Can’t Never Tell

by Unknown

  Adrienne stepped up to the reporter. The woman with lacquered blond hair gave Adrienne a glance and no more than a quarter of a smile, offered with the air of someone who had deadlines and no time to waste. Even though the girl looked no more than twenty, she’d obviously earned her spot and planned to earn others.

  Adrienne had met her match but seemed unwilling to concede.

  “Ms. Andrews?” Microphone in hand, camera in tow, the reporter advanced on me. The cameraman switched on a blinding light the size of a car headlamp. Prisoners who appear on television doing the jail perp walk throw their arms over their heads—not to hide their identity but to protect their eyesight.

  I’d been through this before, during trials that had captured media attention. It didn’t happen as often with civil trials as it did with criminal cases, but it happened. This, though, was no courthouse, and I certainly wasn’t handling any newsworthy cases.

  “I understand you discovered the mummy in the amusement ride.” No question. She made a statement and she waited for a response.

  Had she already worked out her promo trailer? The Amusement Ride Mummy. Or maybe the Mystery of the Mummy Man. That sounded like a Nancy Drew title.

  I stood staring at the camera, a vacant smile on my face, but I didn’t move or say a word.

  “Could you just talk about what it was like?” She spoke louder, emphasizing each word as if she was talking to an imbecile. “What-did-you-see? How-did-it-feel?”

  She knew she could cut her questions and just play my responses, with a voice-over lead-in that she’d record in the studio. She could make sure she sounded smart. She didn’t really care that I’d look wan and shiny with sweat from the heat, the lights, and the lack of stage makeup. Her job was to look good and get film. She probably would’ve preferred that I have no front teeth, like the stereotypical folks who appear on TV after a tornado has targeted their Southern trailer park.

  I just kept staring.

  “Ms. Andrews? It’s okay. No need to be afraid. Just-tell-us-what-you-saw.” She leaned closer with the microphone, as if willing words to come out of my mouth. Any words at all.

  I struggled not to squint or blink too much, even though the light bore into my eyeballs.

  She stuck the microphone even closer. The camera recorded my pleasant though vacant smile, but not a single sound bite. Not even a slow-drawled “Well” or an “It’uz awful.”

  With an exasperated wave of her hand, she signaled the cameraman to shut off the camera.

  I waited until I saw the red light on his camera blink off, several seconds after she’d let her microphone drop and he’d cut the light.

  “Maybe you could have called ahead,” I said. “Or maybe you’d like to ask if I’m willing to be interviewed.” My voice was measured and hard. My role in this story didn’t deserve an ambush interview. I knew dead air and a pleasant smile wouldn’t make the evening news, but if I’d asked that she shut off her camera or get the heck out of my face, that might have made the lead promo. It had been safer to just wait her out.

  Her lips tightened, but she had the grace to look chastised. “I’m on a tight deadline. The national outlets have been running this story since Saturday. My boss is chewing my ass to get some new angle and some visual. You’re hard to track down.”

  Her tight size 2 skirt showed that she had no ass to chew.

  “I’m in the phone book,” I said.

  Her lips tightened a notch more.

  “Miz . . . ?” I waited for her to offer her name. Hers wasn’t one of the pictures on the side of the truck sitting a few yards away, its boom holding a satellite dish at least two stories in the air.

  “Phillips,” she said, struggling to be civil. The insult of my uncooperativeness was compounded by my failure to recognize who she was.

  “Miz Phillips. I appreciate that you have a job to do, but so do I. You see, I’m an officer of the court, and this is an ongoing investigation. I’m sure the sheriff’s public information officer will be glad to talk to you. I’m just not in a position to do so.” I wasn’t really playing straight with her, but she’d picked the fight by ambushing me.

  “Everybody in the country’s talked to the sheriff’s department. I don’t need the same thing all over again.”

  I kept my eye on the tiny, now-dark red camera light. I didn’t want them capturing some useful audio along with a visual of my sneaker-clad feet standing next to her three-inch gold heels.

  “Parade video,” I said. “That would be something nobody else has.” I tried not to sound snotty.

  She looked as though she wanted to bean me with her microphone. The cameraman—a burly fellow straight from central casting, with a bushy beard, baggy cargo pants, and sneakers full of holes—looked like he hoped we’d erupt into a catfight. Even if it couldn’t go on air, maybe he could sell it to a tabloid news show or upload a million-hit YouTube video.

  Adrienne had had the good sense to stay quiet until now.

  “Nancie,” she said, using Ms. Phillips’ first name, a move which flattered Nancie, as Adrienne had hoped. “We’re so glad you’re here. The reviewing stand is full of dignitaries. I’m sure they’d be happy to talk with you.”

  I couldn’t see whether Adrienne had her fingers crossed behind her back, hoping the dignitaries wouldn’t come across looking like goobers. She should have known better than to hope for that.

  Nancie Phillips sighed, exasperated with us all. “We’ll see,” she said, offering Adrienne only a crumb of hope. “Pack it up, Gray. Let’s head to the festival.”

  Adrienne was too controlled to splutter—much. Nancie Phillips moved quickly to the waiting van and closed herself behind the tinted windows. She probably locked her door, since lowering the boom took some time and she didn’t want to give Adrienne an opportunity to gather herself for an assault on her bastion.

  Adrienne stood on the sidewalk, shifting from one foot to another, her cell phone in one hand, her clipboard clutched to her chest, planning her next move. She offered no “thanks for not talking about the town’s embarrassing national news story” or anything. Without a word, she spun on her high heel and climbed into the golf cart that had carried her with stealthy quiet into our domain. Her driver, an earnest teenager sporting a bright yellow shirt that matched mine and Todd’s, wheeled the cart around and raced toward Main Street.

  Adrienne probably planned to lie in wait and follow the broadcast truck when it pulled away from the stop sign.

  I was happy to leave them to their little game. We had a parade to start.

  Fortunately no kids fell off or were run over by floats, no one set off cherry bombs and spooked a horse stampede, and Santa didn’t show up drunk—okay, Santa didn’t show up at all for the Fourth of July. But none of the scenarios Todd and Adrienne feared had materialized. A good time was had by all, and the parade broke up before eleven.

  The heat settled in a damp, sticky blanket even before the sun rose high enough to leave too little shade. After our official duties ended, Todd asked if I wanted to join him at his neighborhood cookout for lunch. His offer was halfhearted, so I didn’t mind letting us both off the hook by declining.

  I mused on my lunch options. Maylene’s was closed for the holiday, and my parents had gone to Asheville to see some handmade rocking chairs. I decided to try the fairgrounds.

  The mile or so walk from Main Street was more attractive than sitting in my hot car and waiting through what passed for a traffic jam in Dacus.

  I hadn’t expected to run into Rudy at the foot-long hot-dog stand.

  He didn’t even bother turning around to acknowledge my arrival. He just snorted when I said, “Hey.” I should’ve known he’d be there. On a day when everyone else was grilling out or fishing or playing somewhere, a guy with a long shift had to find a place to eat lunch.

  Somebody had the foresight to set up picnic tables near the food trailers—whether that was the midway operator or one of Adrienne’s army of volunteers, I couldn’t g
uess. They hadn’t seen their way clear to supply any shade, though. Guess the setup worked better at night, when it was cooler. Not cool, just cooler.

  Rudy and I carried our hot dogs and drinks to the only unoccupied table, at the edge of the cluster. Rudy straddled the seat, turning sideways to keep the dribbling chili over the table and off his khaki pants.

  “Any more information on where Rinda Reimann got those finger bruises?” It was too hot for me to engage in niceties, and that was a question Rudy should have known would come to mind as soon as I saw him.

  He shook his head. “We haven’t sat down with Rog yet,” he said around a huge wad of hot dog. “He’s been indisposed.”

  He said the last word with dainty derision.

  “What about considering Rinda’s boyfriend Ken as the source? Or that the bruises don’t mean anything? That she just fell off the waterfall and those bruises happened some other time in some benign way?”

  He shrugged and took a deep draw on his plastic straw.

  “What if it really was just a horrible accident? What if Rog had nothing to do with it? What if he’s just unlucky to have a wife who was running around on him right before she died? He’s left with a double loss. He’d lost his marriage, and then he lost his wife, which is compounded by all the public rumor about her affair. Now he may even lose his freedom, just because he can’t prove a negative. He can’t prove he didn’t do anything to her.”

  Rudy took another bite of his hot dog. I caught him eyeing mine, either to encourage me to shut up and eat or assessing whether I might decide not to eat and would instead offer it to him. I picked up my hot dog in its paper tray as a self-defensive move.

  “Statistically speaking, it’s more likely she slipped and fell,” I said. “If she hadn’t been having an affair, you wouldn’t even be looking for a way to put Rog on that path last Friday.”

  Rudy balled up a wad of tissue-thin napkins and wiped the red chili stains from around his mouth before he spoke.

  “She was fooling around on him, which is something most men don’t take kindly to. Then there’s the fact that he’s the only one who stands to benefit from her death.”

  “Infidelity isn’t an admirable activity, but it doesn’t have to lead to murder. For Pete’s sake, he fooled around on his first wife and nobody got murdered.”

  “True, but Rog did get a chunk of change when his first wife died. Maybe that just gave him a taste for the good life.” Rudy’s expression was a mild smirk. He was baiting me.

  “Seriously, Rudy. You’re looking at all the options, aren’t you?” Not just leaping to a suspicious-cop conclusion, though I didn’t say that out loud.

  His eyes narrowed. “It’s never easy—or fun—to accuse somebody of murder. Or even suspect them.”

  I’d ticked him off. I backpedaled.

  “I know how careful you are. It’s just—” I struggled for the words. “He looked so lost the other day when I talked to him, so completely out of it. I imagined what it would be like . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence.

  Rudy glowered. “So how do you think he’d be acting if he’d wanted his wife dead? Happy and relieved because he’d succeeded? Shell-shocked? Pretending to be dazed so he could avoid questioning? Maybe that’s his problem. He’s trying to figure out how he’s supposed to act.”

  We locked stubborn gazes, both unwilling to concede aloud the merits of the other’s arguments.

  “Most falls are accidents,” I said. I couldn’t let the last word pass.

  Neither could Rudy. “Most. Not all.”

  He stood and swung his leg over the picnic bench like he was dismounting a really short plastic pony. He gathered his trash and stalked to the waste can without looking back.

  I sat in the boiling sun, steaming from more than the heat, and finished my hot dog.

  “A-vry.” Shamanique strode over, her tight denim skirt so high on her thin thighs that she looked like she’d borrowed some stilts. “Can’t believe I found you. Why don’t you ever have your cell phone on you?”

  Lord, she sounded like her bossy aunt Edna.

  “I left you a message to call me.”

  I’d turned the thing off after the parade, not wanting to be summoned to an after-the-parade debrief by Adrienne. The woman so loved stirring up tornados—in which, of course, she was the center—that the comparative calm after the parade was sure to incite her to furious activity, especially since the television station hadn’t wanted to interview her and since no children had been concussed by flying peppermint candies.

  “What did the message say?” I prompted.

  “To call me.” She propped her forearms on the table as she leaned toward me to make her point.

  “And?”

  “And I found out part of the story on your prune-faced mummy man, but only part.”

  “Great! Any chance we can find somewhere in the shade to talk?”

  “Yeah, I don’t wanna get a suntan.”

  I didn’t know Shamanique well enough to know whether that was a joke, but we both abandoned our stained-plastic picnic table to a group of teenagers with greasy plates of gyros and vinegar fries.

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Shamanique and I left the midway and strolled toward the tree-shaded path that ran alongside the ball fields. The hot-air balloon hung in the hazy blue sky. As we walked, she typed a text message into her cell phone. I’d often observed kids strolling in pairs, ignoring their immediate companion to communicate with someone at a distance, but I’d never found myself the silent, ignored partner before.

  By the time we reached a wooden bench in the shade, she’d finished and turned to notice my raised eyebrow.

  “Telling Harmon where I was. He’s not too happy with me working while we’re supposed to be on a date but, with Harmon, somebody better be working.”

  I nodded, feeling a bit guilty that she was working, but not so guilty that I’d postpone hearing her news until her vacation time was over.

  “So? What’d you find?”

  “That mummy man has done some traveling, let me tell you.” She crossed her hands on her lap. Her fingernails were extra-long fake party nails painted in tiny patriotic stripes in honor of the occasion. How did she text message with those dagger nails?

  “Who is he?”

  “I have no idea. We’ll get there, though.”

  I knew she would, which is why I’m certain no disappointment showed on my face. She was a bloodhound, only sassier.

  “I went over and talked to the Plinys,” she said, “to see if they had any more details about that stuff they bought thirty years ago. They had just started reworking their show when Mr. Pliny had to start using a wheelchair.”

  She leaned toward me and lowered her voice, though no one was near enough to hear. “Some kind of circulatory problem. From smoking, his wife said. She said it also stunted his growth. It’n that a hoot?” She smacked her knee and smiled.

  “Anyway, this guy, which they of course thought was a mannequin, was in with a bunch of other mannequins and some electronics. Stuff I didn’t really understand, switches and motors and such, though Mr. Pliny loved talking about it, every detail. They decided to put together a fright show—a really good one. Before he got sick, Mr. Pliny had always worked the tricks. Did you know he’s sword swallower?”

  Her hand flew to her throat. I couldn’t have agreed more with her reaction.

  “So he likes things to be really, you know, wow. He didn’t want one’a those crappy fright houses most carnivals have. You ever been in one’a those? Dumbest thing ever. Don’t last but two seconds. You ride through in a little car with your knees jammed against the front and six shrunken heads pop up just after you’ve gone past. Just a dumb way to waste money.”

  I’d wasted my ride tickets on one years ago. That hadn’t broken me; I was still a sucker for something that promised a good scare, even if it didn’t deliver.

  “Anyway, when Con Plotnick, the guy who owned all these electronics a
nd mannequins, died, his daughter had a big estate sale. That’s when Mr. Pliny got the idea for a fright house, seeing all that stuff. You remember how the sack hanging from the ceiling swung out at you when you went through the door?”

  I shook my head. Emma and I hadn’t made it that far into the fright house.

  “Anyway, it’s run with a windshield-wiper motor. Can you b’lieve that? They rigged all kinds of stuff themselves. Miz Pliny made the costumes and decided what story should happen in each room.”

  I shuddered at the thought of wrestling Prune Man into his chain-saw massacre overalls. “Couldn’t they tell he wasn’t like the other mannequins?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. I mean, after all, if he’s a real man, he’s gotta have real man parts, don’t he? You don’t reckon that fell off, like his leg, do you?”

  Her face betrayed not a trace of guile. I was impressed with her initiative. She must have spent a lot of time with the Plinys, which was further evidence that she possessed more than a little of her aunt Edna’s doggedness.

  “Anyway, Miz Pliny said they didn’t get him nekkid. His clothes were kind of lacquered on him. Some kind of brown suit, she said. So that’s why he was wearing those baggy overalls. He was so wrinkly and dusty, they put him up high, so folks couldn’t see him real close.”

  That made sense. She paused and I wondered if she was picturing dressing him.

  “She said he was so stiff, he could’ve stood on his own, better than the plastic mannequins. They just thought he was some kind of papier-mâché or something. Some of the others were stuffed cotton, real stiff and tight. Two were straw, like scarecrows. She said they throwed those away, they were so limp and musty and full of bugs.”

  Shamanique shuddered at the thought of the bugs and filth. She’s an earthy, practical girl, but don’t let a spider crawl anywhere in view. Last week, one had swung down over her desk on its thin filament, just dropping in to say hi. The way she shrieked and jumped, I thought she would climb the drapes to get away.

  “So Con Plotnick’s daughter had no idea the mummy was real when she sold it?”