Jeff Abbott: Promises of Home

“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 paying 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?”