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.”
“She was still a kid,” Gertie said. “One who’d lost her father and had a mother who’d basically thrown her to the wolves for her own gain. I imagine there were all manner of threats involved if she talked. There usually are.”
I sighed. “I know you’re right, but it still hacks me off.”
“The real question is does this information change our stance on Tiffany as a suspect?” Ida Belle said.
I shook my head. “If anything, it makes it worse.”
“How do you figure?” Gertie asked. “All we got was confirmation of our suspicions about why she married Gil.”
“There’s that part where Tiffany was a rodeo girl,” I said. “Which meant she potentially had the skill to handle Shadow.”
Ida Belle nodded. “You’re right. And since Liam was close with Tiffany and hung out with the same crowd, I imagine he spent a decent amount of time around horses as well.”
“So the two of them could have done this,” Gertie said. “But why?”
“That’s the question,” I said.
“That’s been the question since this started,” Ida Belle said.