Hush My Mouth

by Cathy Pickens

  Today, though, the banjo music and the thick green, sunspeckled shade, and the car’s eagerness to gobble the curvy road provided some buoyancy. At least for me. Even though the edges of my mind kept asking what if and I wonder why questions.

  I turned into the state park and eased slowly toward the campground store. Waves of nostalgia hit me. Summer day camps, school and church picnics, weekend square dances. I hadn’t been here in years, but the weathered wood buildings, thick trees, and narrow, rough asphalt lanes hadn’t changed.

  Finding Skipper wasn’t hard. In the shotgun-long store that served the campground with everything from charcoal and milk to diapers and ceramic toothpick holders stamped SOUTH CAROLINA, he was the only lanky, bored-looking clerk. In fact, he was the only human being inside the store.

  He was younger than I’d expected, probably college-aged. He showed that lack of interest in anything not playing on a computer or game screen, traits indigenous to guys his age. But he was clean-shaven, with buzz-cut hair, and his khakis were neatly creased.

  “Skipper Hinson?”

  “Uh—yeah.” He raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  “I’m Avery Andrews. This is Fran French. She’s Neanna Lyles’s sister.”

  “Oh.” An uptick in interest thawed some of his bored expression.

  “You and Neanna rode up from Atlanta for the Nut Case concert? You went to the concert together?”

  He nodded, his wariness growing with his interest. “I rode with her. A bunch of us went to hear the band.”

  I cut to the chase. “Neanna died over the weekend, and we’re trying to learn everything we can about what happened after she left Atlanta. I’m sure you understand, so her family can know.”

  His gaze flitted to Fran and back to me, maybe not wanting to see too clearly the questions in her eyes.

  “What happened?” He looked me in the eye, his brows knit together.

  “She—” I took a deep breath. That wasn’t my news to share.

  “We don’t know what happened,” Fran said with finality.

  His eyebrows met in a wrinkle and his jaw was slack, as if he’d been hit in the stomach. I felt bad cornering him at work with the news. He was just a kid, but he was also the last one who’d seen her.

  “What kind of mood was she in?”

  He shrugged. “Fine. We talked. I mean, I didn’t know her. We hooked up on this ride board. Online. I had this job that started this week. And the concert. She seemed fine. She was really funny. We just talked.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “At the concert.”

  “Did she give you a ride here, to the park?”

  “No. Another guy who works here, him and me rode here after the concert.”

  “Did you talk to her after that?”

  “No-o. I mean, she had a boyfriend in Atlanta. She told me that. So I didn’t want to get into any of that. You know.”

  “Did she plan to meet anybody at the concert?”

  “I—don’t know.” He drawled his words out, thinking.

  “Did she run into anybody, introduce you to anybody?”

  “She talked to Gerry Pippen. She was really into Nut Case. Knew all this shit about Pippen. The guitarist. She totally wanted to meet him. Thought this might be a good place, since the Pasture was a smaller venue. You know.”

  “So she met Pippen?”

  “Yeah. I saw them talking some while the band was on a break.”

  “Did she leave with him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. She showed me her signed CD. She didn’t say anything about hooking up.”

  “Did you see her with anybody else?”

  “Naw. Not that kind of crowd. Bunch of greasy old guys. ‘You look like somebody I know’ or ‘You’d look good on me.’ Cheesy lines like that. She totally wasn’t interested.”

  “Any idea where she was staying that night?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Why was Nut Case playing there? Aren’t they pretty popular?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. That’s not really my kind of music.”

  “What do you like?”

  “Bluegrass, mostly. I just went, you know. Hook up with my friends. Get up here. I don’t have a car, yet.” He emphasized “yet” in the face-saving way of car-less boys.

  Fran stepped into the pause. “Was she drinking? Did she do any drugs?”

  He didn’t seem surprised by the questions, though I was. She hadn’t said anything about Neanna having a drug problem, even though Neanna’s mother apparently had. Skipper just shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her do any. She seemed straight.”

  “Were there drugs there? At the concert?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  I didn’t quite trust his answer, if for no other reason than he wouldn’t want to admit he’d been out of the know.

  “Did they sell alcohol to minors?”

  He shrugged again, increasingly uncomfortable. “I dunno. Just beer. Someone would get it for you.”

  Her questions were too hard for him to answer truthfully. You have to make the truth easy and acceptable—or inevitable. It’s okay, everybody does that. Or I have a photo of you taking a hit on a pipe. One or the other.

  The bell on the doorknob jangled.

  “Thanks, Skipper,” I said. A man wearing a white T-shirt stained a faded gray, with an energetic little boy in tow, headed for the milk cooler at the back.

  Skipper looked relieved. He resumed his slumped sentry duty at the cash register, his eyes focused on something not in front of him. Maybe we shouldn’t have questioned him at work. Even though they hadn’t been friends, he had recently shared laughs and a journey with a girl about his age. A girl who was dead. That isn’t easy for the very young to contemplate, or for anyone.

  “Thanks again,” I said.

  Outside, Fran climbed into the car and didn’t speak until I’d turned onto the two-lane road down the mountain.

  “She didn’t have a boyfriend in Atlanta,” she said. “That was over. She must have said that to scare Skipper off.”

  Nothing I could say to that. Fran seemed to insist that a lot of things other people knew about Neanna just weren’t so.

  She didn’t speak again for the twenty-minute drive down the mountain to the inn.

  “Find out what happened. You know the police here. Keep pushing them.”

  She turned in her seat to face me as I stopped beside her silver Honda. “She didn’t kill herself. I don’t care what you think, she didn’t. Find out what happened.”

  She unzipped her cordovan leather clutch. “Here’s a check for a full week’s retainer at your regular rate.”

  The fee I’d quoted had been my you don’t want to pursue this fee. Fran wasn’t easily discouraged. If the check didn’t bounce, she could apparently afford to get her way. Now wasn’t the time to argue with her. I’d ask some more questions, follow up with Rudy, and return most of her money later.

  “The cops here are pretty good,” I said.

  “Not good enough to solve Aunt Wenda’s murder.”

  “Different cops.”

  “They’ll do an even better job if they know somebody cares.” Her gold-flecked green eyes searched my face. “I also want you to see what you can find out about Aunt Wenda’s death. That—was important to Neanna. I’d like to—”

  “I’ll check on that, and I’ll be in touch.” I hoped answers, even if they weren’t the ones she wanted to hear, would give her some peace.

  “Thank you.” She sounded as though she meant it.

  She climbed into her car for her two-hour drive to Atlanta, and I headed to my office, accompanied by the sad edges around my thoughts: Why? And what if?

  Tuesday Morning

  As soon as I got back to the office, I took a detour to answer the ringing phone. What was with this phone lately?

  “May I please speak to Miz Andrews?”

  “This is she.”

  “Oh. Um. Th
is is Tolly Mart. I—um—I think this is my one phone call.”

  “Yessir.” I tried to sound businesslike while my brain flooded with inappropriate responses, such as, “Are you finishing the weekend up late or starting next weekend early?” Calls to my office from the jail usually start after Friday or Saturday night miscalculations of one sort or another. A Tuesday morning call was a first. “What’s the problem, exactly?”

  “I—well, I’ve never done this before?”

  No kidding. “Yessir? What exactly?”

  He sighed. “None of this. Never been arrested, never been in jail, never called a lawyer. None of it.”

  “I see.”

  “One of the fellows in here, he said I should call you. He said you were real good.”

  “Um-hmm.” Then what’s he doing in there, if I’m so good?

  “He said you helped put him in here.” That answered my question. Tolly Mart must be reading my mind. “But then he admitted he put himself in here. That’s what his therapist said.”

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “Dells.”

  Ah, his court-ordered therapist. Dells was back in jail, for violating the restraining order I’d gotten to keep him away from his wife. He kept showing up where he wasn’t supposed to be. He hadn’t permanently injured her, but the word “yet” echoed in my head whenever I thought of him. Maybe he was learning something. Not enough, but something.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I want out of here. There’s been some misunderstanding and I—” His voice quavered. I hoped he wasn’t about to start crying. The public phone outside the intake cell wouldn’t be a good place for that.

  “I take it you haven’t had a bond hearing yet?”

  “No, ma’am.” He almost whispered it.

  “Tell the officer I’ll be there in twenty minutes to have a client conference.” That way, he could probably stay in the likely-near-empty holding cell.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I could’ve made it in five minutes, but I needed more caffeine.

  As soon as I met him, I knew Tolly Mart was not my standard jailhouse client. Not that I’d had all that many, in the few months since I’d returned home. The ones I did have, though, were those the other attorneys in town were willing to throw my way. Courtappointed cases where the fee wouldn’t cover my time. Never the rich kid’s DUI and certainly never a guy who could pay his own bill.

  Tolly Mart was a pressed and proper forty-year-old, a new breed of criminal client for me. He must have shaved this morning. His short brown hair was carefully combed, and his opencollared oxford shirt and dark slacks weren’t wrinkled.

  With a firm handshake, he held my hand in both of his, as if he were clasping a life preserver.

  “Have a seat,” I said.

  The deputy had agreed to let me talk to Mr. Mart in an interview room rather than in the usual prisoner-visitor area.

  “Start at the beginning. Tell me what happened.”

  He shrugged, his hands open on his thighs, his gaze direct. “The police showed up at my work this morning and told me I was under arrest.”

  “This morning? At work?” That explained the fresh-pressed look, but why arrest him at work? Why not pick him up at home and avoid the humiliation?

  “What’s the charge?” I watched his face, wanting to gauge how he narrated this difficult news.

  “For making harassing phone calls to my wife.” He dropped his gaze. “And for violating a restraining order she swore out on me.”

  He wiped his palms down his thighs and back. “But I didn’t. Call her. I haven’t. I told them that when they first served the order.” His voice was urgent, his gaze unblinking.

  “You need to start farther back, with you and your wife. You’re separated? Divorced?”

  “Separated. Getting divorced.”

  The initial interview is so much easier with guys who’ve been through the drill before. If this guy had been my first criminal client, we’d both be at a loss. Fortunately, I’d had a couple of good teachers over the last couple of months—guys who’d showed me how things work, from the inside.

  “Tell me about the divorce.”

  I lost his gaze again. He shrugged. “You know. Married for ten years. Then it’s over.”

  “Her idea? Or yours?”

  He wiped his palms again. “Hers.”

  I leaned forward to let him know I was serious, but I kept my voice gentle. “You’re going to have to talk to me. I can’t help you otherwise.”

  “She left. She said she thought I had a girlfriend. I swear I didn’t—don’t.”

  “Okay. How long have you been separated?”

  “Six months?”

  “And?”

  “Then she got the restraining order.”

  Restraining orders aren’t granted on a whim, as his prison buddy Dells could tell him. Tolly Mart’s wife would have had to show evidence of threats or abuse to get the initial order, as well as present evidence of its violation to have him arrested. He wasn’t telling me everything.

  “Who’s your divorce lawyer?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  My turn to look surprised. “And hers?”

  “Jackson Spurlock.”

  I knew him only from his ads on the back of the phone book. His main office was in Greenville, an hour’s drive away, but he apparently wallpapered all the small towns for a sizable radius, offering to handle car accidents, personal injury, divorces, and other ills that may befall.

  “Why didn’t you get a lawyer?”

  “Because I didn’t want a divorce. I thought she’d come to her senses. No need wasting that money twice.”

  “Twice?”

  “I’d already paid her lawyer.”

  “Is she still living in your house?”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re living where?”

  “I’m renting a room over at the tourist home.”

  I had no idea it was still in business. Renting a bedroom with a shared bath in a lady’s house, with breakfast and dinner included, seemed a nostalgic concept.

  “For the last six months?”

  He nodded. He looked slightly sick at his stomach. Could he really be this dim? Or was he really good at acting dim?

  “Mr. Mart, look at me.”

  His brown eyes locked on to mine like he hoped I’d toss him a treat.

  “You’ve been calling your wife, harassing her.” It was a statement, not a question. A tried-and-true cross-examination technique.

  His eyes moistened, but he didn’t blink. “I swear.”

  “What kinds of calls does she claim you’ve made?”

  “According to the warrant, she told the police I’d called her a hundred times, mostly in the middle of the night.”

  My turn to blink. Would a judge issue an order just on a wife’s say-so? I had to admit I didn’t know, but I couldn’t imagine that even a mass-production lawyer like Jackson Spurlock would seek an order based on nothing more than a soon-to-be ex-wife’s say-so.

  “Why did your wife think you had a girlfriend?” I circled back to that topic, hoping to catch him by surprise.

  His gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t know.”

  I pretended to study the legal pad where I’d scribbled scarce few notes. He’d gotten a recommendation for a lawyer from a guy who’d been helped into jail by that very lawyer. He had a naivete that, inside the concrete block walls of an interview room, almost had to be a lie. But who’d make up a story that weak? He didn’t look like a kook.

  “Sit tight. I’ll be right back.”

  I went into the hall and got the attention of the young officer who was keeping watch over the prisoner.

  “Is Rudy Mellin in this morning?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. I can check for you.”

  Ma’am. For Pete’s sake, if I was looking that old, I needed more rest.

  I stood in the hall while he walked
down to a wall phone. I needed to think for a couple of minutes, away from Tolly Mart’s moist brown puppy eyes.

  The officer strolled back down the hall. “Chief Mellin can see you now, if you’d like.”

  I was surprised Rudy was in his office and not in a booth at Maylene’s, hunched over sunny-side-up eggs with sides of bacon and sausage.

  “Can you keep Mr. Mart in there for a while longer?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t act like my concern was unusual—or misplaced. Probably saved him some paperwork.

  “Thank you.”

  Rudy’s office was around the corner, past the main entrance and information desk, and down another short, nondescript beige-green hall.

  “Hey.” He didn’t even look up when I knocked on his open door. “What’s up?” He continued scribbling his signature on a stack of letters.

  “I hate to show my ignorance to anybody but you. How long’s it take to get a bond hearing?”

  “For?” He kept scrawling, his dishwater-blond head bowed over his task.

  “Violation of a restraining order.”

  He looked up at that. “You’re here to get a wife beater out of jail?” His tone was part surprise, part derision.

  “No.” Mine was all derision.

  He cocked an eyebrow and held his pen, waiting for the story.

  “He was ordered to stop calling his wife.”

  “Any violence?”

  “Not that I know of. I haven’t seen the paperwork.” I didn’t want to confess the extent of my inexperience, even to an old friend like Rudy. I had, after all, only heard one side of the story—and limited vision is always fraught with peril.

  “The magistrate who sets bond is out today. One of the judges is handling the bond hearings, but he’s moved them to this morning before the lunch recess. Just call the clerk.”

  “Okay.” The clerk should have the paperwork filed in the case up to this point. I also needed to get my client to sign a contract of representation. More paperwork. My least favorite thing. “Thanks.”

  I turned to leave him to his signing, but then stuck my head back in the door. “You gonna be here awhile?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Having a little trouble getting through with all this. Interruptions, you know.” He didn’t look up.