Can’t Never Tell by Cathy Pickens

Author:Cathy Pickens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Published: 2011-06-10T08:58:09+00:00

Monday Afternoon

After I escorted Eden Rand to the front door, I noticed the light on in Melvin Bertram’s inner sanctum. I hadn’t heard him come home.

“Yoo-hoo.” I peeked in the French door to his outer office to make sure he wasn’t on the phone.

“Greetings,” he called.

“Welcome home,” I said as I entered the doorway to his sanctum.

He leaned back in his desk chair and stretched his arms over his head as if he’d been hunched over his computer too long.

“When’d you get back?”

“Late last night. Heard you all’ve had a bit of excitement this week. Made the national news, you know.”

“Which story?”

“The dead guy in the traveling show. Don’t tell me you got something that tops that.”

“Rinda Reimann fell off Bow Falls on Saturday.” The regional television stations had mentioned it, but an accidental fall lacks the drama that television scandal news craves. The story was taking too much time to unfold and couldn’t be captured neatly in a sound bite.

“Oh, gosh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Melvin had lived away from Dacus a lot of years, and Rinda would’ve been too many years behind him in school for him to remember her.

He paused for a respectful moment before asking, “So what’s the local chatter on the traveling mummy? Has he set the town on its ear?”

“Parts of it,” I said, picturing Madam President Adrienne Campbell’s dramatic hissy fit. “Most folks find it a curiosity.”

Melvin chuckled. “Well, sure. It’s not like he’s from around here.”

“So what’s the gossip?”

“Guess the news reports didn’t mention who discovered the body.”

“No.” He paused, reading the expression on my face. “No-o. Not you. You’re kidding.”

“ ’Twas me. And Emma.”

“They said some kid bumped into it and the leg fell off.”

“That wasn’t Emma. She just happened to be the one to have it land at her feet.”

“Your sister still letting you see your niece?” He was only half-teasing.

“Amazingly enough, she is. Come to think of it, though, we’ve had only supervised visits lately.”

“I can understand that. I’ve long wondered why they would turn you loose with an impressionable child . . .”

I snorted. “Impressionable. Emma?”

“Seriously, is she okay?”

“No signs of residual psychological damage, which is good. I do worry about that. I can’t quite believe we’re the adults in her life. Somehow, the adults in my life seemd so much more, what? Serious? Mature?”

“Responsibly adult?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, but the adults in your life included Miss Aletha Howe, and Miss Vinnia, and Miss Hattie. Those are formidable role models.”

“Yeah.” Somehow it was reassuring to realize that Emma may have an Aunt Bree who doesn’t always think through the long-term effects for a child, but she also has the same greater-aunts who’d watched over me. I’d been aware, growing up, of the high standards they set, of how formidable they were, but I later realized how protective they’d been, avenging and punishing angels as required.

I needed to change the subject before I got sloppy and sentimental. “Do you know Spencer Munn? He’s a professor over at Ramble College, but he also—I don’t know how you’d put it—gives investment advice to people.

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