Southern Fried (21 page)

He looked puzzled for a few seconds too long, then he blinked in recognition. “Avery? Avery Andrews. Is that you?” I got the distinct impression I’d interrupted something.

He stepped around the clutter of boxes, his hand extended.
Bet they’ll lock the door next time
.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I saw your new headquarters here. Pretty exciting, Harry.”

The young campaign worker hung back in the doorway, not intruding but not returning to the office, either.

“Yep,” Harry said, reflexively running his hand along the waistband of his pants, tucking in his shirt. “Had no idea how much work was involved, running for statewide office.” He fixed me with a smile that looked like he popped it out of a can and pasted it on as needed. The smile never quite reached his eyes.

“I’m sure. Isn’t this a bit early in the campaign season, though? Next November’s a long way off.”

Harry shook his head. “I thought so, too. But not according to the calendar the party guys keep. They assure me there’s plenty to keep us busy.”

His eyes scouted around me, as if he were searching a crowded room for a more deserving audience. Must be a politician’s reflex, because only the sun-bright windows stood behind me.

Before the lull in the conversation got uncomfortable, a newcomer joined us. I saw the slender, golden woman approaching outside the windows before Harry did. But she had eyes only for him—storm blue eyes, expensively enlarged by artful makeup. One eyebrow arched in a sharp question.

“Glad to see the door’s not locked.” Her husky voice dripped acid. “Hello, Lori.”

The young woman bobbed her curls in a nod and evaporated out of sight into the office.

The slender woman with the golden hair and the golden suit then turned to me. The eyebrow arched again as she studied me from head to foot.

Harry, who’d stood frozen like a possum in traffic, recovered the social graces his mother had no doubt pounded into him.

“Lindley, I’d like you to meet Avery Andrews. We grew up together. You’re—a lawyer now, aren’t you, Avery?” His receiving-line smile occupied only part of his face.

“I sure am.” I extended my hand and grasped Lindley’s long, cool fingers. She finished her physi
cal examination, finally looking me in the eye, her eyebrow still slightly cocked.

“Avery, this is my wife, Lindley Duncan Garnet.”

Of the Duncans and Lindleys, I half expected him to say.

“So nice to meet you, Lindley. Helping Harry on the campaign trail, I see.”

She graced me with part of a smile. Her direct gaze testified to her low-country roots more volubly than her round, mushy vowels. “It’s so nice to finally meet some of Harrison’s friends.”

It took me a blink to realize that she meant Harry rather than his dad. So much for the folksy touch of campaigning with your childhood nickname.

“Since Harrison and I met in graduate school at Carolina—we were both getting our MBAs—we haven’t spent much time here in Dacus.” She talked now on autopilot while she studied Harry. Probably a useful skill for a politician’s wife, to talk cheerfully about nothing while keeping a sharp eye all around.

I knew I should be feeling sorry for her, having to keep Harry’s leash so short. But I found myself feeling sorry for shallow, stupid Harry. And for cute little Lori. And whoever else got between Lindley Duncan Garnet and whatever she had her eye on.

“I know you folks must be busy. I just stopped in on my way home. From Lea Bertram’s funeral. Did you all attend?” I hoped I looked innocently wide-eyed.

Harry gave the reaction I expect in a witness un
comfortable with the direction of a cross-examination. He licked his lips, glanced quickly upward to his left, and looked like somebody who wanted to lie.

“Um—no. No, we didn’t go. We—”

Lindley glided the few steps to Harry’s side, touching her hand to his shoulder blade, cutting him off. “No, we didn’t attend. Harrison’s candidacy doesn’t mean he has to appear at every morbid circus that comes to town.”

I smiled sweetly. “Oh, I wasn’t really thinking of Harry’s candidacy. I was thinking of Lea’s relationship with Garnet Mills. After all, she had”—I paused—“an employment relationship with the Garnets.”

Lindley’s hand on his back and her puppet-master posture couldn’t control the flush that crept up past Harry’s unbuttoned shirt collar and across his tanned, fleshy cheeks.

Lindley kept speaking for him. “Harrison isn’t Garnet Mills or its representative,” she said smoothly. “Joining a display like that funeral would serve no good purpose.”

The flush on Harry’s face began to recede. Harry, bless his heart, had found himself quite a handler.

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time. I know you all have plenty to keep you busy.” But Lindley seemed up to the task.

Harry resumed his role of the jovial host and escorted me to the door. Lindley turned into the office where Lori had taken refuge.

What were the words to that old song? Some
thing about marrying a girl just like the girl who’d married dear old dad? Poor Harry.

I drove directly to the cabin, relishing the occasional squeak of a rear tire when I pushed it too hard in a curve. I also relished the silence of the cabin, which seemed an odd reaction, following a funeral. But, after the polite small talk and strained emotion, the unbroken silence comfortably held me.

I changed into jeans and took the Sunday paper I’d filched from my aunts out to the back porch. The sun warmed the porch this time of day, and the rickety wooden rocker facing the water would allow me to soak up the silence.

Unexpectedly, the deafening roar of what sounded like an angry invading army of giant hornets shattered the quiet.

T
he sound of the motorcycle engines grew from the first faint buzz in the distance. By the time they’d reached the end of my rutted driveway and what passed for the cabin’s backyard, even the shelter of the cabin couldn’t protect me from the din.

The thundering reverberations—so at odds with the Sunday quiet—chilled the skin on my arms. I have to admit I wanted to crawl under the porch and hide. But it offered precious little cover.

I slipped inside the screen door, retrieved my .38 pistol from its hiding place in a canvas bag, and slipped it into the back waistband of my jeans.

In books, the hero or heroine always makes that sound like a simple maneuver. But my jeans were too tight from too many home-cooked meals. And no one ever mentions how cold gun barrels are. Or how heavy guns are. On second thought, good thing my jeans were tight or they might have slid around my knees under die weight of my arsenal.

The cold metal felt reassuring—until I slipped
around the side of the house to spy who had come calling.

When I saw what sat in my yard, the gunmetal felt suddenly hot against my skin. I stood in the shadow of the cabin, trying to figure out my options. I had nowhere to run or hide, I had no idea how to get to Sadie Waynes’s house. If I crossed either of the side yards toward the woods, I’d be on open ground. The still expanse of lake lay at my back. The cabin had no closets and I couldn’t fit under the bed.

With no flight possibilities, I opted for a casually amused lean against the side of the cabin, watching two of them clump up the steps to my back door.

The one with a bandanna do-rag wrapped over his blond hair almost forgot to duck under the porch roof. He recovered and hiked his pants up from his beefy hips while his companion pounded on my door with a fist that threatened to splinter the weathered boards.

Then Do-Rag spotted me. I nodded curtly. Not the sort of greeting I’d give if the Frank Dobbins circle came calling. But a proper greeting. And wary.

Do-Rag thumped his companion on the arm and motioned to where I stood looking up at them. They were both big suckers.

The meat-fisted one sported a wiry mud-brown beard that filled his shirt front. His beard might once have reached to his waist, but his waist had grown off and left his beard high and dry. Both men carried a lot of extra weight—linebackers gone to seed. But I would put money on either one of them in an armwrestling match.

I touched my shirttail to make sure it covered the gun grip, then asked, “May I help you?”

“You A’vry Andrews?” Do-Rag asked.

“Mind if I ask why you’re looking for her?”

“That’s her,” Ham Fist said. “Jodo said she ’uz a skinny, mouthy thing with reddish hair.”

I prefer to think of my hair as burnished blonde, but since I had no idea who Jodo was, I likely wouldn’t get the chance to explain.

“Max’d like a word with you.” Do-Rag swung off the steps toward me.

“Max,” I said.

Do-Rag cocked his head toward the assembled motorcycles. The gleam from the chrome bikes enlarged the perception of how many big men on big motorcycles sat in my yard.

“Well, tell Max to come on over and state his business.”

I still stood at the comer of the cabin, with the yard and the lake at my back. How far could I swim in November water before hypothermia sapped me and sent me to the bottom? To the place Lea Bertram had recently vacated.

“Max’d like to talk to you there.” Do-Rag jerked his head. He reached, as if to take my arm, but I made a little step back, then around him.

“Well, by all means. I didn’t know he couldn’t get off his bike.”

Do-Rag spun and sandwiched me between him and Ham Fist, and we approached the circle of motorcycles like supplicants to a throne.

At the center of a loose circle of a dozen or so
bikes sat a thin-chested man with a heavy handlebar mustache and wild, dark hair. And even wilder eyes. He sat astraddle a Harley chopper, his arms crossed on his reedy chest.

“Hear you’re friends with Sheriff Peters.”

Odd introduction. “I’ve been accused of worse. But not lately.”

Wry humor was wasted on this crowd.

“And you’re old man Garnet’s lawyer.” He stated fact, no questions.

I kept my gaze level and struggled to keep a small smirk at the comer of my mouth. But I acknowledged nothing. What the hell was he after?

We stared at each other a moment more. “Need to get a message to the sheriff,” he said. “Since it interests Garnet, thought you could pass it on.”

“Why don’t you just call L.J. yourself?”

That, they considered humorous. Smirks and snorts rippled mildly through the audience.

“L.J.,” he said mincingly, “and I aren’t on a firstname basis. And this information is best passed through somebody else. Somebody more—impartial.”

He sat studying me, his arms still crossed. “We voted,” he announced finally, emphasizing each word. “Unanimously.” As if I understood—or cared.

A sense of unease seemed to move through the bikers. Which certainly didn’t comfort me any.

“How do we get—what d’ya call it? Attorney-client protection.”

“Privilege. Attorney-client privilege,” I said, then winced inwardly at my schoolmarmish tone.

“Attorney-client privilege.”

“By hiring an attorney. One who doesn’t have a conflict of interest from representing another party involved in the matter. Which means you can’t hire me if it has something to do with Harrison Garnet or Garnet Mills.”

He pursed his lips. I don’t think he’d blinked once the whole time we’d talked. “Okay. You can do this for free, then, since you don’t represent us.”

Ouch, hit a starving lawyer where it hurts.

He smiled. Or gave what I supposed passed for a smile—two buck teeth appeared beneath his handlebar mustache.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to—”

“Does Harrison Gamet want the cops to find the guy who torched his factory?”

That got my attention. “I’m sure he would.” Assuming he hadn’t done it himself.

“Well, tell L.J that Noodle Waitley is in a house trailer up Crossover Road. Been holed up there since Thursday night. Sheriff’s been looking for him, but don’t know where he’s at.”

“Will the sheriff know which trailer?” Trailers have a way of reproducing quickly and easily if left in close proximity to one another and unsupervised for long enough.

“Only one after the fork in the road past the old Mitkin dairy.”

“And what makes you so sure L J. wants to visit with this Noodle?”

Something I said angered him. His careless slump straightened. “Because that bitch sheriff’s
been nosing around us ever since it happened. Can’t get anything done without her or some pencilwhipped idiot sniffin’ our butts like lovesick dogs.”

“So you decided to do your civic duty.”

His jaw muscles worked so hard his mustache twitched. His voice grew quiet, but I had no trouble hearing him. “Don’t misunderstand me. Members don’t rat each other out. What I’m doing here would ordinarily mean a death sentence for me. That’s why the whole club came. Noodle’s offense endangered the entire club. And for his own gain. He really left us no choice. We’re just taking care of business.”

“So this is sort of like the black spot, huh?”

Maybe he hadn’t read
Treasure Island
in his misspent youth. Or he’d forgotten it in his misspent adulthood. He must have thought I’d made fun of him, because that jaw muscle started working again.

“Just pass it on to the sheriff.”

“You still haven’t told me anything that would help the sheriff. Why’s she targeted you all, anyway? And how do I know you’re not setting up me or my client—or even this Noodle fellow—for something?”

He leaned forward slightly onto the handlebars of his bike. “The sheriff’s targeted us, as you say, because Noodle was dumbshit enough to be seen at the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d taken to hanging around Garnet Mills drawing a lot of unnecessary attention. We can’t seem to reason with the sheriff.”

I nodded sympathetically at that. I’d known L J. since the third grade. Nobody could reason with her
unless he got her attention first—maybe with a croquet mallet. “Hanging around doing what?”

“Collecting on debts from some of the workers. Don’t make sense we’d bum that plant down to get to one deadbeat.” He shook his head sadly.

“That’s what L.J. thinks? That you killed a—client—and burned the plant?” Why was I cataloging the scenario for a possible hit? Especially since Max didn’t look pleased.