Ten depositions. It was far worse than Jared had expected.
Who to pick? Someone with a fair chance at knowledge of the deposit, and with the character to tell the truth if pressed. For the latter attribute, Jared decided to return to Mrs. Huddleston—who in turn brought her friend Shelby in to help.
“Carol, Shelby,” he said, gaining their attention. “We have ten bank employees we can depose. From the list you sent us earlier,” he said, nodding with a smile at Shelby, “I’ve pared the number down to twenty employee names. These remaining twenty are all people whose jobs and terms of employment made them potential witnesses to the deposit.”
Shelby was listening especially intently. Mrs. Huddleston described Shelby as the uncommon friend—the one who could always keep a secret. Mrs. Huddleston also insisted that her friend had the mind and habits of a packrat crossed with an elephant: she kept everything and forgot nothing. She and her husband ran the Mayfair Drug Store on Main Street for thirty years before selling out and retiring. In the process, they’d done business with everyone in town. It was knowledge Jared hoped to tap now.
“From this pool, I need to know who’s likely to tell the truth. Keep in mind, the bank lawyers will be prepping all of these witnesses to be hostile. They will be fearful of losing their jobs; they will be coached on how to view the evidence and how to interpret my questions. We’re looking for people who, when pressed, will default to their own consciences. We’re looking for the honest man and woman who’ll tell us the truth regardless of the pressure from the lawyer at their side.”
Shelby nodded earnestly and picked up the list. For half an hour, while Jared culled through documents from a single box he had brought along, she and Mrs. Huddleston conferred like sober spymasters.
“I believe we have it,” Mrs. Huddleston said at last. Jared accepted the list from Mrs. Huddleston and scanned it.
Amidst scratches and erasures, ten names were checkmarked and underlined on the list. Beside some of the names, personal notes and observations were inked in each of the women’s hands. Jared saw that the chosen ones stretched from clerks to vice-presidents, the Human Resources Department to a night custodian.
“You know all these people? Believe they fit my description?”
They each nodded. “Some better than others, Jared,” Mrs. Huddleston said. “But none of them are strangers.”
“All right then,” he said, setting the list down with an air of finality. Mrs. Huddleston and Shelby looked solemnly pleased with themselves. He raised two open palms across the table for high fives, which they each accepted.
“Let the games begin.”
Marcus scanned Neaton’s list of ten witnesses a final time as Whittier entered his office.
“Marcus?”
“Sit down, Franklin. Grant just called from the bank. He reviewed Neaton’s list this morning. I want you to get up to Ashley and start prepping the bank witnesses tomorrow.”
“I’m still trying to get the summary judgment brief done.”
Marcus nodded. “I want to keep things moving along, not give Neaton a breather to complete his review of the documents. Neaton says he wants to start on the depositions next Monday, so let’s accommodate him. Take the summary judgment papers along with you and work on them at night.”
Marcus ignored the junior partner’s tortured look.
“Oh and Franklin,” he added offhandedly as Whittier stood to leave, “there is one witness—Sylvia Pokofsky. When you’re ready to meet with her, give me a call. We have a few issues we need to talk through about her deposition.”
19
Sitting at a table at Orsi and Greens, Jared felt good about his deposition preparation over the past week. It was Friday morning—almost two weeks since he’d moved into his father’s house. Jared had mastered all of the documents produced to Goering in the spring. There wasn’t much fodder in the boxes for examining the witnesses, but his deeper understanding of the case and bank would give him credibility when he began the depositions on Monday, and reduce their chances of snowing him.
Mrs. Huddleston was feeding him names of other potential witnesses each morning—people she thought might know something about Paul Larson. Each afternoon he would spend hours visiting them. Tractor and feed salesmen, local investment advisers, lawyers in town, anyone who might have a clue whether Paul Larson came into money before he died. Nothing had panned out so far.
Jessie’s car pulled up and parked in front of Orsi’s. Erin waved through the windshield and Jared nodded back. Jessie had brought Erin from the farm to discuss the case. After lunch, Jessie and Erin would retrieve the deposition exhibits from Samuel’s house and get them photocopied at Kinko’s.
This first two weeks in the house had been less tense than Jared expected, mostly because he seldom saw his father. Samuel treated the basement like it was out of bounds and stayed out. His father’s obvious effort to give him privacy in the house only heightened Jared’s guilt at being there at all. But the truth was, he was in no hurry to have more contact with his father anyway.
His phone buzzed and Jared pulled it from his pocket. He grimaced as he answered.
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Jared, you should get home right away.”
“Dad, I’m busy. It won’t be long—”
“Jared, there’s a U-Haul here with several hundred boxes they want to unload. They say they’re from the bank.”
Jared hung up and pushed away from the table. “I’ve got to go,” he told Jessie and Erin as he passed them at the door. “I’ve got to go home.”
Jared’s breath hung in white puffs as he stood on grass crisp with frost, staring into the back of a full-size U-Haul parked in his father’s driveway. The rear door to the truck was up, revealing boxes stacked four high its full length. He ignored his father, standing to the side, wrapped in a hunting jacket and looking at him with concerned eyes.
Jared was buffeted by gusts of rage. A document dump. Three days before the depositions began. He was unsure if he was angrier about the documents or the fact that he hadn’t anticipated this. It was a common practice at Paisley, especially if your opponent was understaffed or underfunded. He was both. He should have expected it.
“Mister,” a voice called. Jared glanced up at the driver, standing next to the cab. “You’ve gotta unload ’em so I can return the truck.”
Jared looked back into the trailer. Should he complain to the judge—ask for sanctions because these documents weren’t produced during the summer when Goering demanded them? Request more time?
He shook his head. None of them were options—not since Clay pulled out his support. Working on financial fumes, Jared didn’t know how he could survive to trial as it was. A delay would be impossible. Jared began to shiver.
“Son?” his father said gently.
A car pulled to the curb in front of the house. Both Jessie and Erin emerged.
“What do you want to do?” his father asked.
Jared shook his head, pulled the nearest box down, and headed toward the front door.
Over his shoulder, he heard his father slide another box free and saw, from the corner of his eye, Erin and Jessie heading to do the same.
All he could feel was frustration teetering on the edge of despair.
20
Sitting in the Ashley State Bank conference room, waiting for the witness to arrive, Jared rubbed his face with both hands, then studied his notes through bleary eyes. The math so far tallied at four and a half days of deposition, forty hours of testimony, four witnesses—and it all added up to zero. No one knew anything about the deposit. He stared at the table wearily, longing to set his head down and close his eyes.
Jared thought despondently of the boxes he still had to go through in his basement. More math: two hundred sixty-one of them lined the walls. He’d reviewed eighty so far. He’d allowed Jessie and Erin to organize the boxes generally, but couldn’t bring himself to turn over the process of summarizing to them. Jared hazily
estimated that over the last week he’d gotten twenty hours of sleep.
The door to the bank conference room opened. Whittier entered, with his perfect hair and well-pressed suit. He looked fresh and ready for a fight. The court reporter followed, then the next witness—her purse clenched in one fist and a nervous flutter in her eyes.
Jared straightened himself. “Let’s get started,” he called immediately, hoping his voice carried more zeal than he felt.
Jessie looked out over the empty corral. “So this was where you kept your horse?”
Erin nodded. It was early Friday afternoon. Jessie had stopped at the Larson farm to pick up her bag on the way back to Minneapolis. She was returning to the office to put out some fires over the weekend, with a plan to return Sunday afternoon to start typing the document summaries again. To her surprise, Erin was home and offered Jessie a tour of the farm.
Over the weeks that Jessie had been staying at the Larson farm, they’d seldom crossed paths. Soon after Jessie arrived, Erin left for several days to visit her aunt Karen in the Twin Cities. Even after she returned, Jessie typically worked late at Sam’s house typing summaries. The few evenings she came back early to finish typing on her laptop, Erin appeared only long enough to let her in. She then disappeared into her room, “working on papers for her father’s estate.”
It had delayed this tour until today—and conspired to keep Jessie from her plan to get to know Erin.
They first walked the edge of the fields. Across the open acres, with the backdrop of a tractor tilling the neighboring acreage, Erin described the crops her father had planted each year, pointed out what remained fallow and what property got leased out for hay.
She had taken Jessie to the windbreak next, a copse of tall trees that ascended a hill along the west side of the house. It was larger than usual, Erin said, because her father loved woods and couldn’t bear to cut the trees that would have garnered another acre or two of tillable land. It was a sanctuary for tree forts and exploring when she was younger, Erin explained.
They then approached the barn, heading toward the paddock in the back. Erin mentioned that she had just finished cleaning it out—selling what she could and organizing the rest. “I used to go into the barn to get away,” she explained as they walked by. “I had a corner in the haymow where Dad never came. I think he knew when I was there, but chose to leave me alone. When I was lonely, I’d take a book.”
When they’d arrived at the corral where they now stood, Erin’s voice rose for the first time. “Dad bought me a horse the summer I entered middle school,” she said. “A quarter horse. I called him Strider. I imagine it was a bribe. Maybe he was trying to coax me out of the haymow.”
“A bribe?”
Erin shrugged. “Even that early he could tell I wasn’t terribly happy.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while.” Erin smiled. “I’d do my chores, then work the horse in the afternoon. I wanted to attend shows, but money was tight. But, yes, it kept me occupied.”
“What happened to Strider?”
“When I moved to Minneapolis, Dad sold the horse. Said he didn’t have time to care for him. I used to tell myself he was punishing me for moving away. But that wasn’t it. He had enough trouble just keeping this farm going without caring for the horse. And maybe Strider reminded him of my absence.”
There was a familiar tone in Erin’s voice, though Jessie could not place it. She followed as Erin walked on toward a patch of orchard farther back on the property.
The orchard was overgrown from inattention. Worm-wracked apples piled the ground beneath empty limbs where they had fallen. In the fall sunshine, it was a sad corner of the place. “That’s all,” Erin finally announced.
The tractor rumble had grown more distant by the time they turned back toward the farmhouse. Erin pulled her jacket tighter.
“Do you think Jared’s getting discouraged?” she asked as they walked.
Not discouraged enough, Jessie thought. Still, it was never good form to tell a client their attorney was losing hope. “I don’t know. He’s used to the ups and downs of these cases.”
Jessie picked up her knees as she stepped through the tall grass along the path leading to the house. “Will you be glad when the litigation is over?”
Erin walked silently for a moment before answering, “I’ll be glad when I know what it’s all about.”
Now Jessie recognized the tone in Erin’s voice. She’d heard it in her conversations this past week with Sam Neaton during afternoon breaks at the house, while Jared labored at the depositions. Their careful talks flirted at the dangerous edge of things important, circling closer each day, until at last Jessie shared her fears for Jared and the case—and Sam shared fears of his own. It was in those moments that Jessie had heard the tone so recently. It was in Sam’s voice before he cut their last talk short to “finish some work.”
It was the white bone of guilt and regret.
Joe Creedy watched as the women disappeared into the side entrance to the Larson house, several hundred yards across the tilled soil. He braked the tractor and then stopped its engine and pulled his gloves from his hands.
The cell phone number was already punched in from the three times he’d called earlier in the day—and the half a dozen times earlier in the week. He pushed redial. “I need Mr. Grant,” he said when the young woman’s voice answered. “It’s Joe Creedy.”
A moment later, he was surprised to hear Grant’s voice, gruff and low, come on the phone.
“Yes, Joe.”
“Mr. Grant,” Joe said, sitting taller in his seat, “I’m just calling to see if we can meet to talk about the mortgage like you promised.”
“Things are still unsettled, Joe.”
“Look, Mr. Grant. Every month, I get further behind with you. It makes me real nervous not gettin’ this done now. And my wife’s wonderin’ what’s goin’ on. I’ve done everything you asked for nearly a year now.”
“So far. But I told you we’d work things out after everything was done.”
The farmer pulled his cap from his head with his free hand and rubbed his palm across his forehead. He wished he’d brought the bottle out; he felt awful thirsty just now.
“Joe, you haven’t told your friends about our talks, have you?”
“No, Mr. Grant. Like you said. They’re riled enough on their own. They don’t need to know I’ve talked with you about going after the Larson lady.”
“Good. Well, see if you can’t keep them calmed down for the time being. Just leave Ms. Larson alone for now. Things seem to be working themselves out, and we don’t want the sheriff any more involved.”
“Okay. But we’re going to talk about the mortgage, right, Mr. Grant?”
“Yes, Joe. As I promised. When it’s all settled down.”
The phone went silent. Joe slid it into his pocket and hunched over the wheel.
His parents called again last night from Florida. When they asked about the farm, did his father sound worried? Why’d he clear his throat before he asked? Why’d he ask the same question every time they called?
They didn’t know. They couldn’t know. Susie’d never say a word. No one else had any idea how far they were under water with the farm.
And they couldn’t know about the accident either. Nobody knew about that.
He looked at his watch. Four o’clock. Susie would still be at her sister’s. He started the tractor and turned the wheel toward the barn. Maybe he’d head to the Legion hall a little early tonight.
21
Jared trudged up the basement stairs into the kitchen. It was nearly midnight on Sunday. He had passed on an early bedtime to keep digging through the boxes. He rooted a Red Bull out of the refrigerator before trundling into the living room and dropping onto the couch.
Jessie was hunched over a computer, typing Jared’s document summaries. Erin had left several hours earlier after an afternoon spent organizing the boxes by topic. He noticed the empty cup
of coffee on the table beside Jessie.
“So, Captain, you sure you want to continue with these depos, or slow down and finish reviewing the documents first?” Jessie asked over her shoulder.
She sounded tired. Jared had asked himself the same question repeatedly the past week. Was there a nugget in these boxes that he needed for the depositions—one worth delaying the process? Or was it all just fluff?
He’d scheduled the least important witnesses first and worked through them this past week. Jared always did that to give himself a chance to warm up. But starting tomorrow, he was closing in on the more hopeful witnesses—vice-presidents, account managers. Maybe he should put the last five depositions back.
No, he commanded himself. With only seven weeks before trial, a week or two delay was not possible.
“I don’t think so, Jessie.”
“Well, how about letting me help.”
No again. “Maybe,” he said aloud. “Let me see how it goes tonight. How is it staying with Erin?”
Jessie kept typing and did not answer immediately. “Fine,” she said at last.
Jared took a long drink of the Red Bull. There was a knock at the door.
Vic Waye, dressed in a khaki parka, stood in the weak illumination of the porch light. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Neaton?” he asked quietly, stomping his feet for warmth. Jared hesitated, then stepped aside and waved him in.
Jessie had slipped out of the room, Jared saw as he turned to follow. Vic wiped his feet on the entry rug before striding to the couch. Jared took Jessie’s empty folding chair.
“I’m here on my own account, Mr. Neaton. So don’t think anyone sent me.”
“Okay.” Jared saw Vic’s hands slide up his legs and grip his knees. They were thick, with pitted knuckles.
“Look, Verne—Verne Loffler—he was the guy that coldcocked you at the Legion Hall the other day. But you probably know that.”
The Deposit Slip Page 13
