by Jeff Abbott
“Course he didn’t. I embarrassed the hell out of him. And I absolutely could not care about that man-woman he married or that bitch of a mother-in-law he’s got.” She stood and walked to the end of the porch, thumbing her spent butt into the bushes. “I don’t think your sister killed Trey anymore.”
The rain pattered on the porch roof, picking up in intensity. “Do you know who did?”
“No. But I think Hart knows.”
“Hart? Good Lord, if he knew, he’d tell.” I stood. “He practically helped raise Trey, he sure as hell wouldn’t shield his killer!” I forced my voice back down to an acceptable level. “Why do you think he knows?”
She didn’t answer me until she’d lit another cigarette and took a fortifying hit from it “When we got back to Mirabeau, Trey made us drive first to Hart’s farm, even before we went to my uncle’s house. He said he had to see Hart before he saw anyone else in town. Ain’t that weird, what with his own child here?” She shook her head. “I loved Trey, but he was an odd fellow.”
I saw the boy Trey cockily setting back his black cowboy hat and charming my skeptical mother with a smile. The friend staring up at the stars with me, picking out the ones to wish on to ensure he’d get a date with Arlene Poteet. The man, holding his newborn son with wonder and shock on his face.
“Odd fellow,” I murmured. “What did he and Hart have to say to each other?”
“Strangest thing,” Nola said. “We stopped the car short of Hart’s house, and Trey insisted on wheeling himself up to the porch. I honked the horn and Hart came out. He nearly died with shock when he saw Trey—you could just see it in his face. Trey just said to him, ‘Hi, Hart, I’ve come home. I’ve missed you. Can we go in and talk?’ Simple as that. Hart was practically in tears. He went down and, real shy like, shook Trey’s hand. They spoke to each other for a while. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I know Hart wanted us to stay there with him instead of my uncle. I’d have liked that, but Uncle Dwight was expectin’ us.”
“I don’t find anything odd about this, Nola. Hart’s always considered Trey family.”
“I ain’t done. We went into the house for iced tea and talked a bit. Then Trey said he wanted to see his daddy’s grave. Hart said sure, Louis’d been buried out by the creek. Trey told me just he and Hart’d go out there and they’d be back soon. So Scott and I turned on the TV. I went back into the kitchen and Trey and Hart hadn’t gone down yet. They were outside, on Hart’s back porch. Talking. I wasn’t trying to overhear ’em, but I couldn’t help it. Trey was upset. He said to Hart that if”—and she closed her eyes in concentration—“ ‘it hadn’t been for Daddy, I wouldn’t have had to leave. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to forget it all. No one knows, do they?’ And Hart said, ‘Just Steven Teague.’” She opened her eyes and looked at me.
I was stunned into silence, waiting for her to speak again.
Nola shook her head. “It ain’t nothing Arlene or Mark did that drove him out of here. It was something to do with his daddy. I thought y’all ought to know.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to the police?”
“Because I was sure your sister had killed Trey.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m telling you this because I thought maybe you and Arlene should know he left town because of something his daddy did. Not anything y’all did. If you want, I’ll tell the police, if you think it matters.”
I sat back in my chair. “Thank you,” I managed to say.
The only noise for a minute was the splatter of rain.
“I don’t expect y’all to ever take to me.” Nola looked at me with complete candor. “But I’m gonna stay in town for a while, even if Ed won’t leave that stupid sow he married. This’d be a good town for Scott. And I thought if he and Mark are gonna stay friends, I ought to mend fences.”
“Wait a second. Not that it’s much my business, but why are you picking up with Ed and Steven when Trey’s barely cold in the ground? I thought you loved him.”
“I did. I do. I’ve cried and cried till I ain’t gonna cry anymore. But I don’t like being alone. I need to feel needed. Don’t you know that feeling?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t understand how she could woo another man so quickly, unless grief propelled her, and Ed or Steven or any other fellow was just a temporary substitute for Trey, a comforting imitation. Suddenly I felt deeply sorry for her. But I didn’t offer my sympathy or condolences. She just would have misinterpreted it.
“You said you thought Hart knows who the killer is? I don’t understand.”
She stubbed out her cigarette on the porch, crushing it under her rain-spotted shoes. “Whatever reason Trey left— Hart knows what it is. Steven knows what it is. And I think that reason is why Trey was killed. And maybe Clevey, too.”
“Is that why you were kissing Steven?”
She smiled wanly. “No, Steven’s a nice man, but not nice enough. Scott’s been having awful nightmares since Trey died. He’s jumpy and nervous and I’m worried about him. I wanted Steven to counsel him, y’know, talk to him. But I don’t have the money for it. I hoped he’d give me credit. He won’t.”
“I’m sorry Scott’s having a hard time.”
“I am, too.”
“Scott came here. He told us that Trey and Clevey had argued, that Clevey wanted Trey to take part in some revenge scheme they’d make money out of.”
“Trey wouldn’t have done anything like that,” Nola protested. “You find out exactly why Trey left and we’ll know why he died.”
I watched her drive away. She’d been the last real companion of Trey’s life, as different from Sister as possible. Outwardly, at least. I believed they both shared a core of unsuspected strength that made them both survivors in a world that had been less than kind.
She’d given me plenty to consider. Some secret involving Louis Slocum, Mirabeau’s best horse trainer and drunk. Something that Steven, Hart, and Trey were all privy to. Had Clevey found out as well? He must’ve. He had to have known. And it got him killed.
Hart couldn’t have killed Trey. First, he cared too much about him. Second, he had an airtight alibi that Junebug had already confirmed—checking out horses on a farm miles away in Fayette County. But in our talk out on the back porch, Hart’d denied knowing why Trey had left six years ago. He’d lied. And just how the hell did Clevey fit into this? And the attack on Junebug?
I’ve never been a swift thinker. I stopped dead in my tracks, my hand reaching for the door. Steven Teague, if Nola’s story was true and she’d correctly interpreted the conversation she’d heard between Hart and Trey, knew the reason for Trey’s leaving. And here he was counseling Mark, giving me pithy advice on how to handle the trauma that’d nearly destroyed our family. While knowing all the while why Trey had forsaken us. And how the hell would Steven know—he wasn’t even living here six years ago! Someone had told him—perhaps Clevey, who he was counseling? God, that had to be it!
My face felt hot and a slow throb of headache started a surging pain in my temples. My mind felt dizzy, trying to trace the web of Trey’s life. I stepped inside and shut the door.
Clo sat with Mama in the living room, avidly watching a talk show with the sound turned real low. Mama doesn’t like noise much anymore. Clo glanced up at me.
“I wasn’t about to let that white trash in this house,” she proclaimed. “Be mad at me if you want.”
“I’m not mad at you. Where’s Mark?”
She jerked her head toward the kitchen. “Back porch, I think. How’d his therapy go? He feeling better?”
I didn’t answer her, heading out to the porch. It was empty, the rain the only sound, tapping like fingers on foil.
“He’s not there,” I called back to Clo, stepping into the kitchen.
“Well, he called Bradley Foradoiy and chatted with him a minute. Then he said he was going out on the porch and listen to the rain.”
Bradley. Oh, God, and Mark was so single-minded about discovering what was
going on at the Foradorys’. I phoned Davis’s number. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. An answering click.
And then the screams.
I IGNORED THE STOP SIGN AT THE INTERSECTION OF Heydl and Fifth where the Foradory house sat, screeching to a stop and spraying water. Mark’s bike lay sprawled in the yard, glistening wetly. I ran across the grass, vaulting his bike and leaping up the steps in two jumps. The front door was unlocked and I shoved it open, hollering for Mark. I heard a piercing cry from the back of the house.
I tore through the immaculate living room, ignoring the muddy trail I left in my wake. I burst through the kitchen, which opened up into a breakfast nook. And ran into a scene I hadn’t quite expected.
Mark, grimacing, was trying to drag a struggling Bradley back toward the porch door. Bradley kicked at the tiles, scuffing them with his cowboy boots, wailing and flailing his arms. The phone receiver, still off the hook, dangled above the floor and slowly revolved on its cord. Cayla Foradory, her eyes wild and her hair straggling in her face, held a metal broomstick in her hand, blood dotting one end of it. She was whacking the hell out of something on the floor. It was only after I’d taken four more steps in that I saw that she was beating the tar out of Davis, curled in a fetal ball on the kitchen floor.
“Uncle Jordy! Help us! She’s gonna kill him!” Mark screamed at me. I rushed toward Cayla and Davis. He didn’t appear to be moving.
I came up behind Cayla and grabbed the broomstick when she brought it back to have another go at her husband. I yanked it away and she spun toward me, her eyes filled with such blinding fury that I took a shocked step backward. She swung a fist at me and nearly connected with my jaw. Stunned with surprise, I seized her arms and shook her hard.
“Cayla! Stop it! It’s me, Jordy!” She struggled against me like she’d never seen me. I shook her again and she calmed, the berserker rage fading. She took a long, hard, shuddering breath and gasped, “Get out. Get out of here.”
“What did he do to you? Did he hit you? Hit Bradley?” I glanced at her son, but he seemed more upset than injured, crying and mewling in Mark’s arms.
“Hit her? Bullshit!” Mark screamed. “She hits him! She beats him!”
Mark’s words oozed in. I glanced over at Davis; slowly, like a snake awakening to warmth, he uncoiled himself. I saw bruises on his forearms, his neck, and a vicious cut above the left eye. His tortoiseshell glasses lay broken by his elbow. He looked at me like a whipped dog, awaiting the next kick. This wasn’t my friend—this was someone else. Someone I didn’t know.
“Get out!” Cayla rediscovered her voice. “Get out of my house right … this … minute.”
I pushed her away from me and knelt by Davis’s side. He flinched away from my touch, burying his face in the crook of his arm.
“Get my boy out of here. Take Bradley and go,” he muttered into his arm, his voice barely audible. “Please. I don’t want him to see me this way.”
“She’s crazy, Uncle Jordy!” Mark hollered. Bradley wrestled free from him and crawled to his father’s side. I blinked up at Cayla; she didn’t look at any of us except for her son. She tried to take him by the arm, gently, but he squirmed away from her, holding his father’s hand. Bradley’s face was contorted with tears, his lips curling in anguish. Oh, God, what had this boy seen in this house?
“You stay away, Mom,” Bradley cried. “Stay away.”
Cayla straightened up and, without a word, turned and stumbled out of the kitchen.
“I saw it all,” Mark gasped, squatting by me. “She was whaling on him with that broomstick and also tried to hit him with a skillet. You want me to call the cops?”
“No! No police!” Davis seized my arm, pressing hard. “Promise me, no police.”
“Davis. You have to tell me what’s happened here.”
“I told you, Uncle Jordy—”
“Mark, please! Let Davis talk.”
Davis couldn’t look into my eyes. He ran fingers across his head and left a trickle of blood in the thinning blond hair. “Um, nothing really, it was just an argument—”
“For God’s sake, Davis, she was about to beat you unconscious. Now, what did you argue about? What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. I wouldn’t hurt her. Please, just take Bradley and go. Please.”
I took Bradley’s frown-locked face in my hands. “Bradley. Listen to me. What happened here?”
Bradley blinked back more tears. His breath came in ragged, aching gasps. His chin wobbled against my fingers, spittle smearing my hand. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Finally he found his voice and whispered, “Ain’t supposed to tell. Mom said never tell. Never tell, never tell, never tell!”
“You can tell me, Bradley. You know you can.” I kept my voice low and soothing. If violence held sway in this house, God only knew what this poor kid had witnessed.
Bradley fixed his eyes on the floor, the unspeakable secret weighing hard on his heart. After a long minute he spoke, his fingers drawing nervous patterns on the tiles. “Mom. She gets mad. She hits Daddy. She hits him, and she hits him again.” He raised his face again, anguish painting his features. “I ain’t supposed to tell!” He collapsed against Mark, who looked at me with an accusing glare.
“Mark. Take Bradley back to our house,” I said.
“Won’t go! Daddy—” Bradley protested.
“Son. Do as Jordan says.” Davis still wouldn’t look at me. Slowly, Mark got Bradley to his feet and led him out of the kitchen. Bradley was bent with walking, his feet shuffling like a prisoner fettered at the ankles.
I felt thoroughly sick. “Davis. Look at me. How long has this been going on?”
He, like his son, stared at the floor. He rubbed at a spot of his own blood that had dripped from his nose to the tile. More blood leaked between his teeth. I seized his jaw and turned his face toward mine, hot with anger toward him.
“Davis, damn you, answer me! How long has she been battering you?”
He closed his eyes, shamefaced. “Since we found out Bradley was retarded. I guess about thirteen years.”
“What?”
“She can’t help it. You know what a temper she’s always had. She just gets upset when Bradley messes up and she, well, she can take it out on me,” His voice sounded soft, reasoning, the tone of long justification of terrible wrong.
“For God’s sake! Takes it out on you? She was going to beat you to a pulp, Davis!”
“Well, she couldn’t hit Bradley, could she?” Davis said.
I closed my eyes in nausea. “But Mark saw bruises on Bradley’s arm—”
“She got upset with me last night. Bradley tried to stop her and she hurt him. She hurt him for the first time.” He finally looked at me. His blue eyes were streaked with bloodshot sorrow. “I couldn’t believe she hurt him. So I figured, it can’t go on, I can’t let her hurt my boy. So I went to go see Steven Teague, I thought he’d know what to do, what I could do to make her better.”
“Oh, Davis, Jesus. You can’t fix what’s wrong with Cayla. She has to do that.”
“We got back and Bradley told her he’d seen Mark. Cayla wanted to know where’d we been. I told her I went to Teague’s office and she went crazy.” He made a horrible snuffling sound of sickness and sadness long buried.
“Davis. Why didn’t you leave her?”
“I can’t. I love her.”
“I don’t understand you at all.” My own voice sounded near the breaking point. “Why didn’t you defend yourself, fight back? Why’d you let her do this to you?” I was so mad, so frustrated, I wanted to shake him myself.
“Good God. You don’t hit girls, Jordan. I could never hit Cayla.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t let anyone know. Hell, you don’t think I see how you look at me right now? A man that lets a woman beat him. It’s wives that get beaten, not husbands. What kind of man do you think people would say I was?”
If this was his reasoning and logic, he was a far sorrier lawyer than I ever suspected. “I wo
uld have respected you for getting out of this hell, Davis.”
He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so ashamed. So ashamed. My boy—”
“Listen to me. We’ll get you and Bradley out of here. You can stay with us, as long as you need. We’ll see if we can get Cayla to go to counseling. No one has to know what’s happened.”
Davis Foradory turned away from me. “No. People will know. They’ll find out. Like Clevey and your sister.”
“Sister? She knows about this?” I managed to keep my jaw off the blood-specked tile, but it wasn’t easy.
“She came over—the morning Trey was shot. We had been having breakfast and Bradley spilled his milk all over the table, all over the paper. Cayla got upset with me about it. She was hitting me, telling me that Bradley’s clumsiness was my fault, I shouldn’t have put so much milk in his glass—and Arlene walked in. She tried to stop Cayla, and Cayla belted her. Gave her that shiner. I’m awful sorry about that. So’s Cayla.”
Oh, God have mercy. “Your wife hit my sister?”
“Yeah. Knocked her to the floor. Cayla got upset and ran upstairs, so I took care of Arlene. She was so surprised she could hardly say much.”
Although I could imagine Sister being shocked, I could hardly picture her at a loss for words. “She told me she’d fallen down some steps and blackened her eye.”
“I begged her not to tell. I said Cayla didn’t mean it, she just had been awful upset. She was hankering to go wallop Cayla, but I talked her out of it. For Bradley’s sake.”
“I don’t understand why my sister was here.”
Davis sniffed. “She wanted me to be her attorney. Get a restraining order against Trey, keep him from Mark.” He wiped his dripping nose with the back of his sleeve, the carefully cultured lawyer gone. “I told her if she didn’t tell about Cayla, I’d represent her for free.”
I sat back down on the floor. Free legal services for her silence. And she’d done it, knowing that a boy was in an abusive household. Suddenly I wasn’t real happy with my sister.
