Authors: Cathy Pickens
“I understand you were at Luna Lake yesterday when they discovered a submerged car.”
Whatever I’d expected, that wasn’t it. I nodded.
He paused, studying my face, no doubt seeing my surprise. “I understand it was a 1978 Ford Thunderbird.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know much about makes and models of cars. It was old. And rusted. And had a Ford emblem on the trunk. That’s about all I know.”
“Red? With a white top?”
“Hard to say. It was almost solid rust.”
“And—there was a—skeleton inside?”
“That I can tell you.” I shuddered, remembering that Magic 8 Ball skull.
“Could you—could—well, tell anything about—” Words failed him, but the desperation in his eyes spoke what he couldn’t say.
“No. To tell you the truth, the car wasn’t far enough up the ramp to allow the water to drain out. About all I can tell you is it was a skeleton. And, to my untrained eye, that of an adult.”
I didn’t mention the peculiar deposits on the face bones. For one, it had looked too weird and I didn’t know how to describe it. For another, Melvin Bertram didn’t look like he could deal with that picture in his mind any better than I could. Whatever pictures did parade across his brain, they were apparently gruesome enough that he didn’t press for any more details.
“May I ask, why are you asking me about this?” I suspected, but I needed to hear it from him.
He sat back in his chair, his sigh deflating his desperation. Not completely, though.
“The sheriff came to see me today. At my brother’s house. I’m visiting for the holiday.” He paused. “The car has been identified as my wife’s. The license tag and description match hers. Pending an autopsy—which will be delayed because of the holiday—Sheriff Peters expects the body inside will be hers.”
His voice died out, as if he’d saved just enough air to say that last sentence, but had no more in him. He stared at the top of my desk, not seeing the legal pad or my Waterman pen or the absence of billable cases. Then he continued. “Of course, she’s been gone for fifteen years. I don’t suppose a delay for the medical examiner’s Thanksgiving meal is really going to make much difference.”
What could I say to that? “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bertram. Melvin.” To keep from staring at him, I glanced down. A clod of mud clung to the heel of my pump.
He shifted in his chair. “I just needed to confirm some things. I heard you’d been there. And I wanted to know what parts of Sheriff Peters’s innuendo I could believe. Trust me,” he said, eyeing me with an even gaze. “I learned fifteen years ago that cops can shade the truth any color they want it to be. Different sheriff, I know. But same mentality, I figure.”
Different sheriff, all right. Fifteen years ago, L. J. Peters had been with me in the—what? ninth or
tenth grade at Dacus High. L.J. was Lucinda Jane to her mother but L.J. to those of us who had lived in fear of her. By high school, L.J. had abandoned her daily ritual of slamming me against the bathroom wall, a sort of exercise regimen for her through most of elementary school. She’d given that up for more mature pursuits, like sneaking cigarettes behind the gym and sneaking glass-pack mufflers past the Highway Patrol. Lucinda Jane had grown up—and I mean up, to about six feet—and become sheriff of Camden County. That thought frequently frightens me.
“Guess L.J. hasn’t changed a lot since I last saw her,” I mused.
“You know Peters?”
I nodded.
“I forget what it’s like to live in a town where you expect everybody to know everybody else. And everything.”
That last comment was loaded. He fixed me with his steady blue-flecked gaze, as if trying to read how much I knew. And trying to decide how much he wanted me to know.
He decided quickly. “Avery, thank you so much for your time.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pants pocket. “My brother’s address. You may bill me there.”
“I really didn’t do anything,” I said, as I accepted the proffered slip of paper. “But if I can be of assistance, please give me a call.”
We did the handshake thing, and he left without causing any discernible ripples among the group
waiting to see Carlton. Lou Wray stayed out of sight.
I needed to consider more permanent arrangements for my life, make some calls. Network, as they say. This arrangement with Carlton and the Dragon Lady would serve temporarily—but, thanks to the Dragon Lady, only temporarily.
What that meeting with Melvin Bertram had been about, I couldn’t tell. He obviously hadn’t learned anything he hadn’t already known. I shrugged mentally. Might as well call it a day. And a busy one it had been, meeting with both my clients in one day.
I went to retrieve Mom’s van from Aunt Letha’s house. As I covered the handful of blocks up Main Street, Dacus’s version of rush hour—which lasted all of five minutes—moved past on both sides of the crape myrtle-filled median. Daylight faded fast and no one else walked the sidewalks.
Past the central business district, which filled only three or four blocks, Main Street became a hodgepodge of houses. The newest one probably dated to 1950. A few were stately and multistoried, a couple boasted wide verandas. Most were nondescript clapboard or brick.
Dacus claimed no special architectural heritage. No grand, glorious past. No landed gentry with elegant town homes. Downstate South Carolina claimed that pride, where the plantation owners—or the modern version, the sharecropper leaseholders—kept their families in town and away from the grubbiness of actual work.
Dacus, nestled into the foothills of the Blue
Ridge, had first been settled by Germans searching for some place that looked like home. And it had attracted an independent, almost asocial cast of characters over the decades. But they all knew work. And didn’t much revel in hollow neighborliness. I hadn’t understood the difference until my exile downstate. For such a small state, South Carolina maintained a rare diversity, in accents, work ethic, social proprieties. And temperatures.
The crispness in the air invigorated me. The weather statistics always show a five- or ten-degree difference over the 150-mile distance to Columbia. But the cheek-chilling bite of fall never shows up accurately in those numbers. I loved the way the air felt here.
I bent to unlock the van door just as Aunt Hattie nosed the 1980 LeSabre onto the sidewalk, peeking around the driveway shrubs before she pulled into the street. I waved and walked to the passenger window, on Vinnia’s side.
“Avery,” she called over the top of the window as she cranked it down. “Come go with us.”
“Where you off to?” I leaned against the car door.
Hattie, the older of the two by eighteen months, grasped the steering wheel in both hands. Tall and angular, she had no trouble seeing over the car hood’s acreage, and she commanded it with the same authority she’d exercised over generations of biology students. Or pupils, as she referred to them. Disparagingly, I’d always thought.
Grandmotherly-looking Vinnia, shorter by close to a foot and softer and rounder, nestled back in the
passenger seat. “To church. The Sunshine Girls are going to the community Thanksgiving service out at South End Baptist. Hattie, you remembered the keys to the church bus?”
“Of course.” Hattie, used to bossing high-schoolers around, tolerated Vinnia’s remindings. Vinnia had mothered five children and couldn’t get out of the habit.
“Church bus?”
Vinnia nodded. “The Sunshine Girls—of course, we just call them that, but we’d take any men who lived long enough to qualify—”
Hattie snorted at that. “—and could keep up with us.”
A frightening prospect for some man of certain years to find himself mixed up with a bunch that included my great-aunts.
“Anyway, we’re all going together. Hattie and I take the bus around to pick up the girls who can’t drive after dark.”
“You drive the church bus, Aunt Hattie?” I was picturing the repainted Blue Bird school bus that usually sat parked behind the church.
“Certainly.” She leaned over enough so she could get a clear view of me. “Have for years.”
I hesitated, about to tread on dangerous territory. “Aunt Hattie, do you have a commercial driver’s license?” Hattie had retired from teaching five years ago—and that had been more than a decade after most of her contemporaries had retired.
“Whatever for?”
“Well, it’s required now. To operate a commercial
vehicle. It’s like the old chauffeur’s license.” Only the requirements are much more stringent.
Hattie propped her left arm on the steering wheel so she could lean farther across the front seat. I knew, in a momentary flash, what it must have been like to accidentally knick an earthworm’s intestine in her biology class.
“I’ve been driving that bus to pick up those girls since before I taught you to rollerskate, Avery.” She didn’t have to say anything else.
Vinnia scrunched back against her seat so I could have the full force and effect of her older sister. But Vinnia, too, fixed me with her soft blue eyes. In a pitying tone, she said, “Avery, honey, sometimes you know just enough to spoil everyone else’s fun. It’s not a becoming trait, sweetie.”
I tapped the car door lightly, surrendering gracefully. “You all have fun.”
I hoped my smile smoothed things over. What cop in his right mind would stop the Sunshine Girls? All the cops had probably had Aunt Hattie’s biology class. They likely wouldn’t go out of their way to encounter that stern stare again.
I waved as Aunt Hattie bumped the Buick’s back tire over the curb.
The sun had dropped below the trees. Suddenly, the drive up the mountain to the lake cabin seemed a cold, lonely trek.
Something about this time of day, hanging between daylight and dark, always distresses me. I try to stay busy until good dark. Somehow, then it’s okay. But the death throes of daylight and the lone
ness of an empty house and the inevitability of the evening news and a microwave dinner were things I wanted to avoid. Or to share with someone.
I turned toward my parents’ house.
T
he chaos at my parents’ house built to a crescendo I on Thanksgiving morning. Aunts Letha, Hattie, and Vinnia joined my parents, my sister Lydia and her husband, my niece and nephew, two Japanese exchange students from the college, and some drug rehab kid my mother had taken in. I hoped the newcomers were all sufficiently rehabbed and ready to deal with my family in full force and volume.
The aunts had henpecked each other and the dinner to pieces before the time came to set it on the table. During the morning, I’d snatched glimpses of the Thanksgiving Day parades on TV, roughhoused with my niece and nephew (until our mothers yelled at us to knock it off), and—as my contribution to the traditional holiday feast—burned the bottoms on the brown-and-serve rolls. Fortunately, Aunt Hattie had also made biscuits.
The first lull in the noise came when we bowed our heads for the blessing. Then the only sounds came from the television in the den and mouselike crunching sounds from my niece, Emma. Her
mother—my sister—and I caught each other sneaking one-eyed glances in Emma’s direction. I grinned. My sister glared. Everybody else waited for Emma to bless the food, while Emma tried to swallow the pecan she’d snuck off the top of the sweet potato casserole.
As usual, the food tasted like home and the conversation was stereophonically loud and familially funny.
“What time’s the bowl game?” Emma asked. At seven, she’d suddenly become a big football fan. I suspected my dad had worked on her secretly; he’d spent years as the family’s only true believer.
“Who’s playing?” Vinnia asked. She probably didn’t know a football had a point on both ends.
“Clemson, Vinnia.” Hattie nodded sagely. Probably mentally planning on being on her way home by kickoff time.
The conversation ebbed and flowed; sometimes two conversations overrunning each other. I sat back and listened. Was this what it felt like to awaken from a coma? The food was better, the kids’ knock-knock jokes were funnier, the parade floats more elaborate, my family more special to me than ever before. Everything had an intensity I couldn’t describe, as if I’d been banished somewhere far away and had come home when I never thought I’d see it again.
I bent over another mouthful of dressing and blinked back a tear that stung my eye. Silly, but it felt good to be back here. I’d never missed a Thanksgiving at home, at this same table, with the
same menu and these same people. Well, except for the two exchange students and the drug addict.
But it felt like the first time in very long memory: the first time I hadn’t had the pressures and vagaries of school or a law practice; didn’t have Winn Davis, my former managing partner, leaving sexually explicit voice-mail messages; didn’t have the pressure of maintaining impossible levels of billable hours.
Of course, considering the number of billable hours I’d worked this week, I should’ve returned Jake Baker’s call offering me a job in Charleston. But rather than rehearse “Welcome to Wal-Mart” or contemplate working with the state’s most audacious ambulance chaser, I sat back and counted my blessings.
The mention of Melvin Bertram’s name roused me from my maudlin reverie.
“You don’t say,” Hattie said. “Didn’t know he was back. For good?”
“Or bad,” Aletha countered.
We’d collectively begun cleaning and stacking plates and moving serving dishes from the dining room table to the kitchen counters. Mom had shooed the teenagers and little kids out of the kitchen toward the television or other diversions. My dad disappeared out the back door. On any other day, he would clear the kitchen by himself, but he doesn’t dare interfere with the great-aunts.
“I heard at the beauty parlor yesterday something that, if I’d known it, I’d forgotten it,” Vinnia said.
“As if that made sense.” Letha vigorously shook crumbs from the place mats into the sink.
Vinnia paid no heed. “I heard that Melvin Bertram’s wife—do you remember her? Lea Hopkins, she was. She and Sylvie Garnet’s son had been keeping time together, at one time. And now, here little Harry is, running for governor.”
“He’s what?” Aletha demanded.
“Running for governor. That’s what Sylvie announced at the Ladies Auxiliary Wednesday morning. Of course, this is very preliminary. But Sylvie said the party higher-ups had sought him out.”