Hush My Mouth

by Cathy Pickens

  That had been the same year L.J. took to smashing me up against the brick bathroom wall for fun and sport. I guess Aunt Letha’s right: People don’t change, they only get more so. That didn’t bode well for Joel, Frankenstein, or even Knothead.

  I pulled out of the teachers’ lot at school with a better appreciation for how underpaid teachers are, and with some amazement that Emma loved school enough to spend part of her summer in computer camp.

  I parked outside the Law Enforcement Center’s employee entrance and rummaged around in the back floorboard for my hiking boots. From the usually quiet street that bordered the parking lot, I heard a familiar buzzing sound. Donlee Griggs on his scooter. His six feet seven inches topped with a ludicrous round, glowing orange helmet lent a circus-clown air to his balancing act on the tiny scooter.

  Where was his girlfriend? Without her matching pumpkin head smashed into the small of his back, he looked . . . alone.

  With my car door open, I sat sideways in the seat and finished tucking my pants legs into my boots and tying the laces as Rudy, dressed today as a civilian, ambled down the exterior steps to join me in the parking lot.

  “That’s quite a fashion statement,” he said. “Something you learned while you were off in Greenville?”

  I made a face and swung my legs back in the car.

  “You ever been to Pun’s junkyard?” I said. “You’re going to wish you weren’t wearing those spit-shines you got on.”

  “You’re telling me you know all about junkyards?” Rudy climbed in the passenger seat, reluctantly consenting to ride with me only because neither of us wanted to make this appear an official visit.

  “Restore and maintain a classic car, you learn a lot of things. I’ve spent enough time out there that he agreed to let us come play in one of his cars.”

  I’d tagged along with my dad over the years when he went out looking for parts. Pun knew more about what had gone into refurbishing the Mustang we were riding in than anyone other than my dad.

  Pun’s junkyard sat on the edge of town, mostly hidden by a twenty-foot-high barrier of red tips and the natural swell and fall of the land. As I drove through the rusty chain-link gate, we could see the fields spread out before us as if they’d been planted to produce a bumper crop of rust and shiny chrome and rainbow colors.

  I got out to greet Pun, who stood in the door of the battered lean-to that served as his office.

  “I hauled it ‘round yonder.” He pointed down the dirt-and-grass track, then crooked his thumb to the left. “In front of a dirt bank. So stray shot won’t fly around.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’cha doin’ with that one with you?”

  He pointed a greasy knuckle toward my windshield and Rudy.

  “Protection,” I said.

  He snorted. “Never heard tell’a somebody wanting to shoot out win-der glass for the heck of it. So whatever you want to call it. Keep him away from my cars.” Again with the knuckle.

  He turned without waiting for a response.

  I folded myself back into the car, popped the clutch, and drove away before glancing at Rudy.

  “So why didn’t you tell me you and Pun have bad blood? What’s that all about?”

  Rudy’s turn to snort. “We’ve had to come execute administrative warrants a few times—somebody junking a new car to collect insurance or stripping a stolen car.”

  “Pun chops stolen cars? No way you’re telling me that.”

  “No. But all junkyards end up with stuff—just like pawnshops do. We gotta check it out. Pun, he’s got to take it personally.”

  “If I’d known hanging out with you was going to disgrace me with my only connection for keeping this forty-year-old car running, I wouldn’t have invited you to my party.”

  “That could’ve been a blessing. This isn’t my idea of the ideal party spot.”

  We were winding our way along a weedy aisle of debauched car carcasses, headed toward a hillside that had been bulldozed flat on one side to make room to stack cars.

  “So when are you letting me in on what you’ve got planned?”

  I stopped beside a gray Honda, the hood and engine missing, the upholstery torn.

  “We’re going to put a bullet in a head and see which way the glass shatters.”

  Thursday Afternoon

  The Civic coupe Pun had towed into position for me had met its demise when someone rammed its front end into an accordion shape. Just as I’d asked, he’d situated it with the driver’s window parallel to the red dirt bank.

  Despite the front-end damage, the passenger compartment was intact, the right-side door worked, and the window glass was undamaged.

  From the Mustang’s trunk, I drew out a plastic shopping bag and Exhibit One for our demonstration.

  “What the hell?” Rudy stood, his hands on his hips, his mouth open, staring at the white foam head I’d stuck on a thirty-inch dowel nailed to crossed slats.

  “Thought it would help us position the shot, if we had a head. Other than mine.” I had a sore spot behind my right ear where the gun muzzle had hit me yesterday.

  The head, intended as a wig model, could slide a few inches up and down on the dowel so we could get it into the right position. I was proud of my handiwork, despite Rudy’s derision.

  I crawled into the passenger seat, wedged the ends of the crossed slats under the back of the driver’s seat cushion, and pushed the head down an inch or two, trying to approximate Neanna’s height by measuring it against my own.

  I leaned back. “How does that look?”

  “Like somebody’s got too much free time on her hands.”

  I rolled my eyes. “About where her head would’ve been?”

  He bent over with that awkward stiffness common in former high school football players gone to seed, his hands on his thighs. “Yep. ‘Bout there. So?”

  “The gun.” I held out my hand for the gun Rudy was supposed to bring from the evidence room.

  He held a fake suede gun case, but he wasn’t unzipping it.

  “You plan to shoot the head.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “To see what happens. To the driver’s window.”

  Rudy was being purposely obtuse.

  “Perfectly safe,” I said. “See? The dirt bank will stop the bullet.”

  “Okay. But what are you going to do about the flying glass?”

  From my plastic bag, I pulled two pairs of safety glasses I’d borrowed from Dad’s workshop.

  He still just stood staring down at me. Finally, he cocked his head. “Get out. I’ll do it.”

  My turn to stare. I gave in. What did it hurt to play along with Mr. Macho?

  I climbed out, flipped the front seat forward, and slipped into the backseat.

  He shook his head. That wasn’t what he had in mind, but he too decided to give in.

  The Honda wasn’t as low-slung as my Mustang, but the passenger seat wasn’t as far from the dash or the roof, so it was a snug fit for Rudy.

  “Miz Smarty, what about ear protection? This’ll be—”

  I reached over the seat, presenting two bright yellow foam earplugs pinched between my fingers.

  “Cheesh.” He took them, though, kneaded them into thin cylinders, and stuck them in his ears.

  “You’d better close your door,” I said.

  He tried, unsuccessfully, to turn a baleful gaze at me, but gave it up in favor of flipping down the visor and eyeballing me in the mirror.

  “We want the conditions as close as possible, don’t we?”

  Rudy slammed the door. He looked like a bear stuck in a refrigerator.

  He grunted as he twisted in his seat and tried to place the gun muzzle behind the ridge indicating the mannequin’s right ear. He studied it a minute, then grasped the barrel and handed me the gun.

  “You’d better do it. To get the right angle.”

  I took the gun grip. “Like this?” I braced my arm along Rudy’s headrest and t
ried to mimic the impossible angle I’d tried yesterday on my own head.

  “Yeah. Let her go.”

  I gently squeezed the trigger, concentrating on not letting the muzzle shift.

  The shot deafened me, even with the earplugs. I’d involuntarily closed my eyes.

  The eerie white head leaned over in the seat, with only a small hole surrounded by a gray-black spatter of gunshot residue.

  The window glass in the driver’s door also had a hole and was crazed into frosted glass, but it was still intact.

  I looked at Rudy in his visor mirror. We both looked back at the window.

  “So. What does that prove?” Rudy asked, his voice tinted with frustration.

  “That cookies don’t always crumble the same way twice.” Disappointment and the metallic smell of burnt gunpowder left a sharp taste in my mouth.

  I toyed with the idea of getting Pun to haul out another Honda, but I squelched that thought. I’d already pushed the bounds of propriety and goodwill.

  “It was worth a try,” I said with a shrug in my voice.

  “Yeah.” Rudy grunted as he unlatched the door and climbed out. I slipped out of the backseat and walked around the rear of the car.

  On the ground glinting in the sunlight were a few pebbles of safety glass. Nothing but bits, forced loose by the rush of air pushed ahead of the speeding bullet. Very few glints. Just like the crime-scene photos. I bent over and picked up three of them, arranging them in the palm of my hand.

  Rudy watched me over the roof of the car. I took one more look at the shattered window, held in place as the safety glass designers had hoped, in a crazy quilt of pebbles rather than in shattered, scarring shards.

  “Ready to go?” Rudy asked.

  I nodded.

  He took a step back and closed the passenger door.

  Then it happened. The driver’s window crumbled before my eyes. Myriad tiny bits pinged, falling endlessly. With the crazed glass gone, I could see the foam head, the left side facing me blown into shreds by the bullet’s exit.

  I stood spellbound. The glass continued to tinkle as bits sifted down. Inside the car. Except for a few stray pieces that bounced off the window jamb, the glass had fallen inside the car. Just like the crime-scene photos.

  Rudy came around the front of the car and stood near the front tire, studying our handiwork.

  “It happened when somebody closed the door,” I said, feeling deflated, disappointed. I’d hoped we’d learn something I could offer Fran. What, I wasn’t sure. The glass falling inside the car wasn’t sinister. It hadn’t happened because of some mysterious shot from outside the car, as I’d secretly suspected. It had happened when someone closed the door.

  “When who closed the door?” Rudy said. “That’s the question.”

  I jerked my head up. Reality struck like a blow. “Those pictures were taken when the investigators first arrived on scene. The window was already shattered by the time the first officer arrived.”

  “Had to be.”

  We both stared at the open car window and the foam head, reordering our earlier versions.

  “So somebody else was there,” I said. “With her. Somebody got out and closed the door.”

  Rudy pursed his lips. “There’s a chance somebody else found her and didn’t report it.”

  “They opened the door, looked in, closed it, and drove away without reporting it? Any strange fingerprints on the door?”

  “Just smudges,” he said. He didn’t sound convinced by his theory.

  We looked at each other without speaking. I crossed behind the Honda to my car. Rudy climbed in beside me.

  In silence, we drove a distance between the stacks of cars before I could turn around. As I returned to where the Honda sat, Pun stepped out into the road waving the foam head like a South American tribesman with an enemy’s shrunken head on a stick. The mannequin was huge compared to Pun’s head—and had almost as much hair.

  “Take this with you. Jeez. I have enough trouble keeping good help around here without you leaving stuff like this behind. Scare the shit outta somebody.”

  “Sorry,” I called through the window as Pun jammed the head in at Rudy.

  “Least you could’a done was shoot some rats while you’uz out here. Make yourself useful.”

  “Thanks, Pun.” I waved and pulled slowly away before he could launch into another diatribe.

  Once on the highway, I had to pull off again in front of a long-boarded gas station. I was shaking.

  “Somebody was there. With her.” I turned to Rudy.

  His face was somber. “It’s possible.”

  “She couldn’t hold that gun in that position, Rudy.”

  “Okay, probable, then. Still not certain.”

  “She didn’t kill herself, Rudy.”

  The certainty of it washed over me. I gripped the steering wheel. I’d never had a response like this, shaking as if from fear or exertion.

  “You okay?” Rudy asked after a moment. “You aren’t going to throw up, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Can I see the crime-scene photos again? All of them? And do you have—can you find the file on Wenda Sims?”

  “They’re still looking,” he said.

  I shifted into first gear, eased the clutch out, and pulled onto the road. Disappointment was not mixing well with my adrenaline overload.

  “I’ve got a call in to Vince Ingum,” Rudy said. The one who worked Wenda Sims’s case. Retired to Myrtle Beach, old sumbitch. If he hasn’t fallen off a deep-sea fishing boat, he’ll probably call me back today or tomorrow.”

  I underestimate Rudy sometimes. He’d been busy.

  We drove back to town in silence. I dropped Rudy off and went back to the office, still trying to process the implications of what we’d witnessed.

  Shamanique stuck her arm straight out as I walked in, waving a phone message slip. She didn’t take her eyes off her computer screen.

  It took me a moment to digest the note. “This all Rowly said?” He’d called from Atlanta.

  “Yes’m. He wanted to make sure you knew about that.”

  “He got this from the cousin?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  An unnecessary cross-examination on my part. I was reading directly from Shamanique’s note. Her handwriting was neat, she’d time-dated the message. I was simply having trouble taking it in.

  I pulled the pocket doors to my office closed and slumped into one of the armchairs in the window, staring at the note.

  Gran bought life insurance on Neanna—$200,000. N. signed it over to Fran. Paid in full for one year, starting last May. N. made Fran her beneficiary. Call me.

  Two hundred thousand dollars. Why hadn’t Fran told me how much? And that the policy was recent? People had been killed for a heck of a lot less. Crazy possibilities swirled in my head. Was Fran’s “money is no object” attitude an act? A ruse to draw me off the trail?

  Who really says, “Money is no object”? Nobody. Not even people with lots of it. Especially people with lots of it. Could she afford to be generous with the investigation because she was counting on the insurance money? Was she using it like a broken branch to obscure footprints on the trail? Or to ease her conscience for being around to collect it?

  Who buys a $200,000 life insurance policy on a young woman who’s bouncing around in dead-end jobs? Why?

  I dialed Rowly’s number and got him on the second ring.

  “Hey, it’s Avery. A good time to talk?”

  “Sure. How’d’ya do?”

  “Got your message about the insurance. Anything else you can tell me?”

  “Yeah. Miz Sidalee Evans—the grandmother’s cousin—told me about the policy. She thought the whole thing was a sin and a disgrace. She had sermons on several topics, but I won’t preach ‘em at ‘chu.”

  “Thanks.” Rowly and his rural Georgia accent always raised a smile.

  “One important thing. Said Neanna was pure furious when she found out ab
out it. Neanna said that’s about what she’d expect, her own Gran wagering on when she would kick off. Said she’d see what she could do to oblige her. Guess you know about Neanna’s mom Marie and her aunt Wenda—Gran’s only two children?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Miz Sidalee thought buying the insurance was right creepy. Said the grandmother couldn’t afford the premiums, even if it was for term insurance.”

  “She bought term life insurance on Neanna?”

  “Yep.”

  My early-warning system—a knot in my stomach—twisted on me. Why term life insurance? It didn’t accumulate any cash surrender value or act as an investment Neanna could use later. It simply insured her life, as long as the premiums were paid. It served no other purpose.

  “Anything else I need to know?” As if that wasn’t too much already.

  “Nope. Thought you’d want to know about that quick as possible. I’ve been invited to tea with Miz Sidalee this afternoon, so I’ll fill you in on that.”

  “Thanks, Rowly. Got to mull on this a bit.”

  Life insurance on a young woman from a family plagued by young deaths. While she was young, the term-life premiums would be low—lower than whole life insurance. Only as she got older would the premiums increase. If she got older.

  Gran died first, leaving the policy behind, paid up for a year starting in May. Neanna made Fran the beneficiary. Then she’s dead. Made to look like a suicide.

  Why was Fran stirring up questions about the death? Why hadn’t she just collected her check and accepted the obvious?

  I reached for the phone and hit redial.

  “Rowly. Me again. When was the policy first taken out?”

  “Don’t know exactly. Why?”

  “Can you find out? And find out how the suicide exclusion reads?”

  “Know where you’re headed. I’ll get back to you.”

  I stared at my neat desktop. Shamanique must have been in here straightening things. She hadn’t moved any of my stacks—thank goodness. My whole filing system depended on positional memory. The office was definitely neater, though, and I appreciated her initiative.