“Hi, Jill,” I say, and become immediately tongue-tied. I should have insisted on meeting Paul in his office. Though I never knew Jill as well as I would have liked, she was a caring, decent girl from a good background who just happened to be born with beautiful olive skin and the loveliest brown eyes in the entire Delta. I cannot help but wonder what her rival Mae Terry looks like after all these years in a wheelchair. Though she has never met her, Jill asks about Sarah as if I were their next door neighbor who had just returned from a trip with his child to Disneyland.
Sean, their son, is not in evidence, making me wonder if he has been hustled out of town to stay with Jill’s parents until his father’s life calms down a bit. What do you say to your child when you’ve been charged with murder? Sorry for making your life a nightmare, but mine is hell, too, so what about a little sympathy? Not if he’s twelve. I can’t help feeling a little sorry for Jill and Sean, but not sorry enough to resist sticking it to Paul if there is any way I can do it.
As she, chatting all the while, leads me through a formal dining room with a table that could seat twenty, it is apparent she has done her homework about me in the last twenty-four hours. Whatever her husband truly thinks of me, I am to be courted. She opens the door into a den, and I see Dick Dickerson, who stands up as I enter the room. I haven’t seen him in thirty years, but he is recognizable because of his uncanny resemblance to “ole Bullet Head,” Gerald Ford, but unlike the former president with his reputation for ungainliness, Dick can do more than walk and chew gum at the same time. With the grace of a tiger, Dick meets me in the middle of the room and catches my hand before I can spread my fingers.
“Good to see you, Gideon. You’re doing some good legal work these days,” he says, crunching my knuckles.
“Your mother and daddy would be proud.”
“Thank you, Dick,” I say, flattered despite myself.
“Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.
How are you?”
Behind me I hear Paul’s voice, “Jill, can you get Gideon a drink?”
Jill smiles wanly at her husband, who has come in behind us. As Angela has said, he looks in great shape. His blond hair has gone sandy but there is still lots of it, and his stomach is enviably flat under a pair of faded button-up jeans. I wonder what it must be like for her as she visibly ages and he gets more handsome. She asks me, “What would you like?”
I notice that Dick has nothing on the table beside his chair, and say I’ll take some decaf if she has some. Paul protests, but I shake my head.
Something tells me that I am going to want to remember this conversation at least until this trial is over.
Before Paul allows me to sit down he pumps my hand vigorously and looks me in the eye.
“I appreciate you coming by on short notice, Gideon. Dick and I both feel the sooner we start going down the same path the better.”
“No problem,” I say as I sit down on a black leather couch across from Dick and look around the room. On the walls are photographs of the whole family captured in activities that range from duck hunting to posing with Corliss Williamson, the former Razorback great. Jill smiles gamely in all of them as if to say, whose life goes as planned?
Paul, clutching what appears to be scotch and water, takes a seat on the couch by me. I might need a drink too if I were charged with first-degree murder.
“Gideon, Paul says you haven’t had much of a conversation with your client yet,” Dick says, pulling up a yellow legal pad from the briefcase beside his Barcalounger.
“Is he saying anything?”
They seem so eager to know if Bledsoe is going to implicate Paul that it is hard to avoid the feeling that both he and my client are guilty as hell.
“Other than he didn’t do it and that someone is framing him, not much.” “Does he have any ideas,” Dick asks, taking notes, “who that might be?”
Jill returns with a steaming mug that has painted on it Arkansas Razorbacks-National Champs ‘93-‘94. I wait until she leaves, since I’m not sure how much she is supposed to hear. It is difficult for me to gauge their relationship.
Maybe his screwing around with Mae Terry is no threat to her. If your rival is confined to a wheelchair, it probably is easy to believe all you are missing when he goes out the door to her house is some good conversation. I answer, “He doesn’t know. I don’t get the impression that Bledsoe is working on a doctorate in nuclear physics.”
Paul snickers appreciatively, but I detect some nervousness behind it.
If he has a deal with Bledsoe to keep his mouth shut, so far, so good, but there is a long way to go.
“It could have been any of the workers at the plant,” Dick suggests.
“Or possibly someone who didn’t even work there. I don’t think it is out of the realm of possibility that Doris could have killed her husband and set up your client.”
I cannot remember the last time I saw Airs.
Ting. It has to be at least thirty years ago and must have been in their store. Her English was not as good as her husband’s, but she seemed to be there every time he was. Connie said her mother has been ill. I can’t imagine she would kill her husband, but as a defense attorney I can’t exclude anyone I can reasonably point a finger at. But I do not want to admit that I am seeing her tomorrow and have already been on the phone with Connie and Tommy.
“Anything’s possible,” I say, knowing that Dick wants to tell me how to do this case.
Dick frowns at this lack of enthusiasm and says, “We know you have a primary duty to your client, but I think if we coordinate our defenses, it’ll be in both our interests to do so.”
The last thing Dick wants me to argue to the jury is that Paul may have hired someone else to kill Willie and is the one setting up Bledsoe Why not pretend to cooperate as long as I can get away with it? It may be the only way I can get Paul. I respond, “I don’t know why we can’t do that.
Bledsoe insists that he is innocent and that he didn’t cook up any conspiracy with Paul.”
After this exchange, Dick visibly relaxes. Paul has obviously professed his innocence, but until now, Dick couldn’t be positive that Class hasn’t confessed to me that he murdered Willie and implicated Paul. For the next hour we talk generally about the case, and I use the opportunity to ask about the connections after the murder between Class and Paul, who, as expected, minimizes them.
“Before he was arrested, I didn’t even know Oldham had hired Class,” he says, “to help him with the restaurant. Talk to Oldham-he’ll tell you. I own the restaurant, but I treat him like an independent contractor, so I won’t have to worry with a bunch of niggers getting drunk out there and shooting each other and then suing the deep pocket.
Oldham can hire anybody he wants. I guess I saw Class out there a couple of times in the last few months but I don’t remember if I even spoke to him or not. I didn’t give a shit.
Class had worked for me years ago, and he had enough sense to deliver appliances and install them, so I figured he could make change and slice barbecue, and I didn’t worry about it. My deal with Oldham was that he pay me five hundred dollars every month, and as long as he did that, I didn’t care what he did.”
Do Dick or I believe this? I doubt it. I try to remember what Butterfield told me: Bledsoe had claimed he didn’t know Paul owned Oldham’s.
Dick explains that in the file there is a statement from Henry Oldham in which he denies being told by Paul to hire Class, but Oldham admits that Paul made several trips to get barbecue during the time around the date of the murder.