Southern Fried

by Cathy Pickens

  Flailing toward shore more aptly described my progress. One of the perversities of water is that slow, steady movements are always more effective than powerful assaults. But unreasoned fear never learns.

  I dragged the boat as far onto the grassy bank as I could but didn’t take time to flip it upside down. A shot of adrenaline electrified the hairs on the backs of my wrists.

  I ran to the sheltering porch. As I reached for the doorknob, a low voice came from the shadows of the porch.

  “You left your door unlocked.”

  Twelve

  At the sound of the voice, I tried to yelp, but my terrified bolt across the lake and the yard didn’t leave my lungs enough air. I couldn’t see who sat in the shadows.

  “Sorry,” the voice said, the speaker certainly able to see my fright. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Came over to check on you.”

  Sadie Waynes. I didn’t know whether to hug the woman or slap her. I merely nodded, my hand on my chest. In the gloom, I couldn’t make out her rawboned face or the thick gray braided club of her hair.

  “Heard them motorcycles earlier. Didn’t think much about it. Thought they ’uz just passin’. Till I heard ’em start up again after a bit.”

  The rocking chair where she sat creaked once. “I come straightaway, but you ’uz gone. Got right worried. Then I saw the boat out there. Moon’s bright.”

  I nodded, trying to soften my huffing.

  “So I decided to wait.” She didn’t say anything about my frenzied paddling or my mad dash from the boat. Which probably meant I’d looked really stupid. Maybe if I’d dashed into the bathroom or something, I could have saved a little face. Doubtful.

  “Thanks for checking on me. I really appreciate it. My motorcycle visitors were a scary bunch. Glad to know you were there.”

  “Yep. Caught sight of ’em down the road, as I came over the hill.”

  “I’m sure glad to know you can hear stuff that happens here. You know. Back up at your house.”

  “Been hard to miss a dozen souped-up ’cycles,” she said matter-of-factly. ” ’Course, lots goes on up here that it’s best to keep an eye on.”

  Her rocking chair set up a slow, measured creak. “Not that folks always want to know what you’ve seen,” she added.

  The steady creak came as an invitation. I pulled the other rocking chair across the porch, scraping it over the rough boards, and joined her in the gloom. Sadie didn’t seem in any hurry to leave, now that she was here. And I couldn’t very well leave; it was my porch.

  We spent a few minutes rocking, watching the moon streak the lake with pale color. To make conversation, finally I said, “I got to admit, being on that lake tonight spooked me a bit.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I got to thinking about that car, with that girl trapped in it, under the water for all those years.”

  Gentle creaking came as the only reply.

  “Were you living up here then? When she disappeared? Did they look for her around here?”

  “Yep. I ’uz here, all right. Lived here all my life. Before there ’uz even a lake. And yeah, they looked for her here. Found some of her painting stuff left on a picnic table near the lake. Not a sign of her anywhere.”

  She paused long enough that I thought the story had ended, but then she added, “They even drug the lake looking for her.”

  “How could they miss a whole car?”

  I sensed rather than saw Sadie shrug beside me. “Had divers and boats and big iron grappling hooks. Spent a coupla days. Hard to imagine missin’ a car in a little puddle of water like that. But the fellas said at the time that the visibility ’uz so bad, they wouldn’t know if the Titanic had sunk in there.”

  I studied the lake. I knew from swimming in it that the water stayed murky and red-stained, particularly after heavy rain churned the muddy bottom.

  “ ’Course, they weren’t lookin’ for a car. Only a body. They thought her car’d been stolen and her dumped in the lake. Nobody really expected to find a car under there. Maybe if they’d listened at the time. But then, even I ’uz surprised.”

  “Listened?”

  She took a pause before she answered. “I seen her. That day. I told ’em.”

  I turned to face her. “You saw Lea Bertram up here the day she disappeared?”

  In the reflected moonlight, she nodded. The angles of her large-boned face were solemn.

  “Nothin’ that mattered, a ’course. But still. Her family musta been upset, not knowin’ for so long. But they wouldn’t listen.”

  “Her family?”

  “No, no. The po-lice. They had it figgered that she ran off with somebody. But the somebody I saw her with didn’t make sense to them. Guess even then, I ’uz just a crazy old mountain woman. What did I know?”

  “You saw her up here with somebody? And they wouldn’t listen?”

  “Oh, they listened to me. But they listened louder to his mama. ’Course, who’d know best where her son was—me, what saw him with my own two eyes, or his momma?”

  “Who’d you see, Miss Sadie?”

  She rocked for a few beats. “I have to be accurate. Don’t go listenin’ to an old woman who lets her stories get a step ahead of the truth. If I ’uz full honest, I didn’t see him that day. Only his car. But I seen him plenty enough times, just like that day. And her with her paintin’ stuff sittin’ on the table while they ’uz entertainin’ themselves inside that big Cadillac. And that’s what I told the police.”

  “Whose car did you see, Miss Sadie?”

  “That Garnet boy’s.”

  “Harry Garnet?”

  “As sad as it is, yes’m. His daddy’s big silver Cadillac, the one he always drove up here to play in.”

  “To meet Lea Bertram?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Did the cops ask about that? Did she ever meet other men up here?” My questions spilled out, except the one I couldn’t ask: Did her husband know?

  “I don’t rightly know. Seems they started comin’ up after the summer folks packed up and went home. And it ’uz always that big silver Cadillac. Does seem her husband’d notice that she went away to paint a lot but never had any paintin’s to show for it.”

  Now that she mentioned it, that part of the story had bothered me. Granted, I had known Lea Hopkins Bertram only by reputation, but she’d never sounded much like the dedicated-artist type.

  “The cops questioned Harry Garnet. He must have had a plausible story.”

  The sound Sadie made wasn’t quite rude enough to be a snort. She rocked a few creaks before she said, “Or a daddy with money and a momma with a sharp tongue.”

  I nodded a silent acknowledgment. The Garnet name would have been formidable protection. Now, launching a statewide campaign, Harry Garnet wouldn’t want to be harvesting any long-planted wild oats.

  We rocked with our own thoughts. That quiet lake—never more sound than the occasional lapping of tiny waves on mud banks—that lake must know so much, I mused. Surely the sheriff would’ve listened to Sadie Waynes, the quiet lady who knew so much.

  Who had Sadie Waynes been fifteen years ago? Maybe lines on her face and gray in her hair lent her more authority now than she’d had then. Maybe the cops had seen someone far different than I saw now; the strong, watchful woman from over the ridge.

  Even she admitted that she hadn’t actually seen Harry Garnet that day. Only the car he usually drove. But surely Sheriff Jacobs had followed up on that.

  Maybe what Sadie knew of the story had become shaded by time—or by the distance she felt from town people. Not even Harrison Garnet’s position could have protected Harry if there’d been any serious suspicion that he’d been involved in Lea Bertram’s disappearance.

  But that was the key, wasn’t it? Lea Bertram had simply disappeared. Run off with another man, so the story went. Would the sheriff have had a different take on Sadie Waynes’s story if he’d known that Lea had run no farther than the bottom of Luna Lake?

&
nbsp; I shivered slightly. “Miss Sadie, can I get you something to drink?”

  Her rocking chair gave a mighty creak as she rocked forward, both hands planted firmly on the chair arms. “No. Thank ye. I gotta be going.”

  “Well… um.” What was the protocol with a would-be rescuer? “Could I—give you a lift home?”

  “Nope. You know how the roads run here. Take you longer to drive than it’d take me to walk. ’Predate it, though. That’s your granddaddy’s car,” she observed as we walked together around the side of the cabin.

  “Yes’m. My dad fixed it up for me to use.” I didn’t try to explain more than that.

  “Yep. I remember when he got that. Like a tomcat with a brand-new tail. He thought for a while folks’d think him an old fool. Not that what folks thought sat long with your granddaddy.” She gave what sounded almost like a chuckle.

  “Are you sure I can’t give you a ride home?”

  She waved my words away. “Moon’s almost full light.”

  “Miss Sadie, thanks again. For checking on me.”

  She turned to face me, staring until her gaze became almost uncomfortable. “Something’ about you reminds me of your granddaddy. He ’uz one fine man. ’Bout the best I’ve ever known.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say. She turned and walked into the woods, waving once when I called a last thank-you before I lost sight of her in the darkness.

  She’d never asked what the motorcyclists wanted.

  Not until I’d brushed my teeth, getting ready for bed, did it dawn on me that I hadn’t heard what happened to Donlee Griggs at the waterfall.

  For half a second, I toyed with the idea of driving back to the pay phone to call the sheriff’s office. But the idiot answering the phone likely didn’t know—or wouldn’t remember, if he did know. Besides, the sheriff’s department should be out hunting down Noodle, desperado arsonist.

  I’d wait until morning to learn the fate of Donlee. If he hadn’t actually succeeded in killing himself—or at least doing himself some grievous bodily harm—maybe I’d volunteer to do it for him out of sheer exasperation.

  I wandered into the office the next morning a little after nine. When I’d practiced in Columbia, I’d usually been one of the first ones into the office and one of the last ones to leave. That way, I’d found nobody much questioned where I spent the rest of the day.

  Now, nobody questioned anything I did. Except Lou Wray, who seemed to question my very presence in her universe. We exchanged a smile for a cold shoulder, and I ambled back to my office. I’d brought the Atlanta and Greenville papers, a weekold Newsweek, and a thermal mug of iced coffee. I didn’t want to presume upon her kindness by partaking from Lou’s coffeepot.

  I figured I’d read the papers, drink my coffee, maybe call to find out about Donlee. Then rearrange the pencils in my desk drawer.

  Before I finished the comics, the phone startled me by ringing—twice before I fumbled around and picked it up.

  “Avery Andrews’s office.” I tried to mimic the purr the Calhoun Firm’s senior secretaries always used.

  “Avery, honey, is that you? You probably don’t remember me, but I know your mama. And, of course, her aunts. And—well, your whole family. I saw you at the Frank Dobbins circle meeting last week and, well, I decided you were just the one to help. You bein’ a lawyer. And you bein’ at that meeting to hear the outrage for yourself. I’ve stewed about this for the better part of a week. Then I decided, who better to handle this than a lawyer? And who better than Emma Andrews’s little girl? That man must be stopped. The outrage of it all!”

  Her voice built to a crescendo, then silence. She must have stopped for a breath.

  Uh-oh. I should have paid better attention to the lecture at the circle meeting. I’d obviously missed the good parts.

  “Avery, you still there?”

  “Um, yes’m. I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Geneva Gadsden, honey.” She repeated it slowly, as if to a half-witted child who had trouble taking a message for her mother. “Ge-ne-va Gads-den.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I knew the name, but couldn’t put a face or a body with it. “Miz Gadsden, if you have something you think I could help you with, perhaps we could set up an appointment. You could come in and we could talk about it.”

  “What’s there to talk about? All you need to do is think of some way to stop that man. He’s an outrage. He must be silenced. By any means necessary.”

  Maybe she mistakenly thought she’d reached the Soldier of Fortune hit man hotline. “Miz Gadsden, I seem to have missed something. Perhaps if you could start at the beginning. So the notes I’m taking will be more complete.”

  An exasperated sigh rushed through the phone line as I pulled a legal pad and pencil from the desk drawer. They weren’t hard to locate, since the drawer held nothing else.

  “You were there, Avery. You heard him with your own two ears. Surely even God would find him a blasphemer and an abomination. Weren’t you listenin’? How could he say such things about Katie Hope? Surely, if nothing else, that’s defamation of character. So sue him or something.”

  Katie Hope? The Civil War Confederate spy that fellow had talked about at the circle meeting? What had he said about her? How could I tell Geneva that no, I hadn’t heard what he’d said? Geneva Gadsden sounded wrought up enough, she might throw a blood clot.

  “Miz Gadsden, it wouldn’t be possible to sue because somebody defamed a dead person. You see, the law requires—”

  “I don’t give a gnat’s kneecap what the law requires. That-man-must-be-stopped.” She punched each word. “The things he said. He called her a traitor. Claimed that she was a Yankee sympathizer. That she—that she had relations with both Yankee soldiers and Southern boys and passed on information. I never!”

  The Three Stooges’ salacious “we-ell, I can see why” popped unbidden to mind.

  “Miz Gadsden, perhaps if you’d come into the office, you could outline for me your exact complaints. If, in his book, he’s made any misstatements of fact, then perhaps—”

  “Misstatements of fact, my grandmother’s knickers. Avery, if you’re worried that I won’t pay you—of course, my husband is close with the family budget. But he knows what a passion I have for preserving our local history. I can assure you, you’ll be paid. As long as you aren’t trying to take advantage.”

  “Miz Gadsden, I’ll be happy to have an initial consultation free of charge. If there’s any reasonable avenue we can pursue, we can talk about fees at that time. But—”

  “Free, you say? What time would be good for you?”

  So as not to appear too desperate, which I certainly wasn’t, particularly since she likely would never pay a cent, I said, “How about tomorrow morning? Around ten? I have an office in Carlton—”

  “I know. Your aunt Letha told me. Ten o’clock, then. Good-bye.”

  I’d better check on this Katie Hope scandal, find out from somebody what that fellow had said at the meeting or in his book. Maybe I needed a couple of burly guys with a straitjacket and a syringe to greet Geneva Gadsden tomorrow morning.

  When the intercom on my phone buzzed, it took a second to register. Then I couldn’t figure out how to respond. My initial instinct was to stick my head out the door and yell down the hall. But, on a hunch that it might work like the system at the Calhoun Firm, I picked up the phone receiver and said, “Hello?”

  Nothing. Even with some button-pushing, still nothing happened.

  I trundled down the dingy hall to the receptionist’s office. Lou Wray turned slowly when I asked, “Excuse me, did you buzz my office?”

  She didn’t have a phone receiver in her hand. Maybe she’d given up while I fruitlessly punched buttons. She gave me the fish eye, then said with deliberation, “You have a visitor.”

  She didn’t offer to introduce me to my visitor, as I’d seen her do with Carlton Earner’s clients. And that failure proved awkward when I stepped across the hall to the wa
iting room. I had no idea whom I should ask for.

  On the camel-back sofa sat a girl who looked too young to be the mother of the two children playing around her feet, though, judging from her laconic indifference, she probably was. She’d likely come to divorce their dad or to enforce a child support agreement.

  A man in a blue work shirt, his greasy boots planted firmly on the fake Oriental rug, clutched Field & Stream with his grease-blackened fingers.

  A plump woman in a print shirt and lime green polyester pants filled the armchair in the front window. Although plump wasn’t the right word. Doughy, maybe.

  Before I could turn and saunter across the hall to ask Lou Wray to tell me who the hell had come to see me, the large woman in the window spoke up.

  “Miz Andrews?”

  I nodded and smiled.

  She smiled back and struggled out of the armchair. “Miz Andrews, I’m Nila Earling. I’m sorry to trouble you on such short notice, but I ’uz in town takin’ care of some business and—well, I hoped you might have some time to see me.”

  Against her stomach, she clutched an oversize handbag with a tarnished gold clasp. Cardboard stiffener showed through the cracks in the strap.

  “Certainly. Won’t you step back to my office?”

  I glared at Lou Wray as we passed her office—for all the good it did, since she sat with her rigid back to us.

  “Have a seat.” I motioned to the chair closest to the door while I took the other one in front of the desk. I thought sitting together might put her at ease enough that she’d relax. But she gripped her handbag in a two-fisted clutch against her midsection and smiled at me.

  Her skin sagged, eggy sallow, and the pockmarks looked like half-formed bubbles on a partially cooked pancake. Her eyes looked like two pale blueberries that had been pressed into the batter.

  She continued to smile, a bland, permanent smile that likely didn’t evidence pleasure as much as it did a tried-and-true method for coping with the world. She smiled. And clutched her purse in front of her.