You Can't Escape (19 page)

She shook her head. It was weird after all this time to actually want to know something about her own heritage. For most of her life, she’d run away from it.

Though she tried different combinations of words in her search for more on the unidentified body, that was all, apparently, that the
Pioneer
had to offer. Closing her laptop, she drummed her fingers on the top of its matte black finish. She’d just decided to head to City Hall and the police department, see if she could scare up Rusty’s frenemy, Pete Drummond, Mr. Shitface, when one of the men standing in line for a coffee swept his eyes over her, only to sweep them back, his gaze pinning on her.

Jordanna threw him a sideways glance, not relishing another trip down memory lane with any other town residents. He was tall and slim and looked tough as rawhide. His arms were long and ropy and his face was weathered and wind-burned. She could picture him throwing hay bales onto the back of a wagon beneath a blistering sun. She half expected him to call her name, but he remained silent.

She’d just gotten to her feet and was stowing her laptop into her case when he finished with his order and came up to her. Jordanna instinctively took a step back.

“Sorry, not trying to startle you. You’re that reporter, right? Emily’s sister.”

“Umm, yes . . .” She regarded him curiously.

“Martin Lourde.” He thrust out a calloused hand, which she shook tentatively, glad he didn’t crush her hand. He just had that look about him, somehow.

“Jordanna Winters,” she answered, remembering that Pru had said he ran his father’s dairy farm. Hard work, every day. Nate Calverson did not exude the same appearance even though his father’s ranch was many times the size, but then Nate undoubtedly had hired hands.

“You’re the one who shot your old man,” Lourde said loud enough to make Jordanna want to cringe.

“That would be me.”

He grinned suddenly, and it transformed his face. For just a moment, Jordanna caught a glimmer of what must have intrigued her sister enough to indulge in a serious bump-and-grind session against the snack shack. He looked immediately younger and happier, and it dredged up an unbidden memory of him from those high school days: Martin Lourde and Nate Calverson sniggering in the hallways about some girl who’d just come up and tried to talk to them, one of the unpopular ones who were smitten with cool, wealthy Nate. They were polite enough to her while she was there, but she had to have heard their suppressed laughter after she left. If Jordanna could, she would permanently erase the memory of her own crush on Nate. Good God, it was embarrassing, even all these years later.

“I like a girl who can handle whatever’s thrown her way,” Martin said.

“Well, good.” Her memory of him was limited to that moment in the hallway; otherwise, he’d just been a name, a student at Rock Springs High who never moved in her social sphere. “Maybe you can help me with something.”

“What?” His tone grew instantly suspicious.

“I just heard about an unidentified body that was found somewhere on Summit Ridge. Thought I might look into it, and Pru Briles, er, Calverson, said you were the one that told her the body’d been branded.”

He seemed taken aback. “That was years back.”

“I just never heard anything about it.”

One of the baristas suddenly sang out his name and he headed back to the counter to pick up his drink. But he came right back and gestured to the seat, silently asking if he could join her. Jordanna nodded and perched back onto her seat across from him. She could smell the scent of cinnamon coming from his latte. She’d expected him to drink black coffee like she did, just by the ranch-tough way he looked.

“Why’re you looking into that, so late in the game?” He took a sip and said, “Shitfire. They know how to make ’em hot here. Jesus. I could sue,” he called out in a loud voice, turning toward the baristas, but the women who’d handed him his drink never so much as lifted a brow.

“The branding,” Jordanna said truthfully. “That’s a story. Everybody calls the victim homeless, but it sounds to me like he’s just unidentified.”

“He wasn’t from around here.”

“How do you know?” Jordanna asked.

“’Cause no one knew him.” He looked at her like,
Duh
. “No one claimed the body. He just wandered up off Summit Ridge and up and died.”

“What was the cause of death, do you know?”

“Exposure? Old age?” He leaned in more intimately and another smile flashed across his face. “Evil drink, maybe?”

“How old was he?”

He shrugged and slurped up some of his latte. “Older than us, I’m pretty sure. Didn’t pay that much attention. Wasn’t that interesting except for he got himself branded.”

“I heard the chief didn’t want that information to get out.”

“Markum?” He snorted. “Damn useless old goat. This why you’re back in town? ’Cause of that body? Thought you Treadwell girls skedaddled because you didn’t like us anymore.”

“Winters. I’m always interested in a possible story. I heard you knew my sister, Emily.”

“Emily . . .” He shrugged, as if he could hardly remember her, but his eyes shifted away.

“I actually heard you knew her pretty well,” Jordanna added softly.

His eyes were dark brown and now they focused back on her. There was some emotion in there that he was trying to quash. “Yeah?”

“There was that time you were . . . making out . . . against the snack shack, after a game.”

“Making out?” He laughed shortly. “Who told you that? Wow.”

“Emily,” Jordanna lied.

“That surprises me. She sure as hell pretended it didn’t happen afterward.”

“You weren’t her boyfriend, then?”

“It was a long time ago. High school, jeez.” He shook his head. “You’re the one who’s a reporter,” he said, as if the shoe had just dropped. “Looking for stories. That make you any money? Your job?”

“Well, I don’t do it for my health.”

He laughed again, forced heartiness. A few heads turned their way, but Jordanna kept her attention on Martin Lourde. He didn’t seem like a truly terrible guy, but, like he’d said, he also didn’t seem like Emily’s type.

“So, the night at the snack shack was a one-time thing, then?” she probed.

He finished off his latte, tipping back the paper cup to get every last drop, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Emily got religion, like half the town. All the girls who were hot pants in high school got religion. Made ’em feel better about their misspent youth, maybe. But Emily . . .” He lifted a hand off the table, then dropped it back down. “It happened real quick with her.”

“Must’ve. ’Cause I don’t remember her being particularly religious until the very end,” Jordanna said.

“Well, that’s when it was. She got bit by the bug, she was gone, and I mean gone. She stopped talking to me about Christmas that year. I had a pretty bad crush on her,” he admitted. “Bought her this necklace. Wasn’t worth much, but I gave it to her, thinking it was something big. Such a fucking dope.” He dolefully shook his head. “It was all wrapped up in a box. She didn’t even want to open it, but I made her. Told her I wouldn’t be able to live if she didn’t accept my gift, blah, blah, blah.” He shook his head and ran a palm over the top of his thinning hair, embarrassed at the memory. “When she finally opened it, she just looked at the necklace like it was a snake, or something. Said she couldn’t keep it, that she was on a path now. I didn’t know what she meant, but she went on to say that she’d wandered for a while . . . which was apparently when she was getting all hot and crazy with me . . . but that she was firmly on the path of the righteous.”

“The Lord’s path,” Jordanna said, remembering what Kara had said.

He hooked a thumb at his chest, grinned and declared, “Not this Lourde,” in a way that made it clear he’d done this same play many, many times before. “Thought you were looking into the branded homeless guy. How’d we get on your sister? Oh, right . . .” He answered his own question. “You thought I was her boyfriend.”

“Who was her boyfriend back then?”

He grimaced. “She had a lot of ’em. That’s all I want to say about that. She really crushed me back then, y’know? I’ve been married and divorced and had a couple other relationships since then, but . . .” He shrugged. “It’s stupid, but I still think about her once in a while.”

“
L’amour
,” Jordanna said with a smile.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

He shrugged. “But Emily changed at the end of high school. She got weird. Not just the religion stuff, but it was like she was going mental, or something.”

“Sure you haven’t got her confused with me?” Jordanna asked drily.

“People were talking about her. They kept saying how crazy she was, just like the rest of . . .” He cut himself off.

“The Treadwells,” Jordanna finished for him. “Yeah. Go on.”

“Sorry.”

“You were on a track about Emily. What were you going to say?”

“Oh, just that . . . when they were saying those things about her, I kinda ate it up. Because she dumped me, y’know. I acted like it was me who dumped her, but she’s the one who did it.”

Jordanna nodded. “Those things seem really important in high school.”

“Don’t they?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Back then, I didn’t care if she was mental, or not. I was just stupid in love, or lust . . . both. First love, y’know? Sticks with ya.”

Jordanna nodded, though in many ways her own high school experience was a fuzzy blur, a time she’d purposely dropped from her consciousness except for a few sterling moments that she would rather forget.

He sighed heavily. “But then she died. That was the worst. I was sick. Thought I’d never get over it.”

Jordanna smiled faintly. It was kind of sweet, and unexpected, his teenaged love for Emily.

“You don’t look much like her,” he said thoughtfully, his eyes frankly assessing.

“It was quite a few years ago.”

“Yeah . . .” The conversation stalled and Jordanna felt like she’d squeezed Martin Lourde dry of information. She wondered if she could sneak away now, or if he was going to try to prolong their friendship, such as it was.

“Well, I’d better get going,” she said, rising to her feet again.

“If you’re really looking for a story, you should find out what happened to Bernadette Fread. She disappeared over a week ago, and I hope to God she’s okay.”

“You know Bernadette?” She almost said “too” but managed to keep that back.

“Sure. The Fread ranch is right next to my farm. I’ve known ’em all my life.”

His tone suggested it wasn’t always a happy acquaintanceship.

“Someone said they thought she ran away.”

He thought that over, then shook his head. “Maybe, though Bernadette’s not really the type. The Freads raise cattle mostly, and Bernadette’s been right in there, helping out. She did a 4-H project. Raised an orphaned calf. Fed it from a bottle day and night, when it was little. Cried when they sold the steer, after it was full grown. I didn’t blame her. It was like part of the family.”

“Sounds traumatic,” Jordanna agreed.

“Old man Fread’s real fire and brimstone, not that I don’t believe in the Great Man, myself, but he’s definitely of the opinion spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“He abused Bernadette?”

Martin backpedaled quickly. “That’s the trouble with you reporters. Putting words in our mouths. I mean, he was strict . . . too strict. Bernadette’s been on a very short leash, a very long time.”

“But you don’t think she just ran away, or do you?” Jordanna questioned.

“I don’t know. It’s just peculiar and it worries me.”

“I’m thinking about talking to Chief Markum about the branded man, so I’ll ask him about Bernadette, too.”

“Don’t bother. The chief’s a Green Pasturer, and so are the Freads.”

And so’s my father and Jennie.
“I hear an awful lot about that church,” Jordanna said. “The Calversons belong, too.”

“Not Nate . . . not really,” he assured her. “Pru, yeah, but Nate’s another story. You remember him.”

“I ran into him and Pru at the Longhorn last night.”

“No, I mean,
you
remember him.” There was a glimmer in his eye.

Jordanna’s pulse jolted. Did he know about her secret crush? One that maybe wasn’t so secret after all? “What do you mean?” she asked, slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder and grabbing her laptop case.

“Hey, don’t be embarrassed. I told you about me and Emily, didn’t I? Every girl in high school was crushin’ on Nate. That’s just a fact.” He spread his hands as he got to his feet, no harm, no foul. “Nate had a posse of ’em after him.”

“Well, I wasn’t one of them,” she lied. “I barely talked to him.”

“Emily said you wrote about him in your diary.”

“
What?
”

“What I’m saying is, you don’t have to cover up to me.”

“Well, it wasn’t like that.” Jordanna was sputtering, still trying to recover from the fact that Emily had apparently read her journal and spilled its secrets.

Ignoring her, Martin went on, “Nate was a goddam god in those days. Hell, we all knew it, and if we didn’t, he made sure we did. And the Calversons were about the richest family in three counties, so any girl with brains wanted Nate for their boyfriend.”

“I was never interested in the Calverson money,” Jordanna got out with an effort. There were so many things wrong with what he was saying, she hardly knew where to begin her defense.

“Don’t worry about it. We were kids, right?” He wagged his head dolefully. “Emily shouldn’t have gone so soon, but awful things happen.”

Jordanna made a sound of agreement, determined not to say anything more that would make things worse. She would have left right then, but Martin was standing in her way.

“Life’s here to teach us all lessons, though, huh?” Martin mused. “Nate ended up with Pru, and I guess they’re happy. She’s sweet and simple, and he sneaks out and plays poker with us now and again. Took over the family business, but then so did I.”

Martin finally shifted position, and Jordanna managed to edge around him. “Nice to see you again,” she said belatedly, holding out her hand.