“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.”
“Right. So how long?” she asked.
“How long did I sell to her, you mean? I think about five years,” Logan said, scratching his chin as he did the math in his head.
“Right under your dad’s nose.”
He smirked a little. “No risk, no reward, right? Besides, he’s not the white knight he likes to let people think he is.”
She thought of Ellis across the table, playing the concerned father figure while urging her to incriminate herself. How frustration had crept in quickly, his face turning red as his voice got louder.
“And what about now?” she asked. “Still selling?”
“Clean as a whistle,” he said. Leaned an elbow on the bar. Leaned in too close. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
His eyes fixed on hers. He did have pretty eyes, she thought. Maybe that was what Juliette saw in him. Or maybe it was only that he was so unlike what she was supposed to want. That, Emma could understand.
“Did my mother always pay on time, Logan?” Emma asked lightly.
He chuckled. “Nice try. I wasn’t even selling to her at that point.”
“So she got clean, got in trouble, or went above your pay grade?” she asked. She would have known if her mother was using heroin, wouldn’t she?
“Or she was getting it from somewhere else,” Logan said.
“Where?”
He worked his jaw, like he was considering not telling her. “I can’t say for sure.”
“But you have a theory,” Emma said, raising an eyebrow. He wanted to talk. He wanted her leaning in close, listening to what he had to say; he wanted to be important, and there were precious few opportunities to be important when you worked at a place like Wilson’s, lived in a place like Arden.
“It’s nothing.” Logan shook his head.
“Does it have to do with my father?” Emma guessed, and Logan froze. Something illegal, involving her father. Drugs wouldn’t have been her guess. Her law-and-order father thought they should bring the firing squad back, thought “druggies” should be rounded up and put in camps—preferably along with liberals, IRS agents, and anyone who called their pets “fur babies.”