by Jeff Abbott
“I can easily see Mama destroying any letters Trey wrote her,” I interjected. “She might not have wanted you to see them.”
“How could she? How could she carry on a correspondence with the man that deserted me and my child?”
“Look, we don’t even know why he left town.”
“Of course we do! He was a coward, Jordy! He was tired of the responsibility of a wife and a child.”
“All of a sudden, without warning? Why would he do that?”
Sister’s eyes narrowed. “That woman. Nola Kinnard. Maybe he was seeing her on the sly. She used to spend her summers here as a kid, Hart says. She’s got family here. Maybe he met her when she was visiting them. They had an affair and he left me for her.”
“Then why would he write Mama? Why would she write him back?”
She shook her head. “Maybe Scott’s lying.”
“Why would he?”
“Well, he brought back those pictures. Why doesn’t he produce these so-called letters?”
“I asked him. He said he doesn’t know where they are. Maybe Trey didn’t keep them.”
“God!” Sister collapsed in a wicker chair, her hands balled into fists. “I don’t know anything anymore. Goddamn him.” She looked up at me, her face pale, the blackened eye like a smudge of ash that her tears couldn’t rinse away. “I can’t take this, Jordy. This is killing me. I always was strong. I had to be, for Mark. And then I had to be for Mama. I just don’t think I’m strong enough for this.”
I knelt by her and took her in my arms. She tucked her head under my neck. With her face still pressed against my shoulder, she performed a typical Sisterism and changed the subject from one unpleasant to her to one unpleasant to me. “I asked Steven Teague to come talk with you after his session with Mark. I think it would be useful for our whole family to have some counseling.”
“Well.” I didn’t know what to say. “I guess my first question for our family session is how’d you get that black eye, Sister.”
She jerked back from me. “I told you. I ran into a tree.”
“Sister.” I said it softly and I saw her lip tremble. “Don’t lie to me. If you’d hit a tree, the bark would have left abrasions or cuts. Now, who hit you?”
“No one.”
“Why on earth are you protecting him? Or her?” A thought dawned. “Was it Trey? Did he hit you, and you don’t want anyone to know because it might make you even more of a suspect?” I could see the scenario unfold: Sister and Trey arguing at his house, he grabs and belts her (he could still do that from his wheelchair), she runs, tearing her pants on that stray nail on the stairs.
“Trey didn’t hit me. No one hit me.”
“I don’t believe you, Arlene.”
“I don’t care what you believe, Jordan.” It was serious business if we’d stooped to Christian names. Her voice was as icy as a frosted pane of glass in the dead of winter. “Now, will you come to family counseling?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I turned away from her. She got up and went back inside. After a moment I followed her.
“What’s your prognosis on my nephew?” I asked Steven. We’d offered him some lunch and he and I’d taken it out on the porch to talk in privacy. I stuck a tender piece of pot roast in my mouth and watched Mark showing Scott his favorite pecan tree to climb. I couldn’t hear what the boys said to each other in their hushed tones. Maybe Scott was telling Mark what-all Mama had written about Mark in those six empty years.
“He’s a smart kid. But he’s been through hell,” Steven said, buttering a roll and balancing the plate on his lap. “Mark would like to pretend that his father never died in front of him. That it just didn’t happen.”
The meat was tasteless in my mouth. “Can you help him, Steven?”
He paused, chewing. He took a long sip of iced tea before answering. “Yes, with time. Your sister’s done a great job of raising him, but he has a lot of unresolved issues with his father’s leaving him.” He patted at his mouth with a napkin. “Your sister suggested that your whole family attend some of the sessions. I think it might be productive. I understand you were once very close to Trey-”
“I was. Once. We were no longer friends when he came back.” I put my plate aside; my appetite had deserted me.
“Yes, so Arlene said. My plan is to have several individual sessions with Mark; we need to get him a certain stage past the trauma of his father’s death before we tackle the other-”
He didn’t get to finish. Junebug came out onto the porch, exhausted and a little peeved.
“Hello, Jordy. Well, Mr. Teague, you certainly turn up in the most unusual places.” His voice sounded tired and he sat heavily in one of the porch chairs.
“Excuse me, Chief?”
“I finished reading the case file on Clevey you had to turn over,” Junebug said, “and I’ve got a number of questions to ask you. Do you mind coming down to the station with me?”
Steven pointed at his heaping plate. “May I have my lunch first, Chief?”
“Lunch. What a concept,” Junebug muttered, eyeing the meat, gravy, and vegetables.
I’m not so dense I don’t know a plea for an invite. “Junebug, we’ve got plenty. Why don’t you and Steven have a bite and y’all can talk here if you like? Go on and get a plate.” I stood. “I’ll leave y’all alone and I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”
“Thanks, Jordy. Would you mind fixing me a plate?” Junebug asked. “Your sister’s wearin’ war paint instead of makeup, as far as I’m concerned. She didn’t look too happy to see me.”
“Give her time. She’ll cool off.” I went back inside, where I found Eula Mae, Sister, and Candace all speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen. I silently took a plate from the cabinet and began ladling food onto it.
“Second helpings for you?” Sister asked archly.
“No, for your boyfriend. I invited him to lunch. He and Steven need to have a little privacy out on the porch to talk about Clevey’s case.”
“Some boyfriend he is, supposing I could’ve killed Trey.”
“He had to take himself off the case because he believes you’re innocent. Don’t you see that? He couldn’t be impartial in his investigation.”
Sister made a noise that indicated logical arguments were not welcome. I didn’t respond. Nabbing a glass of iced tea, I took Junebug his food. He thanked me and dove heartily in.
“Y’all help yourselves if you want more.” I left them alone on the porch.
Solitude sounded good to me. I avoided any further skirmishes with the female contingent and went up to my room. I lay down on my bed and tried to nap, but the image of Trey, collapsing, dying, staring into his son’s face with the final glimmer of life, kept me awake. And the air felt dense in my lungs, the room having been shut so tightly during all the recent rain.
I went to my bedroom window, which faced out onto the backyard. Scott and Mark had either gone ’round to the front or gone inside. I tugged the window open, hoping for a little fresh air.
“-and I resent this, Chief Moncrief.” Steven’s voice was tight with anger. ’I’ve given you my case file. You’ve read it. I really don’t want to be grilled about my therapy with Clevey.”
“I read it, but I don’t understand half of your mumbo jumbo. And you don’t have a choice, Mr. Teague. You’re not a psychiatrist. You’re not under the same legal obligation to confidentiality. Your lawyer’s already advised you to cooperate fully with me; I suggest you heed his advice.” Junebug’s voice, fainter than Steven’s, floated up to me past the back-porch roof. I saw a bluish puff of smoke from Steven’s pipe drift up from the porch steps.
Shut the window, I told myself, but I didn’t. Curiosity won out over good manners. So much for my Southern-gentleman merit badge. I leaned down slightly from the window.
Junebug muttered something I couldn’t catch. Another miniature cloud of pipe smoke wafted from the porch as Steven didn’t answer.
Junebug spoke again: “He was murder
ed. He was my friend. I’d like to think that if he’d had a problem, he would come to his friends. I know you want to find who killed him, Steven. Please don’t help this killer get away.”
There was a long, thoughtful silence, then Steven’s unaccented, polished voice: “I’ve never discussed a patient’s therapy before. Never.”
“You’ve never had a patient murdered, I assume.”
“No, I haven’t,” Steven answered. There was another pause and then he spoke, his voice sounding resigned and not a little bitter: “Have you ever read Steinbeck, Chief Moncrief? East of Eden, in particular?”
“No, but I saw the movie-with James Dean, right? About the perfect son and the bad son.”
“Clevey was both. He wanted to be good, someone liked and respected. He envied you, he envied Davis, his other friends that he saw as successful. But he enjoyed… being bad, for lack of a better term. He thought there was a certain glamour in breaking the rules. But he was driven to make up for bad actions by doing good. He was like a moral pendulum, swinging from anger and bitterness to piety and kindliness, back and forth. It made him a very unhappy man.”
I heard Junebug’s distinctive snort. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it certainly wasn’t Clevey.”
“Wasn’t it? Didn’t you ever see him be cruel to someone, then be desperate to make amends? Again, and again, and again?”
That phrasing put a different spin on it. Clevey, torturing Ed with truly mean-spirited teasing and the next moment being Ed’s best friend, apologizing and treating him to lunch. Raking Junebug over the coals in the newspaper for a flubbed case, then rallying support around him out of friendship. I’d noticed it always in him, but perhaps I’d dismissed it as a quirk of personality. I’d grown up with him. I thought I knew him.
Steven continued: “Chief, I tried to help Clevey see the value of moderation in his judgments. Realizing that if he made one good judgment, that didn’t give him permission to make a bad one. And if he made a bad choice, did something he regretted, he needed to let go of it and move on with his life. Clevey was eternally making amends because he was eternally doing something wrong.”
“Wrong? Like he was committing a crime?” Junebug demanded.
A pause ensued, and I could imagine Steven sucking at his pipe. “Of course not. At least he didn’t confess to me. Clevey was a manipulator-but he specialized in manipulating himself. He was his own worst victim. He made himself miserable.” He paused again. I glanced around, wondering if any of my neighbors would wonder why I was sticking my head out the window for so long. “I think he would have been much happier if he’d just tried to be a saint or a total son of a bitch. But not both.”
“Do you think you helped him?” Junebug said. I would’ve asked that myself-I didn’t like the thought of Clevey dying a tortured soul, always doing wrong and forever trying to make up for it. Assuming that Steven’s portrayal was correct. I knew of no reason for him to lie.
“I don’t know. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t have died. He wouldn’t have hurt someone so much they killed him.”
“This swinging back and forth between good and evil,” Junebug said. “How did it manifest itself? What was he doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you must know, Steven. How else did you arrive at this diagnosis?”
The wind whipped through the dripping trees. I heard the tap of Steven’s pipe against the rail of the porch. “I think,” he said slowly, “that this conversation is over. I still respect my client’s memory, even if you don’t. And I’m not going to answer any more questions without my lawyer present. Good day, Chief.” I heard the back door shut and Junebug cuss softly, then go inside. I pulled the window closed, the air smelling like waiting rain. And I went downstairs to tell Junebug about the argument between Clevey and Trey that Scott had overheard.
That afternoon, we completed Trey’s funeral arrangements. Mark and Sister agreed with Truda Shiva’s that a double funeral for Clevey and Trey would be appropriate. Hart said he would speak to Nola; he thought she would agree. Sister told Hart to tell Nola she could pick out the burial suit; we would select the coffin. Hart left with Scott. Sister excused herself and I could hear her up in Mama’s room, opening and slamming drawers. Looking for letters. I didn’t join in her search. I watched Mama’s serene face as she watched the beginnings of another rainstorm patter on the grassy yard and wondered how she could have truly exchanged letters with Trey. Why would she? And why wouldn’t she have told Sister?
A thought made my mouth go dry. What if she had told Sister? The only one who could say that Mama definitely hadn’t told Sister was Mama herself, and she was in no condition to remember. What if Sister had known all along where Trey was? What he was doing, where he was living? She said she didn’t know-but was she being entirely honest?
That didn’t make sense. What reason would she have for pretending now that she hadn’t known? I couldn’t think of one; but then, I couldn’t think of a reason for her to have that shiner.
Sister found nothing in her search. Candace ran home for a while, and Clo left to tend to her own family. Mark and I desultorily watched part of the Cowboys game. They stomped their opponents, taking away any distraction for us. Junebug, who’d gone back to the station after Steven bolted, called to tell me that they hadn’t made much progress on the case. He sounded tired. He didn’t ask to speak to Sister, but he asked me how she and Mark were doing.
“They’re fine, Junebug. And how are you?”
“I wish everyone would quit worrying so damn much about me. I’m perfectly all right, just tired. Hey, I found some old pictures last night in my daddy’s scrapbook,” Junebug said. His father (the same SOB who’d christened his son with an insectoid nickname) had fancied himself a photographer and endlessly annoyed you at any social gathering by sticking a lens down your gullet. “There’s a couple of real funny photos of you and Trey. Remember at Ed’s twenty-first birthday party, we all got tight and nearly decapitated each other swinging at that stupid pinata his mama got him?”
I remembered. I’d nailed Trey in the shoulder. Blindfolded with a soft cotton bandanna and with a six-pack in me, he was lucky I hadn’t brained him. He’d wrested the stick from me and swatted me hard on the ass. We’d gotten into a wrestling match that ended when Davis finally whacked the pinata and the damn thing dumped pounds of candy on us. Try to keep fighting when a bunch of squealing, pretty girls fall on you, grabbing sweets out of your hair and face.
“Oh, and one of you and Clevey and Trey when you went fishing with Daddy and me on Lake Bonaparte. You didn’t catch squat. You ought to see all the fish on Trey’s line. Man, that boy could fish. You never had the patience for it, Jordy.”
I didn’t want to remember. “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I hung up. I saw Candace look up from a magazine. Mama snored softly in her chair, Mark had retired to his room; Sister had taken to bed, claiming a bad headache. All of us straying to our separate little compartments, except for Candace.
“Junebug.” I shrugged toward the phone. “He likes to jabber.”
“So he does.” Her voice was strangely low. “How you feeling?”
I kept from making a face. “Fine, I’m fine.” I smiled and stuck my hands in my jeans pockets. “But I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed. You don’t have to stay over.”
“I know. But I’ll stay in the guest room, if you don’t mind. Arlene might need me.”
Arlene. She was staying for my sister, not for me. I blinked. I loved this woman. But I was conscious of how I’d been pushing her away, shutting her out from all the confusion I felt about Trey’s death. That wasn’t fair to her. I knew it. She wanted to help me, wanted me to need her now. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know why.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said. It sounded empty, even to me.
“Sleep well, babe.”
I wished her a good night and went to my room. I lay facedown on the bed, b
reathing in the scent of clean sheets and the smell of rain that pervaded the old house.
Order, I decided. Just like at the library, I needed to get my thoughts in order. I fetched a legal pad off my desk and began writing. After a few minutes I’d scribbled down a list of questions-some horribly obvious-that I wanted answers to: QUESTIONS
1. Why did Trey leave Mirabeau in the first place? 2. Had Mama really been corresponding with Trey all these years? If so, why didn’t she tell us? If she kept Trey’s letters, where are they? 3. Who gave Sister the black eye? Why is she protecting that person? Or is it that she’s afraid of someone? 4. Why was Clevey hiding all that information on Rennie Clifton? Nothing there that isn’t public record. 5. What did Clevey and Trey argue about (that Scott overheard)? What did Clevey mean revenge is sweet? Who did Clevey-or Trey-need to revenge by himself on? What did Clevey mean by “gravy train”? 6. Are Davis and Ed hiding anything? Why did Davis sound so numbed when I talked to him? 7. What does 2 DOWN mean, painted in blood on Trey’s wall? 8. What motives would anyone have to kill either Trey or Clevey? Who had opportunity to commit the murders? 9. Why is Steven hesitant to talk about Clevey’s therapy? Is it just ethics-or something else? I read over my list, then added another: 10. Why did Trey really come home?
That seemed the key to me. He’d been away for six years; he’d sent money to his ex-wife; he’d possibly exchanged letters with my mother. This status quo had been maintained for a long, long while. Even with his injuries, he could have recuperated elsewhere. What suddenly urged him back to a town where he’d be shunned as a cowardly father?
I rubbed my eyes. My head throbbed, pained with memories and with doubts. I contemplated going downstairs to talk with Candace, but I preferred my own company for the moment. I didn’t know what to say to her. I doused the lights and fell into fitful sleep, vaguely hearing the distant roll of thunder as I drifted off.
“Sounds like rain’s coming.” Trey stared up at the star-dotted sky. He propped his booted feet on the cab door of his battered truck and folded his hands behind his head. I lay next to him, trying to count the stars through a blur of beer.