Hush My Mouth (15 page)

She was quiet a moment. “It was like Gran wanted to know everything, to capture everything. Then one day she just stopped. I guess the newspaper quit covering it. Things just petered out.”

We were both silent, thinking about a woman who’d tried her best to hold together her daughter’s life and who’d pieced her death together as best she could.

“Avery, why would Neanna hide that picture in her car?”

I hadn’t told Fran about the rifling of the car trunk. The
circumstances of identifying the photo offered enough difficulty for one phone call. She didn’t need to know any more right now.

“I’d like to have a private investigator check out Neanna’s last boyfriend. Is there anybody else in Atlanta we should talk to?”

“Gran had a cousin she was close to. I don’t know if that would be helpful. Sidalee Evans. But I told you, Neanna and Dirick broke up. Some time ago.”

“That’s been known to provoke some guys. If nothing else, I’d like to mark him off the list. It shouldn’t take long.”

The line stayed quiet for too long.

Finally, she said, “His name is Dirick Timms. I don’t know his phone number, but he lived in an apartment near Georgia Tech, last I heard.”

“You happen to know his birth date?”

“Um—no. Yes. October 31, Halloween. Easy to remember.”

“Okay.”

“I was also thinking,” Fran said. “Can you find Nut Case and that guy she was so interested in meeting? He might know something.”

“The police can locate him. I’ll—”

“It won’t hurt for you to talk to him. I’ll feel better if you do.”

“Sure.”

“Avery, while you’re looking at boyfriends, have you learned anything about Aunt Wenda’s death? I just have this feeling—it’s not right.” She stumbled, searching for words. “Somebody knows what happened to her. I see these cold cases solved on TV all the time. Maybe enough time has passed. Maybe you can find somebody who’ll talk now. It was so important to Neanna. I just want—to do that for her.”

Tears thickened her voice and she paused for a moment. “Since you’re so interested in boyfriends, Aunt Wenda was dating some guy Gran didn’t trust. He hit her at least once. Gran called
the police, and from then on she blamed herself because she couldn’t make Wenda see the danger. I can still hear her: ‘If her father had been alive, they’d’a been calling the ambulance, not the cops. I was too much a coward; I let him continue to draw breath.’”

Her voice broke in short breaths. “Gran couldn’t hold Aunt Wenda back. It was like she was on the edge of an abyss. Like I tried to talk Neanna out of leaving Atlanta. Now I know—”

She must have covered the phone or held it away, but I could hear her jagged breathing.

“Fran?” I hoped she could hear me. “Fran, I’ll talk to you later, when I know something more. Okay?”

The phone clicked off.

I couldn’t imagine Neanna’s life and her losses, and I couldn’t imagine Fran’s grief. No point in telling Fran it wasn’t her fault. Words weren’t going to make her believe that.

I waited a few seconds, then picked up the receiver and checked for a dial tone. I flipped through my Rolodex—one of the few organized parts of my previous life I’d managed to maintain.

I dialed Rowly Edwards in Atlanta. I’d lucked into Rowly in February, during a frantic, misguided trip to Atlanta on another case, when he picked me up in his cab at the airport. What I needed now wasn’t his cabbie skills or his country-music singer/songwriter skills. I needed his private eye wannabe skills. Last I’d heard, he’d finished his training course and had taken a job with an investigation firm to work off his apprenticeship. Who better to cover Atlanta for me?

His voice mail message said he was unavailable.

“Rowly, it’s Avery. See what you can find for me on a guy named Dirick Timms.” I spelled it for him. “His birthday is October 31. He was living in an apartment somewhere near Georgia
Tech. May have a record. See what he was up to last Friday night, if you can.”

I talked fast to get all the information recorded and left my office number.

As I walked through what I was beginning to think of as Shamanique’s office, she came in carrying the mail. More brochures from experts wanting to improve my office function or win my cases for me and magazines I needed to read to keep up in a field where I no longer played.

“Put the sales brochures in the recycling basket.” I pointed it out under the desk. “Stack any bills to be paid with their envelopes in this top drawer.” I hoped there weren’t any. “Put the bill stubs and everything else in the to-be-filed basket. No, wait. Maybe we’d better have a new mail stack, so I can go through it first.” I was still trying to think through the best work flow.

“Okay if I listen to my music?” She pointed to a tangle of delicate wires and an MP3 player.

“Sure. Oh, and a book should come today or tomorrow, about running a law office. Thought that might be helpful to read. When you run out of things to do, you can get familiar with that legal-research site. I left the Web address on your desk. I may get a callback from Rowly Edwards. You have my cell number if he needs to talk to me.”

I could’ve put Shamanique on Dirick Timms’s trail. If she’d worked for Edna, she was probably handy at skip traces. But Rowly was on the ground in Atlanta and could size this guy up without spooking him. It also gave me a chance to hear what Rowly had been up to lately.

I headed for the stairs to change into my work clothes. If I couldn’t put in some billable hours on a case, might as well work off some of my rent.

The bells on the front door jangled about the time I got to
the top of the stairs. Something to help me procrastinate on cleaning the rest of the light fixtures, which would further delay my inevitable appointment with the wax rings on the toilets.

In the entry hall, Colin “Mumler” Gaines and the ghosters stood peering all about, through the doors into our offices, down the back hall, and up at the soaring staircase, watching me descend.

“Hi,” Colin said. He gave a shy wave, his elbow at his side, his hand raised in a sideways salute. “We were wondering, is Mr. Bertram in?”

“I don’t know. Do you have an appointment?”

“No, ma’am. We were passing by, thought we’d—”

Melvin picked that moment to swing open his French doors like a landed gentleman making his study available for brandy and cigars.

He got a wave from Quint and a handshake from Colin. Trini stayed closer to the front door, her hands intertwined in an awkward knot of fingers.

“Do you have a minute?” Colin looked from me to Melvin and back. “We had a quick question and you’re the very people who would know.”

Trini nodded her head in affirmation or encouragement.

Melvin hesitated before he stepped aside. “Come on in.”

In the front room of Melvin’s two-room suite, a leather sofa sat under the window opposite the French doors, flanked by two leather chairs. In the bay window that overlooked the wraparound porch, he had two armchairs and a large pie-crust table that probably cost more than his Jeep. Though it was arranged for comfortable conversation or for reading, Melvin never sat in here. Too much on display, I supposed. He likely had a lavishly furnished den upstairs as well.

It made a nice gathering place for a visit that I expected Melvin would keep short.

The three ghosters sat on the sofa, reminding me of three blackbirds perched side by side on a fence.

“Mr. Bertram, we were wondering . . .” Colin indicated his fellow black-clad birds. “We heard that you arrange investments?”

Oh, this was going to be good
.

Melvin settled in the club chair facing me. Colin sat on the end of the sofa closest to me, so I got the full effect of Melvin’s response. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I knew that expression. Melvin leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed, his tasseled loafers spit-shined, his gray slacks creased.

The kids obviously didn’t hear what he didn’t say, but to me the tension at the corner of his smile and the steel gray-blue gaze spoke volumes.

“Yes, I do arrange investments.” He didn’t lean forward with the intensity he shows when something catches his interest.

“We were wondering what it would take to attract investors for our project.” Colin’s excitement carried him to the edge of his seat. “You see, we have this idea for a TV series. We’ve decided on a name.
On the Ghost Hunt
. And Quint here even wrote theme music for it. Didn’t you?”

Colin nodded to Quint as if urging a reluctant child to give a hug to the grandma who always pinched his cheeks. Quint rubbed his knees and started humming,
Turn, turn, turn-turn tum-ta-tum
, and bobbing his head in time to something that sounded like an off-pitch mix between
Mission: Impossible
and
Scooby-Doo
.

“This could be really big. We were talking about it with a couple of cops, and this guy said you might be interested, maybe to invest yourself or for somebody else. One of your clients.”

I slipped my hand over my mouth, assuming what I hoped was an unobtrusive, thoughtful expression. This was too rich.
Oh, I was glad the bells on the door had beckoned me back downstairs.

“May I ask who told you I might be interested?”

“One of the cops.”

“Oh?” Melvin let his gaze slide over to me. “Where did you meet up with this cop?”

“At the graveyard last night.”

Uh-oh.

“Did you get some good film?”

“Uh—no.” Colin’s gaze danced from the Persian rug to his partners to the door. “Not really.”

Quint came to the rescue. “We had set up and started rolling. You just tape, you know. ‘Cause you can’t ever tell what you might get.”

Trini sat between her partners, nodding.

“Then we heard this noise. I almost levitated, it scared me so bad. Trini screamed. Man, can she scream.”

His tone indicated he meant this as a compliment.

I knew where this was headed. With the hand covering my mouth, I dug my fingers into my cheeks to keep myself from laughing.

Colin picked up the story again. “This lady, dressed all in black, appeared outta nowhere. She had this air horn and she let ‘er rip. Jeez, I thought it’d busted my eardrums.”

“Then the police came,” said Quint.

“Mrs. Amey,” Melvin said, his voice businesslike. He looked like he was playing with a rough cuticle. He was avoiding looking at me.

“Yeah, man. How’d you know?”

“She lives in the graveyard, in the caretaker’s house. She doesn’t take kindly to people who interfere with the cemetery, especially at night.”

“The dudes who suggested we film there sure didn’t tell us about that.”

“No way we wanted to disturb anybody.”

“Or have the police come threaten us,” Trini spoke up. “Said they’d arrest us. For trespassing and for vandalism.”

She’d taken the warning to heart, that was obvious.

“Who suggested you film in the graveyard?” Melvin asked.

Colin shrugged. “Dunno his name. Tall dude, mullet. And one of his buddies. Stopped us on Main Street. Word’s out about our project.” He nodded, his spiky hair waving with pride.

Coughing really isn’t a good way to disguise a laugh. I tried anyway. Melvin gave me a stern glance, one that said,
Don’t get me started
.

“Do you have any usable footage so far?” Melvin asked.

The three faces told the tale.

“No. Nothing yet.”

“Except the freaky lady dressed all in black,” Trini said. “With the air horn.”

“We got good leads, though,” Colin said, preferring to look ahead to success rather than behind.

“Going to Moody Springs tonight,” Quint said. “Like you suggested.”

I started to warn them away from Moody Springs, given that Neanna’s body had been found at the overlook not far from the springs, the same overlook reputedly used by the ghostly hitchhiker. Moody Springs was a little distance from the overlook, though, and I didn’t want to encourage them by mentioning the recent death, fearing what the possibility of fresh ectoplasm might urge them to do. I didn’t want Neanna’s death to become a curiosity.

Melvin nodded, his look solemn—the only way he could avoid trying a fake cough of his own. “I should explain how difficult it
is to get funding for movie or television investment. My clients, for example, would consider it too risky.”

Crestfallen expressions replaced optimism on the three faces.

“Filmmakers often have to provide start-up funding on their own. I know that’s not easy to hear, but you’ve already found a way to start, and that’s better than most with your dream do. Lots of artists start the way you are starting. You may find funding is easier to obtain when you have something to show an investor, something to establish your credentials.”

Their forlorn expressions softened.

“Street cred,” Quint said.

“Starve for your art, man,” Colin said, grasping the vision. “Gotta believe in it before anybody else will.” He nodded, first to Quint, then Trini, who nodded in return. The optimism was spreading.

“Well, thanks for your help.” Colin stood. “Gotta go get set up for tonight while it’s still light. Scout locations, plan shots.”

The three waved good-bye and loped out, pulling the door shut behind them.

I stayed in my seat, giving Melvin a mischievous smile. “Good fatherly advice there. Too bad they didn’t quite hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“You telling them to go home.”

“They have to figure that out for themselves. Thought I’d at least plant a few seeds of reality. They might sprout.”

“You always handle them nicely,” I said, but I couldn’t stay sincere for more than a moment. “Who knows? They might really have a hit series on their hands. Then you’ll be sorry. You could have been on the ground floor.”

He got up, stretched, and headed into his inner sanctum. Over his shoulder, he said, “Don’t you have work to do?”

I’d once again climbed almost to the top of the stairs when I heard my phone. I took another detour back to my office.

Shamanique was hanging up as I closed the door from the entry hall.

“Wrong number,” she said. “I got what you wanted on Nut Case.” She handed me a printout. “Here’s their schedule. Been in Charlotte. Good news is they’re back here tonight for a show in Clemson. Opening for some band at Littlejohn Coliseum. You might could catch them there.”