Can’t Never Tell

by Unknown

  “And how were you made aware of that?”

  “Because I was there when she fell,” I said.

  Something about his hypnotically rich voice made me think of a spider weaving a seductive web.

  “You were present at the death?” He had the good grace to sound shocked.

  “Not exactly present. We were attending a large picnic near a waterfall. Mrs. Reimann was wading in the creek at the top of the falls when someone heard a scream. The rocks are extremely slippery. The Rescue Squad recovered her body from the falls the next day.”

  “I see.” He paused, taking notes, I assumed. “The date on which this occurred?”

  “Last Friday. June 30.”

  “You don’t know who called this office on Saturday to report the death?”

  “No, I told you I didn’t.” I myself wondered who it could have been. He had said “she” had left a message. Who would call a corporate office on Saturday? Who was in such a rush to collect the insurance? Eden Rand’s name popped immediately to mind.

  “Dr. Reimann is shocked and a bit overwhelmed, as you can imagine,” I said. “His friends have rallied around to support him, so perhaps one of them called for information.”

  “Um-hm.”

  “If you could let me know what documents and information you’ll need, I’ll pass that along to Dr. Reimann.”

  “We’ll need a signed copy of the death certificate.”

  I was surprised he didn’t ask for a copy of the autopsy report, after I’d mentioned a postmortem had been done. If I’d been him, I’d have been asking for all kinds of information. Given my proximity to the death, the mysterious weekend call only a day after the death, and the odd way Rinda had died, anybody would have lots of questions. Maybe he was being gentle out of respect for the newly grieved—even though the newly grieved did, under the circumstances, seem oddly anxious to get the money wheels turning.

  I knew, from years of representing insurance companies in medical and corporate defense work, that insurance companies make money from investments. They know they’ll have to pay out eventually, but they prefer to hold on to premiums and delay those payouts as long as they can, within reason, because more time is more money.

  I also knew insurance company claims people are, by nature or nurture, a suspicious lot. If they aren’t when they start in the job, they soon learn to be as they gather wild tales and questionable “accidents” in their daily reports.

  The sorghum-voiced claims guy on the other end of the line couldn’t know about Spence Munn’s lectures on investing early and often. He couldn’t know that Rog Reimann’s cluelessness seemed to call out a fierce protectiveness in the women in his life. He couldn’t know about the shock of Rinda’s fall. Given what he did know, though, I’d be suspicious, if I were him.

  “I’ll get that to you as soon as I can, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Jacobs.”

  “Mr. Jacobs. Thanks for your time.”

  I had fulfilled Rog’s request and gotten things started. I winced, thinking about the scrutiny the insurance company would give that file now, especially with not one but two phone calls before Rinda was even mourned and buried. I felt as though I’d stepped in a cow pie. The calls to the insurance company looked overanxious, but Rog Reimann couldn’t be the only person in need of money when faced with a spouse’s death. That’s why people buy life insurance.

  That Saturday phone call was very strange. And it was even stranger that neither Rog nor Eden had mentioned it. I suspected Eden as the mysterious caller, but Rog could have other helpful females hovering about, watching over him.

  I needed a cup of tea, steaming dark tea. Even more, I needed the full ritual of steeping it in my favorite ceramic pot with the insulated cover that kept my second cup hot.

  In the front hall, I smiled as soon as I saw the crystal vase brimming with flowers. They would need some fresh water.

  I hadn’t gotten flowers since—forever. Dear Lord, since law school. Some of the flush of pleasure evaporated. I stared at the flowers. With a jolt, I realized that Tappson G. Roderick had been the last guy who’d sent me flowers.

  Tapp and I had met in torts class the first day of law school and had built a not-always-friendly rivalry over who could best argue the subtle intersections of law and fact on which plaintiff’s cases are won or lost. Within weeks of our first study group meeting, he’d begun insisting on driving me home from the late-night sessions, the first of many courtly gestures that eventually swept me off my feet.

  Even now, I wasn’t exactly sure when things shifted from courtly to controlling. Not that I haven’t tried to figure it out, because not knowing when it happened, that I hadn’t seen it coming, still scared me. If I’d let it happen once, what would keep me from being blind a second time? I wouldn’t ever open myself to that chance again.

  Memories of my slow-dawning realization were as fresh as yesterday, returning with a wave of prickly emotion. In the middle of the night, a Sunday night, my phone rang. I’d spent the day at a horse show watching a friend compete. It had been a golden, crisp late autumn day, and I’d fallen into bed exhausted.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  The clock by my bedside blinked 1:15 A.M.

  “Tapp?”

  “I’ve been calling you all day. Who were you with?” He was screaming accusations in a tone I’d never heard from him before. I felt groggy from being awakened, and confused. And angry.

  He was beyond reason; I hung up. When the phone rang again, I stretched to reach behind the nightstand and unplugged it from the wall. Had he been drinking? Not really like him. In any case, better to give him a chance to calm down and come to his senses.

  By an odd coincidence, early that same morning I was scheduled to meet with a woman at the law clinic office. Law students get experience working with real clients by spending a certain number of hours working in a clinical setting. After law school, when I began practicing law, defending hospitals and doctors, I learned what a poor imitation this was of the rotation system used in medical schools. Doctors leave their training with a much better idea of their real world than lawyers do, which may explain why so many lawyers are unhappy and looking for ways to escape the profession.

  Even though their clinical training may not adequately prepare lawyers for the real world, my client interview that day was the most powerful learning experience of my career.

  The legal clinic was where I learned why they called us “counselors” and that the most valuable thing I’d ever give some of my clients was a sympathetic ear.

  At the clinic, my job was to take client histories and outline what I thought the next steps should be. The clinical supervisor would then review my recommendations with me and refer the client, usually to a third-year student or to an external agency or sometimes to a district attorney to initiate a criminal prosecution.

  I was twenty-two years old and green as a gourd, though I thought myself quite worldly wise. That morning, a woman in her early thirties sat across from me. She didn’t look as though life had cut her many breaks. With most of the client histories, we had to listen to a lot of chaff before we got to the few kernels of necessary information. That, of course, was the purpose. We had to learn to listen. We had to learn to pick out what was important and, eventually, to direct the conversation where we needed it to go.

  In a rambling tale that I struggled to summarize in my notes, the attractive woman with water-pale blue eyes and teeth too small for her wide smile laid out what I came to know as a classic domestic abuse story. Prince Charming had charged in, driving a red Blazer, had swept her into his arms promising to adore and protect her always. He called her constantly, showered her with attention, didn’t want to let her out of his sight.

  After they were married, his constant phone calls eventually caused her boss to fire her. Her husband started writing down the mileage on her car before he left for work. Eventually she’d lost her car when she couldn’t make the payments, and with
it, she lost her last vestige of freedom. The final straw, she said, had been last Thursday. He came home drunk and hit her for the first time.

  The slap wasn’t hard enough to leave much of a mark. I took a photo of it anyway. The slap was hard enough, though, to wake her up.

  “Afterward, he tried to be all lovey and apologize,” she said. “I just smiled and said I understood. As soon as he left for work the next day, I called a cab.”

  She started crying at that point. One lone little tear streaked straight down her smooth cheek. “I didn’t know where to go, but I knew where I wasn’t going, ever again.” Her voice was ragged but set.

  I remembered staring at her dark blond hair framing her pale skin. She had no job, no car, no friends. He’d alienated her family, left her in control of only enough money for a modest week’s groceries, if she budgeted well. But she had enough courage to risk whatever was outside her narrow prison—and, without intending to, smacked me with a painful truth.

  I never heard how things turned out for her, but seeing the determined set of her jaw that morning, I knew she would be fine. Bruised, but fine. She knew what she had to do, even though at that moment she was swinging without a net.

  As soon as that morning interview ended, I skipped medicolegal jurisprudence class and took a long walk. Down Main Street in Columbia, back along busy Assembly Street, over the hill to Five Points, circling back up through the main campus. I walked and walked, replaying in my head all the vignettes. The things that had seemed chivalrous now were ominous, threatening. My face stung with chill air and perspiration and some odd mixture of anger and embarrassment. As my mother was fond of saying when Lydia and I were kids, “And you’re some of the smart ones.” How could I have missed it?

  By the time I got back to the law school, I knew I would waste no time settling things. Tapp was always in his library carrel by ten-thirty. He didn’t expect what was about to hit him.

  I knocked on his carrel door. Through the skinny window, I saw his face light with a smile as he turned in his chair to open the door. He reached for my waist, to pull me close. I stepped back, just out of reach.

  “Avery, I’m so—”

  I cut off the apology. “Nobody cusses me, you son of a bitch. I don’t know what part of me you thought you owned, but you can consider that phone call last night as your quit-claim deed.”

  Law students spend three years trying out legal jargon, sometimes in the oddest places.

  “Leave me the hell alone,” I said. “Is that clear?” From somewhere, I was channeling Aunt Aletha, even while I was certain she’d never found herself suckered in and manipulated.

  I closed his carrel door for him. He had the good sense—or the arrogance—not to follow me.

  We knew each other’s habits well enough to avoid each other. I dropped out of the study group and moved to the front row in the tiered lecture halls, where we shared classes.

  He sent flowers, then cards with sappy sentiments. I ignored them. After a week of Mr. Nice Guy, I met the real Tapp in a torrent of prank phone calls, flat tires, and a gossip campaign that most of the other students tried to avoid, embarrassed at seeing Tapp’s private self exposed.

  I got a concealed carry permit and hoped the Christmas holidays would bring the space he needed to set himself on an even keel. Instead, it gave him time to get more creative—and meaner.

  I had time to get angrier. I walked out of my garage apartment one frosty January morning to head to class and found all four tires flat, all four stems cut. The friend I called for a ride was horrified and wanted to take me straight to the police station. I declined.

  That evening, I went to a dance club near Fort Jackson and, with my sad story, propositioned a fellow who worked there as a bouncer and bartender. I assured him all he would have to do was stand behind me with his arms crossed. He volunteered the scowl without my having to ask.

  Later that night, we waited in the law library parking lot. I knew Tapp would leave the library around midnight.

  I’m sure two figures stepping out of the dark in the empty parking lot got Tapp’s adrenaline pumping, which only added to the stage effect. I didn’t raise my voice. I just leaned in close and lied. I told him I had photo and line-tap evidence of his nonsense with my car and phone and, if he didn’t cease and desist, I would see to it that he never sat for the bar exam. That would be after somebody scraped him off a dirty sidewalk and hauled what was left of him to the ER.

  My bouncer friend just leaned against the light pole without saying a word. His silence kept him from committing an indictable offense and also worked better than I’d hoped. It worked so well, I was often tempted to suggest the tactic to some of the women who sought help at the legal clinic. If the lawyering thing didn’t work out, I figured I could hire myself out as muscle.

  I stared at the flowers on the hall table, the sunlight slanting through the leaded glass door. I shook myself. It was time I remembered that nice guys send flowers, too. Get some perspective, Avery, and enjoy the ride.

  I brewed a small pot of tea, carried it to my office, and called Shamanique.

  “Ye–uh,” she answered.

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  “No bother. Sittin’ at Auntie’s computer. What else.”

  “Thought you were taking a few days off.”

  “So did I. Sumbody”—I could feel her cut her eyes, even though I couldn’t see her—“thinks she got to keep me outta trouble.”

  In the background, I heard the reply: “You got that right.” Edna Lynch kept her young cousin on a short leash. Whether Shamanique’s behavior was questionable enough to warrant it, I couldn’t say. In my office, she was a hardworking young woman with a sassy tongue, not unlike lots of others her age. She seemed to have a penchant for bad boyfriends who had skated her at least once too close to the line of legality. I took that as youthful indiscretion. Aunt Edna took it as a harbinger of a life doomed unless drastic, life-altering measures were applied. Edna applied them with a heavy hand.

  Edna had gotten me to hire Shamanique about a month ago, while Shamanique was on work release after a bad check charge. Before I’d known what hit me, Edna had the giraffe-legged girl with giant hoop earrings and ever-changing hair-dos sitting at my reception desk. When I’d found out what she could do with a computer and a phone, I was happy for her to become a permanent fixture—even if she did tend to disapprove of my circumspect love life.

  I hoped the flowers would die before she got back to the office. She wouldn’t mind asking questions that I’d rather not answer.

  “Would you have time to run down one more thing in the next day or two?” I outlined what I knew about Rog Reimann’s first wife and her death.

  “You thinking he killed her before he killed this’un?”

  “I don’t think he killed anybody. I just want to make sure I have the facts.”

  “Mm-hm.” Shamanique is quick to assume the worst, not unlike her aunt Edna. “This other’un supposed to’ve died in a car wreck? Not a fall?”

  “That’s what he said. There ought to be a record.”

  “Yeah, no problem. I can probably get this today. Anything else?”

  “That’ll do for now.”

  “I’m ’specting something back on that dead guy at the carnival. That’s one creepy thing you got yourself mixed up in there.”

  I didn’t explain I hadn’t involved myself in it, exactly. Just no point in trying to explain. “Talk to you later.”

  It was too early for lunch. I carried my tea upstairs, piled clothes in a hamper to wash at Mom’s later, and wandered back downstairs to catch up on reading the advance sheets from the South Carolina appellate courts.

  I couldn’t concentrate, so I decided to stroll down to Maylene’s for the early lunch crowd. Chances were good I could catch Rudy Mellin there, even though I’d just seen him for breakfast. Chances were also good that he’d had time to digest the preliminary autopsy reports and might have a better idea what he coul
d safely share.

  Something had left me feeling unsettled—and melancholy? Was it the tone in the insurance agent’s voice? My uncomfortable flash-backs? Or did I just need some physical activity? Option three, I decided, as I locked the door behind me.

  Monday Lunch

  Rudy wasn’t in Maylene’s, but I didn’t have to wait long. He knew what I wanted as soon as he saw me, but he didn’t abandon lunch or choose another booth.

  “Let me order first and catch my breath, how ’bout it? Before you launch into me. Why don’t you find yourself a new best friend?”

  “Ouch. And abandon you? I don’t see anybody else standing in line to eat lunch with you.”

  “I feel so cheap, so used,” he said with exaggerated drama. “It’s not really me you’re interested in.”

  “How’d you know? Okay, I confess, it’s the uniform,” I said, then snorted. “What makes you think I come here looking for you? It’s lunchtime, you know. Half the courthouse is usually here.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the only one with your eye on the door waiting for me to bring you news about dead people. Some appetizer.”

  I didn’t point out that nothing ruined his appetite. He sounded touchy today.

  When he ordered baked chicken and steamed squash, I made no comment. I’d ordered a cold tuna salad plate just because it was too hot outside to eat much. I suspected some kind of diet, rather than the heat, was putting Rudy off his feed. If he wanted to tell me about it, he would.

  “Anything new on the guy at the carnival?”

  “Nope. He’s still in the cooler at the ME’s, still loaded with arsenic and beautifully preserved. Maybe after the holiday, we can spend some time trying to ID him. Until then . . .” He shrugged and took a long draw on his sweet ice tea.

  “The Plinys asked me to see if I could track him down, find out who he was.”

  “The who?”

  “The Plinys. E.Z. and Pinner Pliny. They own the fright house.”

  “They paying you?”

  “That’s how it works,” I said. “The state pays you. Clients pay me. The world goes ’round.”