Hush My Mouth

by Cathy Pickens

“Thanks. Would you all still have the file on her aunt Wenda’s murder?”

  “Should have. It’s still an open case. Reckon you want me to dig that out, too. Anything else, Miz Andrews?”

  With his attitude, he made a mighty poor Della Street. No good as Archie Goodwin, either.

  The peach cobbler brightened his mood, if only a watt or two. He hunkered over it, using his left arm to protect it from a sneak attack from across the table.

  I needed to change the subject. “You ever think about quitting? Doing something different?”

  His brow wrinkled in a frown, and he looked at me as if I might know something he didn’t. “No-o.”

  I shrugged. “Just wondered. You know. What else you might find interesting.”

  “Well, let’s see. What could I do? Work in a mill? Everything’s heading to Mexico. Nobody pumps gas for a living anymore. Fixing my own car makes me cuss, so my mama’d be by regular to knock knots on my head. Maybe the feed-and-seed store?”

  “You ever thought about running for sheriff?”

  He snorted. “My wife has. You both gotta be kidding. Kissing be-hinds on county council? Listening to an irate mama scream because a deputy abused her crackhead son? No thanks. I like what I do just fine.” He narrowed his eyes. “What makes you ask?”

  “Nothing. Just wondered.” L. J. Peters, Rudy Mellin, and I had started kindergarten and graduated from high school together. I’d never heard him say how he liked working for L.J. No gracious way to ask how it was to have her for a boss, so I changed the subject.

  “You heard about the ghost hunters in town?”

  He spooned in a heap of golden crust and peaches Maylene had frozen last summer, dripping with half-melted ice cream. The smell of cinnamon made my mouth moist. “Heard something about it.”

  “Not a big crew or anything. Three kids. You see their article in yesterday’s paper, asking anyone who had paranormal goingson around their houses to call them?”

  He covered his mouth with a filmy paper napkin and gulped, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Isn’t that the craziest thing?” I said. “Ghosters running loose.”

  “Seems to me if you were psychic or whatever,” Rudy said, “you could ride around and find ghosts on your own. Shouldn’t have to advertise for them like you were looking for a used mobile home or a single white female.”

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  He graced me with only a shake of his head. “Used to like to scare people who did, though.” His smile grew as he enjoyed the memory.

  “Okay, you can’t keep that to yourself. What?”

  “Just kid stuff.” He wiped his mouth and pushed away his empty bowl. “You know that little cement bridge that turns off the highway north of town, a mile or so before it heads up the mountain?”

  “I—think so.”

  “No side rails, just raised curbing at the sides. You might not even think of it being a bridge. Bottomland pasture on both sides of the road, with a little creek.”

  I nodded.

  “Some of us were out one night, after a football game or some such. Telling ghost stories. Must’a been near Halloween. We drove across the bridge and stopped to see if we could hear the baby crying.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “Ol’ Campbell decided he’d impress his girlfriend, so he got out to walk back across it.”

  “What baby?”

  “You never heard tell of the crybaby? Suppose to hear a baby crying if you walk across the bridge at midnight under a full moon.” He snorted.

  “I take it you didn’t hear any crying.”

  “Only crying I heard was that dumbass Campbell.” He smiled broadly. “Jennie Lee was sitting in the front seat of that old Plymouth I used to have. I got out to watch Campbell, she slid over in the driver’s seat and put that sucker in gear. I barely got the back door open. She was moving when I jumped in. But not before I heard it.”

  He laughed out loud, one of his contagious belly laughs.

  “Not the baby,” I said.

  “Naw. Campbell. Screaming like a girl. He must’a run a good half mile, chasing us and yelling before she stopped the car.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes had teared up. “We saw a ghost, all right. Campbell was white as a sheet.”

  I shook my head. High school pranks, whether five years ago, fifteen, or fifty, whether funny or frightening or angst-ridden, always have an intensity about them that survives. Our own little ghosts that haunt us.

  “I remember that car,” I said. A twenty-year-old hand-me-down from his grandmother, that car had been lavished with most of Rudy’s money and affection. The rest he’d reserved exclusively for Jennie Lee, a well-endowed, sweet little girl.

  I realized how little I knew about Rudy’s private life. We hadn’t been close friends in high school, so I hadn’t gotten regular reports over the years from my family. When I’d come back to Dacus seven months ago, we’d renewed our acquaintance because both of us spent way too much time eating at Maylene’s, but that’s where it stayed. He wore a wedding ring, but I knew little else about his life away from his chief deputy job. Rudy was like most guys I’d worked with over the years, able to compartmentalize. Then again, I didn’t talk about my personal life, either.

  “Did you and Jennie Lee get married, even though she tried to steal your car?” As soon as I asked, I knew I’d gotten it wrong.

  A cloud passed over his expression. “Naw. That was a high school thing.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t probe further. It might not be a fresh wound, but it looked like it still hurt. High school pranks weren’t the only things that created an energy that didn’t dissipate much over time.

  “Reckon I better get going,” Rudy said, slipping the checks out from under the bread basket and handing mine to me.

  As we stepped out on the sidewalk, I heard a familiar buzzing sound, like a swarm of angry flies. Donlee Griggs zizzed down the opposite side of Main Street on the scooter he’d acquired a few months earlier—about the same time he’d acquired the tiny girlfriend whose matching round pumpkin-orange helmet mashed into the small of his back as she held on for dear life.

  Another poignant trip down memory lane. While Rudy had dated cute girls like Jennie Lee in high school, I was attracting the likes of gigantic, slow-witted Donlee. The crush he had on me had resurrected itself when I’d helped him out pro bono on a drunk-and-disorderly charge back in November, but his unwanted attentions had evaporated like morning mist on a treeshrouded creek as soon as his little motor-scooter mama had appeared. Maybe she’d brought the scooter with her. Either way, Donlee drove by, looking neither right nor left as he passed us.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  “If you expect to have anybody wants to hire you, you got to get you a receptionist. Totin’ a cell phone around, answering it on the fly, don’t cut it. You need a receptionist. Somebody make this like a real place of business.”

  Edna Lynch had walked in my front room lecturing and didn’t stop to catch her breath until she’d backed me into my inner office.

  “Uh—”

  “My niece Shamanique is available. She can do what you need done. You want her this afternoon?”

  “Uh—”

  “You don’t have to pay her but minimum wage. She’s on probationary work release right now.”

  My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I didn’t even get uh out.

  “Bad checks, thanks to a worthless boyfriend’a hers. She ain’t gonna have to worry about having her probation revoked. She gonna have to worry about me beating her sorry ass to within an inch of her life, she messes up again.”

  Edna’s voice had taken on the lilt of a street preacher. Somewhere back along the line, I suspected she and my great-aunt Letha had been separated at birth—even though Edna is black and closer to my mother’s age.

  “I’d be glad to meet her.” How could I say no? If I did decline, Edna and Melvin might gang up on me.

  Edna had refused the offer of a
chair, so we both stood in front of my desk. “Just stopped by on my way to the clerk’s office,” she said. She glanced up at the crystal chandelier. I needed to dust it, maybe bleach it or something.

  “I take it what I hear is right, this Mart divorce is a bad breakup, mostly on her side?”

  “That’s what I understand,” I said. “Of course, I only have Mr. Mart’s side of the story.”

  “Most folks seem to be taking his side, from what I hear. That duhn’t excuse driving somebody crazy with hundreds of phone calls.”

  “No.”

  “He was arrested at work instead of his apartment. The cops tell you why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because she told her lawyer she didn’t know where he lived, just where he worked.”

  I frowned. “Surely—”

  “Can you check that with your client?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” It’s a small town. How could his wife not know where he was living? Why would he keep that a secret from her?

  “I’ll get Shamanique over here this afternoon,” Edna said over her shoulder as she passed into the front parlor, her brown polyester pants whistling faintly on her thick thighs. Edna, with her close-cropped mini-Afro, was shaped roughly like a bowling ball—thick, not tall, plenty hard.

  I stayed in my office and glanced up at the chandelier. Nothing I could do with either Neanna or Tolly Mart and, as usual, I felt frustrated by inaction. Cleaning the chandeliers could count toward my work-for-rent deal with Melvin. Resealing the toilets could wait.

  I checked a couple of home-repair books about the best way to clean crystal chandeliers. As usual, I’d end up calling Mom or Dad when I found the instructions inadequate. The chandelier had accumulated grime for many years, wood smoke from the fireplaces, and probably cigarette smoke from the now-gone days when people saw life through a softly filtered haze of burning leaves. The more I studied it, the more I feared it would be an allout project.

  I gathered my supplies—glass cleaner, bleach, a bucket of warm water, some smooth cotton cloths worn full of holes, and a space-age duster. In short, everything I could think I might need. I changed into overalls, knowing I’d need the pockets, and maneuvered my ladder into place. About the time I climbed to the top, the bell hanging on the front doorknob jangled.

  Edna appeared at the foot of my ladder, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed, studying me with that mixture of disappointment and pity I’ve come to expect from her. In tow, she had a young woman. Her creamy milk-chocolate face was much lighter than Edna’s. Her long legs looked graceful when she stood still, but when she sauntered over to the front window to look out, she moved with that sassy, hip-popping stroll that looked as though she had a techno beat playing in her ear.

  “Hello,” I said, backing down the aluminum ladder from my twelve-foot ceiling. I never notice how loudly a ladder groans until I’m heading down from a height.

  “This is Shamanique. She’s here to help you in the office.”

  Shamanique turned back to us and stood with one hip jutted out. She wore a denim skirt that, on somebody with short legs like me, wouldn’t have looked so short. But she had giraffe legs. Her gold hoop earrings hung almost to her shoulders, and her hair was lacquered into an elaborate pile on her head.

  Edna turned her disapproval laser on her young niece, who got the message without a word spoken. Same as I always did. Edna has loud thoughts.

  Shamanique extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said with rehearsed politeness.

  Her Fu Manchu nails were airbrushed with artful swoops, and her eyes danced with a sassiness that could spell trouble or fun. Which surfaced depended on the circumstances and her mood, I was sure.

  “You interested in doing some office work?” I asked.

  She cocked her head to one side in a half shrug. “Sure.”

  “You type? Do bookkeeping? That sort of thing?”

  In the tiniest uptick at the corner of her mouth, I could suddenly see the family resemblance. She was thinking, Duh, ‘course. But she said, “Yeah. Yes, ma’am.” The last was added quickly, her eyes cutting toward Edna.

  “She can do what you need. She’s smart, when she sets her mind. You need a more professional—setting.” Edna’s disapproving gaze covered me from my paint-splopped sneakers to my overalls sprouting tool handles from every pocket.

  “Great. Um—when can you start?”

  She gave her lopsided half shrug at the same time Edna said, “Now. That’s why she’s here.”

  Great. Having someone work for you requires having work for her to do, which means thinking it through, planning priorities, training her. And deciding how much I could trust her. That would take some time to determine and some private conversations with her, without Edna around ready to grab us both by the nape of the neck and shake us like bad puppies at the slightest provocation.

  “Great. Well. Let’s head back to my office. I’ll show you around and we’ll decide what to tackle first.”

  “What time will you need a ride home?” Edna asked, talking to Shamanique but looking to me for the answer.

  I stopped myself before the words “Oh, whenever” came out of my mouth. “Um, five o’clock?”

  “I’ll just call Gabe, Auntie. You don’t have to—”

  “I better find your little self on the front porch waiting for me at five. You think I’m so dumb, I don’t know Gabe?”

  She spit his name with blistering derision, shook her head, and turned for the door, muttering to herself. I caught something about Gabe and lick of sense and no count.

  “Well.” I rubbed my hands together, my brain racing. I had an employee—one I was expected to pay—and no idea what she could do. She sure wasn’t dressed to climb the ladder up to the twelve-foot ceiling.

  “Let me give you the grand tour.” That wouldn’t take long. The ornate Victorian had a rather simple floor plan: off the entry hall, which was larger than most living rooms, two parlors opened on either side and an age-darkened oak staircase swept up to the second floor. The parlors had served as entertaining spaces both for Melvin Bertram’s grandfather when he’d built and lived in the house and, later, for the Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home.

  “That’s Mr. Bertram’s office.” I indicated the French doors that opened into his office suite—the former front parlor and dining room, which mirrored my two-room office suite. Fortunately for me, Melvin and his venture capital/financial adviser work didn’t require a lot of books, so I got the former library and its matching front parlor, both with lavishly detailed floor-to-ceiling cases for my inner sanctum.

  “Living quarters are upstairs, so that’s private space.” I didn’t elaborate on the fact that Melvin and I had apartments upstairs. Separate apartments. This was a small Southern town, so I don’t flaunt the arrangement, and I still wasn’t sure living here would last. Living so close to work had its drawbacks, but it was more convenient—and better insulated from heat and cold—than my grandfather’s lake cabin.

  “Back here is the restroom.” Ah, something I could delegate. “Occasionally, clients come in here. If you could make sure it’s stocked with paper and soap, that would be a help. Mr. Bertram hires a cleaning service, but they only come once a week.”

  She nodded. We continued past the restroom tucked underneath the staircase—probably added by the funeral home—and past the door to the basement stairs, which led to what had been the embalming rooms. We kept that door locked, and I kept my treks downstairs to a minimum. I didn’t explain its existence to Shamanique, or describe the drains in the floors or the stainless-steel sinks and counters and the lingering laboratory smell.

  “Back here’s the kitchen. Bring whatever you’d like to eat. It’s just the three of us. Help yourself to the Cokes. Coffee, tea, and sugar up here.”

  The kitchen stock was really pathetic, considering it wasn’t just an office kitchen, but also the kitchen for both of our apartments. Melvin kept some fresh fruits and vegetables in the re
frigerator, and canned soups in the cabinet. I kept only popcorn and ice cream on hand because, whenever I was hungry, I had a good idea what time my mom, my great-aunts, or my sister would have a meal on the table.

  “These are the stairs down to the parking lot in back. There’s room back there, so you don’t have to park on the street.” Not that finding a place in front of the old house was difficult, except on the first morning of a court session. Until they got the jurors sorted out, cars were parked in the trees on this end of town.

  The kitchen completed our tour—the only main floor room the Baldwin & Bates renovation decades earlier had left untouched. Clean but shabby, with faded linoleum and yellow Formica countertops scrubbed colorless in spots.

  “That’s all of it,” I said.

  Shamanique looked unimpressed.

  We stared at each other for a blink away from uncomfortable.

  “Okay.” I led the way back down the hall. The dark wood floors popped underfoot.

  The postman dropped the day’s collection through the slot beside the massive dual front doors.

  “You can get started with the mail. Separate it here.” I indicated the round table in the center of the entry, probably left behind because it was too large to get out the door. “If Mr. Bertram’s office door is open, just leave his mail on the table inside his office. He’s not here right now, though.”

  Off in Atlanta or Florida on business, I forgot which. “When he’s gone, leave his mail in the basket next to the refrigerator.” We each had a basket, and the system had worked well so far.

  For me, what hadn’t worked so well was getting the mail where it belonged once it found its way into my office. Always something I had to think about or wait on or didn’t know what to do with. So I lived with stacks of papers. I liked things visible, so they’d remind me what needed doing, but my stacking habit was obvious as soon as anybody entered my office. No matter how many file folders I labeled or where I’d worked, my horizontal filing system remained a constant. Good assistants had been the only thing that saved me from chaos.

  Still no reaction or questions from Shamanique.