Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

The aunts had henpecked each other and the dinner to pieces before the time came to set it on the table. During the morning, I’d snatched glimpses of the Thanksgiving Day parades on TV, roughhoused with my niece and nephew (until our mothers yelled at us to knock it off), and—as my contribution to the traditional holiday feast—burned the bottoms on the brown-and-serve rolls. Fortunately, Aunt Hattie had also made biscuits.

  The first lull in the noise came when we bowed our heads for the blessing. Then the only sounds came from the television in the den and mouselike crunching sounds from my niece, Emma. Her mother—my sister—and I caught each other sneaking one-eyed glances in Emma’s direction. I grinned. My sister glared. Everybody else waited for Emma to bless the food, while Emma tried to swallow the pecan she’d snuck off the top of the sweet potato casserole.

  As usual, the food tasted like home and the conversation was stereophonically loud and familially funny.

  “What time’s the bowl game?” Emma asked. At seven, she’d suddenly become a big football fan. I suspected my dad had worked on her secretly; he’d spent years as the family’s only true believer.

  “Who’s playing?” Vinnia asked. She probably didn’t know a football had a point on both ends.

  “Clemson, Vinnia.” Hattie nodded sagely. Probably mentally planning on being on her way home by kickoff time.

  The conversation ebbed and flowed; sometimes two conversations overrunning each other. I sat back and listened. Was this what it felt like to awaken from a coma? The food was better, the kids’ knock-knock jokes were funnier, the parade floats more elaborate, my family more special to me than ever before. Everything had an intensity I couldn’t describe, as if I’d been banished somewhere far away and had come home when I never thought I’d see it again.

  I bent over another mouthful of dressing and blinked back a tear that stung my eye. Silly, but it felt good to be back here. I’d never missed a Thanksgiving at home, at this same table, with the same menu and these same people. Well, except for the two exchange students and the drug addict.

  But it felt like the first time in very long memory: the first time I hadn’t had the pressures and vagaries of school or a law practice; didn’t have Winn Davis, my former managing partner, leaving sexually explicit voice-mail messages; didn’t have the pressure of maintaining impossible levels of billable hours.

  Of course, considering the number of billable hours I’d worked this week, I should’ve returned Jake Baker’s call offering me a job in Charleston. But rather than rehearse “Welcome to Wal-Mart” or contemplate working with the state’s most audacious ambulance chaser, I sat back and counted my blessings.

  The mention of Melvin Bertram’s name roused me from my maudlin reverie.

  “You don’t say,” Hattie said. “Didn’t know he was back. For good?”

  “Or bad,” Aletha countered.

  We’d collectively begun cleaning and stacking plates and moving serving dishes from the dining room table to the kitchen counters. Mom had shooed the teenagers and little kids out of the kitchen toward the television or other diversions. My dad disappeared out the back door. On any other day, he would clear the kitchen by himself, but he doesn’t dare interfere with the great-aunts.

  “I heard at the beauty parlor yesterday something that, if I’d known it, I’d forgotten it,” Vinnia said.

  “As if that made sense.” Letha vigorously shook crumbs from the place mats into the sink.

  Vinnia paid no heed. “I heard that Melvin Bertram’s wife—do you remember her? Lea Hopkins, she was. She and Sylvie Garnet’s son had been keeping time together, at one time. And now, here little Harry is, running for governor.”

  “He’s what?” Aletha demanded.

  “Running for governor. That’s what Sylvie announced at the Ladies Auxiliary Wednesday morning. Of course, this is very preliminary. But Sylvie said the party higher-ups had sought him out.”

  “Seems awfully young to be a governor.”

  “Not really. He’s forty-something. He’ll always look young, until he just suddenly runs to pot. He’s that type.”

  Perennially youthful, but doomed. Good description of Harry.

  “The shocking thing about the conversation—” Vinnia stopped loading plates into the dishwasher and leaned toward her audience with a conspiratorial air. “Maeve said this affair continued even after Lea married Melvin Bertram. I was positively shocked.”

  Hattie shook her head. “That girl was never any better than she ought to be. Might explain why she popped home from college so quick and took that clerking job at Garnet Mills. Could see Junior practically every day, that way.”

  “How can somebody do something like that?” my mom asked. “I’m sorry if I sound naive. But just how do you go about carrying on an affair with your husband or wife around? Especially in a town this size. Law, I can just see me carrying on with somebody. Even assuming I knew how somebody could do such a thing. I mean, how do you—well, the whole idea is embarrassing.”

  “Explains why people in town remember the rumors fifteen years later,” Letha said. She rinsed the okra-and-beans pot and handed it to Hattie to put in the dishwasher. “And explains why nobody ever thought she and Bertram would stick it out.”

  “That’s all for this load,” Hattie said. “Just stack the rest over there.”

  I gave the stove top a final wipe with glass cleaner and a towel about the time Dad stuck his head in the back door and beckoned me.

  “Avery, you got a sec?”

  Outside, the faint but warm November sun glinted off the cars in the drive.

  “I got a surprise for you. If you like it, that is.”

  He led the way toward the garage, a wooden stand-alone that leaned slightly akilter. The wooden doors stood open to either side, and backed into the space was my grandfather’s 1965 Mustang convertible. Red.

  The car and I were roughly the same vintage. My grandfather had been in his late sixties when he’d bought it, brand-new. As a kid, I’d thought being squired around in that car defined special.

  I approached it with reverence, as I always had. “I can’t drive this.”

  Dad shrugged, his hands jammed in his jeans pockets. “I know it’s not as fancy as that car your firm provided for you. But I thought, until you could get something else—”

  “No, Dad. It’s not that. It’s—well, a classic now. I’d be scared to death to drive it.”

  “I’ve been tinkering with it. The carburetor needed cleaning and rebuilding. Garbs are tricky things. But she’ll do until you get something else. I mean, you’re welcome to borrow my truck whenever you want to. Especially if you think this old thing’ll break down on you somewhere. But—”

  “No, Dad. It’s great. I’ll take good care of it. You’ve got it looking great.”

  I hugged him quickly, taking him by surprise.

  Then I turned to inspect the passenger side, so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.

  “Thanks, Dad. This is—really special.” I swallowed hard. “Granddad loved this car, didn’t he?”

  Dad puffed a laugh out. “He sure did. Even though everybody in town thought him a damned fool. Just made him that much more determined.” He patted the car’s hood affectionately. “He’d be glad to know you’re using it.”

  “Avery!” My mom called from the back stoop. “Avery! Telephone!”

  Just inside the door, the phone receiver lay on the kitchen counter. I pulled the cord tight so I could stand in the laundry room, in hopes of hearing over the sounds of the dishwasher and the television.

  “Avery?” The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it immediately. “I apologize for bothering you at home on a holiday. This is Melvin Bertram. I really need your help.”

  His voice sounded different on the phone—richer, more honeyed. In person, his voice sounded deep, but somehow sharper.

  “Yes?”

  “Sheriff Peters has come to escort me to her office. She has some questions, she says.”
r />   “On Thanks giving?” Even for L.J., that crossed the bounds of propriety.

  “She did let me finish my pumpkin pie.”

  I could hear sounds at his house not unlike those emanating down my own hallway. “Where are you now?”

  “Still at my brother’s house. He lives on Lake’s Edge, so we’re close to town.”

  Lake’s Edge consisted of larger, established homes huddled around the edge of a pond. Distinctly middle-class prosperous, the thing that made the neighborhood truly exclusive was the size of the pond.

  “Sheriff Peters thought we might be more comfortable at her office rather than here, with my brother’s kids and cousins.” His voice drew away from the phone. I figured he had turned to acknowledge L.J. in the conversation.

  “Let me speak to L.J. Is she there?”

  Melvin didn’t say anything to me, but I heard some indistinct muttering, then L.J.’s voice boomed in my ear.

  “A’vry. Shoulda known you’d land back in town and git yourself mixed up in some nonsense that’s none’a your business.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, L.J. Since Clemson made it to a bowl game this year and Carolina didn’t, this is how you decide to spend your holiday?”

  She sounded as though she was working a toothpick through a compacted wad of turkey as we spoke.

  “Can’t put a criminal investigation on hold, A’vry.”

  “But it could wait until tomorrow.”

  L.J. made a smacking sound—probably shifting her toothpick. “’Bout the time some shyster starts tellin’ me I need to hold off questioning her client, I gotta wonder what she’s hiding. Or what she wants time to cover up.”

  “For Pete’s sake, L.J.—”

  “Gotta go. Since Mr. Bertram has graciously consented to help us with our investigation—”

  “L.J. Tell Mr. Bertram I’ll—”

  I bellowed into a dead receiver, as if my voice could actually carry over the severed connection to Melvin, to tell him to watch what he said until I got there.

  I turned down the hall to ask Mom if I could borrow her van. I didn’t have the nerve to presume I could actually take the Mustang. It was too special. But Dad silently appeared, the keys dangling from his fingers.

  Without a word of protest, I solemnly took the keys and left out the back door.

  I didn’t take time to exult over the car. The vinyl smelled of Armour All, the gas gauge sat on full, and the clutch required a surprisingly long reach—quite a stretch for my short legs. But I moved easily from driving my smooth, German-engineered BMW to this loose, loud, punchy little redneck car. An original Mustang without power steering is nobody’s definition of an easy car to drive. But I could see how mastering one bred its own arrogance. I quickly knew why my grandfather had loved this powerful, pouty car.

  I had to hurry. Too many really good confessions take place in the car on the way to the police station. I couldn’t do anything about that. But I could make it to the station almost as quickly as they could.

  This wasn’t a fresh crime—one that had just happened, with a perpetrator dying to unburden himself to a casual and caring cop. And I reminded myself that Melvin Bertram had accumulated more experience in criminal interrogation than I had. After all, he’d started fifteen years ago.

  I pulled into the Law Enforcement Center parking lot, a block down from the courthouse. County cop cars scattered the lot, along with a few civilian cars. Cops’ off-duty cars? Or those of some Thanksgiving Day visitors? Did families come eat turkey dinners with their locked-up loved ones? No telling which was L.J’s car.

  I hadn’t seen L.J., except in passing, since the night we’d graduated from high school. But I recognized her immediately, right up to her bowl-cut black hair. As they walked side by side down the hallway toward me, she eclipsed Melvin, who wasn’t a small man. L.J. wore a dark blue uniform, her shoe box-size brogans clapping the tile floor with a military slap. I’d come in the lot door, so she must have her own parking space somewhere else.

  “L.J Long time.” I offered my hand.

  She scanned me up and down before she took my hand, her narrow eyes dark under her dark bangs. “A’vry.” Her expression said she disapproved of something. Maybe my wool slacks and burgundy cashmere cardigan were too fussy for her taste.

  “Melvin, I assumed from our aborted conversation that you were requesting counsel during your questioning.”

  L.J’s eyes narrowed. Her right hand lightly touched the butt of her bolstered pistol. That’s what she’d been missing when we were in high school: that heavy belt slung with nasty-looking items—shiny handcuffs, a stick in a leather case, a radio of some sort, and that businesslike gun. She lovingly fingered her belt and motioned us toward an open door to her left.

  Not unlike a movie-set designer’s concept of an interrogation room, this one had a small battered metal-topped table and four mismatched chairs. I chose a wooden one with scarred rungs to prop my feet on.

  The room, stuffy, crowded, and not quite clean, didn’t boast a two-way mirror. But a shoe-box cassette recorder, the cord running from the table to a wall outlet, sat on the distant edge of the table.

  L.J straddled a chair on the opposite side of the table from Melvin and me and commandeered the tape recorder.

  While she fumbled with the cassette, I caught Melvin’s attention and raised my eyebrows in an unspoken question. He shrugged slightly. If that meant he didn’t know what had prompted this, then maybe nothing damaging had happened in the car.

  Sitting in that cramped room as L. J. set things up, it struck me how easily Melvin managed silence. Even knowing its value as a technique for eliciting information, I found myself struggling to leave the silence alone. But Melvin just sat.

  He wore a pinstriped oxford shirt and khaki pants, with his gray-flecked sandy hair cut short. His metal-framed glasses were not round enough to look owlish, but lent his face a knowing air. Casually dressy for a holiday at home. He looked like somebody used to business attire and not quite willing to revert to the faded jeans and nappy sweatshirts of a comfortable homecoming.

  “Today is Thursday, November twenty-third,” L.J. spoke into the small microphone. “Present are L.J. Peters, sheriff of Camden County, Melvin Bertram, and Avery Andrews, present as his attorney. The time is now two-fifteen P.M.

  “Mr. Bertram, as you are aware, a car matching the description of your wife’s car was discovered submerged in Luna Lake earlier this week.”

  Melvin nodded.

  “Please answer into the microphone.”

  I didn’t point out that she hadn’t actually asked a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you aware that the tag number was the one registered to your wife?”

  “Yes. A deputy informed me of that…” He paused. “Yesterday?”

  L.J. stared at him a bit longer than comfort would allow. Her skin looked pocked and waxy under the overhead lights. And her eyes were squintier than I remembered—narrow, black slits.

  “Dr. Edwin supplied us with your wife’s dental records. We were fortunate that he’s in town and still practicing.” Dr. Edwin, wildly white-haired and wizened, had been leaning between the dental chair and spit sink so long he had trouble standing up straight.

  “The forensic odontologist in Charleston has agreed to review the case for us tomorrow.”

  Boy, they’d worked quick if they’d already gotten the records to Charleston together with the body and had a specialist lined up.

  “Mr. Bertram.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Can you tell us whether the body in the 1978 Ford Thunderbird pulled from Luna Lake Tuesday of this week is that of your wife, Mrs. Lea Hopkins Bertram?”

  Melvin kept his gaze steady, fixed on L.J. But he said nothing.

  L.J. just stared, waiting.

  If the truth be told, Perry Mason reruns were as close as I’d ever gotten to a real police interrogation. So I treated this like a civil deposition with a lot of money on the table. I sat and waited.r />
  Melvin didn’t rush to confess anything. Or deny anything, either.

  Melvin studied the scarred tabletop. Perhaps coming to grips with something he’d known for fifteen years?

  “Sheriff.” He finally broke the silence. “I don’t know any more about that than you do.”

  L.J didn’t respond immediately. She just stared. Finally, brushing the tabletop with her palm, she said, “That’s your tale. I’m sittin’ on mine.”

  I sat, letting the tape hiss through the recorder. L.J was trying to provoke a reaction—a tactic I’d used myself in depositions when I wasn’t scoring any points.

  Melvin met her stare, his lips pressed together in an obvious effort to keep control. If this was L.J’s normal demeanor with bereaved widowers, she’d have trouble come reelection time. Nope, this was her “you’re a suspect” demeanor. But what did she have to lose? Melvin wasn’t registered to vote in this county.

  Finally, L.J reached for the microphone. “Thank you, Mr. Bertram.” She pronounced the interview concluded and read the time from a wristwatch the size of a pie plate.

  Then she escorted us into the hallway. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Bertram.” That ended it. No reminiscences with me about our high school days or questions about our families. She swung off down the hall, her right hand lightly checking the butt of her automatic.

  Melvin turned to me, his face weary, the skin slack. He suddenly seemed older than he had yesterday.

  “Could I trouble you for a ride home?” One corner of his mouth grinned wryly. “I’d rather not ask the sheriff, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m parked back this way.”

  Outside, he stopped at the top of the short set of concrete steps. “Why, even when you know the only possible answer, does that answer still have the power to—hurt so?”

  “I’m sorry.” I touched his shoulder, not sure what he wanted. But clearly he needed some acknowledgment of the import of what he’d just learned. “I know this must be difficult.”

  He grabbed the metal handrail and began a shambling descent. “But why? Why should it be difficult? Haven’t I known—probably for all of the fifteen years—that she had to be dead? Well, not all. Not at first. At first, I hoped—”