Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

  “So, is the ME running tests on the bones from the car? Or—”

  “Tests on what? On commercial uses for that cheesy stuff growing on her face? Come on, A’vry.”

  “Well, how about a bone expert of some kind? Or—”

  “A’vry, this is Camden County. The autopsy on that weirdy sack of bones already cut into our budget bad enough. This itn’t some fancy-britches law firm. This is a little county with a little law enforcement budget. Hell, they got us on a paper clip ration here. We gotta pay for experts. And for what? We already know who she is. Maybe Sam’s bloodhounds could come chew on those bones and render us an opinion.”

  “Okay, okay. But what about Mr. Bertram? He’s still got a cloud hanging over his head. And—”

  “What makes you think he wouldn’t still have a cloud, even if some kinda gahdam expert dicked around with those bones? Huh? My thought, he’d be likely to have a murder warrant hanging over his head, ’stead of that halo you’d have us hang there.”

  “Rudy—”

  “You ner nobody’s gonna convince me that little girl decided to kill herself by drownin’ herself in a car. And if it’s an accident, it’s one of the damdest I’ve ever seen.”

  “Rudy, cars drive off into creeks and ponds and rivers all the time. Who knows how many people just disappear and nobody knows—”

  “Scant few, if I had my guess. The way I see it, you’ve gotten yerself snookered by a wife-killer. He’s probably just lookin’ at ways to get better at gettin’ away with it.”

  “Thanks for your advice, Rudy. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “Any time.”

  “Will the ME issue a report?” I didn’t know how these things were handled. “Can I get a copy?”

  “When I get one. Sometimes takes ’em a while. Depends on how many people die in peculiar ways over the holiday weekend. I’ll send you a copy. Or you stop by and pick it up, how ’bout?”

  Rudy managed to invest that last sentence with a clear-intentioned leer.

  “Sure, Rudy. Thanks.”

  I called Melvin’s brother’s house. The kid who answered the phone went screeching through the house in search of Uncle Melvin, then Melvin’s measured voice came on the line.

  “Melvin. I just wanted to let you know.” I paused. The words came harder than I’d anticipated. “It’s—it is Lea. I’m sorry. The dental records confirmed it.” As if a medical opinion somehow sanitized the news.

  He didn’t speak for an uncomfortable number of seconds. “Thank you, Avery.” Another pause followed, but when he spoke, his voice didn’t waver or show any emotion. “When will they release the—body? For burial. Did they say?”

  “I forgot to ask. I’m sorry. I’ll call and let you know.” My words tumbled over themselves. How stupid to forget the need for funeral arrangements. Of course a grieving husband would be concerned about that, even fifteen years later. Would a murdering husband think of that so quickly? Perhaps, especially to get it over with, maybe escape the guilt if it could be buried deeper than the car had been.

  I’d spent too much time the last couple of days with suspicious cops.

  “Thank you, Avery. For everything.” He should have been a radio announcer, with a phone voice like that.

  When I called the sheriff’s number again, Rudy had already left the office. The fellow who answered the phone couldn’t tell me anything about the release of the remains. So I left a message for Rudy to call me.

  When the phone rang, I didn’t screen it with the answering machine, thinking maybe Melvin or Rudy was calling back. Jake Baker’s mush-mouthed Charleston slur took me by surprise.

  “A-ver-ee, darlin’. Ah’m so glad I caught you in. This is Jake Baker down in Charleston. How you doin’?”

  “Just fine, Jake. How ’bout you?”

  “Be a lot better if you’d return my calls and tell me you’re fixin’ to come down here and work with me.”

  “Jake, I told you when you first called, you can’t turn an insurance defense lawyer into an ambulance chaser. That defies the laws of nature.”

  Jake chuckled right on cue. “And I tole you, Averee, the only reason I call most insurance lawyers is to get ’em to write one of my clients a check. But you, you’re worth savin’. You’re one helluva trial lawyer. You just went astray temporarily, fell in with a bad crowd, those defense lawyers. But I’m the one can turn you from the dark side.”

  I had to chuckle in return. That summed up the opposing camps of civil trial lawyers as well as anything—each saw the other as lured away from the paths of righteousness by unfathomable evil.

  “Jake, I can’t change my spots. You know that.”

  “Avery, pardon me for bein’ blunt, darlin’, but what the hell you plannin’ on doin’ with yourself? After Winn Davis at the Calhoun Firm gets through trashin’ you, no stuffy, staid defense firm in the state’ll let you in the delivery entrance. And a cracker-jack litigator like you would shrivel and die stuck in some padded boardroom doing corporate transactional work.”

  Those last words he drawled out with an audible sneer. “You read the want ads? What the hell’s transactional work? It’d bore me so bad my dick’d shrivel up and fall off. And it’d bore you too, Avery. Admit it.”

  “I’m exploring other options, Jake. I appreciate—”

  “She-ut, Avery. With your now-tarnished reputation, fighting for the rights of the little people is probably the only option you have left. Nobody who pays big salaries for legal counsel likes to take risks. Hell, if they liked takin’ risks, they wouldn’t be workin’ by the hour for some corporation or defense firm. They’d get real jobs.”

  “Fighting for the little people? Don’t you mean fighting for big settlements that you grudgingly share with the little people?”

  “I can see my work’s cut out for me. But that’s okay. It’ll take time to deprogram you. But hell, this may be the only employment option left for a lawyer with a questionable past. Joe Six-Pack who got crushed in the machinery at work won’t care that you’ve been blackballed at the country club.”

  “Now, Jake, not all plaintiffs’ lawyers have dark pasts. Even I know that, watching ’em from the other side of the courtroom.”

  “Yeah, but how many of those plaintiffs’ lawyers live in an honest-to-God historical mansion in downtown Charleston and drive a Lamborghini to the beach on weekends?”

  “Not many, Jake. But you didn’t say anything about being able to sleep in that mansion of yours. You have any problems doing that?”

  He laughed. “Not a bit. I found if you fuck good and hard a couple of times before bedtime, you sleep like a baby. And fortunately, my dick’s not fallen off from boredom. What about those weenies you worked with down at the Calhoun Firm?”

  “Jake, honey, you’re a piece of work. I’ve got to go.”

  “Come do me anytime, sweetie. I’ll be in touch. Standing offer.”

  “Thanks, Jake.”

  To keep from dwelling on Jake’s assessment of my employment options, I considered stopping by the Builder’s Supply for some pressure-treated lumber. I could borrow Dad’s circular saw. But I hadn’t measured how many board feet I’d need—or estimated how much the rotting porch would cost me to fix.

  I delayed deciding what to do next by rummaging in Mom’s refrigerator for something to augment my long-past Fig Newton breakfast. I grabbed a cold chicken leg off a plate of leftovers and poured a glass of ice tea. My mom brews it right—steeped, never boiled, with loads of sugar cooked into the hot water until it’s sweet as syrup.

  I was gnawing on the chicken leg and reading the cartoon page when Mom swung in the back door.

  “You’re here! Is that all you’re having? There’s some leftover lima beans and mashed potatoes. You could just heat those up.”

  “This is fine.” I draw the line at eating cold limas or mashed potatoes. And I was too lazy to put a plate in the microwave.

  Mom set the armload of files and papers she carri
ed on the countertop. “Lucky you’re here. Something came up this morning. You might be able to help.”

  “Sure.”

  “How do you do a criminal background check?”

  My mother’s blunt but dramatic questions ceased surprising me years ago. “What do you need to check for, exactly?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just stuff in general.” She sighed and pushed a strand of faded red-gold hair off her forehead.

  I just looked at her, waiting. She knew she’d have to do better than that.

  “Okay.” She shuffled through the load of papers she’d shed, organizing them into stacks as she spoke. “You know the new Economic Development and Planning Board for Dacus? Your father serves on the board now.”

  That was news.

  “And they’ve hired a new director. Sy Bonifay. He came from downstate somewhere, I think. Maybe New Orleans or Tennessee before that. Anyway.…” She paused in her paper shuffling, as if searching for the next sentence. “Well, this sounds stupid. But his eyes just don’t look right. They remind me of somebody. And—well, they just need to check him out.”

  “Surely they did that before they hired him.” I sipped my ice tea.

  Mom gave me one of her “oh, Avery” looks. “Sure, they read his résumé or whatever. And they interviewed him. And they probably even took time to call whatever references he provided. But that’s the key, isn’t it? He provided them.”

  “Well, what doesn’t look right? About his eyes,” I asked.

  Her blue eyes focused on me over the gold-framed half-glasses perched on her nose. “They just look too big for his face.”

  “So what’s got you worried?”

  She flapped a file folder on the countertop. She didn’t direct her exasperation at me, but at her inability to articulate what felt wrong. Considering some of the projects she takes on, her instincts come in handy. But sometimes it takes a while for her to know exactly why somebody strikes her the wrong way. She says the good Lord protects her. I say anybody else would’ve been found dead in a ditch a long time ago.

  “Avery—I don’t know. Just—how do you do a criminal check?”

  I shrugged. “L.J. ought to be able to run one for you, if it’s important.”

  “So the sheriff can just plug in his name and find out—what?”

  “She’ll need his social security number. And maybe his birth date. But the national system should turn up any felony convictions.”

  She frowned. “Only convictions? Not arrests?”

  I shook my head. “And no misdemeanors.”

  “Such as?”

  “Most of those, you likely wouldn’t care about. You know, jaywalking, traffic fines, that sort of thing. Trouble is, sometimes more serious things get pled down to misdemeanors.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes a case that a prosecutor can’t quite prove for some reason will get bumped down to a lesser charge, in exchange for a plea agreement. The guy pleads guilty to something, and the county avoids the expense of a trial it might not win.”

  “What kind of cases?”

  “Depends. Maybe something like arson, which is often hard to prove. Or drunk driving. Or child abuse or sexual assault.”

  Her frown deepened, and I hastened to explain. “That’s usually cases where the victim is too scared to testify or wouldn’t make a good witness for some reason.”

  The valley stayed between her eyebrows. “So how can you find out about misdemeanors if they aren’t on this national system?”

  “You could ask L.J. to make sure. I think you still have to do a county-by-county search of the records. And then sometimes neighboring counties. Sounds like this Sy Bonifay has lived a lot of places, though. That’d take a lot of time and money to do a thorough search.”

  Mom nodded, thoughtful. “It’s probably nothing. I’m just curious, is all. He—maybe I just need to get to know him better.”

  I didn’t press her any further. She’d tell me when she got ready. Or she’d keep her mouth shut. Not much I could do to push her one way or the other

  Seven

  I loaded Dad’s circular saw in the Mustang’s trunk and stopped by the builder’s supply for a few boards and nails just to get started on the porch.

  As I turned toward the mountains, the cloud cover that had opened the day began to lift. On cool days, the mountains that shelter the north of town turn a striking cobalt blue as the clouds lift. The scene always takes my breath, a deep, looming blue, with its overshadowing gray-bottomed clouds.

  I drove, leaning with a practiced memory into the curves, the car’s tires burping only slightly as I pushed the accelerator in the depth of each curve. A melancholy enveloped me. Before I’d left my parents’ house, I’d called Melvin to pass along a message from Rudy Mellin. Lea’s body wouldn’t be released immediately, since the investigation was ongoing.

  Ordinarily I hate talking by telephone, mostly because I can’t read the person on the other end. But even without visual clues, the despair in Melvin’s voice sounded palpable, an emotion too strong to bear in person. I felt an odd gratitude for the separation that technology provided, the simultaneous insulation and intimacy of wires and distance.

  How had Melvin dealt with the disappearance of his wife? Had he loved her? Something about his reactions now, the quiet, sad calm, spoke of a depth of feeling that had a calm surface but had not grown shallow over the last fifteen years. What would it be like if someone you loved just disappeared? To not know how. Or why. Or where. To know the whole town whispered. And to have the police looking nowhere but at you.

  What must the last fifteen years have done to him? After fifteen years, he could finally grieve, formally and openly—but still under suspicion. And still with no body to bury.

  The cool air off the lake gave me energy I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The work on the porch progressed surprisingly well. I didn’t slice off any personal appendages, drop any glass panes, or hack off any key support timbers on the porch. A couple more windows were winter tight, and I’d repaired enough of the porch to walk to the front door without falling through to the clammy dirt underneath. Before I bought more supplies, I’d have to sit down with my checkbook and take a serious look at my financial reality. And I still needed to decide what I’d do about that reality.

  I hadn’t thought much past coming to Dacus. A couple of weeks ago, I’d simply run away from Columbia. I still had no idea what, if anything, I should run toward. I’d never imagined coming back to Dacus to stay. Yet somehow, with everyone else assuming I’d come here to stay, I found myself mentally trying it on for size.

  Even given the charity of my family, it cost a lot to merely exist. But I currently spent a whole heck of a lot less to maintain my lifestyle now than a month ago. Amazing what you could do without, once it has been ripped from your grasp.

  The sun began sketching deep shadows from the house to the water’s edge. That prickle of someone staring, a sense that someone stood nearby, tickled the back of my neck. I’d been so engrossed in prying off, measuring, measuring again, sawing, and nailing down, I don’t know how long she’d stood there, watching me.

  “No doubt about who your granddaddy was,” she said.

  She wore a blue down vest with a plaid shirt and jeans. A thick braided pigtail reached halfway to her waist, with a soft halo of gray curls fuzzing around her face. Standing near the porch, she gave the impression she stood eye level with me, a large woman who seemed to fill up more space than she actually required.

  “You knew my grandfather?”

  “Sure did.”

  Something about me, the cabin, or life in general amused her.

  “Sure did,” she repeated. “Your granddaddy and I went back a ways. He knew my daddy. Used to play on that porch where you’re standing when I was a little girl. While they talked men talk.” The crinkles near her eyes deepened.

  “I’m Avery Andrews.”

  I stood on my newly rep
aired step to offer her a handshake, which she cupped in both her strong, rough hands. Like her hands, her face was large but not fleshy.

  “I’m Sadie Waynes. You must know you look like him.”

  I smiled. I didn’t want to say no, I had no such idea. My grandfather had been a tall, gaunt man, old when my mother was born. I, on the other hand, at five foot two, was anything but tall and gaunt.

  She must have read in my face what I didn’t speak. “A’ course, when I say folks look like somebody, not too many would agree. Depends on what you choose to see, I always say.” She didn’t elaborate. “You’re named for your granddaddy.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re the one who went to law school. He was rare proud of you. You back to stay?”

  I was disconcerted by how much this big-boned woman who came out of the woods knew about me. Rather than answer, I asked, “Do you live around here?”

  She gestured past my cabin, over the hill away from the lake. “My family’s place is up Back Creek Cove.”

  I’d never been struck before by how odd it sounded to call a landlocked draw a cove. Odd, now that I could see my growing-up place through distant eyes. Sadie Waynes studied me as she might someone who’d come from a distance. I found myself studying her in much the same way. Even in a place as small as Dacus, we didn’t know each other, but some of the mountain people maintain an isolation from Dacus proper.

  “So you knew my grandfather,” I repeated for lack of anything better to say.

  She nodded, hooking her fingertips into her jeans pockets. “For as long as I can remember. A wonderful man. Suffered no fools gladly.” She kept eyeing me as if she planned on buying me.

  “What brings you over to the lake?” I asked, trying to move the conversation—and her study—on to other things.

  She indicated a croaker sack in a heap at her feet. “Diggin’ ’sang.”

  Ginseng, the much-prized forked root used in herbal remedies and health potions, grew in the hollows. Digging it required patience and a constitution given to long walks, sharp looking, and patient stooping.