the screen that said DELETE SELECTED FILES? and she pressed OK.
I saw it all over her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her chair when I came up behind her. It was only after that that she started whining about all these files being missing.” “Candace, are you sure?”
“Yes, goddamn it, I’m sure.” She switched off the faucet and banged open a cabinet, still speaking in a soft but smoldering tone. “I have been around a computer before, Jordy. She destroyed those files. Are you still going to stand by her side now and defend her to the death?”
“I can’t believe this!” “Believe it, Jordy. And now she’s gotten rid of her guard. You think maybe that’s so she can skedaddle out of here when she wants to? Or maybe she just wants to shame you into protecting her precious self.” Candace went back to the kitchen door and stuck her head into the living room, now all smiles. “You want some cookies with that tea, hon?” ‘Too bad Candace had to go,” Lorna said, munching on a peanut-butter cookie, her head leaning back on the couch. “Yeah, it is.” I stared out at the early-evening haze of heat.
Crickets and katydids raised their voices in the backyard, singing their midsummer oratorio, celebrating their brief lives. I tried to turn back to Lorna, but I was having trouble facing her. Candace had left shortly after serving Lorna her tea. I’d walked her out to the car, still stunned by Candace’s accusation. She wasn’t very happy with me for not throwing her testimony in Lorna’s face and seeing what stuck to those gray eyes and high cheekbones. “Why don’t you confront her?” I had demanded. “I’m not the one protecting her,” Candace had snapped back. “God, what does she have to do? Commit a crime in your presence? She is trouble, Jordy, and I am sick and tired of you taking up for her. I only loaned her the computer to help her, since you believe in her so much. And what does she do? Possibly commit another crime with it. I only get played for a fool once by Lorna, Jordy. You ought to adopt that motto for yourself.” “This is awfully circumstantial, Candace.” “Please. I think Lorna could climb up on the water tower with a rifle, blow away half the town, and you’d still cling to her innocence.” She got into her Mercedes, slamming the door.
“You come see me when you’ve decided what to do. I’m washing my hands of this whole affair, Jordy.” And that had been the end of the conversation. I’d skulked back to the house, feeling the slow throb of a headache in my temples. Assume Candace was right. Why had Lorna destroyed those files? To get rid of information. What kind? That she was in on Greg’s fraud? That she’d been in touch with the chemical waste company in Houston that’d planned to turn Mirabeau into another Love Canal? She’d stoutly proclaimed her ignorance of Greg’s duplicity. But maybe those files had been humming in computer memory in faraway Boston, and she’d had no way of getting to them until she’d talked Candace into getting hold of a laptop with a modem. And of course, suspecting Lorna of being a liar now meant I might have to suspect her of worse. Of far, far worse. I forced myself to turn back to her. She was licking the crumbs from one of Sister’s homemade peanut-butter cookies from her fingers. She caught my eye and smiled.
“Feeling better?” I heard my voice ask. “Sure am. I think your sister’s cookies have medicinal value. Let’s put one on your eye and see if the discoloration goes away.” I nearly laughed. It was the old Lorna, the Lorna I could laugh with and tell my secrets to and trust.
Surely Candace was mistaken. I knew Candace wouldn’t have fabricated the story about the files; she was not a liar. Right now I didn’t know if I could say the same for Lorna. “Why don’t you sit down, Jordan?
You’re going to pace a hole in that carpet.” “Sorry. It’s been an eventful day. I’m restless.” “Well, I think I should call Junebug and let him know about those files. And see if he tracked down Doreen Miller.” She lurched off the sofa and headed for the phone. I sat down on the warm couch cushion she’d vacated. My arm hurt and so did my eye. And most of all I felt mad at my own inaction. I wanted to talk to Sister, but she was working the night shift at the truck stop again, covering for a friend who was taking care of a sick kid. Mark was upstairs watching TV with Mama. I was basically stuck here alone with Lorna.
Until the doorbell rang, followed by the gentle twisting of a key in the lock. “Y’all home?” Clo’s voice carried into the living room. Great. Now I had two visitors in the house that I had a ton of questions for, and no easy way to ask them. “Hi, Clo,” I called, feebly waving a hand from the couch. “What are you doing here?” She hovered above me, peering down at my face. She wasn’t in her nursing whites. “Good Lord. What happened to your eye?” “The mayor slugged me.” This announcement would have elicited shock from anyone other than Clo. She examined the eye critically, muttered “fool boy” under her breath, and sat down. “Arlene told me she had to go into the restaurant last minute, so I thought I’d stop by and see if y’all needed any help with Anne.” She leaned close to me. “Lorna still here?” I forced a smile on my face. “Yes, she is. Would you mind stepping outside with me for a minute, please?” A frown creased her face and she slowly rose to her feet. “What’s wrong?” she asked. I didn’t answer her as she followed me out onto the back porch. Thunder rumbled distantly, and I wondered if we were likely to get one of the tempestuous summer evenings that would keep a lightning show going the entire night, one to shake the floors and the walls. The air was heavy with the promise of storm. I gestured to one of the porch chairs and she sat, still frowning. “Anne all right?” “Yes, Mama’s fine.” I cleared my throat but didn’t say anything-I didn’t know where to start. I decided with someone as blunt as Clo, the blunderbuss approach would work. “I was told by someone that you were having a discussion with Greg Callahan, sitting in his car a couple of days before he died. I just wondered why.” Clo’s face didn’t betray any reaction to my announcement. I wasn’t surprised; she would make a world-class poker player if she ever decided to take up the game. “Who told you this?” “Does it matter? You’re not denying it.” “I didn’t think anything I did outside of this house was any concern of yours.”
Her voice held a grating edge that suggested I was on thin ice. “Look, Clo. You’ve always shot straight with me before. Please don’t stop now.” Her gaze rested on the newly mowed grass of the backyard. She wasn’t going to look me in the face anymore. “I don’t have to answer this, Jordy.” She stood. “You’ll have my resignation in the morning.
Or should I send it to Mr. Goertz, since he pays my salary?” I stood to face her. “Goddamn it, you are stubborn. Look. The man supposedly didn’t know very many folks in town. He talked with you. Privately. I assume from your attitude he hadn’t stopped you for directions to the Dairy Queen. Now he’s dead.” I held up my hands. “Wait, now two men are dead. You’re in this house, taking care of my mother. I think I have a right to know why you were talking to him, Clo. Unless you’ve done something wrong, it’s not an unreasonable question.” She sat, considering. Her fingers folded into the shape of a steeple and she rested her thumbs on her heavy chin. The chittering of the night’s creatures rang in my ears, and sitting like that she looked like a statue of some forbidding, unforgiving goddess. If she couldn’t tell me this, I could never trust her again with the simple duties I’d seen her perform so often: braiding Mama’s hair, coaxing her to rest during her fitful spells, washing her face with the gentlest of strokes. The steeple of her fingers folded. She looked at me with eyes of complete candor. “He wanted to talk to me about you, Jordy. He stopped me on the street, introduced himself to me, said he knew you, and said he had a business proposition for me. I decided to listen to him. “He sat me down in the car. I was kind of nervous about that, but I figured I could handle him. We talked for a long while. He wanted to know about my kids and he told me he knew times were hard for people, even honest hardworking folks like me. He wanted to know how much free run of your house I had. I got pretty suspicious at this point and started to leave. Then he offered me five thousand dollars. I decided to listen some more.” ‘To what?” I asked, my breath caught in my throat. “He wanted me to put a bag in your attic.” “A bag? I don’t understand.” “I didn’t either. Till I looked in the bag. Had chemicals and wires in it.” She didn’t blink. “And rods that looked like sticks of dynamite.”
“My God! He wanted you to put a bomb in my house!” “Not a bomb-the makings of a bomb. It wasn’t all hooked up together.” She let out a long, unhappy sigh. “I told him no way, no way in hell. He offered me ten thousand. I said no, not any business of mine. He reached in his jacket, and I thought for sure he was getting a gun to shoot me dead, but he pulled out a thousand dollars. A thick wad, in twenty-dollar bills. He pushed it in my hand and said we’d never talked. He said if I did talk, keeping the money wasn’t going to pay for the trouble I’d buy myself.” “My God. He wanted to make me look like the bomber.” I stared at her. “What did you do?” She surveyed the lawn again. “I kept the money. I was afraid to say anything-he frightened me. There was something about his eyes, a blankness behind them that made me all shivery. And Jordy, a thousand dollars is a lot. I guess I can’t buy back your trust with it. I thought he wanted to pull some mean prank on you because of you and Lorna’s past. I thought maybe he was involved with her. Or maybe I thought he’d be gone soon and I could just take the money and put it in my granddaughter’s college fund. But then he turned up dead, and no one at all had to know he’d given me that money. I figured it was okay, ‘cause at least he couldn’t hurt you like how he wanted to. “I didn’t have to say anything and I could keep the money. At least, I thought I could.” She shook her head. “I ain’t cut out for this shit. I can always keep other people’s secrets but never my own.” I was hardly listening to her. Greg had wanted to frame me as Mirabeau’s least favorite explosive personality. Why? What on earth did he have to gain? I looked over at Clo; I’d been staring off at the wall as she talked. A hot anger boiled up in me. This woman, who had cared for my mother, for me, our family-she’d taken money from a man who wanted to implicate me as a criminal, and not said a word. “And if he hadn’t died, I guess you would have just stayed quiet about it.” My voice was cold. Her stoic mouth trembled for a moment. “I don’t know what I would have done, Jordy.” She fumbled in her purse and drew out a roll of crisp bills. “I can’t spend it. I can’t put it in the bank, I can’t even put it into Diane’s college fund!” Diane was Clo’s granddaughter, a pretty, precociously bright girl of ten. “It’s like blood money. I wished I’d never stepped out of the car with it!” Her thick hand, closed around the roll, shook in anger. I didn’t feel much sympathy for her. “I think you better go, Clo. I’m sorry that our family wasn’t worth more than a thousand dollars to you-” She threw the money in my face; the rubber-banded wad of cash bounced off my forehead. If I hadn’t been so numbed by her news, I imagine it would have hurt. “I wish I had your smug superiority, but I don’t.” She was screaming now, and tears made her voice ragged. “Instead I got one son to support ‘cause he can’t find work and a grandbaby to raise ‘cause her mama’s dead. I don’t get to sit behind a library desk all day on my ass. I have to take care of people that are going to die soon. And I try not to love them, but I do. People like your mama. I’m sorry I made a mistake, but I made it.
Only you can forgive me for it. I ain’t gonna forgive myself anytime soon.” I glanced up; Lorna leaned in the kitchen doorway, a shocked look on her face, and Mark stood stock-still on the stairs, his mouth gaping. I didn’t know what to say; I felt the molten pain of betrayal-in my gut, in my heart, in my head. My mouth was dry. “I-I suppose you should tell Junebug about this. Maybe Greg knew who the bomber really was.” “All right, I will.” Her tears were gone, wiped away on the back of her hand. “I suppose you don’t want me around here no more. Like I said, I’ll send my resignation to Mr. Goertz.”
Sister’d kill me if I let Clo go. But what was I supposed to do? This woman was caring for my mother, yet she’d stayed quiet for money, knowing that I or my family might be in danger from Greg Callahan. The trust I’d felt for her lay shattered. “I think that would be best, Clo. I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry, too, Jordy. More than you will ever know.” She glanced up at Mark. “Te
ll your Mamaw goodbye for me, sugar pie.” She turned to Lorna. “You be glad that man’s dead, miss. He was nothing but trash through and through.” Lorna didn’t answer. I didn’t look up as the front door closed behind her. I was still staring at the thousand dollars at my feet. Lorna had more presence of mind than I did; she picked it up using a towel and dropped it in a paper bag.
“Junebug’ll probably want it,” she said. I nodded, hating Greg, hating myself, and wondering if I should let Lorna keep a hold on that money.
I took the bag from her and said, “I’ll keep it for him.” She nodded and went back into the kitchen. Mark had vanished upstairs. I went to go lie down on my bed. I closed my eyes. Try not to think about Clo.
The sharp sting of betrayal still hurt. Was I being unfair? Could I forgive her? I rubbed my eyes through closed lids. If Candace was right, Lorna was betraying me in a way possibly worse than Clo-yet I’d given Clo, who had confessed, a tongue-lashing, and I’d given Lorna, who hadn’t, a peanut-butter cookie. I wasn’t being entirely fair by being understanding toward one and damning toward the other. I rolled over and called the police station. According to Junebug, the Boston police had found an address for a Doreen Miller, but she apparently was no longer in residence. They were still looking for her. He had not offered an opinion about the passworded and destroyed Intraglobal computer files. I could only imagine what he would make of Clo’s tale.
I tried to be analytical. Greg wanted me to look like the bomber. Why?