“Tiny’s sweet. Just overprotective. And I’m afraid he’s a bit smitten with me.” “Very. It makes one wonder what lengths Tiny would go to to win your affection.” She frowned. “Sorry?” “Tiny.
He’s a doer, not a thinker. Did you know he nearly strangled me once, in a rage when we were children?” She gestured at my slinged arm and my black eye. “You seem to be very beloved in this town. Maybe if you kept your nose out of people’s business, you wouldn’t need higher health-insurance premiums.” She had a wicked grin. “I’m not the one who came from out of town to stir up trouble, Nina. You are.” “I’m not jousting with you, Jordy. I didn’t come to stir up trouble, I came to stop it.” “But you weren’t counting on Tiny. He’s not stable, Nina.
You should know that before you get involved with him.” I nearly blurted out that Junebug suspected Tiny of being Mirabeau’s munitions marauder, but I bit my lip instead. She sniffed disdainfully. Her motto of loving all of earth’s creatures apparently didn’t extend to Tiny Parmalee. “I’m not involved with him. But I can’t help what he feels or thinks about me. I’ve made it clear to Tiny that I’ll be leaving Mirabeau soon and I’m not interested in a relationship with him.” I almost felt sorry for Tiny. Notice the almost. “So what can I help you with?” “Miss Twyla’s not feeling well, and she asked me to return these books for her.” I glanced at the stack-older Phyllis Whitneys, with the latest potboiler thrown in for a modern touch, and a Stephen Hawking to appeal to her scientific side. “She didn’t want them to be overdue.” “Miss Twyla is very civically minded. Is she okay?” “She’s fine. And hopefully she can worry about overdue books more than the river being plundered, now that Callahan is dead.” I leaned back in my chair. “You must have hated him extraordinarily. I mean, to have fought him more than once.” “I didn’t care about him, one way or the other. I just wanted to stop Intraglobal.” I remembered the rather surprising news of Lorna’s that Intraglobal was a three-person shop. “Do you know who Doreen Miller is?” Her lips thinned. “No, I don’t.” “Well, she was Greg’s silent partner in Intraglobal. You know that Intraglobal wasn’t a big company, right?’ “Small companies can do a lot of damage to our ecosystems, Jordy. It’s a lack of responsibility, not a lack of money, that plunders our environment.” “I just wondered if you knew who she was or where she might be found. Last I heard, they were having trouble tracking down this woman to tell her about Greg.” And I’d forgotten to ask Junebug if he’d made any progress on that front. I’d call when I got home.
“Sorry, I can’t be of help. The only person connected with Intraglobal I ever dealt with was Callahan, until he hired Wiercinski.” She crossed her arms and looked down on me with her wire-rim glasses.
“Speaking of her, is she planning on staying and developing the land in that same grossly irresponsible way that Greg suggested?” Junebug had asked me not to say anything about Greg’s fraud to buy the land and then resell it to the chemical waste company. I didn’t want to tell Nina anyway; she would have just crowed over her moral superiority in opposing Greg. “No, Nina,” I said, my voice sounding tired. “Lorna won’t be trying to develop the land. I’m sure the whole deal’s off.” “Really? I wouldn’t be so sure. Wiercinski strikes me as the type of woman who won’t quit easily.” Nina was right enough there.
I forced myself to shake my head at her. “I don’t think Lorna will have any interest in land development in Mirabeau.” “Pardon me if I-and the others, like Miss Twyla, who are concerned about this-don’t exactly relax our vigil. We’ve raised a substantial sum to stop them in no short order, thanks to Miss Twyla and Eula Mae. Even if Wiercinski leaves town, we’ll be ready for any other unscrupulous developers that try and ruin the river.” “Whatever, Nina. But the deal’s dead, as dead as Greg. As dead as poor Freddy.” “I’ll tell Miss Twyla you asked about her. Good night, Jordy. Don’t get hurt anymore.”
Her beaded necklace jangled as she left. I watched her leave, the faint smell of her citrusy perfume lingering on the air. I thought that seeing my bruised eye would elicit shock from Lorna. What I wasn’t expecting was the absence of a cop car in front of our house, and then seeing Lorna and Candace sitting in my living room, in front of a laptop computer that appeared to be hooked up to my phone in some crazy way, and Lorna crying while Candace handed her tissues and patted her shoulder-a bit reluctantly, I thought. After exchanging a “what the hell happened to your eye?” and “why the hell are you carrying on so?” I sat down with a Dr Pepper and heard what they’d been up to. “I feel like an utter fool,” Lorna wailed, blowing her nose loudly and liquidly into a tissue. Candace gave her another reassuring pat but frowned at me. I know Candace has a big, sweet heart, but she looked right then like she’d rather be swallowing glass than comforting my ex-girlfriend. “Why?” Not to ask would have been anticlimactic. “You’re right. Greg must’ve been a huge fraud.” Lorna gestured at the laptop. “Candace was kind enough to bring over this computer from the Mirabeau Historical Society. It’s got a modem, so I tried to dial into Intraglobal’s files in the Boston office from here.
I wanted to go through all Greg’s home-office files and see what I could find out-see if maybe there was something that’d point us to Doreen Miller or to how he was planning on unloading the land he was going to buy here. But nothing. I’m locked out of everything! Files that used to be there are gone, and files I used to be able to get into are locked.” “When was this done?” I asked. “Who knows?” She sat back from the computer, a disgusted look on her face. “Greg must’ve done it after he and I came down here-or maybe Doreen did it after Greg got killed and she heard about it from the Boston cops. She must’ve wanted to be sure we couldn’t find out about the land fraud.
She must’ve not known about the files on Greg’s laptop down here.” “I don’t even know if the Boston police have found Doreen, Lorna,” I said. If they had, I didn’t know if they’d examined Greg’s computer files-but surely they would have gone through his office. If Doreen Miller was a partner in the fraud, she could have destroyed the files to cover Greg’s tracks. I bit my lip. “Could someone have done this from Greg’s laptop? Was it hooked up with a modem?” I asked. I became aware that Candace was staring at me, a pensive look on her face. “I suppose,” Lorna said slowly. “His did have a modem. I didn’t have a laptop down here. But his machine’s at the police station, and how would anyone here know the passwords?” She shot the finger at the machine. “This is so frustrating!” “Would you mind telling me where your guard is?” I asked. “I thought someone was going to be here to relieve Franklin.” Candace cleared her throat. Lorna stopped frowning for a moment and looked at my knees, standing next to her at the table. “I decided I didn’t need a guard. Not with you here. So I sent him on his way. You’re not mad, are you?” “Lorna, honey, what you need is some nice, relaxing chamomile tea. Jordy, don’t y’all have some in the kitchen? I know your mama likes a cup now and then.” “Uh, yeah, I think so.” “Good, we’ll make Lorna some tea. Come help me find it.”
Candace seized my wrist in a death grip and pulled me along into the kitchen. I glanced back at Lorna; she was staring intently at the uncooperative screen. I pulled free from Candace after she’d dragged me into the kitchen. She rattled the teapot under the faucet, turning the water on full blast. She jerked her head toward the living room and whispered, “She did it.” “Excuse me?” I wondered why we were whispering. “She did it,” Candace repeated. “She destroyed those files.” “Pardon me? What the hell are you talking about?” “I saw her do it,” Candace hissed. “I saw her select a bunch of files and delete them. I was getting us Cokes from the kitchen while she was trying to get into that Boston computer, and when I came back, there was this box on the screen that said DELETE SELECTED FILES? and she pressed OK.
I saw it all over her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her chair when I came up behind her. It was only after that that she started whining about all these files being missing.” “Candace, are you sure?”
“Yes, goddamn it, I’m sure.” She switched off the faucet and banged open a cabinet, still speaking in a soft but smoldering tone. “I have been around a computer before, Jordy. She destroyed those files. Are you still going to stand by her side now and defend her to the death?”
“I can’t believe this!” “Believe it, Jordy. And now she’s gotten rid of her guard. You think maybe that’s so she can skedaddle out of here when she wants to? Or maybe she just wants to shame you into protecting her precious self.” Candace went back to the kitchen door and stuck her head into the living room, now all smiles. “You want some cookies with that tea, hon?” ‘Too bad Candace had to go,” Lorna said, munching on a peanut-butter cookie, her head leaning back on the couch. “Yeah, it is.” I stared out at the early-evening haze of heat.
Crickets and katydids raised their voices in the backyard, singing their midsummer oratorio, celebrating their brief lives. I tried to turn back to Lorna, but I was having trouble facing her. Candace had left shortly after serving Lorna her tea. I’d walked her out to the car, still stunned by Candace’s accusation. She wasn’t very happy with me for not throwing her testimony in Lorna’s face and seeing what stuck to those gray eyes and high cheekbones. “Why don’t you confront her?” I had demanded. “I’m not the one protecting her,” Candace had snapped back. “God, what does she have to do? Commit a crime in your presence? She is trouble, Jordy, and I am sick and tired of you taking up for her. I only loaned her the computer to help her, since you believe in her so much. And what does she do? Possibly commit another crime with it. I only get played for a fool once by Lorna, Jordy. You ought to adopt that motto for yourself.” “This is awfully circumstantial, Candace.” “Please. I think Lorna could climb up on the water tower with a rifle, blow away half the town, and you’d still cling to her innocence.” She got into her Mercedes, slamming the door.
