JENNY LOUDERMILK ANSWERED THE FRONT door and no one could lean more provocatively into a doorway than she did. She seemed determined to live up to Linda’s image of her. She was real pretty, like her mother, except darker like her dad. A lock of luxuriant brown hair hung down over one eye. She was wearing a T-shirt one size too small, and beneath the fabric, the swell of breasts looked perfect. Snug jeans finished her wardrobe. Her feet were bare and her toenails were immaculately painted a shade of dark scarlet. The whole stance had the air of not-so-subtle calculation.
“Hello, Miss Loudermilk. Are your folks at home?”
She regarded me with a bored eye. “Mom’s out back, throwing a pot. Daddy’s not here, though. You’re the library fellow, right?”
“Yes, that’s right. Jordan Poteet.” I offered her my hand. She took it limply, gave it a shake, and then trailed her fingertips along my fingers when she let my hand go. My fingers felt itchy, but I kept them still.
“I was just having a drink. You want one?” I thought she meant drink of water, but I realized with a jolt that she meant alcohol. The glassiness of her eyes looked like it had been poured from a bottle of wine.
“I don’t think that I should drink with you. I doubt your parents would approve.” I’m sure I sounded like a total prude, but what else was I supposed to say? Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t hold with teenagers getting drunk in the middle of the day. And I would hazard a guess that drinking with my boss’s daughter is not de rigueur in Mirabeau government. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite. I drank beer as a teenager, but I only did it while sitting in the back of a pickup truck. I certainly didn’t invite folks in for cocktails.)
She opened the door wider. “What would you know about what they approve of? Believe me, there’s not much.” She turned and walked away, her gait slightly unsteady. I stepped inside the foyer and shut the door behind me.
My first sensation was of antiseptic; even the air smelled as if it’d been scrubbed. The Loudermilk place was big; Parker’s construction company was one of the most successful in the tri-county area, and Loudermilk money was old money. The foyer I stood in had a fancy, swirled marble floor in gray and white, and the wallpaper of gray, black, and silver stripes looked expensive. One entryway opened into a living room that hadn’t seen much living; it was decorated with glazed pots of all shapes and sizes, no doubt the product of Dee’s hands and wheel. She’d painted them with all sorts of figures—stylized antelopes in graceful leaps, Egyptian letters (I recognized the ankh, the symbol of life), and Native American totems. Lifted from other cultures, I thought, without a single symbol from her own heritage. Maybe our culture was just uninteresting to Dee, I reflected. Not even a pot with the Fighting Bees of Mirabeau High on it. I’d stepped away when I noticed the shards in the corner, one of the pots had fallen, smashing into bits on the hardwood floor. It was a shame; it looked like it was a real pretty one, with geometric shapes in red and green painted on it. I wondered why no one had cleaned it up, in this immaculate house.
Jenny saw my eyes staying near the shattered pot. “What can I say?” She shrugged. “I’m a klutz.”
I glanced elsewhere; the other entryway opened into a formal dining room with an impeccably tasteful cherry dining table and a huge china and silver cabinet.
“You coming or you just gawking?” Jenny Loudermilk bleated back at me. I cut through the dining room and found her in a spacious kitchen. It gleamed white—the appliances, the floor, the lights. Jenny perched on a bar stool, elbows leaning on the spotless Formica kitchen counter, a fashion magazine open in front of her. A tall, clear drink with ice and a fat wedge of lime sat in front of her, sitting in its own puddle of condensation.
I picked up the glass and sniffed it. Gin and tonic, and good gin from the smell. “Aren’t you a little young for Tanqueray?” I asked, trying to sound jovial but undoubtedly sounding like a stern nerd.
She shrugged. “I’m a little young for a lot of things, but that never stopped me.” She took the glass back from my hand and sipped, pretending not to watch me over the rim.
“I’m very impressed with how adult you are,” I said.
She ignored the sarcasm, or maybe she just didn’t give a shit what I thought. That seemed a distinct possibility for this little poseur. She sucked on a piece of ice, then dropped it back into her glass. “So why do you want to see my mom? She overdue with those Dr. Seuss books she borrowed for me?”
“Actually I was curious as to how you were doing. You seemed awful upset at the fire last night.” I pulled up a stool and sat down.
She examined the free-floating morsels of lime pulp in her drink. “It was upsetting, seeing that beautiful old house burn down.”
“I didn’t think you were the type to care much about antebellum architecture.”
It was the wrong thing to say. “What the hell do you know about me, anyhow, Mr. Poteet? Where do you get off coming in and telling me what I care about? Jesus, I get enough from the King and Queen!” Her dark eyes flared in outrage, flinting like struck stones.
I raised a hand in pretend surrender. “Hey, look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”
Jenny snorted and sipped at her drink again.
“I thought maybe you were still upset about Greg Callahan,” I ventured. Or your mother and Greg Callahan, I added silently.
Her fingers had been sliding up and down the cool wet length of the cocktail glass and they braked. She stared at her hand and did not look at me. “What is any of this to you?”
“I don’t want my friend Lorna getting hurt. Whoever killed Greg and Freddy might come after her next. You’d gotten to know Greg Callahan, right? Someone here killed him and we have to find out who.”
She was quiet again, as silent as a statue. “Look, Mr. Poteet, just leave it alone. Okay? I’m not going to weep anymore for him. I—”
“Weep for him? What was he to you?” The words tasted terrible in my mouth, but I had to know.
“He was just a friend, a business associate of Mom’s. He wanted to buy Mom’s land.”
“And you got all worked up over a man you hardly knew?”
“I—I cried because I’m just not used to death, okay? It shocks me. Older people get jaded about it, but us kids, we’re different.”
It nearly rang true; I remembered my first funeral, my grandmother Schneider’s when I was twelve, and fighting back unexpectedly hot tears simply at the sight of her closed coffin. But a tone in Jenny’s voice was too calculated; she would not have made for a good actress, despite her poses.
“Your father didn’t seem too upset.” I remembered the excited glow in Parker’s eyes as he watched the fire.
“He likes burning.” Jenny shrugged. “He gets a boner lighting a fire in winter.”
If it was intended to shock, it did. I didn’t go around talking about my folks’ sexual responses much when I was a teenager, I was too interested in my own. I suddenly didn’t want to be around Jenny Loudermilk anymore. She looked unutterably sad to me, sitting alone in this huge, cold house, a little girl drinking hard liquor to show how mature she was, trying to engage in witty repartee that she was sadly ill-trained for.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go have a word with your mother.” I stood and pushed the stool underneath the counter.
“She won’t like being interrupted when she’s throwing pots,” Jenny warned me, coming a little unsteadily off her stool. “You better not—”
“I think I better. And I think you better go sleep off this little afternoon drunk you’ve enjoyed.” I went out the back door toward a small potting shed, decorated on the side with fanciful paintings of children gathering mushrooms. Bright beds of wildflowers surrounded the shed, bestowing a rustic charm they usually only talk about in magazines. As I knocked on the door I could see Jenny Loudermilk watching me from the curtained breakfast nook.
I rapped again on the door. I could hear a gentle humming noise from within, and then Dee Louder-milk’s hard-edged drawl: “Come in.”
I entered the dark pottery studio. Dee Loudermilk sat hunched over a whirling wheel, shaping a mound of clay into something that looked like a cross between a vase and a lozenge. Her hands moved with infinite patience up and down the spinning clay, and I saw they were very like her daughter’s hands moving up and down on the glass of cold gin. I stared spellbound, and Dee, one lock of light hair hanging in her face, glanced past her errant strand at me.
“Shut the door, please, and push the hair out of my face, if you don’t mind,” she said, and I obeyed. It was an oddly intimate moment as I gently moved her hair back behind the delicate shape of her ear. I stepped back, uncomfortable with the sudden closeness between us.
She wasn’t bothered. “Thanks, Jordy,” she said with a workman’s bluntness. “I usually wear a kerchief, but I couldn’t find mine today.”
The humming I’d heard was the whirr of her potter’s wheel, powered by electricity rather than her sandaled feet. I watched in respectful silence as she finished molding the small pot, its gentle curves taking shape under her clay-smeared fingers. Finally, when it had spun long enough, she slowed the wheel to a stop then pried the new vase free with a flat-edged knife. She stood and began to wash her hands at a soapstone sink that sat in a corner.
“How is Ms. Wiercinski holding up? I heard she was staying at your place.” She kept her back to me and I could appreciate again what a fine figure of a woman she was, attractive in her dirty chambray shirt and argil-smeared black jeans, with the smell of wet clay and light sweat about her. It wasn’t hard to see why Greg might’ve liked her.
“Yes, she’s there. She’s holding up well.”
“I hope she’s more likable than Callahan,” Dee said, still soaping her hands clean.
“Didn’t you like Greg?”
One bubbled hand found the faucet and turned the water on higher. She didn’t look up at me. “I didn’t know him very well. He tried to get me to sell him land, but I wasn’t interested.”
“How often did he meet with you about your land?” I asked, sitting on an empty stool.
“Now, why would that be any of your business?” Dee asked, reaching for a clean towel. Her hands, free of dirt and soap, looked as though they had been freshly sculpted from some rare pink stone.
I didn’t feel like pushing Dee Loudermilk. She’d tell me in no short order to get the hell out if I stepped over the line. I tried not to fidget on the stool, stared into her dark blue eyes, and decided on the direct approach. “Gossip around town suggests that Greg Callahan was chasing after you. Did you know that?” I decided to leave Jenny’s name out of it for the moment.
“Funny, I used to enjoy gossip. I don’t find it nearly as interesting these days.” Dee leaned against the gray soapstone sink, surveying me with eyes that betrayed nothing.
“I don’t usually listen to rumor, either. But someone has killed two people here, Dee, and they were both on one side of the riverfront development deal. My friend Lorna might be the next target. If you know anything about Greg Callahan or anyone who might have wanted him dead, and you’re not telling, I’ll have Junebug over here so quick your head’ll spin faster than your potter’s wheel.”
She surprised me by laughing. “My goodness. Threatening the boss’s wife? You’ve got more guts than I gave you credit for.”
“I’m not trying to be impertinent, Dee. I figured you’d appreciate me not beating around the bush.”
She smiled. “Does Candace know you feel so strongly about protecting Lorna Wiercinski? She might keep a closer eye on you if she did. Look, I barely knew Callahan.”
“He’d already offered you money for your land, right? In the area of fifty thousand?” I guessed that her land, close in size to Bob Don’s lot, would fetch the same price.
“Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t going to be enough to make me sell.”
“And how did Mr. Callahan take that?”
“I didn’t tell him my decision. He was dead before I got a chance to.” Dee stared away from me, at the smears of white clay on her workbench. She moved away from the sink and got out some liquids and brushes. Pulling a stool over to the workbench, she began to apply a glaze to a bowl.
She glanced back up at me. “I don’t know why you’re wasting time here. None of us had a reason to kill Greg Callahan. You should be off talking to that nutty Miss Twyla or that oaf Tiny Parmalee. They’re the ones who were against him.”
“You don’t know anything about Freddy’s death, either?”
“No, I do not,” Dee answered in a measured, nearly soft tone I had to strain to hear. The sweep of her brush made a delicate mark on the bowl’s surface, like an angel’s fingerprint.
“You seemed terribly upset at the fire.”
“That’s a stupid comment, Jordy; we all were upset at another bombing taking place.” She glanced at my arm in its sling. “I mean, when we think we nearly lost you to that lunatic.” Her tone didn’t sound like my loss would be a grief for her.
“Parker seemed to enjoy watching Chet’s house burn.”
Her brush hesitated over a dark crescent of watery glaze she’d just applied to the pot. “Parker has a strange sense of humor. You really shouldn’t pay him mind.” She completed her glazing and went over to another workbench with a cabinet next to it.
“Jenny seemed terribly upset as well.”
“She’s a teenager,” Dee answered, pulling on a heavy pair of rugged work gloves, “and she gets upset easily.” Hexing her fingers inside the gloves, she opened the cabinet and rummaged inside.
I was about to tell her how upset—and drunk—her daughter was, when Dee turned back to me, her hands spread apart like she was measuring a caught fish, and metal sparkled like stars between her palms, the length of silvery barbed wire glinting in the bright sunlight from the studio’s window.
“Isn’t it lovely, Jordy?” she asked, a half smile on her face.
I stood quickly, nearly falling over and toppling the stool, staring at the strand of death in her hands. It was just like the wire in Greg’s throat.
“Don’t be afraid, silly. God, but you’re jumpy, just like Parker.” She moved over to the pot she’d thrown, sitting down again. I stayed on my feet.
“Where did you get that?” I managed to ask.
“At the store, just like everyone else,” Dee answered. She began to wrap the wire around the pot itself, pressing the barbs into the material so the wire held.
“That’s—that’s an odd decoration for a pot,” I croaked. “And not in very good taste right now, Dee.”
“It’ll be lovely when it’s done.”
“You have a lot of that wire on hand?” I cleared my throat, knowing that it wasn’t about to be ripped (at least for the moment), and righted the chair I’d knocked over.
“Sure. I do lots of Southwestern-style pots for that crafts store over in Bavary. Barbed wire’s a big decorating item there. You can get pottery, sculptures, all sorts of stuff like that.”
So the killer wouldn’t necessarily have had to cut the wire from the fence that bisected Dee and Bob Don’s land. He or she could have filched a length from Dee’s studio. Dee knew it was here, and presumably so could Parker and Jenny—or anyone who bought Dee’s ceramics. Of course, it wouldn’t be filching if Dee herself took it to wrap into Greg’s neck like soft clay.
“I’m sure you mentioned to Junebug that you had that kind of wire on hand, didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t ask. I didn’t volunteer.”
I shook my head. “Are you just trying to make yourself look bad? Is this some game to you?”
She finished setting the sharp wire into the pot and stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Of course it’s not a game, Jordy. A man’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Two men. Don’t forget Freddy.”
“Poor Freddy. He was really an oaf, wasn’t he?” “You’re ice, do you know that?” I suddenly wanted to be away from Dee Loudermilk. “You make that pot right after a man is strangled with wire. I think that’s sick.”
“Aren’t you the sensitive boy? Then leave, Jordy. No one asked you here anyway. Why don’t you run back to your little friend Junebug Moncrief and tell him what I’ve been up to?” She smiled hollowly at me. “I’m a Loudermilk. See if he’ll do anything about mean ol’ me.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. “Not cooperating with Junebug in his investigation isn’t going to help your husband.”
She laughed. “I’m not a good political wife and Parker knows that. I could frankly not give a rat’s ass about him being mayor. If I did, I’d have him fire your ass in a minute. You’re not exactly behaving like a loyal employee. But maybe it’s good for old Parker to have a thorn in his side.”
“Do you give a rat’s ass about your daughter? She’s in there—” I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence as Parker Loudermilk barreled into his wife’s studio, looking for all this world like his senses had fled him. He stared hard at me, venom contorting his face.
“Jordy. What are you doing here?” The breath that powered his voice was ragged with fury. His eyes slid to Dee, who stood calmly by her wheel, arms crossed over her breasts.
“Just talking with Dee about all the goings-on in town,” I offered. It sounded idiotic, but I frankly didn’t have a witty excuse available.
“Would you mind leaving?” he asked, the politician in him kicking in belatedly. “I mean, I need to talk with Dee privately. And I’m sure you must have work at the library to do.” His dark eyes darted to her and lingered. I saw the folds of flesh in the corner of his eyes crinkle in annoyance when he saw her standing disinterestedly watching us.
He might be the mayor, but I’d had enough. “Yes, I think I will leave. Y’all are just too strange today for me. First Dee makes a big production of letting me know that she’s got a bunch of the same kind of wire that killed Greg”—he swallowed hard at that little announcement—“and your daughter’s got a solid drunk on in the house. I’ve had my fill of Loudermilks today, thank you kindly.” I turned to go.
“Goddamn you!” Parker roared, and I whirled back, thinking he was coming after me. But he wasn’t. He was after Dee, seizing one of her arms and shaking her hard. Her eyes were frozen on him, unblinking, like marbles left in sand.
I had no wish to get involved in their domestic squabble, but I couldn’t very well walk out when it looked like he might hit her. I grabbed his shoulder, said, “Hey, Parker, calm down—” That’s when he spun around and belted me, hard.
I landed on the floor. You don’t know how much getting hit in the face hurts. It’s a lot, trust me.
“Parker!” Dee shoved past him to kneel by me. I was busy working my jaw; it seemed okay. My eye, though, sure was sore.
“Oh, aren’t you tough?” Dee spat at her husband, who stood staring down at me with a look of utter blankness. “Hitting a man who’s got his arm in a sling! And he’s a librarian, too.”
I decided to ignore that implicit slur against my profession and my manhood as I got to my feet. My left eye tingled, as though announcing that its skin would soon darken like an overripe plum. I was still so surprised that I hadn’t even gotten ticked at Parker. I just thought: The mayor hit me.
Dee steadied me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Parker?” she snapped. “Have you just totally lost your mind?”
Parker Loudermilk continued to glare at me, but his fingers unfolded out of fists. Finally his well-worn mask of local government slipped back into place. He smiled, nearly beatifically at me, then walked out of the studio.
‘Tell me he’s not going to get his gun,” I said to Dee, holding my good hand up to my eye. This investigating crap could get you damaged if not outright dead.
“No, he’s not going to get a gun,” she answered, but I saw her delicate teeth biting the top of her lower lip. She looked worried, which did nothing to reassure me. “Let’s get a cold compress on your eye.”
Dee helped me into the kitchen. We heard the squeal of tires in the driveway; Parker leaving, I guessed. Jenny wasn’t in the kitchen. I sat on a stool while Dee wrapped a baggie of ice in a dish towel and pressed it against my eye. I was feeling better—so well, in fact, that I wanted to kick Parker Loudermilk’s ass for him. Dee pressed the coldness to my face. Another lock of her blonde hair dangled before her face and I wanted to push it back behind her ear, the way I did back in her pottery shed. I didn’t.
“I’m sorry, Jordy. But maybe you shouldn’t go around asking so many questions.” I saw her eyes dart around the kitchen again, as if looking for something.
“She might be passed out, but I don’t think she’d drunk that much,” I answered, guessing that she was looking for her daughter.
“Jenny’s much like her dad. Prone to stupid decisions. But I really don’t want to talk about my daughter with you.” She pushed down hard on the ice over my bruised eye. “Does that feel better?”
“Not when you’re trying to drive it through my skull like that,” I answered. I pulled on her hand to ease the pressure and she let go of the compress entirely. I took hold of it and watched her walk to the sink.
“You know, it’s not like I barreled in here, guns blazing and accusations flying,” I said. Well, maybe I did, but that was beside the point. “Your daughter’s drinking heavily and your husband—a public figure—is belting city employees. What are y’all trying for, a guest spot on Oprah?”
“I’m sorry that Parker hit you. He doesn’t deal well with anger.” Her back was to me and I saw her chambray shirt wrinkle and smooth as her back tensed.
“No, I guess not. But never mind his behavior to me—that I can figure out. Why’s he so mad at you?”
“He’s not mad at me, he’s mad at the world.” She ran water in the sink and rinsed her face.
“No, he’s mad at us.” Jenny’s voice came from behind me. She walked slowly and steadily around me, pulling the ice down from my face. “That’ll turn cool colors. It’ll go with everything.” Her words didn’t slur, but I could see the effort in her face to enunciate.
“That’s a real comfort,” I answered.
Jenny watched her mother, who had turned to face us. “Is this how the end starts, Mom? I’d like to know so I can get my front-row seat.”
“Jennifer Louise, go upstairs. You’re drunk. You and I will talk later.” Dee’s voice was as hard as fired clay.
“No,” Jenny said, not even looking at her mother but staring at me. “Greg’s friend, she’s your ex-girlfriend, right?”
I nodded.
“Jenny! I said go upstairs!” Dee yelled.
“That’s where I hide the liquor now, Mom,” she retorted. “Are you sure that’s where you want me to be?”
I stood up, keeping the ice pressed to my swelling face. “This has all been charming, ladies, but I’m frankly tired of this bullshit I’ve already gotten my eye punched, so I might as well go for broke. Rumor has it that you were both sleeping with Greg Callahan.” I turned to Dee. “Now he’s dead, and your family is falling apart. Your daughter’s drinking and your husband’s pissing mad and beating up innocent librarians. What am I supposed to think, Dee? Maybe that hunk of wire in Greg’s neck did come from your studio.” I sounded cruel, but this dancing around the sour core of what might have happened with them had grown tiresome. I held my breath, waiting for her reaction.
Dee’s mouth, pale and unlipsticked, worked as though trying to form words. A vague smile haunted her face.
Jenny didn’t wait for her mother. “Leave her alone. She didn’t kill Greg.”
“Jennifer Louise, hush, right now!” Dee came forward in a burst of motion like a runner exploding from the block. She seized her daughter’s arm. “I told you to go upstairs.”
“How long are we going to protect him, Mom?” Jenny screamed. “I can’t do this anymore! I can’t—” The slap against Jenny’s face reverberated in the tiled kitchen. She stared at the hardwood floor, and a thin dribble of blood formed on her lip. She shuddered. “Mommy—”
Dee whirled on me. “You. Out. Now.”
I lowered the ice from my face. “Y’all are, without a doubt, the most screwed-up family I’ve ever seen.” I glanced over at the stunned teenager. “Jenny, you okay?” She didn’t answer.
“If you don’t leave, I’m calling the cops,” Dee said, taking a step toward me.
“Good idea. Let’s have them all over.” I shook my head at her, Jenny’s words ringing in my ears. How long are we going to protect him, Mom? “Whatever the hell mess y’all have gotten yourselves into, Dee, get out of it now. Let me help you—”
“I don’t need help. I need for you to go. Goodbye, Jordy.” She put her crying daughter under her arm like a bird protecting a wobbly nestling and escorted Jenny out of the kitchen.
I left, keeping the bag of ice and the dish towel it was wrapped in. They owed me that much, surely. And I drove to the police station just as fast as I could.