“Only good things,” Tempest said.
River motioned us inside, led us to the living room. “Come in,” she said. “Ignore Elias. He’s all bluster. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
Elias walked up behind River and put an arm around her, the gesture protective. “Hell yeah, I meant something by it,” he said.
“Elias,” River said, her tone warning.
Tempest blanched, and as skittish as she’d been about us earlier, I was afraid this would give her reason to leave.
“Shut the hell up,” I said. “My love life is none of your business, and I’m happy. So grow up. We didn’t come here to get grilled by you. We came because we found something important.” I set the journal in the middle of the coffee table. “Now. I suggest you start reading.”
An hour later, the room was silent, the discord between Elias and Tempest forgotten. “So, Jed was the one who killed her, then,” Elias said, his jaw set.
“It looks like it,” I said.
“Explain this like I know nothing,” River said. “We know that your mother killed your father.”
“The reasoning for that is laid out earlier on in the journal,” I said. “The mine in the back yard behind the house had been abandoned for years after my father lost the permit to blast there.”
“Because Silas blew it up fucking around,” Elias said.
“Yes, because I blew it up fucking around,” I said. “Anyway, to make a long story short, my father found something back there on the property, dicking around doing who knows what. He brought it down to the geology teacher at the high school, where he was still working as a janitor. The geology teacher got interested because it was europium and it might be worth a bunch if someone wanted to start digging.”
“And that’s when he told your mother he had a plan to make them rich,” River said.
“Yes, and reading between the lines it looks like the geology teacher went behind his back, talked to the Mayor, and -”
“I didn’t see anything in there about our mother and the Mayor,” Elias said.
Tempest looked at me. “It’s in there,” she said. “It’s a little earlier in the journal. She and Jed Easton senior had been hooking up for a while. It sounded like he was sweet on her.”
Elias grunted. “He’s married,” he said. “Boy she sure could pick quality men.”
“I don’t think she was quite as enchanted with him,” I said. “Anyway, the asshole got drunk and told our mother they were going to be rich. She didn’t believe him at first, but then she talked to the Mayor.”
“Who would have already known,” River said. “Because of the geology teacher. Why didn’t the teacher just go direct to the mining company?”
“It looks like a lot of it is on private land,” Tempest said. “My grandmother got an offer on her place, outside of West Bend, but she said there have been other offers, mostly on places in town.”
“I don’t get it,” River said. “What would that matter? The mining company just buys the property and mines for it, right?”
“Well, first of all, they’re trying to get it for a song,” I said. “Without the residents knowing exactly what they’re sitting on. That’s the most important part.”
“And you can’t just set up a mine in town,” Elias said, turning toward River.
“Oh, right,” River said. “It’d have to be zoned for mining or whatever, right?”
“Exactly,” Elias said.
“So that’s where the Mayor comes in,” River said.
I nodded. “The Mayor and Jed would be able to grease the wheels,” I said.
“So if your mother was in on it, why would Jed kill her?” River asked.
“She laid it right out in the journal,” I said. “She was greedy. She didn’t just want to sell the land. She thought she should get a kickback from Jed and the Mayor. So she threatened the Mayor. He thought he could reason with her, but she said she was going to blow everything wide open - the affair, the fact that Jed and the Mayor were dirty, the mining company scamming the town residents out of a fair price on the land, the whole thing.”
“We’re assuming Jed killed her, though,” River said. “We don’t know that.”
“You’re right,” I said. “The journal only implies it. It doesn’t outright say. It just talks about the fact that Jed went to see her and threatened her.”
“Jed or his father,” Tempest said. “It was one of them.”
“So the question is,” River said. “What we do with what we know?”
“That’s definitely the question,” Elias said. “And I don’t know the answer.”
35
Tempest