The Jezebel Remedy (32 page)

“We didn't expect them to retain the rookie from Legal Aid,” Lisa said. “No surprise they'd hire top talent.” She felt a crimp in her stomach. Her breathing lost its rhythm, misfired, picked up stray skips and surges. She inhaled through her mouth, licked her lips and drummed her clear-polished nails against a yellow legal pad, a client's phone number and several doodles on the pad.

“It's a complete, absolute house of cards, Robert,” Joe insisted. “Bits and pieces are true, but it's a damn fiction. I never signed any agreement with them, and we never received one thin dime. Lisa took a Bahamas vacation with M. J. Gold, but she surely didn't come home with over seven hundred thousand dollars. American. I fucking love how they're so important and global they have to spell out that we're dealing in U.S. dollars.”

“Well, as we all understand,” Williams remarked, “it's not so much what actually happened that concerns me. It's what they can sell to seven strangers sitting in a jury box.”

“And I didn't forge any will. That's crazy shit.” His voice was ragged. “Sheriff Perry found the document.
He
gave it to me.”

“Let's sort through it,” Williams said.

“Exactly,” Lisa agreed, still rattled. “They didn't just meet at the secretarial pool three days ago and start dictating random allegations they can't support. Think about what Garrison told us, Joe, how he claimed his plan was already in place.”

Joe nodded vigorously. “You're right. You both are. Sorry. I'm not a very helpful client; I need to calm down. But fuckin' A, it pisses me off to no end.”

“Let's recap the simple items first,” Williams offered. He stood from his chair and paced while he spoke. “Okay, I'm sure they have phone records confirming that Pichler—and probably Garrison himself—spoke with Lettie prior to her death. They admit it. Give them credit, that's slick and neutralizes part of our case. They'll claim they were secretive about it because of their business requirements. The call from ‘Jane Rousch' to Garrison and her visit to Henry County become significantly less incriminating. Classic strategy: Concede the issue and twist it to your advantage.”

“They have me in the Bahamas,” Lisa added. “Which was easy to track. It was no secret.” She coughed into her fist.

“Thanks to Facebook,” Joe griped. “Got to broadcast everything on Facebook or it doesn't really count. I remember her pal M.J. posted a couple times while they were there.”

“Or perhaps they simply picked it up from talk around town,” Williams speculated. He'd stopped wandering and was stationary, almost at the far corner of the room. “Once the will surfaced, you were both on their radar. Seems they started planning and building in precautions a long while ago. Keeping track of you. At any rate, they can prove Lisa was in Nassau—passport, customs, plane tickets. And you can bet the ranch they have the documents from the bank. No way they'd wing that kind of claim and not have the goods.”

“Their ‘goods' are street-vendor Prada,” Lisa interjected. “Fake as fake can be. Counterfeit as hell.”

“I assume M.J. will testify that Lisa didn't go to a bank,” Joe said. “We should have a very credible witness.” He looked at Lisa. “Did you two ever separate long enough for you to visit a bank and make a six-figure international withdrawal in a country that moves so slowly it's like the whole island's powered by two weak double-A batteries?”

“We never split. If push comes to shove, I have an absolute alibi,” Lisa said, struggling to sound decisive. “Of course M.J. is a very close friend. They could impeach the hell out of her.” She sucked in air, took a long and deliberate draw.

“I'll send formal discovery today so we can review whatever documents they claim the bank generated. Phil's already trying to track down as much as he can about the bank itself.”

“That should be fruitful,” Joe said.

“I'm also guessing they have you on tape telling Pichler a trust might own the Wound Velvet,” Williams stated.

“Yeah, they probably do,” Joe said miserably. “We never actually made the claim, never actually said more than it was a
possibility
but, yep, they probably have it. I called him back before I sent the nondisclosure agreement. Shit.”

“Did they tell you the call was being recorded?” Williams asked. He was pacing again.

“I assume so. I think so. Pretty much every business does these days. ‘For quality control and training purposes this call may be monitored or recorded,' right? I never paid any attention to it, but I was extremely careful not to misrepresent anything. We never said a trust owned the VV 108; we only said it was a possibility.”

Williams remained at the far corner of the office. “They'll have a field day with the semantics, Joe. Especially if you initiated the contact and led them into this some-trust-might-own-the-wound-medicine discussion.” He returned to his chair and took a seat, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his fingers laced together.

“True,” Joe said. “I realized at the time it might come back to bite me in the ass. There's a mention of potential trust ownership in the nondisclosure agreement too. I had to have some gimmick so I could tease out the information. Get a read on them.”

Lisa was staring at the floor. She talked without bothering to look at her husband or Williams. “Given the unlimited digital magic that, hell, most teenagers have access to—and Photoshop and computer programs and state-of-the-art copy machines—creating Joe's signature on a settlement agreement would be child's play.” She shook her head and finally looked up at Williams.

“Especially,” Joe said morosely, “since they have a perfect example of my signature on the nondisclosure documents and the original renouncement I gave to dumb-ass Neal. I can't believe he'd go along with this and sell us down the creek. What a turd.”

“Who notarized Joe's signature?” Lisa asked.

“A Helen Allyn,” Williams answered. “Probably a Benecorp flunky who'll remember Joe just like it was yesterday. You allegedly showed her your Virginia driver's license—your ID number is written under her seal. I'll bet the number is accurate, but we'll still check.”

Joe frowned. “It's a crying shame we live in a world where everything can be altered and reproduced and cut from whole cloth to the point that photos and documents are just another medium for skulduggery. It used to be good, old-fashioned lying under oath was the weapon of choice. But now…” He shrugged. “And, of course, the legal system really needed more ways for people to cheat.”

“That leaves Lettie's will,” Lisa said.

“I'll drive us over there,” Joe said. “I'll tell Betty to call the clerk's office and have them pull the file.”

“I have a sick feeling the file's not going to have great news for us,” Lisa said. “Damn. I never saw any of this coming. It's amazing how imaginative these guys are.”

“At least they didn't remove the case to federal court,” Joe said as he was standing. “Not yet, anyway.”

“I pondered on that, and I'm sure they did too,” Williams replied. He'd also stood, and his hands were in his pockets. “If you're Benecorp, maybe you do decide to try the suit here in Henry County. We all know there's no bottom to the fall from a small-town pedestal. If your friends and neighbors think you've hoodwinked them and manipulated them, they stick it to you tenfold, especially if you're in an authority position—preacher, cop, mayor, local lawyer. It's personal. They're connected. You've screwed them and their community over, plus they're mad at themselves for getting duped. When they turn against you, it's vicious and rabid. The tar-and-feathers variety of unhappiness.”

“God, this is just awful,” Joe said. “Makes you realize how treacherous the system can be when you're on this side of the equation and
it's your ass on the line. It isn't all so professionally clean and abstract. All of a sudden, it's a knife fight instead of a chess tournament.” He glanced at Lisa. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, the response barely audible. “I'm fine.”

“Listen,” Joe encouraged her, “we knew this would be a brawl. They're lying, and we aren't. We understood it wouldn't be easy or quick. We're playing the game in our hometown with rules we've operated under for years and years. We'll whip them.”

Lisa considered Vicky Helms one of the brightest, most efficient circuit court clerks in the state. She managed an office of nine other women, and every Henry County file was organized and in its proper place, every scrap of paper was accounted for, and every transaction was handled according to the Supreme Court manual, occasionally treated even better than the book required. The office collected fines, sold hunting and fishing licenses and received recordation taxes for deeds, and Helms had never been so much as a penny in error when the state audited her ledgers. County clerk was an elected position, and Helms was personable, attractive and mischievously funny, more of a cutup than the job title might suggest.

Lisa entered the clerk's office first, followed by Joe and then Robert Williams. She spotted Helms and instantly realized that the clerk was in a full-tilt tizzy. Helms sensed them and glanced up from a file and spoke as they were heading behind the front counter to where she was standing. “It's gone,” she declared. “Flat gone.”

The three of them crowded around her and focused on Lettie's probate file. Williams picked through each paper. The will was missing.

“You still have it on film, though, right?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Helms said. “Come on. I've already pulled it up on the terminal.”

They walked into the deed room, which was filled with metal file cabinets and oversize, canvas-covered deed books that fit into slots along three walls. The books stretched from the ceiling to the vinyl-tiled floor; the oldest had the number 1 stamped on its spine and contained the county's earliest deeds, documents whose land descriptions
made mention of rods, poles, creeks, gum trees, turnpikes, iron stakes and set stones. A row of computer terminals was located on a long wooden ledge near the wide entrance to the room, a chair underneath each terminal.

Helms pointed to a document on the screen. “There it is, but the original has disappeared. Of all people's to disappear, it had to be Lettie VanSandt's. Figures, doesn't it?”

Joe studied the document image on the screen. “No. Damn. It's a fake. It's close—probably on purpose—but that's not the will I brought over here. I've seen enough of Lettie's writing to know it's bogus. It's about a B-plus forgery. Good enough to look like somebody was trying, bad enough to make sure any decent expert could determine it's a con job.”

“Well, Joe”—Helms bristled—“if it's on that screen, it's what you brought me.”

“I'm not saying you made a mistake,” Joe assured her.

“Well, what
are
you saying?” she demanded.

“Where do you keep the probate files?” Williams gently asked.

“In here, in a filing drawer. Probate has its own section. The third and fourth cabinets, halfway down.” She gestured at the cabinets.

“So they're open to the public?” he asked.

“Unless the court seals something, every file in here is public record. Criminal, civil, probate, whatever. Except juvenile.” She set her hands against her hips, tucked her chin. “That's the law, Robert. Same as in every courthouse in every jurisdiction in the entire state.”

Williams reached out and briefly, gingerly touched her shoulder. “I know, Vicky,” he said. “We're not blaming you. Not at all. We're just trying to figure out what happened.”

“This office has never lost a document under my watch. Ever.”

“Can people access the files without you knowing?” Lisa's tone was normal; she didn't baby the question. “I'm asking because we've never had any reason to learn the day-to-day details of how this office operates. We lawyers come and go as we please, but regular citizens? People not a part of the system?”

“If you know what you want and understand how to locate it using the index, you don't need one of us to help you. Only sealed files and
juvenile cases are unavailable. I've mentioned before at our conferences that maybe the state needs a better system, a controlled access or at least a sign-in, especially when we have all the historians and genealogists and Civil War buffs handling priceless historical documents. They could damage them or, yeah, even steal them.”

“So, anyone could walk in,” Lisa said, “get hold of Lettie's file and steal the original will?”

“In theory, yes,” Helms replied. “Or a photo from a criminal file or the separation agreement from a divorce case. It's not a fact we broadcast, and I hope you won't. It'll just give people ideas. That's the main reason most everything important is duplicated by scanning it into the system.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, distracted. He was using the keyboard to scroll up and down the image on the screen.

“Maybe Lettie's will is missing, but we still have an exact copy on record. Right there.” Helms pointed at the terminal Joe was using. “For that matter, Sandy Berger, from President Clinton's administration, he made off with documents from the National Archives. As big an office as there is. Remember that little fiasco? No system's perfect.”

“We've all been scorched here, Vicky,” Williams told her. “I promise nobody's got an ax to grind with you.”

“Sounds like Joe does,” she said.

“No I don't, my friend,” Joe promised her, now finished with the screen and giving her his full attention. “Robert hit the nail on the head: We've all been burned.”

“You gave me Lettie's will, and I scanned it myself, Joe. I'm positive.”