No One Can Know(49)

“Sure.” His father must have told him that, too. He set the drink in front of her. There were tattoos climbing up his arms, smudged with age. Clumsy images of demons and dice, an anchor with an unreadable banner. She caught the edge of the smell of him, musk and soap.

She took a sip, remembering that she hated club soda. Studied him while he studied her. Her ice clinked in her glass as she tipped it back and forth in her hand idly.

“Why are you here, Emma Palmer?” he asked. “It’s not for the drink and it’s not for the ambience, so what is it?”

“You and my sister,” she said.

“Me and your sister,” he replied with a half grin. “So you heard about that.”

“I was kind of hoping it wasn’t true,” she said.

“Can’t imagine someone like me with the perfect princess of Arden Hills?” he asked, and laughed. It was an unkind sound, like a crow’s warning call.

“Is that why you slept with her? You wanted to ruin the pretty princess?” Emma asked.

His face darkened. “No. Look. I liked her. I did. A lot more than she liked me, I think.”

Emma considered him. She’d met Logan a handful of times as a kid. Her dad wasn’t close to Ellis like he was with Hadley, but they were friendly. When Logan was a teenager, he’d been around the house a few times when they had dinner with the Ellises. She remembered a boy who couldn’t seem to hold still, constant motion and a tension in the air that made her nervous. He seemed more settled now, but there was still a taut feeling to the air. Something getting ready to snap.

“Were you at the Saracen house the night my parents died?” she asked.

He set his weight back a bit, surprised. “Jesus, you don’t beat around the bush.”

“Were you?”

“Playing detective?”

“Just asking questions,” she told him. “Please. Help me out?” she asked, and she didn’t have to fake the desperate plea in her voice.

Something shifted in his face—a look of sympathy or maybe pity appearing briefly in his eyes before he nodded reluctantly. He glanced over at the guy with the beer at the end of the bar. Dropped his voice. “Sure, I was there at some point.”

“And Juliette?”

He didn’t answer right away. She just waited, eyes locked with his. “She was with me for a while. She took off,” he said at last.

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, irritation roughening his voice. “She wasn’t in a talking mood. We had an argument, sort of. She ran off on me.”

“And you didn’t see her again? You don’t know where she went?” Emma asked.

“No,” he insisted, but his eyes dodged away from her. He was lying, Emma thought—or hiding something.

“Did you give my sister anything?” Emma asked.

“Oh, that’s low-hanging fruit,” he said with a lewd chuckle she thought was a bit performative.

She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“She partook on occasion,” he acknowledged.

“That night?”

“Probably.”

“What?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “Would’ve been oxy. Benzos, maybe. Look. Juliette was a good kid who wanted to be bad for a while. She would’ve gotten bored with me pretty soon, if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”

“But she took something, and she ran off. That’s why you were looking for her,” Emma said. She was still struggling to imagine Juliette out in the woods. Juliette high. Juliette having sex. In her memory, Juliette was a white cardigan and fingers resting lightly on ivory keys.

If Juliette had been on something and came back to the house, could she have lost it? Done something?

Logan folded his arms. “I wanted her to have a good time, that’s all. I wouldn’t have given her much. And she was a lightweight. Didn’t take after her mother in that respect.”

Emma jerked in surprise, her mouth dropping open. The flash of satisfaction on his face told her the effect was intentional. “You’re saying my mother was a client?” she asked. She ought to have been offended, incredulous, but it made a certain amount of sense. The “migraine pills” Emma didn’t remember her ever going to the pharmacy for, the way she would just seem to vanish from herself from time to time.

“Yeah. Now and then,” Logan said with an easy shrug.

“What did she use?” Emma asked, and Logan gave her a strange look. She supposed she should have acted more shocked and less genuinely curious.

“Why do you want to know?” Logan asked.

“I’m not here to get you in trouble,” Emma said, spreading her hands. “I want answers about my family. Help me out.”

Logan grunted. “It’s been a long time,” he hedged. “She probably bought what all the rich not-that-kind-of-junkie junkies bought. Valium, Vicodin, oxy, whatever their preferred flavor. A few at first and then more and then too much, and either they got clean, got in trouble, or got above my pay grade.”

“Above your pay grade meaning…” she prompted.

“Heroin,” he said simply. Emma gave him a skeptical look. “Never heard of the opioid epidemic? Eventually the semilegal stuff stops doing the job. But like I said, above my pay grade. If it wasn’t something you could at least theoretically get with a doctor’s note, I didn’t stock it.”