know what they are.” She didn’t look at me. “Haven’t the police already talked to you? They must’ve contacted your family.” She kept her eyes glued to the table. “I told them I didn’t know any reason why Greg Callahan would have our number.” “There is a reason. Now, for Jenny’s sake, can’t you tell me?” Becca Johnson slid back into the hard orange plastic of the cafeteria chair. She popped the top on her warming can of soda and sipped, taking her time to answer me. Finally she said: “I don’t want Jenny to get into trouble.” “Hon, Jenny’s already in trouble. Big trouble. I think you know that. If you’re a friend, you’ll help her get out of this mess.” “Why should I tell you anything, Mr. Poteet?”
Her right eyebrow arched. “Because the truth has to come out now, Becca.” I softened my voice. “Jenny said to her mother she couldn’t keep protecting him-whoever him is, and I think it’s her father. I’m going to wager the pressure of that secret is why she poured those Valiums into her palm and washed them down with a bottle of gin. If the secret’s out, the pressure’s gone. There’s nothing to hide.”
“Nothing to hide,” Becca echoed. She ran a finger up and down the condensation of the can, in eerie imitation of Jenny and her glass of gin earlier in the day. “Well?” I asked. Her tongue covered her top lip for a moment, and she glanced around quickly to assure herself no one could hear us. The only other people in the cafeteria were two older black ladies, laughing quietly in conversation by the cash register. The words came slowly, like paste squeezed out of a tube.
“Greg was seeing Jenny. He had been since he got here. They met when he came out to talk to Mrs. Loudermilk. Jenny’s impulsive about men.
She has a bad thing for older men-she’s dated a guy in his late twenties over in Bavary. No one else knows about that but me.” She shot me a look that said: And you better damn well not tell either. Or get any ideas in your head about her. “There’s no reason to discuss her past relationships, Becca. I’m not going to judge Jenny.” “Anyhow, she ended up going to his room at the. Mirabeau B., and well-” She blanched. “They got intimate.” “And her parents didn’t know?” I asked.
She shook her head. “She wouldn’t let him call her at home. So he’d call me and leave messages for her. He used the name Don Miller. So I just told them Don was a friend from over in Bavary I met through school. Just a friend, not a boyfriend. So they didn’t ask about him, except my mom teased me about how much this boy Don was calling me.
He’d call and tell me where and when Jenny could meet him, and then I’d call her and give her the details.” She stared into space above my shoulder. “I told her this was stupid, really stupid, falling for a much older guy who wasn’t staying in town. But he kept telling Jenny he would be coming back to Mirabeau a lot, what with the condo resort getting built.” Don Miller. Not too far off from Doreen Miller. I leaned forward. “There is no condo resort, Becca,” and I told her of Greg’s fraudulent plan to resell the land to the Houston chemical waste company. Her face hardened. “That son of a bitch. I was right about him.” “Then why did you help her?” She smiled, ever so slightly.
“Because it mattered to her, and she’s my friend. And there was something terribly silly and romantic about them. I mean, you knew it wasn’t going to work, but they had all this passion.” She paused. “But her parents found out.” “How?” “I don’t know. Jenny’s not a good liar, so they probably caught her in a contradiction. Or they got careless around town and someone ratted to Mr. and Mrs. Loudermilk.” “What about the possibility of Dee having an affair with Greg? How does that strike you?” Her eyes met mine. “It strikes me as possible. Isn’t that awful, Mr. Poteet? I guess I should think better of my best friend’s mother, and Mrs. Loudermilk’s always been good to me, but yeah, I could see her doing it. She does what she wants, I think. That whole family does. After all, they’re Loudermilks. And she’s a very”-Becca paused, searching for the right word- “touching person. I don’t mean emotionally touching, but physically. I could see her having an affair just for the sheer pleasure. But if she did fool around, I think she’d make sure no one ever caught on. She’s tough.” I thought of the look of ecstasy on Dee Loudermilk’s face as the wet clay spun into texture and shape beneath her smeared fingers. I nodded. “Jenny never mentioned anything about her mother and Greg, and if she had known, I’m sure she would have said something to me. We don’t have many secrets from each other.” “So do you know anything more about the Loudermilks?” “Yes,” she said, staring down at her soda can. She finally looked up at me again. “When her folks found out, her father was furious. He’s scary. I don’t know how Mrs. Loudermilk took it-Jenny said she didn’t seem upset at all. She was trying to defend Jenny against her dad. Mr. Loudermilk-” She broke off for a moment, then surged on, bolstered by some inner courage: “He’s one of those men everyone says nice stuff about, but I don’t think many people like him. And he’s never made me feel entirely comfortable. There’s something a little bent about him.” I thought again of the odd joy in Parker’s eyes watching the Mirabeau B. burn and of Jenny’s snide comment about her father getting excited by fire. Not to mention the hair-trigger temper and the violent streak. I had to agree with Becca that Parker’s bathroom didn’t appear to be fully tiled. “This will sound really strange, Becca, but did Jenny every say anything about her father and the bomber?” Becca blinked. “No, not that I remember. I mean, the bomber’s been all anyone’s been talking about.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why, you don’t think that Mr. Loudermilk… “ “He could be. He owns a construction company. He’s worked with explosives. And he really seems to enjoy watching fire. I noticed it when the Mirabeau B. burned and Jenny commented on it to me.” I paused. “And the room of the man who was having an affair with his daughter gets blown up. Is that supposed to be coincidence?” Becca took a long, studied breath.
“God, I never thought of that. When Mr. Loudermilk found out, it was late Thursday night, after they’d had that meeting at the library about the land development.” “I was there,” I said. “Whoever ratted on Jenny did it after the Loudermilks got home, but I guess that they’d seen her arrive at the meeting with Greg and that just added fuel to the fire. No puns intended. Jenny and her dad had a big fight and then he stormed out. Jenny said her mom didn’t fight with her-she was stone-cold icy to her. Jenny called me and I said I hoped that her dad had gone for a drive to cool off and not to go confront Greg. She was supposed to have met Greg around midnight, but she was arguing with her parents and there was no way they were letting her out of the house.” Lorna had heard a door slam down the hall around midnight-an irate Greg returning from a lonely rendezvous or angry that his young lover hadn’t shown up? “I mean,” Becca continued, “Greg was guilty of statutory rape. Well, when I said statutory rape, Jenny just had a cow. She said she was going over to the Mirabeau B. and make sure her father hadn’t hurt Greg. She hung up on me. I got worried that Jenny would go over there, find her father and Greg fighting, and there’d be a big scene.” She stopped to rub her eyes. “God, this was only a couple of days ago and now it seems like years and years. I’ve hardly slept since.” “What happened?” “I don’t live far from the Mirabeau B., so I snuck out and walked over. I thought if there was trouble, I could at least be there for Jenny. If her parents knew how I helped her, I’d be in deep shit with them, but I wasn’t really too worried about that. I thought Jen needed me. I got there and saw Mr.
Loudermilk barreling out of the side door of the bed-and-breakfast-”
“Wait a second, Becca. What time was this?” “Very late. Around two.”
Interesting. That was around the time Lorna had ventured into Greg’s room, gotten tied up, and locked in a closet. She hadn’t mentioned hearing an argument then, though. Did that mean that Parker Loudermilk had silently killed Greg Callahan, then left? “Anyway, he was hurtling out of there just as I saw Mrs. Loudermilk’s car pulling up. I don’t think he saw them, he’d parked behind the house. He got into his own car and left. I nearly came out of the shadows then, but I wanted to see what was going to happen. Maybe if Mr. Loudermilk and Greg had already had it out, then I wouldn’t have to get involved. I still didn’t want the Loudermilks to know how I’d helped Jenny and Greg get together. They might not want Jenny and me to be friends anymore.” She sighed, sounding older than she should. “They sat in their car for a minute or two, then slowly drove off. I’m sure the Loudermilks would be very upset if all of this about Jenny and Greg came out.”
Especially if Parker murdered him over it. I didn’t voice that thought, however. “Did you approach Jenny?” “No,” she confessed. “I went home to bed. I still haven’t even told Jenny that I was there.” I licked my dry lips. “Did you see if Parker was carrying anything? A pair of gloves, or a bag of some sort?” She closed her eyes in concentration, her face as still as a statue’s, caught in a representation of eternal thought. “He didn’t have a bag or anything.
But he was shoving something into his pockets as he left. I couldn’t see what it was.” Gloves, I thought. Maybe a pair of work gloves to protect his hands from the prick of the barbed wire. Parker would have had time to drive out to Dee’s land, cut the barbed wire (or even take the barbed wire from Dee’s studio), go to Greg’s room, kill him, tie up Lorna, and leave. Parker Loudermilk was at the murder scene about the time that Lorna had gotten grabbed and locked up-and a time that fit for Greg to be murdered. And Jenny Loudermilk, reading the account of her lover’s murder in the paper, must’ve felt crushed under that knowledge. What had Dee told her when Jenny
