“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?”
“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,
