Hush My Mouth (2 page)

Melvin looked up at me, shaking his head. Nice to know he hadn’t forgotten me and my precarious perch while he played ghost guide.

After I lowered the tar pot, I let the rope drop. Melvin held the ladder and I eased myself around until my foot found the
rung. That first step was always the worst for me. Stretching into limbo, fearful the ladder would begin to tilt into space.

“I can’t believe you sent those kids on a wild goose chase, Mr. Andrews,” I said when I touched ground.

A wry half smile still turned up one corner of his mouth as he dusted his hands off. “Seems they chose a wild chase without any help from me. You really need to get a receptionist. So much coming and going around here. I can’t be expected to be your greeter. Especially”—he cocked his head in the direction the trio had taken—“if you and your stone-faced friend here begin to attract the fringe element.”

I handed him the sticky tar pot, its rope trailing along the ground. “If you’d take care of patching your own leaky roof, Mr. Bertram, perhaps I’d have time to greet the weirdos myself. You know where the ladder goes.”

I took the porch steps two at a time. I had to hurry and get ready for the client who’d insisted on a morning appointment. I closed the front door without looking back. I knew Melvin would look dismayed, both at the tar-smeared pot in his hand and at the task of pulling down the extension ladder and hauling it to the huge garage around back, under the house. His penchant for order would be at war: leave the ladder in plain view of everyone traveling Main Street or risk getting dirty while wrestling it out of sight without my help. I knew if I glanced over my shoulder, I’d feel sorry for him and turn back to help. But I was a bit shaky-legged from both the physical and mental exertion of my roof walk.

Roof patching and other chores offset my rent payments even though Melvin might, at times, have been better served by paying professionals. But for the last three months, since I’d officially decided to set up practice in half the downstairs of his recently reacquired Victorian, it had been an amiable and mutually beneficial arrangement.

Today, though, my subcontractor work was interfering with my practice of law. I had a new client coming in just a few minutes. I’m not much of a primper, but I needed to shower, change clothes, and get back downstairs before Melvin had yet another count against me on the matter of no receptionist.

Melvin’s consulting work doesn’t entail clients coming to his office. When he’d invited me to share space, I wasn’t sure he’d foreseen the effect of clients dribbling into my office. Dribbling, not streaming. It wasn’t so much the quantity as it was the unpredictable but steady number of characters and odd cases that arrived, as this morning illustrated. I also had some doubts about my next appointment.

She’d called early this morning and needed to see me right away. Her sister was missing. When I’d suggested she call the sheriff, she cut me off, insisting it was more complicated than that. Now that I thought about it, maybe I should have asked the ghost hunters to stick around to help with the search.

Monday Morning

I made it back downstairs after my shower mere seconds before my new client stepped onto the deep, shaded porch. When she’d called early that morning, she hadn’t given me much information, just that she needed help finding someone.

In the seven months since I’d returned to Dacus from a big firm specializing in trial practice, I’d choked back more than a few knots of anxiety. In my old life in Columbia, I’d known what I was doing and I was good at it. The tougher and more complicated the case, the more I liked it. Now, all too often, the bread-and-butter problems that walked through the door—the wills or property transfers or divorces—all had learning curves for me. Whether my clients knew it or not, I was frequently surprised by how little nuts-and-bolts law I knew.

On the other extreme, some of their problems were so simple,
I felt like a thief asking for my fee. Too many of those who found themselves on my doorstep had already been beaten up and sucked dry. Likely why some of the other lawyers in town steered them in my direction.

“Finding someone” fell outside my experience, but the young woman who now swung open my beveled-glass-and-oak door had been insistent.

“Ms. French?” I asked. “I’m Avery Andrews.”

“Fran.” Her heels made three businesslike clicks on the oak floorboards of the room-sized entry hall as she crossed to shake my hand.

Her slender fingers were cool, her handshake firm. She looked down at me, her green eyes curious, studying me just as I was studying her.

I led her to my back office and we settled in. The answering machine would catch any messages, and the two wing chairs in the window alcove would be comfortable and private. My outer office had once been a family parlor and later a funeral home viewing room. Beautifully furnished with a few carefully chosen chairs, my grandfather’s oak desk scavenged from my great-aunts’ attic, and my own collection of antiques, it lacked only one thing: the receptionist Melvin kept pestering me to hire. That seemed such a big step—both a financial and personal commitment to being here, to practicing law on my own. I kept putting off the decision.

Fortunately, Fran declined my offer of coffee. I’d forgotten to check whether Melvin had made any, and as a noncoffee drinker, I was completely inept at the task. “You said you needed help finding someone,” I said.

“My sister Neanna Lyles is missing. To be truthful, she’s not really my sister, but my parents. . . we were raised together as sisters.”

The part of me always interested in others’ stories wanted to settle back for a chat. The part of me that had worked on billable
hours with a big firm knew to get down to business. If I couldn’t help her, no point in dragging this out.

“Your sister lives in Dacus?”

“No. In Atlanta. We both do. We grew up there. She drove up here a couple of days ago. I haven’t heard from her since Friday, and I’m starting to panic. She should have called before now. I called all the places I could think of—the hospital, the sheriff, all the hotels in the area. When I ran out of options, I got in the car and drove.”

Her fingers tangling and untwining in her lap were the only physical hint at her disquiet. Flawless makeup on porcelain skin, chocolate-brown pants, cream silk shirt, bobbed auburn hair, wide green eyes, she looked like an Atlanta bank executive, which she might be when she wasn’t searching for her not-quite sister.

“Was she here visiting someone?” The reasons to come to Dacus were limited, despite attempts by the Chamber of Commerce and the scattered bed-and-breakfasts to market the local charm. People mostly just passed through on their way to fish on the lakes or to camp or hike in the national forest or to travel higher into the Blue Ridge Mountains seeking cooler weather.

“She said she was coming to a concert.” Fran untangled her fingers. “Nut Case, her favorite group. They were playing at some club around here.”

“You know the name?”

“The Ranch? Or the Pasture? Something like that.”

“The Pasture.” I’d never heard of Nut Case, but the Pasture had been around for decades, a honky-tonk with a big pasture out back for occasional concerts.

“Neanna called on her way here last Friday, then nothing. It was easier to drive here than to sit home and worry. I couldn’t help but see your angel sign when I drove into town. I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice.”

“I’m not sure I’m the best person to help you. Dacus has a private investigator who is actually very good. I could put you—”

“No,” she said, her tone sharp. “No. I’ve had enough of P.I.’s. You’re from around here, aren’t you.” She wasn’t asking. “You know people, know how things work around here.”

“Yes.” My family had been here longer than dirt.

She nodded at the confirmation. “I asked about you. People like your family. At least the people who work at the gas station on the north edge of town.” Her smile acknowledged the unscientifically small size of her sample. “The story is difficult. You can hire whatever help you need, but I need someone I can trust, someone—who can handle a difficult case and move quickly.”

“You can’t know that about me from the gas station.”

She smiled. “No, but they did tell me you were once a ‘big fancy lawyer in Columbia.’ After I called you to make the appointment, I stopped by the library to check you out online.”

Hmm. I needed to check myself out sometime, see what popped up. “Okay, suppose you tell me about your sister. Then we can talk about next steps.”

“Fair enough. To tell the truth, the concert wasn’t the real reason she came. She came looking for her aunt, for information about her death.”

She noted my surprise.

“Maybe you’ve heard about Wenda Sims?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“I’m sure it was in the papers, but you’d have been young when she died.”

Fran looked to be in her late twenties, a little younger than I was, but I let her tell her own story.

“Wenda was murdered here in Dacus in 1985. She was found stretched out on a grave marker in a cemetery.”

The lightbulb came on. “I do remember that.” I’d been in
junior high school. It had been all the buzz for a few weeks, just because it had been so strange how she’d been found in the graveyard. In the way of small towns, it had probably disappeared as a topic of conversation because she wasn’t from Dacus and people figured she’d brought her trouble with her from somewhere else. “That was Neanna’s aunt?”

She nodded, her expression somber. “She’d been strangled and displayed there, with her suitcase and makeup kit sitting on the ground at her feet. Neanna idolized Wenda—and, I’m afraid, idealized her. Neanna was only seven when Wenda died. She was Neanna’s fairy godmother, her shining light in an otherwise dreary and sometimes frightening family.”

“Seven. That’s a tough age to—”

“Lose someone? Particularly for Neanna. She wouldn’t talk about it for the longest. It just hurt too much. I think a lot of what she remembers about Wenda are her grandmother’s stories about how much Aunt Wenda doted on her. Neanna still keeps the Raggedy Ann doll on her bed that Wenda gave her when she was a baby.”

When she wasn’t talking with her hands, they moved restlessly in her lap.

“Neanna’s grandmother—we called her Gran—raised her after her mother ran off with some guy. Neanna was just a baby. Gran never said, but I assumed Neanna’s mama had a drug or alcohol problem. They didn’t hear from her after she took off. When we were in high school, Neanna finally found out her mama had died. It hit Neanna hard, finding out her mama had been dead for years.”

“Had anyone looked for her mother?”

“Off and on. It’s why I don’t trust private investigators. I watched too many of them take Gran’s money—and her hopes. She couldn’t afford it, but they didn’t care. Gran found out on her
own that Marie had died in San Francisco a year or two after she left Atlanta. Gran found out our senior year in high school. Everything’s so emotional then anyway. You can imagine how hard it was on Neanna.”

“What about Neanna’s father?”

“Long gone. He’d disappeared when Neanna was a baby, never to be heard from again.”

“How did you know Neanna?”

“We’ve been best friends since kindergarten.”

When she smiled, the fret wrinkles around her eyes eased. “We were in school together from then on. When we turned thirteen, Neanna’s grandmother started having some health problems—gallbladder surgery, diabetes, I don’t know what all. Neanna had always spent a lot of time at my house when we were little, and she stayed with us more and more whenever Gran had to go to the hospital. I don’t think Neanna’s teen years could have been much fun for Gran. Maybe she was remembering her own two daughters and how things hadn’t worked out too well, one murdered, one just gone. Neanna had a rebellious streak, at least when Gran was the one handing down ultimatums. Neanna would do anything for my dad, though. Eventually she just moved in with me and my parents.”

She paused, staring into space—or across time. “I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after, but after we graduated from college, Neanna drifted from job to job. She majored in art, but she didn’t want to teach and she didn’t have the business head to become a gallery darling. So she took retail or waitress jobs, just something to pay the rent. She doesn’t even paint for fun anymore, which is a shame. If someone has a gift like that, she should use it.”

“What do you do, Fran?”

“Besides wish I was as talented an artist as Neanna? I own my own advertising and sports marketing firm.”

That helped explain the professional polish, the creased slacks, the pearly white teeth, and why she was so much better at articulating her case than many of my clients.

“You did have the business head, then.”

“Yeah. Too bad we couldn’t team up somehow, huh? We talked about it, but things just settled into a routine. Neanna is still a member of our family. She’s there for Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays. And, I suspect, for the occasional loan from my dad.”

She emphasized the word “loan” with crooked forefingers, hinting that her dad hadn’t looked for or expected repayment. Judging from her lack of bitterness, I suspected her dad was generous with both his daughters. Fran had the confidence and presence of a child who has been well cared for. Fran could be my sister—or at least a cousin. My hair had more gold than red in it, but the similarities outweighed the differences.