Hush My Mouth (10 page)

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded. He might be new to this, but he wasn’t stupid.

“The judge didn’t order any restrictions on your phone use in jail, but they’ll be monitoring your calls.”

I didn’t want to scold him and tell him to behave himself, but I sure didn’t want him to do anything stupid. I stared at him, hoping for an insight. I’d believed him when he said he didn’t know about the phone calls. Just how crazy was he?

He studied the oak wood grain on the judge’s bench and gave an absentminded nod.

“Call me if something comes up. I’ll be in touch with you. Also, I want your permission to hire a private investigator.”

His gaze snapped around to me but his slump didn’t shift.

“Her fees are reasonable and she’s quick. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the bond reduced just based on you saying you didn’t do it because it’s apparently your word against some phone records. We need to find out what’s going on here, okay?”

“So I can’t go back to work.”

Who is this nut who’d gotten my number from a wife beater in a holding cell?

“I’ll see you later,” I said and reached to shake his hand.

The act of reaching to accept my handshake roused him a bit.

“What can I tell my boss about when I’ll be back at work?”

Good question.

He shrugged, with a look that said he knew he didn’t have many options.

Midmorning Tuesday

As I strode down the block toward the Law Enforcement Center, I dialed Edna Lynch to give her the particulars on Tolly Mart’s case. When I had trouble walking and flipping through the few pages Alma had photocopied for me, I sat on the weather-worn cement steps cut into the hill leading up to the county agriculture extension office and balanced the file on my lap.

“The complaint says one hundred twenty-seven calls,” I said, the bad news confirmed in writing.

Edna’s
harrumph
needed no elaboration.

“I’ll fax you the phone company records as soon as I get them.”

“How ’bout you just leave them at your office for me to pick up?”

“Mm, I could, I guess.” I was trying to think where I would be later in the day. Nothing today had worked out as I’d planned.
“I probably won’t be back there to make copies until midafternoon.”

“You say they came and arrested him as soon as he got to work this morning?” She didn’t sound happy—but then, Edna seldom does.

“Yes’m.”

“I’ll get back with you.” My phone went silent.

I sat watching the occasional car pass, feeling for the first time the warm cement on my thighs and the increasing stickiness in the air as the sun moved higher. Nobody ever used these steps because the parking lot was around back, so a couple of the drivers slowed and stared, checking to see if I needed help or, more likely, to see if they knew me.

Just past the graveyard, in the direction of Rudy’s office, the sidewalk lay in shade. Using the metal handrail, I pulled myself up and turned toward the shady sidewalk.

At the Law Enforcement Center’s front desk, I said to the young woman on duty, “Chief Deputy Mellin, please.”

“Your name?”

“Avery Andrews.”

She eyeballed me as she picked up the handset, probably making use of the identification skills she’d studied in a textbook at the academy.

“Chief Deputy Mellin is not in his office.” Her tone said she expected that to be the end of the matter.

“Could you page him for me, please?” I smiled sweetly.

She held my gaze a moment, then reached for the handset again. Maybe she feared I was a stalker, a dangerous ex-girlfriend, or head of a citizens’ complaint committee—in short, bad news for Chief Deputy Mellin and, as a result, bad news for her.

I paced about on the polished institutional tile, watching the heat shimmer on the car windshields in the parking lot. Civilian
cars. The official vehicles were parked around back in a separate lot, both for ease in transferring arrestees and for security of the vehicles—vandalized police cars were hard to explain to the county commissioner’s budget committee.

I glanced at my watch.
Dang
. Rudy had probably headed out the back to lunch.

The switchboard set buzzed about the time I turned to the guardian of the gate to call off the search.

She covered the receiver and whispered, “Your name again?”

Less than a minute later, Rudy leaned around the door and motioned with a manila file folder for me to follow him.

“You ready for lunch?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Sure.” If you want to talk to Rudy, being ready to eat on command was a prerequisite.

He tucked the folder under his arm and led the way.

Rudy, the bulked-up remains of a successful 3-A high school right tackle, still works out sporadically, but he’s not running any wind sprints. He’s what my daddy calls a right big ol’ boy, the kind who can lift a perp up by the throat should the need arise, but he couldn’t easily turn and look over his own shoulder.

He rounded the corner and stopped so quickly I almost plowed into him. He’d almost collided with a guy also wearing a deputy’s uniform, this one with a slight build and a challenge on his face.

“Chief Mellin.” His tone said he might spit on Rudy’s shoes.

“Rodney.”

“I was coming to see you.”

“I’m heading out.”

The officer didn’t budge, his shoulders drawn back. The set of his jaw said he was looking for a fight.

Rudy stood solid. The officer noticed me standing behind Rudy. My presence didn’t make him dial down his intensity.

“I hear you’re messing with my case.”

“I’m doing my job. Nothing stopping you from doing yours.” Rudy leaned forward, emphasizing his height advantage.

“I’m going to the sheriff.”

My eyebrows shot up. He sounded like some kid running to tattle to the teacher.

“You got an extra set of balls, you go for it.”

He stepped past Rodney, opening the way for me to follow. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Rodney, offering only a curt nod. His fury whistled through his clenched teeth as I passed.

Maylene’s still had some breakfast stragglers. Rudy must not have made it in for breakfast this morning, since he was hungry so early.

We slid into a back booth, with Rudy facing the door, and placed our orders.

“What was that all about?”

“Dumbass doesn’t have sense enough to wet his finger and see which way the wind is blowing. Thinks L.J. actually hired him and his book learning to be a detective.”

“He’s mad about you looking into Neanna’s death?”

“He ain’t seen mad.”

I let it go. Rudy was a big boy and knew how to take care of himself. Most important, he knew how to take care of L.J. and keep things from blowing back on her. Which is what really mattered to L.J.

“So, you got a present for me?”

“I signed out the evidence file. You wanted to see it for yourself.” He didn’t hand it to me. “First, though, tell me about her sister.”

“What’s to tell? She’s grieving. She misses her sister. She feels guilty, wondering what she could’ve done to prevent it. She’s smart, very polished, and driven to find out what happened.”

Rudy focused on buttering a biscuit from the napkin-lined plastic basket. “You know they aren’t really sisters.”

He watched for my reaction.

“Yeah.” Quick work by the sheriff’s department. “But they thought of themselves that way. That’s what matters.”

His turn to be surprised, that I already knew.

“So what brought her here from Atlanta? The dead sister.”

I winced at his callousness, even though I knew Rudy, like any cop, medical malpractice attorney, doctor, or nurse—anyone who deals with human difficulty had to develop self-protective calluses.

I took a sip of ice tea, wanting to buy a moment to think. No need to let my friendship with Rudy blur the lines of my client’s confidences.

“The concert,” I said. “And curiosity. You know her aunt—Neanna’s real aunt—was murdered here.”

Rudy nodded, his eyes hooded. He’d wanted to know if I knew.

“Neanna was—curious.” I’d hold the rest of my cards for now.

“Why’d her sister hire you?”

“Answers.”

“She doesn’t trust us?”

He read enough on my face to draw the conclusion he’d expected.

“Some of that,” I said. “Face it, her aunt’s murder is still unsolved. She doesn’t know anybody in Camden County. How would you react, if you were her?”

He slid the folder across the table. I opened it on the bench seat beside me, blocking it from view so no idle passerby could get a glimpse that might ruin his lunch.

The photos were held in plastic-sleeved sheets. The first photo
showed the rear of a dusty blue Honda taken from twenty feet away. The car sat on rough-patch asphalt littered with gravel and debris. In the second and third, the camera moved closer with each shot.

To the right of the car ran a silver guardrail, dented and pocked with rust. Beyond the guardrail, treetops were visible, so the ground must fall away steeply on the other side. The car had a Georgia license plate.

“Where is this?” I hadn’t asked exactly where they’d found her. Judging from the photos, I guessed a pull-off on a steep, little-traveled mountain road.

Rudy studied me a moment with narrowed eyes. “The overlook above Moody Springs.”

“You’re kidding.”

Of course he wasn’t. Rudy could tell I was surprised by the news. “Um, we—some of us were just talking about Moody Springs yesterday,” I explained. “Odd coincidence.”

“We’re trying to keep it quiet. Don’t need a bunch of sightseeing ghouls up there getting theirselves run over.”

Ghouls—or ghosters. I hoped the newspaper article had yielded more promising haunted places for them to visit.

“That’s a busy road,” I said. “An odd choice. And such a beautiful spot. How . . .” I trailed off into my own thoughts. Who drives to a spot like that and thinks,
This is a lovely place to die?
Had Gran’s death and the breakup with her boyfriend and her obsession with Aunt Wenda’s death piled up into a depression she couldn’t push aside? Had she dwelt on the fact that she was now the same age Wenda had been when she died?

I flipped to the next picture. The photographer was standing close behind the car. The headrest on the front seat blocked the view but, after some study, I could make out a body, leaned slightly to the right, slumped over the steering wheel. I could also guess what was obscuring part of the left side of the windshield.

The next photo, taken from maybe ten feet away on the driver’s side of the car, showed the body clearly through the open window, although what remained looked human only because I knew what I was seeing.

“I didn’t bring all the crime-scene photos, just the key ones. They aren’t all in the book yet. Too much trouble hauling everything around loose.”

Something in Rudy’s tone made me look up from the photos. I kept the file on the seat beside me. He took a gulp of his tea, so I couldn’t read on his face what the loose photos implied, but I knew the case book would be Rodney’s responsibility, the irate would-be detective. The clear tea glass looked tiny in Rudy’s hand.

Rudy, whose hair often sticks up in a cowlick in back, was scrupulously well organized when it came to managing the few criminal cases each year that called on him to be a detective. Rodney better make sure he got his act together.

I flipped quickly to the next shot. “Thanks,” I said. “This is plenty of pictures.” Maybe too many. Sadness washed over me in a wave.

The next photo showed a close-up of the car’s window frame. Bits of glass—the thick, almost round balls of safety glass from a broken car window rather than the shards that plate glass or a mirror would produce—lay along the edge of the window. Of course. The window was open because it was broken. Not rolled down. Shot out.

The next photo showed the ground, with enough of the car visible to give it visual reference. A few bits of glass dotted the ground underneath the door.

The waitress—new to Maylene’s, which wasn’t unusual because the turnover here was legend—plopped our plates and another plastic basket of biscuits and giant squares of cornbread down in front of us and smacked our checks onto the table.

I stayed twisted around in the seat, thumbing through the last few photos. Most were the scene-setting variety, not the closeups with the right-angle ruler to measure the smallest bits of evidence or to show the wound details. These photos recorded the body’s position before she was removed, washed, and probed inside and out.

I paused at one of the photo sheets. One shot taken through the open passenger door showed the gun on the front seat. An automatic pistol, solid black and ominous. The next, a close-up of her hand, showed dark flecks dotting the side of her forefinger and back of her hand. Her palm was clean, her fingers delicate and waxy.

The next picture captured the view through the passenger door. If you could ignore the ominous dark spatters and avoid wondering what was on the door frame and headrest behind her, you could almost believe she was sleeping. Her shoulderlength pale hair fell over the lower part of her face.