Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

  “Why the hell you got yourself stuck all the way up here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “To personally inconvenience you.”

  We stood like two gunslingers, L.J. with her .357 strapped to her ample hip, me with my caulking gun dangling recklessly at my side.

  “Well, for gawd’s sake, why don’t you have a phone? Thought I’d come by and see what had happened to you.”

  “Thanks. A new service of the sheriff’s department?”

  “Only where the potential victim is a smart-ass lawyer with a client down to the jail.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Thought the promise of a fee would perk your interest. You don’t pick your friends too well, though.”

  She paused for dramatic effect. I waited her out.

  “Melvin Bertram,” she said.

  I tried to keep my face straight, not to give anything away. Why was that such a natural reaction? Because she was a cop? Or because she was L.J.? “For what?”

  “Questioning. He won’t talk without you. Says you’re his lawyer. Now tell me why he keeps needing a lawyer and him back in town only a couple of days?”

  “You tell me.” I slid the caulking gun under the railing onto the porch. “And what grounds have you got for questioning him?”

  “He agreed to come down and talk about the fire last night. You were there, weren’t you.”

  She wasn’t asking a question. So I didn’t answer. Glancing down at my clothes, I picked at a smudge of dried caulk on my jeans.

  “Give me a sec to change. I’ll be right behind you.”

  On the way in the door, I popped the board back over the window pane. I’d have to finish that later.

  I sponged off and pulled on my navy blazer and slacks. No court appearances, so no risk of a judge frowning on my failure to appear in skirt and panty hose. I ran a comb through my hair, pulled it back into a ponytail, then hopped in the car. I tried to apply powder and mascara as I sailed down the winding mountain road to town.

  In the now-familiar interrogation room, Melvin Bertram, clad in a yellow cotton sweater and navy corduroys, sat on the edge of a wooden chair, his forearms crossed casually on the table. The presence of worry wrinkles between his eyebrows heartened me. In my limited criminal-court experience, only the guilty are graceless enough not to look worried.

  “Avery.” He stood to shake hands. I suspected even he wouldn’t have been able to explain whether a businessman’s reflex or a troubled person’s need for human touch had prompted the handshake.

  L.J. pushed into the small room with us.

  “L.J., you mind if we have a few minutes here?” I asked.

  She fixed me with a withering look, but worked her toothpick to the comer of her mouth and left without saying a word.

  “Any idea what this is all about?” I glanced around the small room as I took a chair opposite him. It crossed my mind how easy it would be to bug this room. I glanced at the tape recorder to make sure my voice hadn’t activated it.

  Melvin followed my glance, then shrugged. “They asked about the fire last night. At the mill. The sheriff’s tone got a bit belligerent. Brought back some bad memories.” The shadow of a grin drew at the corner of his mouth. “So I told her I didn’t have anything to say without my lawyer. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I shrugged in turn. “That’s what lawyers are for. Why do they think you know something about the fire?”

  Even before I finished, he started shaking his head. “I have no idea. My connection with Garnet Mills ended years ago. Maybe I’m just convenient. The new resident suspect.” His attempt at humor evaporated behind his sarcasm.

  “Okay.” I went to the door. “Answer the questions. Don’t volunteer anything. And give me a chance to interrupt before you jump to answer.”

  He nodded, and I motioned down the hall to where a dark-suited deputy stood against the wall, looking like a fleshy potbellied stove.

  The deputy summoned L.J. from wherever she lay in wait and, after she addressed the preliminaries to the tape recorder, she began her questions.

  “Mr. Bertram, we appreciate you taking time to come talk to us. I know this is an inconvenience, particularly on a holiday weekend.”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes. L.J. must have just gotten back from a seminar on playing the good-guy cop. Trying to put a suspect at ease came across as an unnatural act for her.

  Melvin merely nodded. He still sat on the edge of his chair, his arms crossed in front of him like a barrier—or a restraint.

  “Mr. Bertram, could I ask your whereabouts last evening?”

  Melvin paused a brief space, with a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth. “You mean after you and I got together yesterday afternoon? I spent the evening—Thanksgiving—at my brother’s house. With his family.”

  L.J. blinked, reminding me somehow of a lizard. Or a Komodo dragon. “Could you describe for me your relationship with Harrison Garnet and Garnet Mills?”

  “Now? None. I haven’t seen or spoken to Harrison in—oh, probably fifteen years.”

  “Since your wife—disappeared.”

  Melvin nodded.

  “Please answer aloud. For the tape recording.” L.J. gestured toward the little shoe-box recorder, a motion designed to remind Melvin this was no casual chat.

  “Since around that time, yes,” Melvin said.

  “Your wife worked for Garnet Mills.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you haven’t been in touch with the Garnets since her disappearance?”

  “There’s been no need.”

  L.J. settled against her chair back, the plastic seat protesting. “Your father and Garnet were partners, weren’t they?”

  Melvin paused. “Yes. A number of years ago.”

  “And you did some work for Harrison Garnet, accounting work. Back when you lived here?”

  A deep breath and a careful answer. “Yes. Dacus had no other accountants or financial advisers at that time.” He implied that the oddity would’ve been if Garnet hadn’t hired him as his accountant.

  “What do you know about the fire last night?”

  The crease between Melvin’s eyebrows deepened slightly. “Nothing, except that there was one. Some kind of explosion, I understand.”

  L.J. leaned forward, keenly interested in his reply. Or feigning interest. “Now, where did you hear that?”

  Melvin shrugged. “Somebody talking around the house. Or uptown when I stopped to get gas. Or at the post office.”

  L.J. chewed her bottom lip, studying him, waiting to see what he would add. Melvin didn’t oblige her.

  “Mr. Bertram.” She settled back again, her tone more conversational. “I hoped you might help me understand something. You ever been involved in or know about a case—as an accountant—where somebody tried to destroy records? You know, by setting a fire they hoped looked accidental, but arranging things so important documents would be destroyed?”

  Melvin paused longer than he had for the earlier questions, more wary. “No, I haven’t. That area of fraud investigation has not been a part of my practice.” Another pause. “If you need an expert of that kind, I have a friend who works fraud investigation for the U.S. Attorney’s office. White-collar-crime stuff. A forensic CPA.”

  L.J. nodded. “Well, thank you. That might come in handy.”

  Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been for him to volunteer the name of an expert. But surely she hadn’t expected him to scream I did it, I did it, I blew up that building. You caught me red-handed.

  L.J. studied him a few more seconds, then turned to me. “You were there last night, weren’t you?”

  She dropped her saccharine tone and didn’t waste any of her good-cop questioning methods on me. I didn’t point out that, since I sat there as Melvin’s counsel, her question was out of line.

  “Yes. I heard the blast from Main Street, then saw the glow in the sky.”

  “Pretty loud boom, I hear. Convenient you were there.”<
br />
  I frowned, meeting her steady gaze. “I don’t know. Somebody else called the fire department. There certainly wasn’t anything I could do to help.” I remembered the orange flames. And the heat. And my sense of helplessness as I reached for a car phone I didn’t have. That wasn’t anything I’d share with L.J. Or Melvin.

  “Did you see anything? Or anybody?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not anything that made an impression. But frankly, the damage to the building looked so—incredible. I’m afraid I couldn’t take my eyes off that. Then I left. I didn’t want to be in the way.”

  L.J. stared. She wanted to say something smartass. But she knew the tape recorded her comments as well as ours, so she too had reason to choose her words carefully.

  She picked at a scar on the table, then asked, “Either one of you know Nebo Earling?”

  I’m sure my face betrayed my surprise at hearing that name again so recently on the heels of my graveyard chat with Aunt Letha.

  Melvin shook his head. “No. I don’t believe I do.”

  But L.J. ignored him, staring at me. I shook my head. “Just by name.”

  I didn’t explain that Aunt Letha had taught him in school. And I doubted that Nebo’s graveyard flower-snatching prompted L.J.’s interest in him.

  “You know he works for Harrison Garnet?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe I did.”

  She glanced at Melvin. We sat in uncompanionable silence for a few exaggerated seconds. Melvin maintained the dispassion of a business executive at a rubber-chicken dinner.

  “Thank you again, Mr. Bertram, for taking time to answer a few questions. We have to ask questions, you know. Eventually we get answers. From somewhere. I’ll have one of the deputies take you back to your brother’s.”

  “No need,” I said, pushing back from the table. “I’ll be glad to drop you by, Melvin.” The stiffness in my muscles highlighted for me how tense the meeting had been. Or how little I’d exercised over the last couple of weeks.

  I needed to spend more time at the walking trail. Without Cissie Prentice and her designer outfits.

  “Nice car,” Melvin said as we pulled out of the Law Enforcement Center parking lot.

  I’d known all along he would come to his senses. “Thanks. It belonged to my grandfather.”

  Melvin rubbed his palms along the thighs of his corduroys. “I hope this’11 be the last ride I have to catch back from the police station.”

  We both smiled, trying to turn it into a joke.

  He studied the five-and-ten store as we stopped at a red light. “You know, I’d actually toyed with the idea of moving back here, setting up an office in Dacus, moving back closer to my family.”

  I stared at him.

  “I know,” he said, amused. “Two trips to the sheriff’s office in two days isn’t quite as inviting as a Welcome Wagon visit.”

  “No, I guess not.” Not knowing what to say, I changed the subject. “What do you do, Melvin?”

  He nodded. “Mostly I work as a financial adviser. On limited partnership ventures, that sort of thing. Which I thought could be done from Dacus as easily as from Atlanta. But now I’m back to rethinking my career options.”

  I didn’t say anything about my own career confusion. The red light changed. How would life in Dacus be for Melvin Bertram?

  “Avery, I did have another favor to ask. Before you got there, two of the deputies were talking. One of them—a fellow named Mellin—attended the autopsy. Of the body from the lake.” His voice had lost its wry edge. “Apparently he hadn’t even had time to fill the sheriff in on the details.”

  Body wasn’t a word that floated first to my brain when I thought of the passenger in that car, with those teeth bumping against the back window.

  “—if you could talk to him.” Melvin’s words floated back into focus. “You know.” He paused uncomfortably. “Find out—”

  I nodded. “I’ll check and see. Who’d you say accompanied the—remains to Charleston?”

  “Rudy Mellin? I think that’s his name.”

  Melvin climbed out at the bottom of his brother’s driveway. This had become an awkward ritual.

  “I’ll call if I find out anything,” I said.

  He nodded and waved.

  I turned toward my parents’ house. Carlton Barner had closed his office for the day, so I couldn’t go there to use the phone. But no point in driving back up the mountain if Rudy Mellin had already returned from the autopsy.

  To preserve the chain of custody—or whatever they called handling a body—and to reduce the number of times the state’s few medical examiners must testify in court, cops usually accompany bodies and observe the autopsies. That, I’m sure, adds immeasurably to the attraction of law enforcement as a career.

  But such activities didn’t explain why cops like Rudy Mellin developed doughnut butts. Seemed to me a steady diet of autopsies would act as an appetite suppressant. But I’d heard stories about them holding a cadaver’s liver in one hand and munching on a bean burrito in the other. At least that’s the kind of stuff they tell each other.

  Neither of my parents was home. I called the sheriff’s main number and, after a couple of transfers and lots of holding time, a slurry voice drawled into the phone.

  As soon as I heard his voice, a picture of Rudy Mellin materialized unbidden in my brain. I’d run into him in Maylene’s a few times over the years. He still wore the same size-34-waist pants he’d worn when we sat next to each other in high school chemistry. Unfortunately, now his actual waist size spanned an additional ten inches, while his size-34 pants sank lower and lower on his hips.

  “Hear you drove to Charleston with a friend, Rudy.”

  “She-ut, A’vry. Truth tell, I never been around bones that stunk like those. Can’t get the smell outta my nose for nuthin’.”

  “Who’d’ve thought it.” I paused a polite interval. “What’d they find? Any word?”

  “Shouldn’t be by now, but there is. It’s Lea Bertram, all right. Car was hers, so I carried her dental records with me. Perfect match.”

  “Any sign what killed her?”

  Rudy snorted rudely. “Hard to check for lake water in her lungs, bein’ as she didn’t have any lungs.”

  “Right.” Har, har.

  Rudy smacked on something. Chewing gum? “No broken neck or trauma visible on the bones, though. Doc went over those with a magnifying glass. Said sometimes bullet or stab wounds actually nick a bone and are visible long later. But nuthin’.”

  “What was that stuff on the face?”

  Rudy made a gagging sound. “That’s what still stunk after all these years. Doc called it grave wax. Looked like Grandma’s tallow soap to me. Which Doc said it kinda was. Bodies that rot in damp places, sometimes their proteins change into fat. ‘Hydrolyzed something.’ Sounded like the ingredient list for potato chips.”

  Cop humor.

  “Could they tell how long she’d been down there? Would that stuff have lasted very long?”

  “Hard to say for sure. But Doc—she got so excited, she had to go to her office and pull a couple of humongous books off the shelf while she dictated her report—she said some cases have been reported ten or fifteen years later with that stuff. She called it adipocere.” He pronounced it addy-po-sear.

  “That long? But don’t bodies decompose faster in water?” I’d been an avid Quincy fan, mostly because of a kid-size crush on Jack Klugman.

  “Sure, but the little fishies couldn’t get to her to nibble her up. And she certainly didn’t float to the top as the gases bloated her. Nope, she stayed down there a decade and a half, sealed up in her own little soap-making factory.”

  Ick, I thought. But I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of my squeamishness. “So everything points to her dying about the time she disappeared.”

  “Yep.”

  L.J. and company had sense enough to send Lea Bertram’s dental records to the autopsy, so I knew they’d have been digging around in th
e old files.

  “So what do you think happened, from what you know so far? Did she just drive off into the lake and drown?”

  Rudy snorted. “And pigs fly. S’pose anythin’s possible. But how do you accidentally drive down a boat ramp and end up eighty feet from shore?”

  “Could she have committed suicide?”

  “Hard to read her mind, A’vry. Despite the time me and her spent together on the way to Charleston.”

  “Did your records indicate what she was supposed to be doing the day she died?”

  “Yep. According”—he paused to make a couple of smacking sounds—“to a coupla witnesses, she’d planned to drive up the mountain. Do some painting. You know, pitchers.”

  “Um-hmm.” And I’d thought for a minute she’d taken up house-painting, you goober. “So, did you find painting stuff in her car?”

  Smack, smack. “A plastic box, with some metal tubes inside. Prob’ly anything else would’ve rotted.”

  “How about some little metal cylinders, like the bands around paintbrushes? Or—”

  “Yeah, A’vry. We dug around in amongst the rusty seat springs and rust-covered floorboards looking for rusty cylinders that would probably turn to powder soon as we touched ’em. Like everything else in that spook-show wreck.”

  “Oh.”

  “The hood, whole parts of that car just crumbled away. Dangdest thing, that it’d hold together all this time, then just crumble.”

  Had it crumbled away faster, they would’ve had nothing to pull Lea Bertram to the surface in. Her wax-covered bones would’ve scattered and sunk in the muck of Luna Lake. And nobody would be hauling Melvin Bertram to the sheriff’s office for questioning.

  “Why is L.J. asking about Nebo Earling? He have something to do with the fire?”

  “Well,” Rudy drawled, “there’s been some speculation about that. But not by anybody that knows Nebo. Nebo’s one dumb shit. Hadn’t got sense enough to strike a match without-singeing his eyebrows off. Naw, they reckon he might’ve seen something.”

  “At Garnet Mills?”

  “He ’uz sort of a watchman. Not that I’d set him to guard my doghouse without expectin’ to find the dog’s collar gone and him hungry.”