Hush My Mouth (12 page)

“I take it you didn’t hear any crying.”

“Only crying I heard was that dumbass Campbell.” He smiled broadly. “Jennie Lee was sitting in the front seat of that old Plymouth I used to have. I got out to watch Campbell, she slid over in the driver’s seat and put that sucker in gear. I barely got the back door open. She was moving when I jumped in. But not before I heard it.”

He laughed out loud, one of his contagious belly laughs.

“Not the baby,” I said.

“Naw. Campbell. Screaming like a girl. He must’a run a good half mile, chasing us and yelling before she stopped the car.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes had teared up. “We saw a ghost, all right. Campbell was white as a sheet.”

I shook my head. High school pranks, whether five years ago, fifteen, or fifty, whether funny or frightening or angst-ridden, always have an intensity about them that survives. Our own little ghosts that haunt us.

“I remember that car,” I said. A twenty-year-old hand-me-down from his grandmother, that car had been lavished with most of Rudy’s money and affection. The rest he’d reserved exclusively for Jennie Lee, a well-endowed, sweet little girl.

I realized how little I knew about Rudy’s private life. We hadn’t been close friends in high school, so I hadn’t gotten regular reports over the years from my family. When I’d come back to Dacus seven months ago, we’d renewed our acquaintance because both of us spent way too much time eating at Maylene’s, but
that’s where it stayed. He wore a wedding ring, but I knew little else about his life away from his chief deputy job. Rudy was like most guys I’d worked with over the years, able to compartmentalize. Then again, I didn’t talk about my personal life, either.

“Did you and Jennie Lee get married, even though she tried to steal your car?” As soon as I asked, I knew I’d gotten it wrong.

A cloud passed over his expression. “Naw. That was a high school thing.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t probe further. It might not be a fresh wound, but it looked like it still hurt. High school pranks weren’t the only things that created an energy that didn’t dissipate much over time.

“Reckon I better get going,” Rudy said, slipping the checks out from under the bread basket and handing mine to me.

As we stepped out on the sidewalk, I heard a familiar buzzing sound, like a swarm of angry flies. Donlee Griggs zizzed down the opposite side of Main Street on the scooter he’d acquired a few months earlier—about the same time he’d acquired the tiny girlfriend whose matching round pumpkin-orange helmet mashed into the small of his back as she held on for dear life.

Another poignant trip down memory lane. While Rudy had dated cute girls like Jennie Lee in high school, I was attracting the likes of gigantic, slow-witted Donlee. The crush he had on me had resurrected itself when I’d helped him out pro bono on a drunk-and-disorderly charge back in November, but his unwanted attentions had evaporated like morning mist on a treeshrouded creek as soon as his little motor-scooter mama had appeared. Maybe she’d brought the scooter with her. Either way, Donlee drove by, looking neither right nor left as he passed us.

Tuesday Afternoon

“If you expect to have anybody wants to hire you, you got to get you a receptionist. Totin’ a cell phone around, answering it on the fly, don’t cut it. You need a receptionist. Somebody make this like a real place of business.”

Edna Lynch had walked in my front room lecturing and didn’t stop to catch her breath until she’d backed me into my inner office.

“Uh—”

“My niece Shamanique is available. She can do what you need done. You want her this afternoon?”

“Uh—”

“You don’t have to pay her but minimum wage. She’s on probationary work release right now.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. I didn’t even get
uh
out.

“Bad checks, thanks to a worthless boyfriend’a hers. She ain’t gonna have to worry about having her probation revoked. She gonna have to worry about me beating her sorry ass to within an inch of her life, she messes up again.”

Edna’s voice had taken on the lilt of a street preacher. Somewhere back along the line, I suspected she and my great-aunt Letha had been separated at birth—even though Edna is black and closer to my mother’s age.

“I’d be glad to meet her.” How could I say no? If I did decline, Edna and Melvin might gang up on me.

Edna had refused the offer of a chair, so we both stood in front of my desk. “Just stopped by on my way to the clerk’s office,” she said. She glanced up at the crystal chandelier. I needed to dust it, maybe bleach it or something.

“I take it what I hear is right, this Mart divorce is a bad breakup, mostly on her side?”

“That’s what I understand,” I said. “Of course, I only have Mr. Mart’s side of the story.”

“Most folks seem to be taking his side, from what I hear. That duhn’t excuse driving somebody crazy with hundreds of phone calls.”

“No.”

“He was arrested at work instead of his apartment. The cops tell you why?”

I shook my head.

“Because she told her lawyer she didn’t know where he lived, just where he worked.”

I frowned. “Surely—”

“Can you check that with your client?”

“Yes, ma’am.” It’s a small town. How could his wife not know where he was living? Why would he keep that a secret from her?

“I’ll get Shamanique over here this afternoon,” Edna said over her shoulder as she passed into the front parlor, her brown polyester pants whistling faintly on her thick thighs. Edna, with her close-cropped mini-Afro, was shaped roughly like a bowling ball—thick, not tall, plenty hard.

I stayed in my office and glanced up at the chandelier. Nothing I could do with either Neanna or Tolly Mart and, as usual, I felt frustrated by inaction. Cleaning the chandeliers could count toward my work-for-rent deal with Melvin. Resealing the toilets could wait.

I checked a couple of home-repair books about the best way to clean crystal chandeliers. As usual, I’d end up calling Mom or Dad when I found the instructions inadequate. The chandelier had accumulated grime for many years, wood smoke from the fireplaces, and probably cigarette smoke from the now-gone days when people saw life through a softly filtered haze of burning leaves. The more I studied it, the more I feared it would be an allout project.

I gathered my supplies—glass cleaner, bleach, a bucket of warm water, some smooth cotton cloths worn full of holes, and a space-age duster. In short, everything I could think I might need. I changed into overalls, knowing I’d need the pockets, and maneuvered my ladder into place. About the time I climbed to the top, the bell hanging on the front doorknob jangled.

Edna appeared at the foot of my ladder, her hands on her hips, her lips pursed, studying me with that mixture of disappointment and pity I’ve come to expect from her. In tow, she had a young woman. Her creamy milk-chocolate face was much lighter than Edna’s. Her long legs looked graceful when she stood still, but when she sauntered over to the front window to look out, she moved with that sassy, hip-popping stroll that looked as though she had a techno beat playing in her ear.

“Hello,” I said, backing down the aluminum ladder from my twelve-foot ceiling. I never notice how loudly a ladder groans until I’m heading down from a height.

“This is Shamanique. She’s here to help you in the office.”

Shamanique turned back to us and stood with one hip jutted out. She wore a denim skirt that, on somebody with short legs like me, wouldn’t have looked so short. But she had giraffe legs. Her gold hoop earrings hung almost to her shoulders, and her hair was lacquered into an elaborate pile on her head.

Edna turned her disapproval laser on her young niece, who got the message without a word spoken. Same as I always did. Edna has loud thoughts.

Shamanique extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said with rehearsed politeness.

Her Fu Manchu nails were airbrushed with artful swoops, and her eyes danced with a sassiness that could spell trouble or fun. Which surfaced depended on the circumstances and her mood, I was sure.

“You interested in doing some office work?” I asked.

She cocked her head to one side in a half shrug. “Sure.”

“You type? Do bookkeeping? That sort of thing?”

In the tiniest uptick at the corner of her mouth, I could suddenly see the family resemblance. She was thinking,
Duh, ‘course
. But she said, “Yeah. Yes, ma’am.” The last was added quickly, her eyes cutting toward Edna.

“She can do what you need. She’s smart, when she sets her mind. You need a more professional—setting.” Edna’s disapproving gaze covered me from my paint-splopped sneakers to my overalls sprouting tool handles from every pocket.

“Great. Um—when can you start?”

She gave her lopsided half shrug at the same time Edna said, “Now. That’s why she’s here.”

Great. Having someone work for you requires having work for her to do, which means thinking it through, planning priorities, training her. And deciding how much I could trust her. That would take some time to determine and some private conversations with her, without Edna around ready to grab us both by the nape of the neck and shake us like bad puppies at the slightest provocation.

“Great. Well. Let’s head back to my office. I’ll show you around and we’ll decide what to tackle first.”

“What time will you need a ride home?” Edna asked, talking to Shamanique but looking to me for the answer.

I stopped myself before the words “Oh, whenever” came out of my mouth. “Um, five o’clock?”

“I’ll just call Gabe, Auntie. You don’t have to—”

“I better find your little self on the front porch waiting for me at five. You think I’m so dumb, I don’t know Gabe?”

She spit his name with blistering derision, shook her head, and turned for the door, muttering to herself. I caught something about
Gabe
and
lick of sense
and
no count
.

“Well.” I rubbed my hands together, my brain racing. I had an employee—one I was expected to pay—and no idea what she could do. She sure wasn’t dressed to climb the ladder up to the twelve-foot ceiling.

“Let me give you the grand tour.” That wouldn’t take long. The ornate Victorian had a rather simple floor plan: off the entry hall, which was larger than most living rooms, two parlors opened on either side and an age-darkened oak staircase swept up to the second floor. The parlors had served as entertaining spaces both for Melvin Bertram’s grandfather when he’d built and lived in the house and, later, for the Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home.

“That’s Mr. Bertram’s office.” I indicated the French doors
that opened into his office suite—the former front parlor and dining room, which mirrored my two-room office suite. Fortunately for me, Melvin and his venture capital/financial adviser work didn’t require a lot of books, so I got the former library and its matching front parlor, both with lavishly detailed floor-to-ceiling cases for my inner sanctum.

“Living quarters are upstairs, so that’s private space.” I didn’t elaborate on the fact that Melvin and I had apartments upstairs. Separate apartments. This was a small Southern town, so I don’t flaunt the arrangement, and I still wasn’t sure living here would last. Living so close to work had its drawbacks, but it was more convenient—and better insulated from heat and cold—than my grandfather’s lake cabin.

“Back here is the restroom.” Ah, something I could delegate. “Occasionally, clients come in here. If you could make sure it’s stocked with paper and soap, that would be a help. Mr. Bertram hires a cleaning service, but they only come once a week.”

She nodded. We continued past the restroom tucked underneath the staircase—probably added by the funeral home—and past the door to the basement stairs, which led to what had been the embalming rooms. We kept that door locked, and I kept my treks downstairs to a minimum. I didn’t explain its existence to Shamanique, or describe the drains in the floors or the stainless-steel sinks and counters and the lingering laboratory smell.

“Back here’s the kitchen. Bring whatever you’d like to eat. It’s just the three of us. Help yourself to the Cokes. Coffee, tea, and sugar up here.”

The kitchen stock was really pathetic, considering it wasn’t just an office kitchen, but also the kitchen for both of our apartments. Melvin kept some fresh fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator, and canned soups in the cabinet. I kept only popcorn and ice cream on hand because, whenever I was hungry, I had a good idea what time
my mom, my great-aunts, or my sister would have a meal on the table.

“These are the stairs down to the parking lot in back. There’s room back there, so you don’t have to park on the street.” Not that finding a place in front of the old house was difficult, except on the first morning of a court session. Until they got the jurors sorted out, cars were parked in the trees on this end of town.

The kitchen completed our tour—the only main floor room the Baldwin & Bates renovation decades earlier had left untouched. Clean but shabby, with faded linoleum and yellow Formica countertops scrubbed colorless in spots.

“That’s all of it,” I said.