Water's Edge (17 page)

______

Later that afternoon Tom heard the bell jingle as someone entered. Dreading another clash with Rose Addington, he cautiously peered around the door of the office. It was Lamar Sponcler.

The white-haired lawyer was wearing gray pants, a yellow tie, and a starched shirt that had become wrinkled after a long day.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Sponcler asked.

“No, I was going to leave in a few minutes, but I’m not in a hurry. Come in and have a seat.”

Sponcler ran his hand along one of the bookcases. “Your father was a unique man. Very old school in the way he practiced law, but he had a way with people. They trusted him.” Sponcler pointed to the boxes of files. “Are those his open files?”

“Some of them. Bernice took care of a lot of the cases before I arrived. These are the ones left for me to deal with. I’m filing motions to withdraw and trying to locate lawyers to assume representation in the others.”

“Have some of the clients asked you to take over?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not surprising.” The older lawyer nodded. “Have you thought any more about our conversation at the courthouse?”

Tom hesitated.

“That’s okay.” Sponcler smiled. “You’ve had a lot on your mind. But I’d be very interested in discussing an arrangement for you to work with me.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Tom answered sincerely. “However, all my experience has been with complex financial litigation. The further I get from law school, the less I remember about plaintiff’s work. That’s why you saw me at the courthouse the other day doing research.”

“You were researching, not assuming. That’s a good thing. And you’re not afraid of the courtroom.”

“No, I’m not,” Tom admitted. “When I was a kid playing baseball, I loved coming up to bat in a pressure situation. Getting ready to try a case gives me the same feeling. I want to do it.”

“Listening to you makes me want to get back into the fight.” Sponcler laughed. “Not every lawyer who passes the bar has what it takes to go to war for a client in court. Ability can be improved, but it has to be built on something already inside.”

Tom put his fingers together in front of his face. “If we joined forces, would I be able to accept cases like the ones I’ve handled in the past?”

Sponcler wrinkled his nose. “From Arthur Pelham?”

“Maybe.”

“Arthur talked with you.” Sponcler nodded his head. “I’m not surprised. Pelham Financial has been a big boost to the local economy, but representing them doesn’t fit with my practice. Having two hundred little clients is better than representing two big ones. If I lose a client, I can keep on going. If a firm with two clients loses one, fifty percent of the business is gone.” Sponcler pointed to the boxes. “Your father knew that. Think some more about my modest proposal.”

______

The following morning Tom called Bernice as soon as he arrived at the office.

“I’m slowly getting better,” she said. “I sat up in a regular chair for a couple of hours yesterday working on a jigsaw puzzle and wasn’t too stiff when I got up. I hate that I haven’t been there to help you.”

Bernice loved putting together jigsaw puzzles.

“Take your time coming back. Without a job to go back to, I’m not working very hard.” Tom glanced down at the notes he’d made about the designated trust account. “I do have one business question. Do you know anything about a designated trust account opened about six months ago at Bethel Commercial Bank & Trust?”

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line before Bernice spoke. “I remember your daddy started getting an extra envelope from the bank each month.”

“Any idea where he kept the monthly statements for that account?”

“I’m not sure, but I know he took at least one out of the office. I remember because he had the envelope in his hand when he was about to leave early one afternoon and I asked him about it.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he had a meeting with a client.”

“Which client?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Could it have been one of the afternoons he went fishing with Harold Addington?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. They went fishing a lot once the weather started warming up, and Addington called the office regularly. It was easy to recognize his voice because of the accent.” Bernice paused. “But he always sounded on edge to me, especially for someone who was calling about a fishing trip. He spoke fast and demanded that he talk to your daddy right then. And your daddy took the call, even if he was working on something else. I chalked it up to his love of fishing. Was there any money left in the extra trust account?”

“Yes, and I’m trying to figure out who it belongs to.”

“How much is it?”

Tom hesitated. “Enough that I don’t want there to be any chance of making a mistake about ownership.”

“And you think it might belong to the Addington family?”

“It’s one option. Addington’s daughter thinks Harold paid the firm a retainer, then my father wrote out a fee without doing the work.”

“What?!” Bernice exploded. “That’s the most ridiculous—”

Tom immediately regretted mentioning Rose’s accusation.

“But it’s just a misunderstanding on her part. Don’t be too hard on her. She just lost her father too.”

“Anyone who knew your daddy would never believe he’d do anything dishonest. I hope you straightened her out!”

“Get back to your puzzle.”

Bernice wasn’t going to be sidetracked. “I can’t believe the Addington girl accused your daddy like that. What’s her name?”

“Rose, but forget I mentioned it.”

“That won’t happen,” Bernice grunted. “And she won’t forget what I’ll have to say when I run into her!”

chapter
FOURTEEN

L
ater that day Tom leaned back in his father’s chair with his feet on the desk. A pile of untouched files were stacked on the floor. He was reading Genesis and reached the part about Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

“A thin place,” Tom muttered. “Maybe this is where the people who believe in that stuff got the idea.”

Then Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put at his head, set it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel . . .

Growing up, Tom was familiar with Jacob’s ladder from the Sunday school song, but he didn’t know the name of his hometown was in the Bible. His cell phone rang. The caller ID showed an unknown number with an Atlanta area code. Tom laid the Bible on the desk and answered.

“Hey, Tom. This is Nate Becker. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

Tom took his feet off the desk and sat up straighter. “No, it’s fine. I’m at my father’s office in Bethel.”

“Mark Nelson told me you were going there to close down his practice.”

“Yeah. Except for a couple of things to sort out, it’s not too complicated.”

“There’s always something to deal with.” Becker put his hand over the receiver and said something Tom couldn’t hear. “We’ve picked up a few new clients over the past six months, and I’m running around like a crazy man. You know Darrin Walker, the CEO of the Advantage Group, don’t you?”

Tom had met the head of the investment firm based in San Diego on several occasions. Barnes, McGraw, and Crowther wanted to capture Walker’s business when the company expanded to the East Coast.

“Yeah. He’s a sharp guy.”

“He thinks the same about you. At our initial meeting with him earlier in the week, it came up that you’d left your firm and might be in the market for a new opportunity. Darrin said he’d be interested in letting you work on their business. He mentioned a case in which you represented a codefendant—”

“The Auburndale litigation.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Apparently, his lawyer at the time rode your coattails to victory.”

“We got a good result for everybody.”

“Don’t be modest. Anyway, the coincidence of all this coming together got my attention, and I brought it up at our partners’ meeting. Before you start sending out résumés, we’d like first crack at discussing a position for you with us. I have a ballpark idea about your salary working for Reid McGraw, and I can tell you up front you’re looking at a raise with a partner share in a year or two if everyone likes you as much as I’m sure they will.”

It was exactly the kind of call Tom had dreamed of receiving. It took the remaining sting out of his termination by the old firm.

“Thanks, Nate. I appreciate you getting in touch with me and not using what happened at Barnes, McGraw, and Crowther as a negotiating point against me.”

“I don’t know what you’re used to, but that’s not our style. When Jack Sweet asked me to join him, I’d been canned by the Trimble and Wallace firm. Jack offered me a raise, and we haven’t looked back since. It’s a good culture over here. We work hard, play hard, and watch each other’s backs.”

“Would I be in your litigation group?”

“Yes. We handle a broader array of cases than you did at Barnes, McGraw, and Crowther, but we mostly keep to financial and commercial litigation. We also take on an occasional plaintiff’s case if we see potential for a recovery. Would you have a problem with that?”

“No.”

“Good. Some lawyers get locked into a billable hour mind-set and can’t switch sides. We settled a big plaintiff’s case a couple of weeks ago. The hourly rate assigned to the lawyers who worked on it was pushing $1,000 an hour. Of course, if we’d tanked, no one would have made a penny.”

Tom’s eyes opened wide. “With that kind of possible upside, I wouldn’t mind taking a risk.”

“I didn’t think so.” Becker covered the receiver with his hand again and spoke to someone else. “Hey, I’ve got to jump on a conference call. Will you get back to me?”

“Absolutely. Before I talk to anyone else.”

“Great. Have a good weekend.”

Tom set his phone on the desk. He’d gone from no options to three: continue his father’s practice with the added stability of work from Pelham Financial, join forces with Lamar Sponcler and learn at the feet of an accomplished small-town practitioner, or return to Atlanta and slip into familiar work with an excellent firm that already appreciated him. He flipped through the pages of his journal until he found an entry where he’d written Proverbs 3:5–6, followed by a prayer that he would receive a good job offer. He put a red star in the margin.

______

Even though they weren’t inviting Esther and Rose Addington to supper, Tom and Elias had decided to cook steaks on the grill Saturday evening. When Tom rolled the grill from the garage, he saw the boxes his father had left stacked against the back wall. Most of them probably contained junk, but Tom suspected there were memories, happy and sad, waiting for him behind the corrugated cardboard walls.

Elias sat in a rocker on the porch while Tom fired up the coals. He lightly seasoned the steaks with a simple rub of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Rover raised his head and sniffed the air when Tom came out of the house with the steaks on a plate. Placing the plate on the ground, Tom began scraping the rust and debris from the grill with a wire brush.

“How long has it been since you used this?” he called out to Elias.

“Over a year. Your father smoked fish on it one night, and several men from the Mount Pleasant congregation came over to eat with us.”

“There are bits of skin stuck to the grill,” Tom said. “Didn’t you think about cleaning it after you used it?”

Tom had his back to the porch while he scrubbed the grill and turned around just in time to see Rover, his nose in the air, trotting across the yard toward the steak plate. Tom snatched the plate up from the ground.

“Weren’t you going to warn me?” he asked Elias. “Rover almost stole our supper.”

“Sorry,” Elias said, opening his eyes. “I was thinking about that fish. I ate way too much. Your father not only knew how to catch fish, he also knew how to cook them. He could bake it, fry it, sauté it, grill it, smoke it, you name it.”

Once the coals were covered in white ash, Tom placed the steaks on the grill, closed the lid, and checked the time on his watch. Rover lay down near the grill. Smoke swirled out the vents.

“How do you want your steak?” he asked Elias. “I like mine medium-rare.”

“That’s fine. I’m not afraid of red meat so long as we pray over it.”

Tom sat on the porch steps. “A lawyer from a good firm in Atlanta called me this afternoon,” he said. “He wants to talk to me about coming to work with his group.”

“Are you considering it?”

“Yeah.”

Tom told Elias about the call from Nate Becker and the conversation with Lamar Sponcler. He didn’t mention Arthur Pelham.

“What do you think I should do?” he asked when he finished.

“I’m not sure, so I’m not going to shoot off my mouth about it.”

Tom eyed the old man with surprise. “It’s not like you to withhold your opinion.”

Elias shrugged. “You’re learning how to take baby steps with God, and I don’t want to mess you up. One of the things an old man like me has to avoid is letting the failures of the past cast doubt on what lies ahead. Right now, your faith is stronger than mine.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No.” Elias shook his head. “Childlike faith that hasn’t suffered disappointments can be the best kind to have.”

Later, while they were eating their steaks, Tom looked over at Elias, who was contentedly chewing a juicy bite.

“Elias, are you a mystic?”

Elias swallowed and eyed Tom for a moment. “No, I’m a carnivore, and every bite of this steak proves it.”

Tom chuckled. “Rose Addington claims you’re a mystic.”

“Really? I thought a mystic was someone who withdraws from the world and spends time having weird spiritual experiences.”

“Then she’s right,” Tom replied with a confident nod. “You are a mystic.”

Elias cut another bite of steak. “I’ll give you my opinion about one thing,” he said, raising his fork to his lips. “When God is moving in your life, you should enjoy the adventure.”