Southern Fried (20 page)

“Only to reappear days later with Sylvie Jones on his arm,” Hattie added.

“Well, I guess those things happen,” I said, though I couldn’t see choosing Sylvie over Olivia Sterling, given the choice.

“No, those things seldom just happen.” Letha snorted. “At least not to Sylvie. No, more likely those things are well engineered. ’Course, Harrison Garnet’s like most men—gullible and egotistical in the same, confused mix. Sylvie took him by the nose—or something—and led him down the proverbial path. Idiot fellow didn’t have sense enough to question her claim that she was pregnant. Reckon he figured out she lied to him when it took Harry Junior another four or five years to be born.”

“She lied about being pregnant?”

“That was rumored.” Hattie’s tone said she thought such rumors best not encouraged. “But, of course, Sylvie never said anything to anybody.”

“Didn’t have to,” Letha countered. “That hangdog look Harrison Garnet wore around town told everybody he’d jumped the fence. Serves him right, he found himself penned up with a she-dog a right-thinking man would’ve avoided.”

“Letha—”

“Sylvie Garnet made up a story like that to trick a
man into marrying her?” I thought that cheesy ploy had been invented for soap opera audiences.

“Sylvie Garnet would’ve stuck a firecracker up her butt and shot herself in a flaming arc across the sky if she thought it’d land her a man with money,” Letha pronounced. “Sylvie always knows what she wants and she always manages to fix things so she gets them. If I had my guess, she’ll get that son of hers elected governor or God himself’11 be explaining why.”

“Harry’s really considering a run for governor?” I said.

All three of my aunts and both of my otherwise-quiet parents nodded. My dad, obviously relieved to have the conversation shift, said, “Apparently some of the political powers think a fresh, new face can make a run against the traditional state machine.”

“Well, if it’s a fresh face they want, that’s Harry Garnet.” I knew Harrison’s son. A brain, no. I’d always figured Harry to be damned lucky to have a daddy with money. He’d tried several business ventures around town, leaving a string of disasters and questionable dealings behind him.

“And speaking of jumping fences,” I said, “how do the political handlers plan to deal with Harry’s lively history? Just think who’ll be coming out of the woodwork, dying to talk to the newspapers.”

“Avery, now…” my mother cautioned.

“Emma, you know good and well she’s tellin’ the truth,” Letha said in my defense. “Nuts don’t fall very far from the tree. Harrison Garnet didn’t learn
from his mistakes and neither did his son. Randy as goats, both of ’em.”

“Letha,” Vinnia said, “you have no way of knowing that for certain.”

I started to volunteer my friend Cissie Prentice as a reliable source on young Harry’s history, but decided that might raise embarrassing questions about how she knew so much. After all, she based everything on one brief interlude after a Dacus Dance Club Christmas party, on the pool chairs at the Ramada Inn.

“Don’t get so prim on me, Vinnia,” Letha said. “Everybody in town knows about it. Why, he ran around with that little Lea Hopkins, even after she married.”

“Harrison Garnet had an affair with Lea Hopkins?” I said, confused.

“No, no. Harry. Sylvie Garnet ’bout had a cow. You can imagine how she reacted. White trash, and married white trash at that.” Letha reached in front of Mr. O’Hara for another biscuit.

“Now, Letha, just because Lea was a little wild doesn’t mean she was trash.”

“Okay, then, a tramp.”

“Was their affair common knowledge?” Being back home made me realize I’d missed out on a lot of good stuff over the years.

“No. Not really. I knew because Sylvie and I were working together on something about that time. She mentioned things she thought cryptic, until you put ’em together with other things being
talked about around town. Then you were left with a pretty clear impression that something naughty was going on.”

Letha paused before taking a bite of her jellyslathered biscuit. “Come to think of it, the police asked Harry a few questions when she disappeared. That’d make interesting campaign material: a former murder suspect presents his crime bill proposal.”

“My,” said Vinnia, ignoring Letha’s sarcasm, “think what must be going through Sylvie’s mind now that poor girl’s body’s been found. She probably rejoiced when she disappeared. Think how bad she must feel now, knowing that Lea was dead and in Luna Lake all that time.”

Letha snorted. “Feeling bad? Sylvie’s only regret is that, had she known sooner, she could have figured out how to walk on water so she could dance on the watery grave.”

“Letha.” Hattie’s voice said clearly she considered the topic exhausted. “Harry’s married now and settled down. Some smart young lady from Charleston.”

Under Hattie’s guidance, the conversation took a less catty turn. I excused myself before they cut the pecan pie—which required a tremendous act of will. The funeral started at one.

The crowd at the new Baldwin and Bates Funeral Home, built on a hill overlooking the new commercial bypass, outstripped the Georgian brick’s capacity to handle it. I arrived early, but the closest parking spot was in the grass beyond the back lot.

Amazing how many friends a woman missing for fifteen years still has, I thought wryly.

“Amazing how many ghouls and vultures live in a town this small,” Cissie Prentice said, appearing at my elbow and magically reading my thoughts. “Present company excepted.”

“I had a personal invitation,” I smarted back.

“From a skeleton. Sure you did. Or did you find out how cute the grieving husband is? A bit old. But much in need of consolin’, don’t you think?”

Cissie signed the family book and handed me the pen. She still drew little circles over the
i
’s in her name.

Cissie had chosen a deep-burgundy dress that clung to her like kitchen wrap—her idea of appropriate mourning attire. Even I stared as she sat and crossed her legs.

“How do you walk in those heels?” I whispered.

“Hell, I can balance a cup and saucer on my foot while—”

I tried to forestall any more graphic details by leaning across Cissie to greet Mr. Earnest, the barber. We said polite hellos in properly subdued funeralhome tones while Cissie grinned at me maliciously.

I glared at her as I settled back. She replied by carefully recrossing her legs, giving Mr. Earnest more of a show than he’d bargained for at a funeral.

The organ set up a wheezy, high-pitched whine, mournful in a way the organist likely didn’t intend. She’d cranked out several measures before I recognized “Amazing Grace.”

The flower display stood directly in front of us.
At funerals, I always hear my granddad’s voice: “Nothing sadder than a funeral with no flowers.” The organist modulated into “The Sweet By and By,” piercingly shrill on the high notes.

I leaned over and whispered into Cissie’s ear, “You ever hear anything about Lea Bertram and Harry Garnet?”

She gave me a boy-are-you-out-of-it look, eloquently spoken with one raised eyebrow.

“Me and everybody else,” she whispered. “They were one hot item for quite a while.”

“When?”

She shrugged and leaned toward my ear. “Sometime after she married. But it ended before she disappeared, for sure.”

“So she and Bertram had been married, what? Two or three years?”

“I guess.”

“Was Harry the only one?”

Cissie shrugged again, the effect on her mourning attire drawing Mr. Earnest’s attention. “Probably not. They were spotted together often enough that she’d have been hard put to work anybody else into her schedule. But don’t you remember her scandalizing everybody, riding around with one of those motorcycle guys? Said she was just catching a ride to work.” Cissie’s raised eyebrow questioned that claim.

I settled back onto the wooden pew and chewed on the inside of my lip. Cissie had always been a precociously well informed gossip, but she was a high school kid at the time. If she’d known about Lea, plenty of adults had, too.

Had Melvin Bertram known? Did he follow Lea up the mountain one day, expecting to thwart a tryst? Or had Lea accidentally rolled her car into the water? Had somebody been there with her? Somebody who’d kept his mouth shut all these years? Maybe somebody who, with a gubernatorial race ahead of him now, would especially want to keep things buried in red mud and silt? Or was I jumping to too many conclusions? I hadn’t seen any of the Garnets in the funeral crowd. I guess an employer’s social obligation expires at some point.

The rich copper gleam of the casket picked up the golden tones of the russet-tipped roses blanketing the top. The sight of the casket surprised me. Maybe they’d released the remains after all.

Reverend Brown, from the Presbyterian church, read from a small white Testament. The words floated around us like a soothing, somber comfort. “‘Neither death, nor life’ ”—his voice resonant and warm—“‘will be able to separate us’ ”…

Fortunately he skipped the ashes-to-ashes part. No ashes, just mud-stained bones. And those grinning teeth.

I shut my eyes, bowed my head, and let the sounds wash over me: the quiet rustling of paper programs, the creak of wooden pews as mourners squirmed. The funeral chapel was packed, although the only actual mourners were probably Melvin Bertram and a thin, blond fellow sitting beside him. Lea’s brother? Melvin’s brother?

The rest of the watchers were looky-lous. Folks like Cissie—and me—who’d been drawn by a mor
bid fascination. Quiet sniffs and snuffles were notably absent. Few tissues would be sacrificed to false emotion today. And, tastefully, the Reverend Brown didn’t whip out a eulogy designed to elicit those tears.

From where I sat, I couldn’t see Melvin’s face until the congregation stood. We sang a couple of verses of “Peace Like a River” while the family filed out. Melvin didn’t scan the crowd to see if anyone he’d invited had come. Hard to tell the difference between a hangover and deep mourning. And hard to describe what made nun look off balance. He had dressed in a conservative navy suit, white shirt, and subdued tie. Not a hair lay out of place. His gaze stayed on the red carpet runner all the way up the center aisle.

Melvin left, escorted by the fellow who’d been sitting with him and another slightly built man who would have looked more at home at a Little League game. No one stopped them by reaching out with a comforting hand or a murmur of condolence. The attendees stood around more as audience than mourners.

No graveside service had been announced, so most folks strolled to their cars, enjoying the lazy, cool Sunday afternoon.

“Cissie,” I said to draw her attention from the limousine disappearing down the winding drive. “How certain are you that Lea Bertram had an affair with Harry Garnet?”

Her ponytail flipped sassily over her shoulder as
she turned to face me. “Well, why don’t you ask the cops? They believed it enough to question Junior at some length when Lea disappeared. Of course, they didn’t look too seriously at anybody but Lea’s husband. From what I remember, Junior’s mama saw to it that the sheriff’s attention stayed focused somewhere else. Sylvie Garnet apparently raised holy hell when they came sniffing around her baby.” Cissie paused, glancing at the line of cars streaming out the exit and down the hill.

“Reckon what led them to question Harry?”

She shrugged. “Guess cops follow up on gossip. And there was plenty. Even I remember it. I guess because Lea hadn’t been out of high school that long. And she’d been a cheerleader.”

Cissie had also been a cheerleader. They must maintain some sort of cult relationship, binding across the years. Of course, Cissie had been asked to leave the squad her senior year for conduct unbecoming to a cheerleader. Whatever that was, we’d never talked about it. “Seems like,” Cissie said thoughtfully, “I remember somebody said they saw him in her car? No, somebody saw his car—I remember he drove this boss silver Cadillac—following her car up the mountain road. But he must have had some explanation.” She shrugged, her dress straining dramatically.

“Or the eyewitness made a mistake,” I added. “That happens more often than the times an eyewitness sees it straight.”

“Looks like the parking lot’s cleared out enough.
I’m heading home for a nap. I have to catch up on the sleep I missed last night.” She grinned slyly. “Stayed up late to see the comet. You seen it yet?”

“No, not yet.” And I probably wouldn’t see it from the vantage point she’d had. “Does the
Kama Sutra
recommend anything special for comet watching?”

She smirked as she climbed into a glowing white Lexus sedan and closed the door.

“Like the new car,” I mouthed as she turned to wave.

She waggled her fingers in reply and swooped down the winding drive. My faded Mustang cranked right up, and I followed.

As I turned onto Broad Street, the flapping red, white, and blue banners and miniature flags lining the walk caught my attention. The billboard-size
Garnet for Governor
signs made it clear this was no used-car lot.

On a whim, I pulled into the parking lot beside what had been a car dealer’s showroom.
Experience: for a Change
banners festooned its circled glass windows. Experience at what? Harry probably hoped few voters asked, with his string of business failures and aborted get-rich-quick schemes.

Movement amid the patriotic posters inside the showroom windows caught my eye and I climbed out of the car.

“Hello?” I called as I pushed open the unlocked glass door. “Anybody home?”

At first, only the fresh chemical smell of newly
printed posters greeted me. Then a head topped by a soft corkscrew afro popped around the door frame of one of the old sales offices lining the back of the showroom.

“Uh…yes?” Her eyes round in her milk-chocolate face, she looked startled at having visitors. “May I help you?” Her hands smoothed the sides of her denim dress.

“I just noticed your headquarters. And I knew Harry years ago—in school. He’s not around, is he?”

What were the odds of that? Pretty good, as it turned out. Harry appeared behind the elf-life black woman, his white shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his cuffs rolled up a notch or two.