Promises of Home jp-3

by Jeff Abbott

  “She’d told her mama she’d gotten involved with a man she couldn’t have. Her mama thought that meant a white man, but it meant more than that. It meant a man who loved another man.” I shook my head. “How did you keep Trey from knowing? Did he?”

  “No.” Hart spoke so softly I could barely hear. His eyes never wavered from mine. “No, Trey didn’t know. He didn’t know about me or Rennie or his daddy.”

  “So. Rennie is pregnant with your lover’s child. Now you’ll have to help me out here, Hart. The hurricane comes, Louis is drunk, you get suspicious that Trey’s pulling a stunt somewhere in the storm. Maybe at his favorite tree-house hangout. So you go out to the woods and get Rennie to come along with you. And you kill her.”

  “That’s not it,” he croaked. “Put the gun down, please, Jordan. We’ve known each other forever, please.”

  The rifle didn’t budge. My arm should’ve felt tired, but it didn’t; I felt strangely, perversely, alive. His life was in my hands and I felt sickly drunk with power. I wanted this to be over. “Tell me, Hart.”

  His voice broke, and he spoke slowly, the truth rising to the surface like a pustule. “Rennie found out about Louis and me. Louis told her when he was dead drunk. I didn’t know. She volunteered to go with me to look for Trey and you boys. When we got out to the woods, away from Louis, she told me she… knew what I was. And that if I didn’t drop Louis, she’d tell the town. I panicked. She was vicious, horrible. Said she’d make sure everyone in town’d know about me. They’d all hate me for what I was.” His face pained with the memory.

  “Before I knew it, I’d picked up a heavy branch and I hit her with it. I just meant to scare her, let her know she couldn’t mess with me, I wasn’t even trying to hit her in the head, just scare her, I swear! She fell-so totally, so suddenly. I couldn’t believe I’d killed her. I just wanted her to shut up, to leave Louis and me alone. So I left her out in the storm. I hurried back to the farm. Louis had passed out from drink. He didn’t remember that Rennie and I headed out together.” Two thin tears ran down his face.

  I eased my hold on the rifle. Now that he’d confessed, the tension’d leaked out of the room like air from an old balloon.

  “And Clevey. Did he see you out in the storm?”

  “No.” His voice was wooden. “But he told me he decided to investigate Rennie’s death. He was a strange man, doing rotten stuff one day, trying to make up for it with kindness the next. He wanted to make up for blackmailing-”

  “I already know Clevey was a blackmailer, Hart.”

  He started, but I said nothing further. No need to drag poor Davis’s name into this fascinating conversation.

  Hart swallowed thickly. “So, for penance, he wanted to find out if Rennie had been murdered. He said he got suspicious when he was writing the anniversary piece on the hurricane and he found old notes on her file at the coroner’s that indicated she was pregnant when she died. And of course, there was never any reason given for her to be out in the woods during the storm.”

  I felt ill. Clevey was not the person I thought he was.

  But then, few people of my extended acquaintance seemed to be these days.

  “So how did he make the connection between Rennie and you? Why would he share these suspicions with you, Hart?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t look in my face.

  This didn’t make sense. I tightened my grip on the rifle. “Clevey told Trey that revenge was sweet if he gave it half a chance. Clevey wanted Trey to participate in some blackmail scheme, I think. Trey didn’t. He told Clevey the past was past. You know anything about that?”

  “Can I have a drink, please, Jordy?”

  “No, you may not,” I answered politely. “You killed Clevey to keep him from blackmailing you, didn’t you, Hart?”

  Anger colored Hart’s face. “Keep him from it? He’d already bled me dry over six years, Jordy, I couldn’t do anything else. Most of my money’s gone. All I’ve got left is the farm. The last time I gave him money, he bragged he was going to make what he’d done to me right by exposing whoever killed Rennie. He didn’t know yet it was me.”

  I felt confused. He hadn’t suspected about Rennie’s death for six years…

  “The past six years? That’s when Trey left. So whyever Trey left, Clevey knew about it, too?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Hart yelled in frustration as the walls, long built around his secrets, continued their inexorable tumble.

  “What happened, Hart?”

  I remembered Ed’s comment in the library: Clevey said he was the last fellow to see Trey in Mirabeau.

  Hart stared at me with weary eyes. Not hateful, not bitter. “You’ve gotten so smart. What do you reckon happened?”

  I didn’t speak for a moment, and the only sound was the logs crackling in the fire. “You and Louis. He found out about you.”

  “Worse.” Hart stared at the bright orange embers of wood burning into ash. “Trey and Clevey-they walked in on us.” He fell silent

  “In bed?” I ventured.

  “Do you want me to draw you a goddamned picture, Jordan? Louis and I had argued. We’d gotten drunk and made up. We were in the kitchen. Trey walked in, and I was in his father’s mouth. Clevey saw, too. Got the picture now?”

  I took a long, bracing breath. “And that’s when he left us. Left my sister. Left his boy.”

  Hart wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. “Yes. He turned around without a word and walked out. I didn’t see him again until he and Nola and Scott drove up to the house last week. He’d forgiven me. He didn’t want to hate anymore.”

  What Trey’d told Sister rang true: he’d left on terrible impulse for the wrong reasons, and he’d been too scared to come home. Afraid we wouldn’t want him. Afraid to deal with his father. For a man like Trey, what he’d seen represented the ultimate in betrayal and pain.

  “And Clevey knew all this? He never told?”

  “That,” Hart said slowly, “would have cut into his profit margin. I had no money left to give him. And I had Trey’s forgiveness. Clevey said he’d take the farm. I said no. He said yes. So I shot him.”

  “And your new lover was Clevey’s therapist. How convenient.”

  “Clevey was busy trying to justify the rotten things he did. Booze and therapy seemed to be the easiest ways for him. He never told Steven he was a blackmailer, though. But I had. So Steven kept nudging him toward stopping the blackmail. It didn’t work.”

  “Steven left here after Rennie died. How’d he fit in?”

  “I knew him from Austin. I-I used to go to Austin sometimes and drink in the gay bars. I’d met him there. We’d fooled around, and he moved out here, but he couldn’t take the pressure of being closeted in a little town. I was trying to work out my relationship with Louis. So Steven left. I ran into him again several months ago and he decided to try Mirabeau again. He’s not involved in any of this, not directly. He doesn’t know that I killed Clevey or Rennie.”

  I thought of Steven’s unwillingness to discuss Clevey’s case with Junebug. “I bet he suspects you killed Clevey.”

  “Just leave him alone.”

  “But Steven knew why Trey left?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Nola has big ears. How nice that Steven has been counseling Mark over his father’s murder, when he knows more about Trey than Mark does.” I made myself quit gritting my teeth.

  “Are we done? You can go ahead and shoot me now.”

  “No. I want to know how you killed Trey.”

  “I didn’t, I told you. I was over in Fayette County-”

  “Yes, we’ve heard your alibi. How much did you pay off the horse dealer there to back up your story?”

  “You shut up!” Hart yelled. “You’re not so smart, Jordan, no matter how bright you think you’ve gotten since you’ve aimed a gun at me. Listen to me: I didn’t kill Trey. Do you really think, having gotten rid of one blackmailer, I’d put myself in a vulnerable position of pa
ying someone in Fayette County for an alibi? That would’ve just been an invitation to get more money extorted out of me.”

  He had a point. I wasn’t sure I was buying it.

  “Tell me how you did it, Hart. Why’d you keep score in Trey’s blood?”

  “I didn’t, goddamn it, Jordan. I didn’t shoot Junebug and I didn’t kill Trey. Why would I? Why would I kill Trey? He’d forgiven me; Nola told you as much. He’d come home. He’d come to see me. He wanted nothing to do with Clevey’s schemes. He’d nearly died and he didn’t want to be away from the people who had loved him!”

  Hart stood and I motioned him back down with the rifle.

  “No!” he yelled in defiance. “Go ahead and shoot me. Do it for me. You don’t think that I’ve wanted to kill myself? For God’s sake, I didn’t enjoy killing Rennie Clifton! I didn’t even mean to! And killing Clevey was horrible-I used his own gun on him. He begged me not to, he said he was sorry, he cried for his mother, and I still forced myself to shoot him!

  “I’m a Quadlander, for God’s sake! I killed a girl and paid money to a scumball because I didn’t want anyone to know that a Quadlander was gay! But I’ve made myself into something truly awful, a murderer, so just shoot me now. Shoot me now.” He sank back onto the couch, broken.

  I lowered the rifle. He was right about Trey. His motive to kill him had vanished with Trey’s forgiveness.

  “Look at me, Hart.”

  He glanced up, seeing me and the rifle lowered. “You believe me.”

  “Yes,” I managed.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry about the girl. And I’m sorry about Clevey. I’m glad you know I wouldn’t have hurt Trey.”

  I didn’t answer. Motive, opportunity-think. And a collage came to me, like the lightning that’d thundered over Mirabeau the past week, cracking through the veiling clouds. Fragments of repeated conversations. Photos passing through my hands. A cryptic message scrawled in blood that I had placed far too much reliance on. And Trey’s begged request to my sister before she fled his house. It pointed, horribly, to one person.

  Realization hit me with the brute force of a punch. I nearly dropped the rifle. Hart looked at me like he thought I was having a heart attack. Oh, God, let me be wrong.

  “Jordy?”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  He pointed. I dialed home. Two rings. Three. My heart stopped and started. Four. “Hello, Poteet residence.” Clo’s voice, moderately cheerful, a little breathless.

  “Clo. Where’s Mark?”

  “He and Bradley took off with Scott.”

  I forced breath into my lungs. “Where’d they go?”

  “Over to Scott’s, I believe.”

  “Clo, listen, this is very important If they come back, make sure they stay put. The boys must stay where they’re at.”

  “Okay, Jordy, sure.”

  “Fine, I’ll be home shortly.”

  I hung up and dialed information. Please, God, let Nola have a phone already. The operator had just come on when I heard a knock at Hart’s door, and a timid, “Hello? Hart sweetie? It’s Nola.”

  I slammed the phone down. Hart and I looked at each other. I kept waiting for him to scream out a crazy man was holding him at gunpoint. He stayed quiet, watching me with old eyes.

  Nola bounded into the den, smiling at Hart, not seeing me and the rifle at first.

  “Hey there, sugar pie, you don’t mind a little company for a while…” Her voice faded as she saw me with the rifle hooked under my arm, the haggard Hart, the bulleted vase. “What the hell’s this?”

  “Nola. Where are the boys?”

  She pointed at my rifle. “You answer me first. What’s that for?”

  “Never mind! Where are Mark and Scott? ”

  She pointed over her shoulder. “They wanted to go down by the creek… down by the graves.”

  I bolted past her, shoving her out of my way, and dashed into the dark night.

  20

  Cloying mud pulled at my boot heels as I ran from the house. “Mark! Mark! Get to the house!” I screamed, hoping he could still hear me.

  The clouds scudded over the moon, darkening the night into pitch. The porch light from Hart’s house provided hardly enough illumination to see my own legs as I tore across the gravel road, down the creekside to where two generations of Slocum men lay in eternal slumber, one in murdered sleep. I couldn’t let it happen again.

  Branches tore at my face as I ran through the woods down to the creek. I stumbled over a ropy mass of roots, and cussing, skidded into the mud, tumbling head over heels. The rifle flew out of my hands and slid into the darkness. Still yelling Mark’s name, I pulled myself to my feet, trying to spot the rifle. And a bullet exploded into the tree next to me, spraying bark and oak.

  I went back down to my knees and scrabbled behind the tree. I could see vague outlines near the graves of Louis and Trey: two, maybe three boys. Who else was there?

  “Uncle Jordy!” Mark hollered. “Stay back, stay back! Scott, you asshole, don’t shoot, it’s Uncle Jordy!”

  “Scott, listen to me! Listen! You don’t have to do this, let’s talk.”

  Scott’s voice, when it came back, was petulant. “I don’t want to talk. Don’t run at me in the dark, you scared me.”

  “Sorry,” I called back. Of course I wasn’t, but while Scott Kinnard was blasting away at trees he wasn’t hitting human flesh. “Let’s talk, okay?” Tentatively, I stood and began to walk down toward their voices. Wondering if each step would be met with a bullet. I needed the rifle, but I couldn’t spend minutes searching for it. The night held quiet.

  Scott let me within ten feet of him, and as moonlight dimly slid along us as a cloud parted I saw Mark standing over his grandfather’s grave, keeping a trembling Bradley an arm’s length behind him.

  “Go away, Jordy.” Scott’s voice was toneless. Not scared-not crazed-and that was more chilling. He sensed his control and he had a child’s smugness. The. 38 in his hand was rock still.

  I kept my voice steady and assured. “No, Scott. I won’t go away. If you’re going to kill Mark, you have to kill me, too. And your mom and Hart are up at the house. I don’t think you can make this look like an accident.”

  “Kill me?” I heard Mark repeat softly. I couldn’t see his eyes, but the realization charged the air between us. “He wants to kill me?”

  “Scott. Listen to me. This won’t work. I know you killed Trey.”

  “ What? ” I heard Mark sputter.

  “That’s a lie! I loved Trey!” Scott shrieked. He was pointing a gun at me; he’d killed a man, but he still sounded like a child. An angry, temperamental boy who’d lashed out with rage at a wish denied.

  “You loved him too much,” I started, hearing Nola and Hart rushing toward us in the undergrowth, Nola calling her son’s name. “You loved him, but he wasn’t going to stay. He wanted to go back to my sister and Mark. And you couldn’t stand that. You couldn’t stand that he was going to be like your mom’s other boyfriends and leave you. So you shot him dead.”

  Scott didn’t speak. Mark seemed frozen in horror. Nola, breathless, managed to grab at my arm.

  “You’re lying, lying! Scott wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

  “Then have him give you the gun,” I said calmly. “And we’ll go back up to the house and talk about it.”

  Nola’s fingers tightened on my arm. The moon glimmered from behind a wall of cloud and I could see her weathered face staring at her son in abject shock.

  “Scotty, honey, give Mom the gun.” She took a step forward.

  “No. Stay back, Mom, please. Go back to the house.”

  “Honey-”

  “No! Not after I did it for you, for us!” He waved wildly with the . 38 pistol that seemed too big for his hands.

  “For us?” Nola repeated, cold shock edging her voice. “Scott, hush up right now! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

  “Scott!” Hart’s voice, solid, commanding, the voice that had lectured Tr
ey and me on shooting guns and riding properly. “Stop this foolishness, right now, son. Put that gun down.”

  “You shut up!” Scott demanded. He turned entreating eyes back toward his mother. “I had to, Mom, I had to. He didn’t want us no more, he wanted Arlene and”-he moved the gun in a vicious swath toward Mark-“and he wanted you. You. I was the one that was supposed to be his son, not you!” Anger made his voice ragged.

  “Baby, please,” Nola entreated. Scott ignored her.

  I glanced at Mark, He still seemed transfixed by Scott, like the injured bird gazing steadily at the slithering cobra. He attempted to step back and stumbled into Bradley, who cowered behind him.

  “Stay put!” Scott ordered him. “You stay right there.”

  “Scott,” I said quietly. He swung the gun back toward me, quick and sure. If only one of us could get at him-I prayed we’d still be able to talk him down.

  “You tell me. How did you know?” Scott demanded.

  “Why? So you can shoot me, too? You’ll have to shoot us all, Scott, and I don’t think you want to do that. I don’t really think you want to hurt anyone anymore.”

  “I will.” His voice broke with tension. “I have and I will. Why don’t you ask that stupid police chief of yours?”

  I swallowed. “You were the only one who heard Clevey and Trey argue. You were the only one-besides Hart- that knew they shared any sort of dark secret in their lives before either of them died. And that Saturday morning, you came home early from the basketball court. So when you heard Trey pledge his undying love to my sister, and say he wanted her and Mark back, you decided to kill him. And you decided to make it look like he’d died because of some connection to Clevey. You heard the conversation between him and my sister, but they didn’t know you were in the house-at least my sister didn’t. And when she left, you got Trey’s gun and shot him in the back. Then you painted that 2 DOWN in blood to suggest that Trey’s murder was part of a pattern that started with Clevey’s death. Then you shot Junebug to keep the pattern going. No one would look twice at you that way, although a man you loved as your daddy was about to drop you and your mother.”