Can’t Never Tell

by Unknown

  “Rinda left that. She said it had—everything?” he said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Can you—do whatever needs to be done?”

  “Why don’t we wait?” I said. “There’s nothing that can’t wait until—”

  He shook his head and wiped his palms along his thighs. “Eden said I shouldn’t wait. That it would be better to get things rolling. The sooner I get the money, the sooner I can invest it. Time value of money, you know.”

  He was parroting a lecture he’d heard more than once. From Eden Rand? I was back to the question, why the rush?

  As I studied him, huddled in the wing chair next to mine, I wondered what I was seeing. The more he talked, the more I suspected this was the real Rog Reimann. Not overmedicated, just spacey. Frank or someone who knew him well could give me more insight, but this looked like the real Rog. He was clearly stunned by Rinda’s sudden death, but, judging from Rinda’s careful list of contacts, he was obviously used to someone else taking charge of life’s little details.

  Had it always been that way with Rinda? Had she “arranged” their love affair as neatly as she planned their financial affairs? Was Rog content with being led around by the nose—or by something else? I couldn’t picture him carried away in a passionate embrace. I could see him led away by someone with a good idea what she wanted from him.

  Or could this all be an artful act? Could he be hiding something more sinister behind his flaky helplessness? According to his colleagues, Rog was a respected professional, someone who attracted substantial research grants. Was he also a clever manipulator? Self-absorbed criminals—and they were all self-absorbed—often created plausible decoys, drawing attention away from their real motives. Was the helpless act and his reliance on Eden a decoy? Was he pulling the puppet strings, while making it appear that Eden was?

  My mind flashed to the gorilla girl act. What was the costume and where were the mirrors?

  “I’ll make some calls and be back in touch,” I said. My calls would involve finding a lawyer more qualified than I was to handle his estate matters, then I could suggest that Rog contact that lawyer.

  Rog didn’t look relieved or even aware that he’d convinced me to see things his way. He looked—unfazed.

  “Have you finalized plans for the service?” I asked. That was the nicest way I knew to ask, without saying, Has the ME released her body?

  “Um. Yeah. We’re waiting until Friday. For family and friends from out of town.”

  “I see.” I stood, and he followed my lead to the door. Eden was on her feet, staring out the front window. If she’d tried to listen in at the door, she’d have found how solid and well-fitted the pocket doors were.

  “I’ll be back in touch, Dr. Reimann.” I offered my hand. He stared a moment, then took it in his limp grasp.

  Eden guided her charge by the elbow into the front hall, glancing every few steps at his face for some clue to his state of mind.

  I sure hoped Rog Reimann was ready to have Eden Rand in charge of his life because she’d already appointed herself to the role.

  Why hadn’t Rudy returned my call? Why couldn’t other people be up and working early on Monday morning, the day before the Fourth of July? Heck, was Rudy off this week? He’d said he wasn’t taking any time off, but he might have changed his mind. If he was in town, I knew where he’d be—if Maylene’s wasn’t closed today.

  I was disappointed to find that Rudy wasn’t inside enjoying the unquaintness of Maylene’s. I nodded at Mr. Earnest, my dad’s barber, who shared a table with a guy in a seersucker suit eating an omelet and grits. I hadn’t brought anything to read, and it felt lonely, staring around at the half-empty restaurant.

  The reduced workload did nothing to brighten the attitude of the one waitress who was working the day before the Fourth. She took my order—oatmeal with walnuts and an ice tea—but nothing said she was happy about it.

  I studied the scratches on the tabletop, trying to decide whether they formed a Rorschach outline or a meditative maze I could trace with my finger. A flash of blue seersucker appeared at my table.

  “Avery? Ken Tharp.”

  I stared at him with some interest as he offered his hand. An athletic man, he kept his wiry blond hair cut short to control the curls.

  He nodded toward the seat across from me. “Mind if I interrupt for a minute?”

  “Not at all.”

  He sat sideways in the booth, not sliding in for a long stay. His dark blue eyes studied me. He had a strong, tanned face, though his summer suit indicated that he worked in an office.

  “Can you tell me anything about the investigation into Rinda Reimann’s—death?” His voice caught and his eyes glistened. Given the gossip, I could understand his emotion. I just wasn’t used to men wearing it quite so close to the surface.

  I held up my hand to stop him. “I don’t—”

  “I understand you can’t violate any attorney-client privilege.” He said it as if it had a bad taste. “But—”

  “Mr. Tharp, I’m not sure why you think I know anything. The sheriff or one of the investigators—”

  “They won’t talk to me. I’m not family. All Peters wants to do is ask questions and make snide comments. As Rog’s lawyer, I—”

  “I’m not Rog’s lawyer. And if I was, I wouldn’t be free to talk about it.”

  “You’re not?” His tumble of words stopped and his mouth hung slack for a moment. “I heard—I—”

  I searched for some soothing, innocuous balm I could offer to smooth his hurt and anger.

  His mouth tightened and he cut me off. “What I want to know is, when is that worthless excuse for a sheriff going to arrest the murderer? Has he paid her off with the money he made the last time he got away with murder?”

  I held up my hand to stop him, but he had to say what had been gnawing at him. The story about the first Mrs. Reimann’s car accident wasn’t going to answer his anger. Besides, I wouldn’t trust the story until Shamanique had worked her magic and confirmed it.

  “How can he just wander around free while Rinda is—” The rest of the sentence wouldn’t come. He slammed his hand on the table. The scars on the table no longer brought to mind a meditative maze.

  “Mr. Tharp, I’m so sorry. I know you and Rinda were—close.”

  I saw nothing in his red-rimmed eyes that would respond to anything I had to offer. No use arguing that her death could’ve been an accident.

  Was this anger grown from real grief? The anger was certainly real. It was the grief I couldn’t be sure about. Was the anger a mask, for guilt or something else?

  Ken hadn’t been on the mountain that day—at least, not that any of us saw. That didn’t mean he wasn’t. It was, after all, a large wilderness area. What were all the whispered phone conversations that day? Plans for a hot rendezvous later that morning? The passionate twitterings that mean nothing except to the two people exchanging them? Or was it a prolonged argument? Was Rinda breaking it off? Was Ken having second thoughts? Had the phone calls not settled the issue and he’d driven to Bow Falls for a face-to-face that had gone horribly wrong?

  Could he read any of my wild speculation in my expression? His gaze was fixed on my face, his jaw muscles knotting and working, but he didn’t act as though he saw me.

  Was I sitting across from a clever killer, someone who’d decided the best defense was an offensive strike on Rog Reimann? That seemed unlikely. His emotion felt too raw to be so calculated. But what did I know? He clearly wasn’t rational or in control.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tharp. I know it’s hard to comprehend.” I made soothing sounds, just as I’d been taught to do by the gentle ex-nun who’d taught the grief-counseling course I’d taken in law school. It had been something to give me another focus, a few Sunday evenings in a church meeting room away from studying civil procedure and contracts. I’d had no idea how useful it would be in my life as a lawyer, or how difficult it was to look at grief and realize how impotent you rea
lly were in the face of it.

  I felt guilty turning Ken Tharp into an ideal fantasy suspect. Maybe that was my way of holding his anger at arm’s length. He didn’t have the luxury or release of grieving openly. She’d been another man’s wife. Would an adulterer feel free to call the preacher for a grief-counseling session? He certainly wouldn’t be wrapped in the public sympathy a spouse would be offered. Nobody was bringing plates of pound cake and fried chicken to his house. He was out in the cold, alone with an impotent anger. Just alone.

  I reached across the table and laid my hand on his knotted fist. He jumped, as if just realizing I was there.

  I held his gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

  He jerked his hand away and began to blink rapidly. Without another word, he rose from the booth and headed for the door, acknowledging no one else in the restaurant.

  With “impeccable” timing, the waitress plunked the ironstone bowl of oatmeal in front of me and sashayed off without asking if I wanted more sweet tea.

  I sat for a moment, my head bowed. Anybody watching would assume I was praying over my breakfast, but I was numbed by Ken Tharp’s visit, by his aloneness.

  The booth across from me creaked and I jerked my head up.

  “Rudy!”

  “You okay?” He looked genuinely worried.

  “Uh, yeah. Fine.”

  “I know the food here itn’t great, but it itn’t that bad. Tell them to drop it on a hot griddle, it’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks.” Rudy’s presence was stolid and calming after Ken Tharp’s unreachable emotion.

  Even though the waitress wasn’t doing anything but standing near the coffee machine picking at her cuticles, it still took a minute before Rudy could attract her attention and wave her over to take his order.

  “You’re later than usual,” he said. His thick finger wouldn’t fit in the handle, so he wrapped his hand around the battered ceramic mug.

  “You, too. Hear anything on those two autopsies?”

  “No ‘Good morning, Deputy, what kind of gas mileage you getting on that new cruiser the department bought?’ No friendly chitchat?”

  I gave him an exaggerated frown. “How’s the mileage?”

  “It sucks eggs.”

  “The taxpayers will be disappointed to hear that.”

  It was his turn to give a frown, this one not false or exaggerated.

  “Did you get the medical examiner’s reports?”

  “Preliminary. On both of them.”

  “And?” He was making this difficult. Had he worked the night shift? Best not to ask. He just needed to drink his coffee and tell me what I wanted to know. “What about the mummy man?”

  “He was just that. Mummified,” he said, then paused to sip his coffee before he offered the crowning surprise. “With arsenic.”

  “He was poisoned?”

  Rudy, with his impeccable timing, knew the word arsenic would startle me, but he remained calm, as if it was all in a typical day.

  “No.” He drawled it out. “Embalmed with it.”

  “Embalmed with it? How’d they know that?” That explained Rudy’s bored recitation, despite the dramatic news.

  “You don’t poison somebody with several pounds of arsenic, for starters.” He settled back. “How old you think that body was? How long you guess he’s been dead?”

  “How the heck should I know? He looked fresh, if that’s what you mean. Not rotten or anything.”

  “The ME said they used arsenic to embalm bodies from around the Civil War to about the turn of the century. Some morticians continued using it into the 1930s, before they got concerned about the risks of using it in such quantities. Not healthy having lots of that stuff wandering around loose because it was darn popular for making people dead as well as preserving them afterwards. Not to mention what happens if it leaches from a graveyard into someone’s well. So they started using other embalming methods. Maybe not better ones, though, because arsenic preserves really well. As you saw.”

  “So that guy’s been dead what? Seventy plus years?”

  “Wish I looked that good now.”

  The stump of the leg lying on the floor came to mind. Dry, a bit scaly. That hadn’t looked so good. Neither had those half-closed eyes.

  “What killed him?”

  “Remarkably easy to tell, according to the ME, with everything so well preserved. An aneurysm.”

  “No sign of foul play?”

  “Apparently not. Very straightforward cause and manner of death. Unless somebody scared him into having a stroke.” Rudy chortled at the thought. “Then put him in a horror house. That’s a good one.”

  “A straightforward cause and manner of death still doesn’t explain how he ended up traveling the carnie circuit in a horror house. Could the ME estimate the date of death any closer?”

  “Nope. Apparently the state of preservation makes that difficult. No clues from the clothes or anything, since he’d been dressed in some sort of costume. A couple of layers, actually.”

  “So now what happens to him?”

  Rudy sat back while the waitress thumped his plate—his one, solitary plate of food—in front of him.

  “On a diet?” I asked, eyeing the two eggs, steaming sea of buttered grits, four strips of bacon, and two pieces of buttered toast sliced into triangles.

  “Cutting back some,” he said, snappishly.

  I stirred a dollop of syrup into my oatmeal and returned to the topic.

  “Any idea who the guy is?”

  “Not a clue. Reckon they’ll keep him for a while. Depends on how backed up the cooler is. My guess would be he’s headed for potter’s field.”

  That was sad. After a life on display, to be relegated to a life of anonymity. I observed a moment of silence with my mouth full of oatmeal.

  Rudy finished chopping his runny egg yolks into his grits. As he used his fork to scoop the mess onto a piece of toast, I asked, “What about Rinda? Anything unusual?”

  He stopped, toast poised. “Lots of questions around that one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Autopsies don’t tell the whole tale. Sometimes you got to get to the real story other ways.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I got people to talk to.”

  “About what?”

  He shoved a bite of dripping toast and grits into his mouth.

  “You’re not going to say?”

  He chewed and swallowed, slow and deliberate. “Not at liberty to divulge at this time, Counselor.”

  “Fine,” I said. Not much I could threaten or cajole him with and not much point. He’d talk when he could—or when he wanted to. We ate in a companionable quiet, though I felt a sense of unease thinking back on my meeting with Rog Reimann. Maybe Rudy’s secret really was none of my business. Maybe it was safely unrelated to my potential new client. Somehow I doubted it.

  I sat with Rudy while he finished off his diet breakfast and wiped his plate clean with the last bite of buttery toast.

  We said goodbye at the cash register. “See you later, A–vry,” he drawled as I left him hitching his pants up at the cash register and reaching for a toothpick.

  Monday Morning

  After I got back to my office, I studied the list of contact numbers Rog Reimann had given me. I’d never handled an estate before, didn’t really know where to begin, and doubted it was something I wanted to learn to do.

  I’d have to check with another lawyer, probably Carlton Barner. Carlton had been my unofficial mentor since I’d returned to Dacus, when I found myself having to learn how much law I didn’t know. Working in a specialized trial practice had left a lot of holes in what I knew about nitty-gritty law—the kind of stuff clients really need their lawyer to know.

  I still wanted to make sure Rog Reimann was in his right mind—or at least his usual mind—which was why I hadn’t bothered having him sign a fee agreement. Being unable to collect a fee from him was the least of my worries.
/>   Rog had been so insistent on starting the insurance collection process. The rush seemed in poor taste, but he was getting a lot of pressure from Eden. Maybe paying for the funeral was a financial stretch for him. I could also see how focusing on getting something done might serve to distract him, in some small measure, from his grief. It wouldn’t hurt to get the ball rolling, if it made him feel better. I could introduce him to Carlton or someone more experienced later in the week, or next week after the funeral, after some of his shock had worn off.

  I called the number listed beside Life Insurance on Rinda’s neat list, then punched my way through the computerized prompts until I got a female voice asking for policy numbers and other information, which I read from Rinda’s careful list. I listened to several minutes of Muzak until a rich, slow male voice said, “Hello? Miz Andrews?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are calling in reference to . . . ?” He left the question hanging.

  “Rinda Reimann.” I gave him the policy number so he could confirm I wasn’t a random drive-by caller.

  “You phoned this weekend?” His drawl was honey-smooth. I pictured him as a black man, probably because his rich voice sounded like the singer Barry White.

  “Um, no. No, I didn’t.”

  The line was quiet for a moment. “You didn’t call to notify us that the insured was deceased?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who did call?”

  “No, I don’t.” How strange. “Didn’t you get the caller’s name?”

  “She left a message, but no name.”

  “Dr. Reimann has asked if I would handle some of the details of his wife’s estate.”

  “Are you a member of the deceased’s immediate family?”

  “No, I’m an attorney.”

  Another pause. “I see. Perhaps you can give me some of the information I’ll need to begin processing this claim. Do you have a death certificate?”

  “No-o. Not yet. I understand the medical examiner has completed the autopsy, so the certificate should be available shortly.”

  “Mm-hm. So you don’t know the cause and manner of death.”

  “Not officially, no. I do know she fell off a waterfall.”