Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

  Garnet’s tour didn’t take us from the beginning of the operation to the end. The direction seemed governed by the shortest distance between points rather than production flow, so we saw the areas closest to his office first, then moved to the more remote parts of the plant.

  Jason didn’t make any notes or linger over anything or ask any questions whose answers interested him—not until we arrived in the part of the building where a handful of workers fitted and glued wooden furniture frames together.

  Jason Smith started paying attention when we got there.

  “What sort of glues do you use, Mr. Garnet?”

  Harrison Garnet paused in his recitation. “Whatever we can get at a decent price. Everything’s gotten so expensive lately.”

  I wanted to kick him—or one of his crutches—and tell him to answer the question. Nothing more. Don’t volunteer. Don’t embellish. Don’t give economic or political commentary. But he still wasn’t asking for my advice.

  Jason Smith nodded appreciatively. “I’d like to have a look around outside now.” He glanced at Garnet’s crutches, probably without realizing that he’d done it.

  As if he had something to prove, Garnet heaved himself around. “Right this way.” With his shoulders churning, he plowed toward an exit and the rear loading dock.

  Jason, for all his fresh-faced shallowness, knew what he was looking for. And Harrison Garnet hobbled right along without even asking what it was. Or how much trouble he would be in if Jason found it.

  Was Garnet really that naive? Conceivable. As a lawyer, even I knew precious little about the environmental field. Except I did know that guys who wear suits could end up doing jail time alongside bruisers named Bubba. Either Garnet didn’t have anything to hide or he didn’t know it needed to be hidden.

  On the dock, Jason assumed his cocky stance, surveying the back parking lot as if he owned it.

  “How long has this plant been here, Mr. Garnet?”

  “This original building’s been here since the forties. Initially it housed a garment manufacturing plant. We took it over in the midfifties. Expanded quite a bit in the early years.”

  Again, Jason murmured politely, studying the parking lot. “I’m trying to picture your layout here. I believe a creek runs along that back part of your property?”

  “If you can call it a creek. Barely enough water in there to wet the rocks. We use city water and sewer here.”

  Jason nodded, staring past the sunlight glinting off the parked cars toward the tree line half a football field away. Then he turned back toward the door we’d exited from, not bothering to finish his tour of the loading area. “I’d like to take a look at some of your paperwork now, if you don’t mind.”

  Garnet registered only a tinge of surprise—or maybe disappointment—then turned toward the door. “Sure—”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Smith.” I’d played the strong, silent type long enough. “Before you go on a fishing expedition through the company records, I’m going to have to ask you again the purpose of your search. I’m sure you understand.” The syrupy drip of my voice did little to soften my insistence.

  Harrison Garnet looked over his shoulder at me but didn’t struggle to turn around.

  Jason Smith, sensing a break in the ranks, waited. When Garnet didn’t speak, Jason focused on me. “As I’ve indicated, I’m not required to reveal my source—”

  “And as I’ve indicated, I believe you are required to state the subject of the complaint.” I had no idea if that was true. But if he weren’t required to tell, he should be.

  I half expected him to put his hands on his hips and taunt me: Well, I’m not telling. Nyeh, nyeh, make me.

  How many guys like Jason had I known? Overconfident, ego-inflated white boys heading into a world where they couldn’t get by on a paucity of brains and plenty of family connections the way their frat brothers had in the past. Headed into a world where women and guys who weren’t white or well connected would flail the tar out of the likes of them. And they’d conveniently be able to blame affirmative action, reverse discrimination—anything but their own cockiness and lack of experience. And lack of humility.

  “Your attitude certainly isn’t in the spirit of cooperation as, together, we try to resolve this matter,” he said.

  Bullshit. “Maybe we could be more help in resolving this matter if we knew what this matter is.”

  We’d squared off, with Harrison Garnet closed out of our little tête-à-tête. Garnet maneuvered awkwardly around so he could watch us. Jason Smith appealed to him. “Mr. Garnet, if I could simply see your records for—”

  “Mr. Smith, I don’t know how to make this any clearer. Without more information about what you need to see, I can’t let you pillage about in my client’s files. Those files contain confidential customer information, trade secret process information—any number of things that are proprietary and valuable.”

  I had no idea if any of that was true, either. But I was on a roll. And I resented his continuing end-runs around me to Garnet.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to supply a search warrant before you go any further.”

  Muscles on either side of Jason’s jaw shot out in tight knots. “If you want to play hardball, Miz Andrews—”

  “Now, wait a minute.” Harrison Garnet wobbled a bit, trying to enter the fray.

  “You can simply tell the judge what you’re looking for and he’ll spell it out in the warrant. Then there won’t be any misunderstandings.”

  “Mr. Garnet has already given consent to an inspection. It’s too late—”

  “No, it’s not.” Nice try, Junior. “He consented to show you the plant. On advice of counsel, he’ll need to see an administrative search warrant before you can see the company’s records.”

  Jason’s jaw muscles worked overtime. “Very well, Miz Andrews. But plan on seeing me—and my supervisor—here first thing tomorrow morning. Accompanied by a search warrant allowing us access to the records. If you want to do this the hard way, I assure you that can be arranged.”

  Harrison Garnet’s gaze trailed from Jason Smith’s reddened face and locked on me. Without a word, he told me I’d better know what I was getting him into.

  Four

  Holding off Jason Smith, Boy Regulator, lacked the finality of a victory, but at least I’d won the skirmish—and gained a twinge of that ha, beat you that I hadn’t felt in a while. Where that set the battle lines, I wasn’t sure.

  If I took time to admit it, I also felt a twinge of oh, shit. Angering the little twit in the olive Italian suit likely hadn’t been the smartest thing I’d ever done. But every instinct I had said he knew exactly what he was looking for. And Garnet and I still wouldn’t know when or if he found it—until it was too late to explain or rectify.

  I’d bought enough time to evaluate the records myself. I just hoped I would understand what I saw. The complaint apparently hadn’t alleged anything life-threatening, urgent, or irreversible, which meant Jason the wonder kid would have to wait until after Thanksgiving. No judge would give him an administrative warrant—valid for only twenty-four hours—for Thanksgiving Day.

  Harrison Garnet hadn’t seemed too concerned. At least not concerned enough to review the records with me after Jason left, despite my insistence. I tried to set a meeting for first thing Friday morning, though I doubted that would give us enough time to adequately prepare for the junior G-man’s return. But he said he’d call.

  Did Harrison Garnet know what Jason wanted? Did that explain why he wasn’t worried? Or did he not have enough experience to worry? He was a difficult man to read.

  I had an hour before my appointment with Melvin Bertram, so I drove to my great-aunts’ house on North Main and parked out front. I studied the house. This lengthy holiday visit to Dacus felt odd. Everything in Dacus, everything that had been normal and accustomed in my life before, now shone in stark relief. Against what? The backdrop of my life as a lawyer? As I studied my past, the light seemed to hav
e shifted or to have grown brighter. Not the blinding light that floods in the side door of a movie theater at the end of a matinee. More like the stark quality of light on a fall afternoon, when the crisp air holds little humidity and the edges of everything seem sharper.

  From behind the privet hedge that crowded the sidewalk, the rusty, spicy smell of boxwood enveloped me. The hoop-skirted branches of a magnolia tree, that staunch representative of the indestructible South, sheltered the entire right front yard.

  Anyone who associates magnolias with their waxy, iridescent white flowers has missed the essential nature of magnolias. Every time I see a magnolia, I remember my first visit to Charleston days after Hurricane Hugo hit. Stalwart oaks, downed or damaged, trashed the streets. Even the palmettos once used to build fortresses stood ragged. But the magnolias, despite wind and flood, hadn’t lost a single waxy leaf, as though their skirts had scarcely been ruffled. Daintiness is disconcertingly deceptive in magnolias.

  The stiff, shoe-size dead leaves scratched harshly as I kicked them down the front walk. The white clapboard house, always in need of painting no matter how recently it had been done, had stood on this spot for a hundred years.

  I twisted the turn bell in the center of the front door. The mechanical jangle carried easily to the back part of the house. Usually I went in and out the back door, but for some reason, today I felt like a more formal call.

  “Avery.” Aunt Letha flung open the door without first parting the lace curtains. “You should have phoned first. You’re just in time.” The odor of moth-balls and Aunt Letha’s gardenia perfume wafted over me.

  She backed me onto the porch and slammed the door, rattling the windowpanes. Aunt Letha’s rottweiler, a black mass of spoiled dog flesh named Bud, strutted at the end of his leash like one of Hannibal’s elephants. The family suspected he’d been named for an old boyfriend. Aunt Letha wouldn’t say.

  “Where—”

  “Come on.” She left me blowing in her wake like dried leaves in a wind. When she hit the sidewalk, I noticed her Rockports.

  “Aunt Letha, I’ve got on pumps. I can’t walk in—”

  “Sure you can. If you can’t keep up with an old lady like me, you’re in a sad state.”

  Bud’s thick nails rasped along the magnolia-leaf carpet. I’ve never had sense enough to know when to back down from a challenge. I trotted down the sidewalk after them.

  Aunt Letha towers over me. Despite her bulk and her age, an impression of energy and activity encircle her like an aura. She steamed down Main Street while I clopped down the root-broken sidewalk behind her. She cut right on the first side street, marched through the gates at Memorial Park, and plopped down on a bench near the praying hands statue. A block and a half. Bud looked around, sighed deeply, then stretched out on the grass, his legs out behind him like a frog awaiting dissection.

  “You walk every day, Aunt Letha?”

  “Every day.” She sat spraddled on the weak-legged bench, her turquoise pull-on slacks strained at the knees. “Almost.”

  We settled into a companionable silence. The graveyard—the only one in Dacus, if you didn’t count the country church cemeteries scattered outside town—covered the two blocks behind the Lutheran church. Weathered granite and marble monuments, some with lettering scrubbed away by wind and water, were sprinkled thickly all around us. Most stones bore the family names of original German settlers.

  Flowers brightened the graves—some clamped onto the tops of headstones, some in metal canisters stuck into holders, others on spindly legged wire stands. In odd contrast to the solemn, fall-colored plastic and fabric flowers, I noticed several Mylar balloons, shining and dancing in the sun. Balloons on graves? I didn’t comment on them. Aunt Letha surely had a well-rehearsed diatribe on Mylar and Lutherans that I didn’t need to hear.

  “Got any clients yet? Besides that white trash you’ve been picking up at the courthouse.”

  “Yes’m, I do, as a matter of fact. Two new ones this week, it looks like.”

  “Harrumph,” she answered. “It’s a wonder. Avery, you’re gonna have to mind what kind of folks you find yourself attracting. What kind of clients you gonna have, you keep associating yourself with weirdos like that Donlee Griggs? That boy acted like he’d been struck stupid by lightning when he was in my eleventh-grade history class. And time has not improved his lot. What few synapses the unfortunate circumstances of his breeding left him, he ruined with drink.”

  I nodded. No argument from me on that.

  “You realize folks are going to have enough trouble taking you seriously.”

  I half turned to get a better look at her.

  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Avery? If folks’ve known you any stretch of time, they have trouble believing you have a lick of sense. That’s just the way it is with folks.”

  Her biblical turn implied a generic reference, not one directed solely at me, except as illustration.

  “You have to give people a reason to take you seriously, Avery. People in this town still remember you wearin’ those shiny red satin shorts and those white leather boots off down Main Street.”

  “I never—”

  “Don’t tell me. I stood right there and watched.” Bud stirred at the sharpness in her tone, ready to leap to her defense, should the need arise. Of course, he’d never actually had to defend Aunt Letha. How could the need ever arise?

  “Marched right down Main Street in it.”

  The occasion she referred to leapt from a distant memory. “Aunt Letha,” I said, exasperated. “I was three years old. In the Christmas parade, for Pete’s sake.”

  “People remember, Avery.”

  “You were three years old once, in this same town.” Though, even as I said it, I had trouble imagining it. “People don’t have any trouble taking you seriously.”

  “Never pranced down Main Street in red satin and white leather boots with my bare legs a-shinin’.”

  “And a baton, Aunt Letha. I twirled a baton.”

  “Dropped it a time or two, best I remember.”

  Hard to argue with fact.

  We sat, studying the gravestones and the bobbing balloons and listening to the distant traffic sounds.

  Casually, as though searching for nothing more than companionable gossip, I asked, “What do you remember about Melvin Bertram?”

  “He’s back in town, I hear.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “I remember his younger brother in high school. His parents aren’t from here. Moved in after Melvin would’ve been in my class, best I remember.”

  Which meant they’d been in Dacus some decades—still newcomers, by Dacus measure.

  “His father was with one of the new plants that moved in about that time. From somewhere over in Georgia. Sordid doings, that about his wife.”

  “Whose wife?”

  “Melvin’s, of course. She upped and disappeared. Must have been"—she calculated in her head—"fifteen years ago. That was the high school’s centennial celebration. I remember Melvin’s mother on the covered dish committee with Vinnia. Tiny, chirpy like a bird. Always wore shoes with a strap across the instep.”

  Tiny, next to Aunt Letha, could mean almost anything.

  “I don’t remember Melvin,” she continued. “His brother was a smart kid. Better in math than in the verbal arts. You could tell he had to be an engineer—or whatever else that type might turn to. Couldn’t do much else.”

  Like my dad, the engineer turned renaissance newspaper publisher.

  “But, my, the talk that steamed around town about that wife of his. Lea Hopkins, she was in high school. And quite a little piece of work, even then. Not that old-lady schoolteachers were supposed to know about such, but the football team apparently passed her around with more completions than they did the football.”

  I snuck a glance at Aunt Letha, my eyes wide. To be a lady of a certain age, her practical earthiness could jolt me sometimes.

  “She headed off to college, bu
t within a year or two, the engagement announcement, photo and all, appeared in the newspaper. Melvin was a bit older than she, but only four or five years. Not enough to be unseemly, you know. Settled in, him working as a CPA. She typed or something in the office at Garnet Mills. I remember because, of course, when she didn’t show up for work and all the talk started, they interviewed everybody who knew her.”

  As we sat, side by side, staring across the gray-brown autumn lawn and the cold stones, a figure limped through the gate from the south side of the graveyard.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, recognizing the man I’d seen in the Garnet Mills parking lot, the one who’d approached the biker at the gate.

  “Nebo Earling. Visiting his momma’s grave, I guess. She died years ago, bad to drink. His daddy took off long before that—nobody ever had any idea who he was, though they suspicioned about one or two.”

  He limped away from where we sat, toward the far side of the park. As we watched, he stooped at a grave, picked up an arrangement of yellow and orange flowers, studied them, then chunked them haphazardly back into the vase. He moved a couple of graves down, chose a bunch of bright red silk flowers, limped across to another grave, and placed the flowers in the empty vase.

  “Look at him. I know that boy hasn’t got good sense, but even a jaybird knows when it’s stealing.” Letha shrugged. “Reckon if anybody cares, they’ll spot their flowers and reclaim them.” She sighed expansively and crossed her arms. “Yep. One Thursday Lea took the afternoon off. To go up the mountain to paint, she’d said. ‘Least, that’s what she told Rita Wilkes.”

  Rita Wilkes. The woman who presided over the Garnet Mills office. No wonder she acted as if she owned the place. She’d been there forever.

  “But Lea didn’t show up for work the next morning. They called her husband. And later the cops. Fact that Melvin hadn’t raised a hue and cry when his wife didn’t come home all night struck folks as odd. That, more than anything, fueled the suspicions. Don’t they always say look around the house when somebody gets murdered, likely a loved one did it?” She nodded sagely.