Jeff Abbott - Promises of Home

“Scott, I’m sure your mama wants the killer brought to justice, regardless of who it is,” Candace said softly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t want Arlene to be charged if she was innocent.”

“I guess.” Scott didn’t sound very convinced. He seemed to be holding something barely in check, his eyes flickering between Candace and me, gauging us on a scale of trust.

I kept my mouth shut. Silence seemed to compel Scott to speak.

“It’s just that, what with that other fellow dying, and he came over to the house not long after we got to town-”

“Clevey? Clevey was at y’all’s house?” I interrupted. A sharp pinch on my knee (not from Scott) silenced me again.

“Let Scott tell his story, Jordan, please,” Candace said.

“We got in Thursday morning. Trey made a couple of phone calls. And this other guy, Clevey Shivers, comes over to the house. Red-haired, loud, funny. He smelled like beer, though. Even in the morning.

“He and Trey went into the bedroom to talk, and Mom and Uncle Dwight went to go run errands. I was watching TV, but Uncle Dwight’s got crappy reception. So I went back to my room to read comic books and I could hear them arguing.”

“Arguing?” I leaned closer.

I could see Scott steeling himself. “I heard Mr. Shivers-Clevey-telling Trey he was years late. Laughing at Trey, saying he’d”-Scott wrinkled his brow in memory-“missed the gravy train. Trey told him to shut up. Clevey laughed some more. Trey said they weren’t going to talk about what they’d seen. Trey told him what was past was past, he wasn’t interested no more. And Clevey said-Clevey said that Trey better keep out of his way. Said the gravy train might go slow on the bend and he could climb on.” He paused and rubbed his eyes. “Isn’t Gravy Train like a dog food?”

Candace and I exchanged looks above the boy’s head.

Once the story started, Scott didn’t seem to need further prompting. “I got scared. Clevey kind of said the last part real mean like. But Trey yelled back at him, saying that Clevey was nothin’ but a cheap con artist and a crook. Trey told him to get out and Clevey told him to think about it some more, once Trey got some more of them medical bills he’d be begging Clevey for help.” Scott licked his lips, his voice deepening in imitation. “Then Clevey said, ‘You do anything to fuck this up, Slocum, and you’ll be in worse shape than you are now. Revenge is sweet if you give it half a chance.’ Trey didn’t say anything and Clevey left. The house shook when he slammed the door.

“I just lay on my bed. I’d figured they thought I’d gone to the store with Mom and Uncle Dwight, so I didn’t even move. I heard Trey wheeling himself around in the bedroom, talking to himself. It sounds stupid, but I crawled out the window and made a lot of noise coming back in the house. I didn’t want him to know I’d heard.”

“Why?” Candace asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t like the way that Clevey fellow talked to him, it was scary. One minute sounding mean, like he’d just as soon spit in your face, the next minute sounding like he was your best friend ever.

“If someone had told me Trey’d be murdered in a couple of days, I’d have said for sure that Clevey would have been the one to do it. But he couldn’t have. He was already dead himself.” Scott shook his head. “I don’t like this place. I don’t know why Trey wanted to come back here.”

“This is an unholy mess.” Hart Quadlander shook his head at me. Candace had taken Scott in, finally plying him with an offer of a more substantial lunch, and Hart had lit a cigarette. I saw his fingers tremble slightly, the smoke swirling around his hand.

“Trey’s death has you unsettled, doesn’t it?” I asked him.

“More than you’ll know,” Hart answered. I liked him; he was one of the last remaining icons of Southern gentility to be found in Mirabeau. He was tall, striking, dark, gray-streaked haired, gray-eyed, with a textured deep drawl that should have done public readings of the works of Padgett Powell or Larry McMurtry. Being the last of the Quadlanders counted for a lot in Mirabeau, and Hart wore his position like a mantle.

“It was hard on me,” Hart said, halfway to himself, “when Trey left town. I’d grown real fond of him over the years. And of course, it just killed his daddy. Louis had always had a drinking problem, but it just got worse when Trey left. I reckon we can be thankful Louis ain’t here to see what became of his boy.”

“Trey sent my sister money,” I said.

Hart digested this news, drawing on his cigarette and breathing out a plume of smoke. “I hate to say this, Jordy, but the town gossips have Arlene pegged as the prime suspect. None of us can ignore her belting Trey at Truda’s house. It’s not helping her that Junebug pulled himself off the case.”

“You don’t think that, do you?” My stomach sank. Hart Quadlander was highly respected in Mirabeau. His opinion could influence others.

“I don’t believe in assessing guilt before you got all the facts. Maybe someone else had a reason to kill Trey.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ceramic ashtray we kept out on the porch for our smoking guests and looked at me. “Frankly, Jordy, I can’t think of a soul other than Arlene with a motive. He’d been out of town for a long while.”

“What about when he left town? Can you remember anything that happened then? Maybe he got killed ’cause he came home.” Over the years Hart and I had wondered about Trey’s reasons for leaving; but I had to ask.

He shook his head. “He was here one day, gone the next. He must have been planning to run out on Arlene and Mark and his father. After all, he took those pictures that Scott found.”

The pictures bothered me; they suggested a man who still cherished his family, not an abandonee. And something niggled at my mind regarding those pictures. “You sure you can’t think of anything?”

Hart shook his head and lit another cigarette. “Son, I’ve gone over that time again and again. Louis was still drinking a little too much, but he was trying to stay off the juice. ’Course, when Trey left he started boozing all over again. Drank himself to death over that boy.”

I still stung from the intimation against my sister. “So where were you when Trey died?”

Hart shrugged and didn’t seem offended by the bluntness of my question. “Saturday morning I was over in Fayette County, at the Running Creek Horse Farm. Looking at some ponies to buy. I didn’t hear about Trey’s murder till I got home that afternoon at three.”

“Did Trey tell you why he showed up in town again?”

“God, no.” Hart rubbed his chin, a half smile on his face. “And that just about shocked the bejesus out of me. I never expected to see that boy’s face again. He showed up at the horse farm with young Scott and that Nola gal. Asked to talk to me alone.” He shrugged, “I was awful glad to see him. I don’t know if I would have felt that way a few years back. I blamed him too much for pushing Louis back to the bottle.”

“Louis poured out his own death,” I snapped, perhaps a bit more bluntly than I should’ve. Louis Slocum had never been any good; he’d been a sorry father to Trey. Louis made his own choices in life. Not confronting his alcoholism was one of them. (Yes, I know it’s a disease. A treatable one.)

“That’s easy for you to say now, Jordan,” Hart said with heat in his voice. “You didn’t have to see your best friend drink himself into a grave.”

I didn’t answer. “Trey gave you no reason for why he’d left six years ago?”

Hart rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “None. And he offered no apologies. He told me that he wanted to see Arlene and Mark again. That he was tired of being away from home. That the accident had-had changed his viewpoint on many things. On people that he’d cared about.”