Jeff Abbott - Promises of Home

“Jordy? You want a drink?” Hart offered again.

I glanced at the secretary he’d converted to a dry bar. Nothing cold there-he’d have to go to the kitchen.

“I’d like a beer, please.”

“Sure. Coming right up.” He sauntered off to the kitchen, keeping up a running chatter about town and country that I ignored. The key in the bureau was old, but it rotated easily. You don’t live out in the country and make your firearms hard to grab. I yanked out the first rifle and cracked it open to check it was loaded. It was. Thank you, God.

I was about to have a shocking talk with someone who’d been guarding secrets for decades; I needed something more persuasive than my winsome smile.

When Hart came back into the den, laughing and talking about some idiotic story about Nola Kinnard going shopping, I had the rifle firmly and steadily aimed at his chest.

He jerked, as though I’d already shot him.

“Don’t move!” I ordered. He froze. The bottle of beer slipped nervelessly from his fingers and shattered on the wooden floor.

“Jordy. Good God. Look what you made me do! Is this a joke?” Hart’s eyes were wide with shock.

“No, it’s not.” I shook my head slowly. “Put your hands up and don’t make any sudden moves. Move away from the door. Sit over here on the couch.”

“Jordy-”

“I know how to use this, Hart. Remember-you taught me. My own daddy didn’t cotton to hunting, but Trey did, and you took us out. When Trey and I were fourteen, you taught me how to shoot.” My voice dripped with bitterness; it didn’t sound like me talking, but some stranger who’d stepped into my skin.

“Okay, okay.” He moved slowly toward the couch, keeping his hands still, and sat down. “Now, what’s got you so upset?”

“Just your recent activities, Hart. Oh, and some ancient pastimes, too. like killing poor Rennie Clifton.”

He took a long, steadying breath. “I don’t know what you mean.”

I aimed the gun at his crotch. He tensed. “Yeah, you do. You killed her. You killed Clevey. You killed Trey. You shot Junebug.”

“No. No.” Fright made his breathing hard.

“Don’t you lie to me, Hart. Don’t you go pretending all these years that you’re an upstanding Southern gentleman when you’re a goddamned liar and murderer.” I stared at him along the sight. “I didn’t just now get here, Trey. I saw you and Steven Teague exchanging endearments.”

He shivered, his dark eyes open pools of shock. “Listen, Jordy, I don’t know what you think you saw-”

I moved the rifle and fired. A vase five feet to his left shattered into powder, the bullet’s percussive scream deafening in the room. I’ll give Hart credit, though-he didn’t scream. His eyes were tightly shut, but he opened them slowly. I pumped the rifle.

Silence hung between us for long seconds.

“I don’t care about your sexual orientation, Hart. Truly I don’t. But I have a theory about what might have happened in this house twenty years ago. I’m going to share it with you. You’re going to listen.

“You were a happy family here. You and this man named Louis you hired, and his son, Trey. Three decent fellows. Except Louis had a bit of a drinking problem. He wasn’t a fellow to take much responsibility for his actions. And when a pretty girl caught his eye when she came here with her mother to do some work, he decided to have her.”

Hart didn’t move a muscle.

“So Louis and Rennie had a little affair. She got pregnant. You found out. That put a crimp in your plans, because you and Louis were already lovers.”

“Jordy-”

“Hear me out, Hart. Oh, you don’t have a choice about that, I forgot.” I smiled tightly. “It’s just a guess, but I’m trying to think why you might have reason to kill Rennie Clifton. Let’s say you and Louis were lovers. Your devotion to his memory has always been unusually strong. And he was a rough-and-tumble man who’d take pleasure in something and not feel much guilt over it. Or maybe he did-and that fueled his drinking. And it might explain why you’d keep a drunk like Louis on your payroll for so long. But Louis liked women, too. After all, he’d produced Trey. And so he took another lover, maybe in an effort to prove something to himself. He picked Rennie.

“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?”