“So you think she was the one who pulled the trigger?”
“She’d used him and was done with him. Claiming he was drowning Lula was a convenient excuse.”
“But Lula says she remembers being drowned.”
Georgia emphatically shook her head. “Walter loved that girl more than anything in the world. He would have sooner shot himself than hurt a hair on her head.”
“What if he found out he wasn’t her biological daughter?” I asked, figuring I wasn’t giving too much away. Given Louise’s sexual history, it was entirely plausible. Although Louise had flat out told me that Bart had tried to drown Lula, and Lula herself remembered something along those lines, that didn’t necessarily make it true. I couldn’t ignore that Louise was a liar, and Lula’s memories weren’t reliable. Everything related to the murder and what had preceded it was jumbled in her head.
“He figured it out before he supposedly tried to drown her.” Her face crumpled. “Lula can’t roll her tongue.”
“What?” I asked in confusion, and then it hit me.
“The ability to do it is a genetic trait. Recessive. She was learning about it in school and needed to figure out which parent she got the trait from. Both Louise and Walter could do it. But Walter lied and told her he couldn’t either. It tore him up to find out he wasn’t her father, but he wasn’t all that surprised. He came to us right afterward and told us.” Tears filled her eyes. “That was only a few months before she shot him.”
So Bart couldn’t roll his tongue. I added that to my list of useless facts. “Did he confront Louise?”
“Not that I know of. He was scared to push his luck. He figured she might take Lula from him.”
“So why do you think she decided to shoot him that day?” I asked. “Something must have prompted her. Were they fighting?”
Wet paper towel still in hand, she began to scrub again. “I can’t help you there. That’s something you’ll have to ask Hank.”
“Why would Hank know about their fight?”
She gave me a blank stare.
Then I realized Georgia had just confirmed a connection between Louise and Hank. “So Louise does have it out for him.”
“Seems more like he’ll be wantin’ to deal with her now that she’s back.”
Should I confess what Louise told me about Hank’s fortune? It didn’t seem wise, so I decided to play dumb. “Why’s that?”
“Louise took something of Hank’s, and he wants it back.” Her brow lifted. “If you want to know what it was, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you know how Hank got into the pot-selling business?”
She released a laugh and started scrubbing the table again. “I do, actually. You want the story?”
“If you feel comfortable sharing.”
She snorted. “As long as you aren’t some undercover agent . . . but I suspect anyone with a professional interest in prying out Hank’s secrets would have tried years ago. Wouldn’t be much point goin’ after him now. I’m sure the statute of limitations has long since expired on most of it.”
“I assure you, Georgia, the very last thing I want to do is hurt Hank. He took me in and treated me like a daughter. I would never betray him.”
She studied me for a long moment. “No. I can see you wouldn’t.” She resumed wiping. “I think the story starts with Mary.”
I gave her a look of surprise.
“I heard she died from cancer.”
“That’s right. Breast cancer. Sadly, they caught it too late, but she still put up a valiant fight for nearly ten years. Some days were better than others, but she was in bad shape for the last year or two. I suspect she only hung on as long as she did for her family.
“She and Hank eloped.” She lowered her voice. “She was only sixteen, you know.”
My eyes flew wide. “No. I didn’t.”
“Her parents wouldn’t give their permission, so Hank took her down to Georgia. The age of consent was fourteen then.” Her eyes went wide. “Can you believe it?”
“No. It’s shocking.”
“I know.” She tutted her disapproval. “Hank was older. Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Her parents flat out forbade her to see him, so Hank and Mary saw gettin’ married as a way to solve that little problem.”
I picked up on of the wet towels and continue cleaning. “Why did they disapprove of him? I take it he hadn’t started his business yet, since you said it started with Mary. Was it just his age?”
“Well . . . you’re right. He hadn’t, and he wasn’t known for holding a steady job. It didn’t help that his parents were known as poor white trash.”
“Like Louise’s family?” I asked.
She paused before nodding—“Yeah,”—then made a half-hearted swipe across the table. “Mary’s folks had a little bit of money. They weren’t rich, mind you, but they were more than comfortable. Her father was a foreman at the lumber yard, and he had a hankering for her to wed Bart Drummond.”
“What?” I practically screeched.
Georgia laughed. “That was Mary’s reaction too. She couldn’t stand him. She went on a couple of dates with him to appease her father and Bart’s daddy, but he was a pompous ass even then.” She turned pensive, sinking momentarily into her thoughts. “Lookin’ back, I suspect she started datin’ Hank as a way to rebel against her father and take control of her own life.” A faraway look stole over her. “It may have started out that way, but there was no doubt she loved him. He worshipped the ground she walked on. He would have given her the moon if she’d asked.”
“I was surprised they lived in such a small house,” I said. “It’s nearly falling apart now.”
“That was all Mary,” she said, shaking her head. “Once Hank was makin’ money hand over fist, he wanted to give her something grand, but she insisted they stay in their tiny house. She wouldn’t even fix it up. Said it had been good enough for them in the beginning, when they were desperate for a home, and it was still plenty fine. I’m sure it was her way of provin’ her parents wrong, long after she’d buried them.”
“Did she have any brothers and sisters?”
“Oh, no. She was an only child. It broke her heart when she struggled to get pregnant with Barbara—even more so when she couldn’t carry another baby to term after she was born. She had several miscarriages, some of them quite late.” The painted tables forgotten, she sat in one of the small chairs. “If you ask me, the fact that her babies were buried on that land was the real reason she refused to move. She couldn’t bear to leave them. I still say it was a blessing she departed before Barbara did, but then again, Barbara might not have fled so far down that path if Mary had lived.” She gave me a sad look. “The grief’s what killed her. She started with Mary’s pain pills and worked her way up from there.”
Hank had told me that much. After witnessing his daughter’s decline, he was so against opioids that he’d refused to take pain pills when he’d come home after his leg amputation.