“Now, Samson, one more time. Why did you threaten to kill your wife?”
“And for the last time, we’d been having problems, real problems.”
“That doesn’t mean you kill your wife or threaten her. You’re paying me lots of money, Samson. Right now it looks pretty bad for you. The report came back on the gun. It was the gun that killed Kimball Haynes.” John, not averse to theatrics himself, used this last stunner, which was totally untrue—the ballistics results hadn’t come back yet—in hopes of blasting his client into some kind of cooperation. It worked.
“No!” Samson shook. “I never saw that gun before in my life. I swear it, John, I swear it on the Holy Bible! When I said I was going to kill her, I didn’t mean I really would, I wouldn’t shoot her. She just pushed all my buttons.”
“Buddy, you could get the chair. This is a capital-punishment state, and I wasn’t born yesterday. You’d better tell me what happened.”
Tears welled up in Samson’s eyes. His voice wavered. “John, I’m in love with Ansley Randolph. I spent money trying to impress her, and to make a long story short, I’ve been dipping into escrow funds which I hold as the principal broker. Lucinda saw the ledger—” He stopped because his whole body was shaking. “Actually, she showed it to Kimball Haynes when he was over to read the family histories and diaries, you know, to see if there was anything that could fit into the murder at Monticello. There wasn’t, of course, but I have accounts beginning in the last decades of the seventeenth century, kept by my maternal grandmother of many greats, Charlotte Graff. Kimball read those accounts, meticulously detailed, and Lucinda laughed that she couldn’t make sense out of my books but how crystal clear Granny Graff’s were. So Lucinda gave Kimball my ledger to prove her point. He immediately saw what I’d been doing. I kept two columns, you know how it’s done. That’s the truth.”
“Samson, you have a high standing in Crozet. To many people’s minds that would be more than sufficient motive to kill Kimball—to protect that standing as well as your livelihood. Answer me. Did you kill Kimball Haynes?”
Tears gushing down his ruddy cheeks, Samson implored John, “I’d rather lose my license than my life.”
John believed him.
50
Obsessed by his former partner’s diaries, Dr. Larry Johnson read at breakfast, between patients, at dinner, and late into the night. He finished volume one, which was surprisingly well written, especially considering he’d never thought Jim a literary man.
References to the grandparents and great-grandparents of many Albemarle County citizens enlivened the documents. Much of volume one centered on the effects of World War I on the returning servicemen and their wives. Jim Craig was then fairly new to the practice of medicine.
Z. Calvin Coles, grandfather to Samson Coles, returned from the war carrying a wicked dose of syphilis. Mim’s paternal line, the Urquharts, flourished during the war, as they invested heavily in armaments, and Mim’s father’s brother, Douglas Urquhart, lost his arm in a threshing accident.
All the patients treated, from measles to bone cancer, were meticulously mentioned as well as their character, background, and the history of specific diseases.
The Minors, Harry’s paternal ancestors, were prone to sinus infections, while on her mother’s side, the Hepworths, they either died very young or made it into their seventies and beyond—good long innings then. Wesley Randolph’s family often suffered a wasting disease of the blood which killed them slowly. The Hogendobbers leaned toward coronary disorders, and the Sanburnes to gout.
Jim’s keen powers of observation again won Larry’s admiration. Being young when he joined Jim Craig’s practice, Larry had looked up to his partner, but now, as an old man, he could measure Jim in the fullness of his own experience. Jim was a fine doctor and his death at sixty-one was a loss for the town and for other doctors.
With eager hands Larry opened volume two, dated February 22, 1928.
51
Jails are not decorated in designer colors. Nor is the privacy of one’s person much honored. Poor Samson Coles listened to stinking men with the DTs hollering and screaming, bottom-rung drug sellers protesting their innocence, and one child molester declaring that an eight-year-old had led him on. If Samson ever doubted his sanity, this “vacation” in the cooler reaffirmed that he was sane—stupid perhaps, but sane.
He wasn’t so sure about the men in the other cells. Their delusions both fascinated and repelled him.
His only delusion was that Ansley Randolph loved him when in fact she did not. He knew that now. Not one attempt to contact him, not that he expected her to show her face at the correctional institute, as it was euphemistically called. She could have smuggled him a note though—something.
Like most men, Samson had been used by women, especially when he was younger. One of the good things about Lucinda was that she didn’t use him. She had loved him once. He felt the searing pain of guilt each time he thought of his wife, the wife he’d betrayed, his once good name which he had destroyed, and the fact that he would lose his real estate license in the bargain. He’d wrecked everything: home, career, community standing. For what?
And now he stood accused of murder. Fleeting thoughts of suicide, accomplished with a bedsheet, occurred to him. He fought them back. Somehow he would have to learn to live with what he’d done. Maybe he’d been stupid, but he wasn’t a coward.
As for Ansley, he knew she’d fall right back into her routine. She didn’t love Warren a bit, but she’d never risk losing the wealth and prestige of being a Randolph. Not that being a Coles was shabby, but megamillions versus comfort and a good name—no contest. Then, too, she had her boys to consider, and life would be far more advantageous for them if she stayed put.
In retrospect he could see that Ansley’s ambitions centered more on the boys than on herself, although she had the sense to be low-key about them. If she was going to endure the Randolph clan, then, by God, she would have successful and loving sons. Blood, money, and power—what a combination.
He swung his legs over the side of his bunk. He’d turn to pure fat in this place if he didn’t do leg raises and push-ups. One good thing about being in the slammer, no social drinking. He wanted to cry sometimes, but he didn’t know how. Just as well. Wimps get buggered in places like this.
How long he sat there, dangling his legs just to feel some circulation, he didn’t know. He jerked his legs up with a start when he realized he was aptly named.
52
The buds on the trees swelled, changing in color from dark red to light green. Spring, in triumph, had arrived.
Harry endured a spring-cleaning fit each year when the first blush of green swept over the meadows and the mountains. The creeks and rivers soared near their banks from the high melting snow and ice, and the air carried the scent of earth again.
Piles of newspapers and magazines, waiting to be read, were stacked on the back porch. Harry succumbed to the knowledge that she would never read them, so out they went. Clothes, neatly folded, rested near the periodicals. Harry hadn’t much in the way of clothing, but she finally broke down and threw out those articles too often patched and repatched.