“Don’t bet on it, counselor. The finance company found Tug’s girlfriend in the trunk. What was left of her.”
A. P. Hill sat down on the waiting room bench without even remembering to dust it off first. She felt cold and out of breath at the same time. Hot damn! she thought, hugging her briefcase. I’ve got my first murder case.
When Edith Creech returned from the courthouse, Bill was tidying his office. He had stacked his legal pads neatly on the corner of his desk. He had alphabetized the contents of his bookshelf. Now he was trying to dust the black-robed mascot Flea Bailey with his handkerchief.
“Hello! You’re back!” said Bill. “Can you send dead groundhogs to the dry cleaner, do you think?”
Edith rolled her eyes. “They’re gonna put you and Mr. Trowbridge in matching straitjackets. I got your paperwork here.” She tossed a sheaf of photocopies onto Bill’s just-dusted desk. “The house goes back to a Colonel Phillips in the late eighteen hundreds, and he left it to the Home for Confederate Women. It’s all in there. Is that what you wanted?”
“Yes. Thanks! I already knew all that, but we had to have the documentation for the buyer. Just a formality. Oh, and while you were out, Powell called in to report her big news. Her bad-check guy just turned into a murder case.”
“And A. P. Hill is defending him?”
“Right.”
“Good,” said Edith. “It’s about time they stopped being soft on criminals around here. How are your cases going?”
“I’ve sent Mr. Trowbridge the kitten question, and I’m waiting for his next salvo. I show the Home for Confederate Women to the first prospective buyer on Wednesday.” Bill laughed. “The buyer, Mr. Huff, wants me to meet him at the airport with a sign that says HUFF, so he can find me. I assured him that wasn’t necessary, but he insisted. Remind me to make the sign between now and Wednesday.”
“I’ll do it,” said Edith. “I print neater than you do. If he’s picky enough to want a sign, he might as well have a good one.”
“Thanks. Let’s see: what else have I got done? Oh, I’ve filed Civil Action Number 90-CI-something-or-other in circuit court, which basically says that my dad will continue to make the house payments and pay the car insurance and so on at the old homeplace until we get the whole mess sorted out.”
“Are you busy enough then, or do you want to run the newspaper ad advertising MacPherson and Hill for another two weeks? It’s time to renew.”
Bill thought about it. “Better run it,” he advised. “We could use a few simple wills and speeding tickets to generate some revenue around here. Besides, Powell gets nervous if she has time to eat dinner.”
Edith looked at her watch. “Well, I don’t. If I don’t feed my cat by six o’clock, he starts rooting in the houseplants. Pure spite, that’s what it is. So if you don’t need me for anything else…”
“No,” said Bill. “I guess I could call it a night, too, since nobody seems to be clamoring for my services. Maybe I could stop in and see how Dad is doing in his new place.”
“Isn’t that a whattayacallit? An ex parte communication?”
“Not if we just talk about dinner… the Redskins… neutral topics. But-er-you don’t have to mention this to my mother next time she comes in.” Bill was the picture of abject misery. “Edith, have you ever been divorced?”
“It was a good while back, and it wasn’t all that complicated. We didn’t have anything worth squabbling over. We had an old trailer, a lot of debts, no kids, and not much love left to lose, so it went pretty quick. I won’t be much help to you in figuring out your parents’ situation.”
“They’re behaving so strangely. It’s so hard to know how to fix it.”
Edith Creech said gently, “Well, Bill, they didn’t hire you to fix it.”
Margaret MacPherson was not thinking about her husband, Doug. She definitely was not. After five-thirty, the time when he would have been coming home from work, she had expended a considerable amount of energy ensuring that she would be much too occupied to remember his existence. She had watered the plants, vacuumed the spotless carpet, and reread the mail, even the bills and catalogues. In the background the television blared away for background noise, but she did not look at it. It was only a question of habits, she told herself; and one must be patient and give oneself time to change habits.
It would all take some getting used to. The rooms looked strange-with odds and ends of furniture missing from their accustomed places and none of Doug’s usual clutter on the end tables. It was nice not to have to fix a complete meal every night, the meat and two vegetables that Doug insisted on. Now she could have a salad or a bowl of soup if she pleased, or just skip dinner altogether. Maybe she could lose a few pounds now that she was on her own. She looked at herself in the mirror above the fireplace. She might lighten her hair as well; it looked so mousy these days. Before, there hadn’t seemed to be much reason to bother. It wasn’t as if Doug ever noticed. She could have set it on fire and he wouldn’t have remarked on it. Now, though, she thought she might try styling it. This was a time for trying things.
It was her turn now. The children were grown and launched into respectable careers. Her mind hovered over the word respectable in Elizabeth’s case-all those cadavers-but at least she was married, and that’s what counted. A stricken face stared back at her from the mirror as she listened to those sentiments. At least she was married, and that’s what counted. Had she really thought such a thing? Her generation had been raised to believe that, and it was hard to outgrow that early indoctrination, even when you knew what a lie it was. That wasn’t what counted at all. It mattered very much who you were, and what you did with your talents, because marriage these days was not a haven from the world. It was not the safety net; it was the tightrope.
Margaret MacPherson’s gaze fell upon the family portrait, framed and hanging over the sofa. That could go in the attic, she thought. She could put another picture there reflecting the status of her new life-just as soon as she figured out what that was. She was brooding again. Time to get busy. Do the dishes, then, to keep occupied. She walked into the kitchen to tackle the day’s dishes, only to find that she had already done them.
On the way to Appomattox, the ghost of an army
Staggers a muddy road for a week or so
Through fights and weather, dwindling away each day.
– STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT,
John Brown’s Body, Book 8
DANVILLE-APRIL 9, 1865
COMPARED TO THE fair city of Richmond, Danville was a piddling town, Gabriel Hawks reckoned. Perhaps the place was a mite bewildered to be suddenly elevated to the capital of the Confederate States of America and simultaneously flooded with refugees from the former capital. Its citizens had scurried to find suitably grand accommodations for the sudden rush of Confederate dignitaries who had taken up residence in the little Dan River mill town now that Richmond was a smoldering ruin. President Davis and two of his cabinet officers were guests in the home of Colonel W. T. Sutherlin, but there were too many refugees for Danville to accommodate, so some of the lesser folk were quartered in railroad cars switched off on a side track, where they subsisted on what commissary rations could be spared for them.
It seemed that most of the navy had fetched up in Danville. Gabriel had never seen so many captains, commanders, surgeons, and engineers, all milling around with nothing to do. They mostly congregated at the naval store set up by Paymaster Semple. There they’d pass the time sitting on bread barrels, tying fancy sailor’s knots, and swapping sea yarns about past glories. But they were fish out of water. How could they still be in the war high and dry miles from the sea, their ships destroyed, their ports captured? But they simply had to wait it out, like the rest of Danville.