Hush My Mouth

by Cathy Pickens

  “Wenda’s boyfriend was a drug dealer?”

  “That wasn’t what he told the IRS, but we had plenty of evidence that’s what was going on with his friends up at the Pasture. Still was when I retired, for all I know.”

  “The Pasture?” I asked. I felt Rudy come to attention beside me.

  “That’s how her boyfriend Tank met Lenn Edmonds. He’d recently bought the Pasture. Lenn still have it?” he asked Rudy.

  “On paper and in fact. Never made a bust there that involved him, though we’re called there fairly regular. Rumors about bootleg whiskey, but the feds’ve never made a case.”

  He snorted. “Like they ever could.”

  He took a cornbread muffin from the basket. “Much as I might have wanted to pin it on Tank or even on Edmonds, her hitchhiking seemed the likeliest place she met her killer. Never safe, especially for a woman.”

  “Lenn Edmonds was the other suspect?”

  “Yeah. The guy with two alibis. You know, I always liked Edmonds. Damn good football player, even if he didn’t have sense enough to go to Clemson. He just has a way of surrounding himself with shady dealings. Part of owning a nightclub, I guess. That Ash Carter still riding around on Lenn’s coattails?”

  “Yep,” Rudy said.

  “Not much changes, does it?”

  Lenn Edmonds. No wonder he’d stared at Neanna’s picture. She did look familiar, exactly like somebody he’d once known. Exactly like someone he’d been suspected of killing.

  “You ever get any leads on who gave Wenda Sims a ride from Atlanta?” Rudy asked.

  “Naw. Not enough manpower to troll all the I-85 truck stops.”

  “Unlikely that a serial killer has been plying I-85 all these years waiting for her niece to appear,” I said.

  Vince fixed me with his pale eyes, but I didn’t blink or apologize for my sarcasm. Wenda’s killer had been going on about his life for too many years.

  He fumbled with his tightly rolled napkin. As if he read my mind, he said, “I hated to leave with that case file open. Can’t say I was sorry when her grandmother stopped calling me ever’ whip-stitch to see what was happening.”

  The waitress appeared with a wagon-wheel-sized tray full of plates and slid them in front of us. Vince paused but didn’t step away from his memories.

  “Too many of the cases we handled were obvious, almost like the victims couldn’t have stopped themselves if they’d tried, like they went looking for it. With her, even though she’d made some bad choices, she didn’t seem like one who deserved it. I remember reading about an English case once, a body found in a steamer trunk. Commenting on it, somebody said, ‘You’ll never find a good girl in a trunk.’ In my experience, that’s true. With her grandmother watching over her, seems she would’ve stayed out of an early coffin.”

  I cut my first steaming piece of steak. My mouth watering, I paused to ask, “Why did Gran quit calling?”

  He shrugged, putting his knife to his own cream-gravy-covered golden-crusted steak. “I don’t know. She just all of a sudden quit. A little after the first anniversary. I remember because that struck me as sad, as if the warranty had run out or something. I told myself I’d call her, keep in touch. A’course I didn’t.”

  He waved his fork at Rudy. “You know how that is.”

  His voice was somber. I knew I was glimpsing the soft underbelly he used gruffness to hide. I wondered if Rudy had ever seen it before, the vulnerability, the sadness. I knew he felt it himself. Did Rudy work as hard to hide it around his colleagues, or had he just not been at it as long?

  The three of us chewed and thought our own thoughts.

  “How is Miz Sims, her grandmother?” Vince asked.

  “Gran—died.” I shied away from saying she passed away, figuring he’d read euphemism as weakness.

  “Mm. Sorry to hear that.” He kept his gaze on his food. “How’d you come by that picture?”

  I glanced at Rudy, not sure what he’d already told Vince, or what he was comfortable telling. Rudy didn’t look in my direction or step into the conversation, so I blundered on.

  “You know about Miz Sims’s granddaughter, Neanna Lyles? She had it.”

  “And she’s dead. Rudy mentioned it when he called. Hell of a note, itn’t it?”

  “Neanna’s friend—actually, they’ve been raised more like sisters—came to my office when Neanna first went missing. Neanna’s body had already been discovered, but they hadn’t officially identified her yet or located the next of kin.”

  I paused, but Rudy forked in some drippy collards and seemed content to continue his observer’s role.

  “The officer at the scene initially figured it as a suicide. Rudy took me to the impound lot to see the car, so I could give a full report to the sister, Fran. We discovered the photo stuck in the car’s headliner. They’d found her luggage ransacked, and a scrapbook Gran—Miz Sims—had kept was missing.”

  “A scrapbook?” His weathered fisherman’s face wrinkled in a frown.

  “Gran kept a scrapbook about the investigation into Wenda’s death. She kept all the news articles about the case. She’d had that photo stuck in the front.”

  I’d slipped it back into the envelope and had moved it aside when the food arrived. We didn’t have to see it to remember all too well what it showed.

  Vince snorted. “Grandmothers clip stories about their grands accomplishments, but that’s sure not what any grandmother has in mind for making her babies newsworthy, is it? I can see wanting to know what was going on, but why the hell she keep a creepy thing like that?”

  I didn’t point out that he’d kept the file on the case, his own version of a memory book. “I think she’d always wanted to pretend the family was normal. After what happened, this was the most normal thing she could do. Maybe she wanted to write the story, so to speak. Make sure it was told, that her baby wasn’t forgotten.” Maybe save her somehow, pull her back from the edge.

  His snort was milder than I’d expected. “Wish to hell we could’ve written an ending for her.”

  We ate in silence for a while, then Vince asked Rudy what some of his old buddies were up to and what the latest uproars and scandals were, both in the sheriff’s department and around Camden County. I half listened, watching their easy camaraderie, trying to fathom the dynamic between old hand and the once-Young Turk. I detected grudging respect on both sides—and some envy. Envy that one was free from the pressure and envy that the other was still in the thick of it.

  As the meal wound to an end, Rudy got down to business, making sure he had names and spellings for Wenda’s boyfriend and the alibi witnesses. Vince gave him all he had to offer.

  “Call if you think of anything,” Rudy said, clasping Vince Ingum’s hand in a warm, bear-paw handshake as we stood on the corner underneath the restaurant’s man-in-a-bathtub landmark sign.

  “Will do, buddy. Good to see you. Keep me posted.” He paused and fixed Rudy with his pale-eyed gaze. “Write her an ending, will you?”

  Saturday Afternoon And Evening

  The trip home was quick. Rudy groused that tonight was his night to take patrol, so he wanted to catch a nap before he went on.

  “I thought you were chief deputy. Aren’t you supposed to be the big-picture guy? Don’t you have minions?”

  He made a rude noise. “A department our size, we’re all minions. Besides, it was kind of my idea that everybody rotate through patrol. Nobody wants a boss who’s forgotten what it’s like on the road.”

  I didn’t ask if Sheriff L. J. Peters was part of the egalitarian patrol-duty roster.

  “Not a complete waste,” I said. “It gives you something to complain about.”

  “It’s good to remember how bad it is,” he said with a snort.

  We made it back home by late afternoon, with time to spare. I’d been toying with the idea of taking Emma up to the state park with me, maybe stroll around the lake and go to the Saturday night square dance. Too easy to get lost in the daily details an
d let time for those kinds of things just slip away.

  Melvin strolled into my office as I finished making arrangements with my sister Lydia about picking up Emma, what she should wear, and whether I was planning to feed her.

  “Square dance, huh? They still have those?”

  “Yep.” Any excitement from new arrivals over at the jail holding cell wouldn’t happen until later that evening, after Rudy and the other minions started clearing from the bars those who believed every weekend was a holiday worth getting plastered to celebrate.

  Melvin was obviously in a summer celebration mood of his own but with no plans and nowhere to go.

  “You want to come?” I asked. “Just me and Emma. We’d love for you to join us.”

  I held open the French door to my office, hoping to lead him out so I could lock the doors and get upstairs to change into shorts and a T-shirt. I was certain the state’s parks and recreation budget hadn’t sprung for air-conditioning the huge barn since the last time I’d been there.

  “I don’t want to cut in—”

  “We’re leaving in twenty minutes. You’d better get ready.” I waved him into the hallway and cut off his protests.

  The phone in my office rang. I hesitated, not wanting to answer it but wondering if it might be Lydia or Emma calling. I shooed Melvin in the direction of the stairs and turned back to Shamanique’s desk.

  “Hey. Found Wenda’s old boyfriend, Tank Smith,” Rudy said without preamble.

  “Already?”

  “Easy to find them when they’re dead.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  Rudy must have felt the same disappointment that swept over me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have felt the need to call.

  “Stiffed a guy in a drug deal ten years ago in Atlanta. Got a knife through at least one vital artery for his trouble.”

  “Nice. I’d really liked the possibility presented by a bad-boy boyfriend.”

  “Might still be a possibility. It’ll just be harder to unravel without him around to answer questions. And not as satisfying in the end.”

  Rudy believes in justice—swift and meaningful justice.

  “We’ll just get busy on his alibi witnesses. Maybe, now that he’s gone, somebody’ll be willing to tell the truth.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be napping?”

  “Who says I’m not?” He clicked off.

  Thanks to Rudy’s call and my indecision about wearing shorts when I saw my deathly pale legs in the mirror, I was the one who ended up making us late picking up Emma. By the time I jerked on khaki slacks and rushed downstairs, Melvin was waiting, jingling his car keys.

  Melvin refuses to ride with me, which was just as well since my Mustang’s backseat was like riding in a hole for seven-year-old Emma, who wasn’t tall enough to see out.

  Not that she minded riding in the Mustang any more than I had at her age, but Melvin’s Jeep wagon was more comfortable, even if I thought he drove like a sissy.

  Emma had finished her supper and was waiting on the front steps when we arrived. As we began our climb up the mountain, she perched on the backseat with her headphones on, her head bobbing as she watched the houses pass and grow sparser until trees took over the scenery. “You missed it last night,” I said to Melvin. “Do tell,” Melvin said, allowing a half smile.

  “Your little ghoster film group captured some great storytelling last night, but they seemed more excited about blobs of light that looked suspiciously like bugs.”

  “Blobs of light.”

  “Excuse me. Orbs. Pardon my shocking lack of precision with the terminology.”

  Melvin shook his head.

  “It obviously wasn’t an invitation-only event. Tap’s Pool Room must have suffered a sharp drop in business last night because too many of his regulars opted to attend the storytelling and marshmallow roast.”

  Melvin took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a blink to see if I was making up my unbelievable story. Unbelievable, yes. Definitely not fabricated.

  “Don’t ask me what they were doing there, but Donlee and PeeVee and Cuke Metz and several of the Ghouly Boys showed up to watch the festivities and the filming.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “My sentiments exactly. I suspect somebody in that group is the one who’s been suggesting haunted sites to Colin.”

  “Couldn’t be your buddy Donlee.”

  “Gosh, no. He’s not smart enough. And PeeVee’s status as the brains of that duo doesn’t qualify him, either. My money’s on Cuke, from what I’ve seen. You know him?”

  “No.”

  “He doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of that crowd, and he looks suspiciously like the guy who drove the truck on that Moody Springs video.”

  “You’re kidding. You sure?”

  I shrugged, not willing to swear to it.

  “Did they cause any trouble last night?”

  “The ghosters?”

  “No, your buddies.”

  I snorted. “Right. My buddies. No, they were perfect gentlemen, which is what worried me. Not even drinking, so’s you could tell it. But I don’t get a good feeling about it. Your ghosters are too earnest. They’re taking this way too seriously. That’s when somebody could get hurt.”

  “Maybe not,” Melvin said.

  “Somebody—namely you—needs to have a chat with them. They seem to take you seriously.”

  Melvin cocked his head with the slow tick-tock of a metronome but didn’t say anything.

  “True,” I said, playing devilish advocate. “All this nonsense might attract an investor for their film.”

  “Might get somebody hurt, too,” Melvin said, coming around to my point.

  At the state park, we left the car far away from the barn, even though we were early enough to pick a spot among the trees near the front door. The better to make our escape if the dance wasn’t as much fun as we remembered.

  The long sunlight and the balmy air combined to make the perfect ending to the week, a lazy late afternoon.

  We didn’t have enough time before dark or the dance to walk all the way around the lake that served for swimming, canoeing, fishing, and waterfront views for the thirteen scattered lakeside rental cabins. We wandered down to the roped-off swimming area with its coarse-sand beach and across the WPA-built spillway to check out the moonshine still they had on display and to soak up the quiet as dark encircled the tree-sheltered lake.

  By the time we strolled back up the hill to the barn, the crowd had gathered and the music had started.

  The doors on one side of the barn were open to let the massive fans suck air through the screens. Bleachers on either end of the dusty wooden floor could seat only a small number of local regulars and the campers who walked over from the cabins and the RV park, but the almost constant music made sure few people wanted to sit, drawing them to the dance floor.

  Much hadn’t changed in the years since I’d last attended a square dance. The live band, with a couple of members I recognized. Young men grown to look more like their fathers than they’d want to know. The fathers grown into grandfathers who took turns calling the familiar changes in the dance. The rhythmic clacking of the two-tone taps nailed into the bottoms of loafers and boots, thudding in a pulse. The campers loose-limbed imitation of the knee-jarring buck-and-wing step.

  Emma was a dance-school dropout like her aunt—too boring, she said. She needed the regimen of tae kwon do, she allowed, but she’d learned enough in her toddler tap class that she was a quick study. Melvin was the one who really surprised me. He remembered even the seldom-called changes, and he charmed Emma when we showed her and a little camper about her age how to do a freestyle swing turn.

  Emma was thrilled with the orchestrated steps, less than enthralled with holding a little boy’s hand.

  I remembered in a familiar rush the first time I’d come square dancing. A more experienced sixth-grade friend of mine had told me that holding hands with a boy wasn’t so bad, that you’d be having too much fun da
ncing to notice. “Not like you could really catch cooties or anything,” I whispered to Emma.

  Melvin knew how to let me know that I didn’t need to lead. When he slid his hand under my shoulder blade and guided me into a swing spin on our first circle-four, then quickly led Emma and her camper partner into a shoot-the-moon without missing a beat, I knew he’d logged some serious clogging time.

  Had I seen him here, when I was in high school? Had he been one of the older dancers, one of the men who’d bent over politely to dance with the kids Emma’s age and then swept away in a courtly promenade me and the other high school girls—still kids but, at the same time, hopelessly grown-up and awkward, in our own minds? I didn’t remember seeing him or dancing with him, but his strong, sure lead brought back that tilting balance between goofy adolescent and fairy princess in a red-faced rush.

  When the band stopped to take a break, Melvin grabbed soft drinks from the crowded canteen, and the three of us adjourned to a picnic table in the now-dark trees several yards from the barn.

  The crowded dance floor and the frenetic clogging had left my sweat-damp shirt clammy in the humid night air. After the loud music, even the cicadas’ and tree frogs’ efforts to drown out conversation sounded muted.

  We sat on the weathered tabletop, rested our feet on the splintery bench, and drank our icy Sprites in companionable exhaustion for a while.

  “So the storyteller last night was good?” Melvin asked.

  “Yep, she was. Somebody from over in Cullowhee. Think she might teach at Western Carolina.”

  “Did she tell some scary stories?” Emma asked.

  “Some. You’d have liked them.”

  “Ah, you like ghost stories, Emma?”

  She gave Melvin one of her solemn nods.

  “How about the story of the ghost dog? You ever heard that one?”

  “No.”

  Emma was sitting on the other side of Melvin. Without her noticing, I had no way to warn Melvin that she took life seriously, more like her great-great-aunt Aletha than any seven-year-old should be. He was on his own, picking a path between what any jaded seven-year-old would find tame, and therefore lame, and what a seven-year-old girl in the dark woods at night would find the stuff of nightmares. He was on his own, but I would be the one in trouble.