Jeff Abbott - Promises of Home

“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 murdered. 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.