Pale Gray for Guilt (7 page)

"But the grace period is up! It isn't possible now!"

Judge Wellington sighed. "Bullshit," said he. Then he swept his hundred-dollar ranch hat off in courtly fashion, nodded toward Connie and Janine and said, "Begging your pardon, ladies." He dropped the hat on the floor beside his chair and said, "Whitt, I can't remember you ever being admitted to the Florida bar, so there's no point in me citing the pertinent and appropriate cases where the courts have ruled that in the cases of widows and orphans, especially where the widow was one of the parties on the mortgage, foreclosure action can be set aside provided the bank has not yet passed title on to a third party in a liquidation of the recovered assets."

"But we've accepted earnest money from-"

"One Preston LaFrance in the amount of three thousand two hundred and fifty dollars, representing ten percent of the agreed price on the foreclosed business property on the Shawana River, and the acceptance of that money did not constitute a change of ownership on the property, and here is the certified check for ten thousand, Whitt, and I request a signed receipt, with the date and the hour thereon."

"I can't accept it until I find out-"

"You take it and you make out the receipt saying you are taking it and holding it in escrow pending the decision of your legal people, or you and me are going to go around and around right here, boy. Besides, here is a situation where, by accepting the mortgage obligation and paying it up to date, Mrs. Bannon is putting that mortgage back on the books, sound and whole, in the amount originally owed and paid down to where this check puts it, and it would seem like a bank officer thinking of his stockholders-and thinking of the State Banking Commission-would snap at the chance to keep from showing a loss. Why do you seem to be holding back, Whitt?"

Sanders patted his red forehead with a handkerchief. "As you pointed out, Rufus, I'm not a lawyer. I don't know what our obligation to Mr. LaFrance might be."

"Absolutely no obligation, I can tell you, but you'll feel cozy hearing it from your own people, so we'll give you a chance to do just that. Suppose we come back at two thirty?"

"That… that ought to be time enough. Uh… Mrs. Bannon, do you intend to operate the business there yourself?"

"She's going to think about it," Judge Wellington said. "When her husband couldn't keep up on his insurance, he had the good sense to tell the company to apply the cash value to the premiums instead of drawing it out, so she has a little money to give her time to do some planning. We'll let you get on back to work, Whitt."

We left the bank and walked two blocks to the old Shawana River Hotel, and got a corner table in the dark-paneled, high-ceilinged old dining room. Janine was at my right, and the judge across from me. Connie and the judge and I ordered drinks. Jan didn't want any. There was a yellowish look to the tan of her lean, Mediterranean-boy face, and the skin of her face and hands had a papery look.

I touched her hand and said, "Okay?"

She gave me an abrupt nod, a smile that appeared for but a moment. The judge seemed lost in private thought. Finally he gave a dry little cough and said, "McGee, you seem to know what you're trying to do for this little lady, and I know Connie well enough to know she'll go along with some pretty wild ideas. But I've heard a few hints around the courthouse, and a few rumors, and I can put things together, and I wouldn't be doing right by my client not to give advice, whether it's wanted or not."

"I want your, advice, Judge," Janine said.

He sipped his bourbon and licked his lips. "These little counties all got what you could call a shadow government: These folks have known each other for generations. They got to putting this land deal together, and there is a little business right in the way and doing pretty good. Expanding. So they use the county government to stunt that business and knock it down to where the price is right. It doesn't take all five county commissioners. Just a couple, plus the other three needing favors themselves sometime, with no need of anybody asking too many questions. You depended on highway trade and river trade, and giving service to local residents. Now they could have kept that road open to traffic and in pretty good shape too while fixing it, and set up a short-term contract on it. There's pollution-control ordinances on the books to keep that river in better shape. They could have denied that Tech something outfit when they petitioned to have the bridge taken out. When you didn't drop off the vine as fast as they wanted, then they put those regulatory services people onto you and really closed you down. Okay, Miz Bannon, you got squoze bad. So what I say is this. I say don't mess too fancy with these folk because in the long run you can't win. You can lay the squeeze right back onto them. I know how these folks think. You just say a hundred and twenty-five thousand, plus the buyer takes over the mortgage. No dickering. No conversations: Let them make the offers. When time starts to run out on them, somebody is going to get nervous and offer a hundred thousand, and then you by God grab it and walk away, and you'll know you've skimmed some good cream off their deal."

"That isn't enough," she said in a barely audible voice.

"But, girl, you'd be hurting them in the place that hurts the most. What are you trying to get out of this? Lord God, you can't make anybody ashamed of how they did you, even if they'd ever admit it wasn't just kind of a series of accidents. They just say it's dog eat dog and lots of businesses fail all the time."

"But they had Tush killed."

That little embellishment had been kept from the judge. He leaned forward, his old eyes wide. "You say killed? Now, young lady, I can understand how you could come to believe it was like that, but these folks just don't operate that way. That man of yours worked hard and long and it was all going down the drain, and sometimes a man gets to the point where he-"

"You didn't know Tush Bannon," Connie said. "I did. And Travis McGee knew him longer than either Jan or me. We're not taking any votes, Rufus. We're not talking about probably this or probably that. We're telling you he was killed."

Judge Wellington leaned back, so upset he tried to drink out of the glass he had already emptied. "Well now! Then, it must have been some fool mistake. It must have been something else that went wrong. Then, by God, the thing to do right now is put it in the hands of the State's Attorney for this Judicial District and…" He stopped suddenly and frowned at Connie. "By God, I must be getting old. He'd turn it over to the Assistant State. Attorney for Shawana County, and the Shawana County Sheriff's Department would make the investigation, and the Shawana County Medical Examiner would do the autopsy, and all these folks are elected to office, and there'd be all the pressure to cover it over and forget it, and even if it went to a Grand Jury if it got that far, who'd get indicted? I'm getting so old I'm forgetting the facts of life. Second childhood. I'm thinking the world is like I thought it was when I was back in Stetson Law School." He scowled into his empty glass. "Maybe bring in somebody from the Attorney General's office to poke around?"

"Maybe," I said. "But first maybe we should blow some smoke down into the burrow and see what comes running out."

He thought and nodded. "Now I see why you want to do what you're doing. I won't say it has much chance of working. But it'll sure stir things up." He gazed at Jan. "Miz Bannon, I know it's a great and sad and tragic loss. And doing something about it can make a person feel better somehow. But don't aim all of yourself at that one thing, of paying somebody back. Revenge. Because it can turn a person sour through and through."

"I don't care what I turn into, Judge," she said.

He met her dark gaze, then opened his menu and said, "We better get our order in."

I went alone to Ingledine's Funeral Home and arrived at quarter of two. It was on a lateral street, and was a small version of Mount Vernon, set between a Savings and Loan branch and a used car lot. I asked for Mr. Ingledine and the stealthy, earnest, unctuous young man told me that Mr. Ingledine had retired, and that he was Mr. Farris, Junior, and that he and his father owned and operated the establishment, and how could he help me, sir.

We tiptoed past an arched doorway where, under a rose-colored spotlight, a waxy pink and white old man rested, propped up in his bronze box, with floral offerings concealing whatever the box rested upon. Two old women sat on a couch on the other side of the room, holding hands and murmuring to each other.

Mr. Farris, Junior, opened a desk drawer in a small office and took a folder out, and extracted the death certificate signed by the County Medical Examiner.

"We obtained the vital statistics from available local records, sir. You might check them over for accuracy." Brantley B. Bamzon, and the age looked right, and he had the next of kin right. The doctor had listed it as accidental death. I asked about it and he said that in the absence of any suicide note or any witnesses, and in view of the fact that he could have been working on the diesel engine, it would have been unfair to assume suicide.

"Would you care to… uh… view the remains, sir? I would not advise it. It's quite a… an extensive and nasty mutilation. There is absolutely no possibility of any reconstruction of the features. And I think it would be wise for you to discourage the widow from viewing the deceased. A memory like that would be… difficult to forget."

"What work have you done?"

"Well, a great deal of the blood was gone, of course. We trocared the rest of it as best we could, and the body fluids and so on, and by clamping some of the major vessels in the chest and throat area, we did manage to embalm to a certain extent. Let me see. Oh, yes, we were able to make positive identification so that we do not have to trouble anyone about that. They had at one time sold sandwiches and coffee at their marina, and the County Health Department requires a health card with a photo and thumbprint, and the Sheriff's Department verified the identity by taking a print from the body."

"You've been very efficient."

His smile was shy and pleased. "I am sorry, but I do not quite understand… what your function is in this, Mr. McGee?"

"Friend of the family, you could say. Here is a limited power of attorney, notarized, empowering me to make the arrangements in the name of the widow."

He looked at it with a faintly pained expression. "There'll be no services here, I would assume?"

"No. You can expect shipment instructions within the next few days." He led me back into the display room. The lids were propped open, the linings glossy, the handles burnished. They ranged from two twenty-five on up: I picked a three-hundred-dollar box. We went back into the office.

He said, "I'd recommend that we take the remains out of the storage vault and place the body in the casket and seal it, sir."

"I suggest you leave it right where it is, Mr. Farris, under refrigeration, until you get shipment instructions. And then please don't make a permanent seal. There could be an insurance question, on an accident indemnity clause."

"Oh. I see. But you should know that storage is costing eleven thirty-three a day. That's with tax, of course."

"Of course. Now may I see your statement on this?"

He took the statement from the folder and took it into the next room. I heard the slow tapping of unskilled typing. He brought it back and handed it to me. He had added the box and two more days of vault rental. The total was seven hundred and fifty-eight dollars and thirty-eight cents.

"Mr. McGee, I am sure you will understand our position when I point out that it is our information that the deceased was a bankrupt, and we will have to have some assurance that…"

The certified check for a thousand dollars that I placed in front of him stopped him abruptly. I said, "Is this top copy mine? Just acknowledge the receipt of a thousand dollars on it, Mr. Farris, and when the body leaves here, deduct any further charges from the credit balance and mail your check to Mrs. Bannon, To-Co Groves, Route Two, Frostproof. And I see you have a photocopy of the death certificate, so you can let me have the original? Thank you."

He went with me to the front door, through the ripe smell of flowers in full bloom, through the muted organ music.

He put his pale hand out, smiled his pale smile, and said, "Please express our sympathy to the bereaved."

I stared at his hand until he pulled it back and wiped it nervously on the side of his jacket. I said, "Junior, you could make a tangible expression of your sincere sympathy."

"I don't believe I follow you."

"Before you send her the check for her credit balance, just refigure your bill. She's a young widow with three boys to raise. You padded it by at least two hundred and fifty dollars. I think it would be a nice gesture."

His face went pink. "Our rates are-"

"Ample, boy. Real ample."

Outside I took a deep breath of Shawana County air, but there was something vaguely industrial in it, some faint acid that rasped the back of my throat.

We were moving in, stirring them up with a blunt stick. The old judge, with good law and good timing, was snatching the ten acres right back out of the hands of LaFrance, just when he thought he had his whole deal lined up. And soon he would know a stranger was moving into the game, buying some chips, asking for somebody to deal. When in doubt, shove a new unknown into their nice neat equations and see how they react.