We all leaned in to look at the photo. It was a group of teens standing in front of a fence. There were horses in the background and the name of each teen was carefully penciled in below their image. I didn’t need the names to spot Liam and Tiffany, though. They looked the same but younger—that kind of young in the face that you lose when you hit your twenties.
“Who’s the sourpuss off to the side?” I asked, pointing to a woman frowning at the teens.
“That’s Emilia, Tiffany’s mother,” Brenda said. “If I remember correctly, Tiffany was supposed to be on punishment for her grades, but she’d sneaked out to go to the rodeo.”
Brenda tapped the photo where Liam and Tiffany were. “I think most people could see Liam and Tiffany were sweet on each other, but in a good way—an innocent young teen way. I didn’t see any cause for concern back then and trust me, I know the signs of a toxic teen relationship. You know what I’m saying, Gertie.”
Gertie nodded. “Oh yeah. So when her father died, did Tiffany keep hanging out with the group?”
“No,” Brenda said. “That was probably the second big blow to hit her. That group of kids were big into rodeo and Tiffany had been an up-and-coming barrel racer. She really loved her horse, but after her father died, her mother said they couldn’t afford to keep him as they were paying stable fees, food, vet, and entry for all the competitions. When her mother sold the horse, Tiffany stopped hanging out with the group. Stopped hanging out altogether that I could see. I’d spot Liam’s truck at her house on weekends but I never saw them out anywhere from then on…until her mother remarried. Then it got so her mother was always looking for Tiffany because she didn’t want to come home.”
“What do you think was going on?” I asked. “Abuse? Because I get depression over losing her father and her horse, but that look of long-term illness you described plus the complete shift in behavior says something went very wrong.”
Brenda blew out a breath. “I suspected as much. Even asked Tiffany about it a time or too—in a roundabout way, you know. Just trying to get her to open up a bit about the man and what was going on with her life. But every time I brought him up, her face went blank and she bolted.”
“Because that’s not a red flag,” Gertie said.
Brenda nodded.
“Did you try talking to her mother?” Ida Belle asked.
“Of course,” Brenda said. “But I could tell straightaway that woman wasn’t going to hear anything about anything. She’d always been weak, you know? Had to have someone propping her up. She’d found a replacement and by God, wasn’t nothing I or anyone else said going to shift her thinking on the matter.”
“So she stuck her head in the sand and ignored the fact that her daughter was likely being abused by her husband,” I said. “What a piece of—you know what, that’s even too kind.”
Brenda nodded. “I talked with the principal and social services and all of them had a go. Just so you don’t think I left it at trying to talk to her mother. But Tiffany wouldn’t say a thing so there was nothing they could do. The girl just moved like a zombie through high school until she turned eighteen mid senior year. All the teachers wondered if she’d drop out and take off. Well, you could have knocked us all over with a feather when she up and married Gil. No one had seen that one coming.”
“I can’t imagine you would,” Ida Belle said. “No one in Sinful saw it coming, either. I mean, we knew Tiffany spent a lot of time over at Gil’s house, but we always assumed she was there to see Liam and preferred it to her own situation as Gil wasn’t exactly an involved parent.”
“Not as much supervision,” Brenda said. “And that’s the logical road to take. I wish that had been all it was, but I suspect it wasn’t.”
“Well, what you’ve told us explains a lot,” Gertie said. “Is Tiffany’s mother still with that guy?”
“No, but not by her own choosing,” Brenda said. “Shortly after Tiffany married Gil, the state police showed up and arrested him. Seems he was wanted for a series of assaults of high school girls back in Mississippi.”
“How did they find him?” I asked.
“Luck. The regular food delivery driver for one of the local restaurants was injured and a replacement was filling in,” Brenda said. “Turns out the fill-in driver was from that town where the assaults occurred and he made a delivery the same day that criminal was doing some painting downtown. He recognized him from the news bulletins and called the cops.”
“It’s a shame it didn’t happen years sooner,” Gertie said. “Could have spared that girl.”
“Do you know if she talks to her mother anymore?” Ida Belle asked.
“I’m not aware of Tiffany having a word to say to her mother since even before she left,” Brenda said. “And I can’t say that I blame her. After the arrest, I guess the mother couldn’t face the truth of it all. I heard she went into the hospital right after for a spell. Rumor was she had a nervous breakdown. She sold her place shortly after all that and moved up the highway somewhere. The local gossip says she never leaves her house, but I don’t have any firsthand knowledge on what she did after leaving here, so that could be drama made up by the bored. Don’t care what happened to her, truth be told. It’s women like her make the rest of us look bad.”
Gertie shook her head. “What sad, sad thing. All the way around.”
“And then Gil gets killed for his car, which wasn’t necessarily surprising given the times and he was in the city,” Brenda said. “But that stunt at the Halloween festival…well, I just don’t know what to think.”
We all nodded. Apparently the news of finding Gil’s car in a Sinful bayou hadn’t made it to Brenda yet, but I saw no point in bringing it up. Brenda had told us everything she knew.
“We don’t know what to think either,” Gertie said. “It seems so pointless.”
Brenda sighed. “Well, at least this time the tragedy struck when the girl is of age and I assume she’ll have some money to get on with things. It’s better than she had before.”
Chapter Thirteen
We climbed into Ida Belle’s SUV and headed back for Sinful. As soon as we drove off, we were all exclaiming at once, clearly outraged by what we’d heard.
“It certainly explains a lot,” Ida Belle said.
I nodded. “It does. I wonder if Tiffany ever told Liam what was going on.”
“I doubt it,” Gertie said. “Liam wasn’t much of a tough guy, per se, but I can’t imagine him knowing something like that and doing nothing.”
“Even the weak can fire a gun,” Ida Belle said. “And besides, if Liam had known, he would have told his grandmother and there’s no way Josephine would have let that lie. She’d have raised the roof off of Louisiana.”
“True,” Gertie said. “And the first thing she would have done is moved Tiffany in with her.”
“I just don’t get why Tiffany didn’t tell someone the truth,” I said. “If Josephine would have taken her in, then she had an option. A good one, it sounds like.”