Hog Wild

by Cathy Pickens

  Not really, but she was entitled to her inconsistencies.

  “So what would you like me to do?”

  “I don’t really know, Avery. I want that angel stopped, but I can’t afford to pay the rest of Mr. Barker’s bill.” She hesitated. “Do you think the police will—investigate me? How do these things work? I certainly would investigate, if I were the police.”

  ‘That’s one reason why you need to confront your husband’s accusation head-on. You don’t want something like that haunting you.” Another bad choice of words. Her mouth had a stubborn set to it.

  “Did Mr. Avinger have life insurance?”

  She nodded. “A small amount.”

  “You know a police investigation or even the accusation alone may prevent or delay your beneficiary payments. Even if the angel isn’t erected, imagine the repercussions if you leave this unchallenged.”

  For the first time, she looked surprised. “The insurance they won’t pay?”

  “If they reasonably suspect you’ve been involved in your husband’s death, they have every right to delay payment pending the investigation.” I didn’t want to add and demanding payment won’t make you look innocent.

  “Oh.” Her voice was quiet. She balled her handkerchief in her hand and rubbed her fists up and down on the thighs of her khaki pants.

  For the first time, she seemed subdued by what she faced.

  I walked around my desk and fumbled in a drawer for a legal pad. “Jot a note to Dr. Randel, giving him permission to talk to me about your husband’s case. Do you have a copy of the death certificate?”

  She nodded as she took the pad and pen I offered her.

  “Would you bring me a copy of that?”

  I would talk to Sheriff L.J.—Lucinda Jane—Peters, but I wouldn’t be trading on our old elementary school ties—more like seeking favor in spite of long-held animosities. Maybe she or Deputy Rudy Mellin could clue me in on any domestic history Magnolia “Maggy” Avinger hadn’t shared with me. I was glad Maggy had volunteered her innocence. I believed her, but clients don’t always tell the truth and I can be gullible.

  2

  Friday Afternoon

  Melvin must have heard Maggy Avinger leave my office. He returned to finish inspecting the sand-cast metal door locks and latches I’d chosen and pronounced them in keeping with the architectural integrity of the house and therefore acceptable. One hurdle crossed.

  Rather than tackle the installation on an empty stomach, I decided to wander down Main Street for Maylene’s lunch special. First, though, I called to get an appointment with Dr. Randel, a phone consultation at the end of his lunch break. His receptionist gave me the impression the quick appointment was a favor for Maggy Avinger rather than a professional courtesy to me. I’d need to eat fast so I wouldn’t be late.

  Maylene’s was filling up early. With bright sunshine and a cool, clear March day hinting at spring, I wasn’t the only one looking for an excuse to leave the office.

  Deputy Sheriff Rudy Mellin waved from a back booth for me to join him.

  “Figured you’d be out pig hunting,” I said as I slid onto the patched vinyl seat across from him.

  Rudy gave me a fish-eye stare. “How ‘bout you just go back up to the door and wait on your own dang booth.”

  “You’d miss my company. Besides, anybody else who came to sit down would want an update, too.”

  Rudy snorted and stuffed a doughy white roll in his mouth.

  I bowed over the menu too long, trying to decide what and how to ask Rudy about Harden Avinger without siccing him on my client. Rudy and I had known each other since kindergarten, had even been lab partners in high school chemistry class. I’d been surprised when I returned home to Dacus three months ago and found he was chief sheriff’s deputy. Once upon a time, he’d talked of teaching high school history.

  Now, I had to remember he was a cop.

  I ordered the salt-and-pepper catfish with cole slaw and launched into my questions in what I hoped was a roundabout way.

  “Rudy, hypothetically, what would you all do if somebody died following a long illness, with every indication it was a natural death? The doctor and every-body agreed on how he’d died. Then suppose a letter he wrote to somebody showed up, claiming he was poisoned. He didn’t notify the cops. He just wrote. . . a friend. But you learned about it. What would you do?”

  “Hypothetical, huh? This so-called friend have some kind of attorney-client privilege?”

  I shook my head a bit too vehemently. “Just a hypothetical. Something I got to wondering about.”

  He held my gaze, looking for a telltale slip, then he shrugged, his belly tight against the table. “Reckon we’d start with the doctor, as well as background on the family. Any domestic disturbance calls in the past? Do friends or family suspect someone of wishing him ill? Someone stand to gain at his death? We’d handle it like any other investigation. Checking records, asking questions, digging around the edges to see what we unearth.”

  “What if you found nothing? No inheritance left to speak of, no signs of familial discord. The doctor was convinced it was death from a long painful disease. And what if the guy was known as a jokester and those who knew him thought it was just a bad prank?”

  “This hypothetical of yours is awfully detailed.” Rudy took a slow swig of his ice tea, watching me, waiting to see if I’d fill the silence with some explanation. I offered only a shrug.

  He set his glass down. “If the doctor was convinced everything was on the up-and-up and we didn’t have anything more than a letter to go on, we’d likely let it drop. If he was under a doctor’s care, he might not have had an autopsy, though if he did, we would request a tox screen on the organ tissues, just to make sure.”

  “So if the doctor was satisfied and you trusted his judgment, you wouldn’t try to exhume the body?”

  “It would depend, but I doubt it. Too much red tape to exhume, and too expensive. The family could ask for one, but they’d have to pay.” Of course,” he snorted, “if his family offed him, they probably wouldn’t be forking over big money for an exhumation, autopsy, and tox screen, now would they? Those are pricey items.”

  “You said if he’d had an autopsy, there’d still be tissue samples available? Who keeps those?”

  “The hospital pathologist sometimes performs a limited autopsy. I don’t know about your hypothetical case. With suspicious circumstances, the pathologist holds on to hunks of stuff, stored in jars, in case it’s ever needed again for more tests. Mostly to protect the hospital in lawsuits, I’m sure. Quite a sight, I can tell you. These big glass jars with hunks of lung and heart and liver all jammed together with JOE BLOW writ large on the lid. That’s what we come to, hunks of goo in a giant dill pickle jar.”

  The waitress plopped a plate of gelatinous beef stew, cabbage, and red beets down in front of him. He took a second to bow for grace, then dug in.

  “Anything I need to know?” he asked around a mouthful of meat and potato.

  “No. Just trying to think through a puzzle in my head.” I’m not a good liar, so it’s best for me to stick with manageable truth. Not too much false detail. That’s where liars always mess up, too many false details.

  He eyed me as he chewed. My plate arrived at that opportune moment, and I lowered my eyes in my own quick blessing.

  Rudy had prepared me well for my quick conversation with Dr. Randel. Yes, Harden Avinger had terminal cancer. No, he had no signs of intestinal distress or other symptoms of poisoning of any kind. No, no full autopsy because he’d been under a doctor’s care with no mystery about what had killed him. No, his wife couldn’t have stockpiled pain medication and given it to him all at once; he’d had Dilaudid through a PCA pump.

  “Miz Andrews, I’m usually loath to malign any patient of mine. Not because I have any compunction about showing disrespect for the dead but because I consider it unprofessional. However, many’s the time I’ve wondered why Maggy Avinger didn’t bash her sorry excuse for
a husband over the head with a cast-iron frying pan and put them both out of their misery. He was insufferably cruel to her right up to the end, and she repaid him with gentleness and devotion. I don’t know what’s prompted your questions. If it has anything to do with something Harden Avinger stirred up, I don’t want to know. That’s blunt, but that’s the way I see it.”

  He paused, then said, “If you want to know exactly what was going on with him at the end, call Rulill Evans. She was his hospice nurse. She can tell you better than I can.”

  Dr. Randel transferred me to his office nurse, who supplied Rulill Evans’s phone number. Thanks to the wonder of cell phones, tracking her down didn’t take but one phone call.

  “Ms. Evans, Dr. Randel suggested I talk to you about Harden Avinger’s last days. He said you’d know more about his condition.”

  “Well, I guess so. That’s my job, isn’t it? To keep doctors as far away as possible from patients who want to die in peace. Doctors prescribe whatever I tell them and trust I know my business. Just the way it should be.”

  I had to hold the phone away from my ear whenever she spoke. I pictured Rulill Evans as a battleship-sized woman cut along the same lines as my great-aunt Aletha. She didn’t bother asking for a medical release form. Federal privacy laws have done little to change human nature.

  “Some question has come up about Mr. Avinger’s condition during his last days—”

  “What kind of question?” She asked before I could finish, her tone defensive.

  Might as well be as direct as she was. “Do you have any indication he’d been poisoned?”

  “Poisoned? With what?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Who throws around accusations like that without anything more than some general suspicion? Who’d you say you were?”

  “Ms. Evans, confidentially, Ms. Avinger learned her husband accused somebody of poisoning him. She asked me to look into it.”

  Not exactly the way the story developed, but safer than volunteering what I was trying to squelch.

  “Harrumph.” Her snort forced me to move the phone farther from my ear.

  “Harden Avinger was a jerk and an idiot. The only thing that poisoned him was his own black heart. Don’t you think I’d have noticed if he had any signs of poison? He wasn’t throwing up. He didn’t even need anything for nausea from the narcotics. A lot of patients do, but he didn’t. Didn’t even require much in the way of pain meds. Poison.”

  She spit out the last word. “That man was poison, but he sure as hell wasn’t being poisoned. Can I be any clearer than that?”

  “No, ma’am. I appreciate your time.” If I ever needed somebody to stand with me when I faced death, Rulill Evans was one I’d want. I sure wouldn’t want to face off against her, though.

  If Harden had been poisoned, it would be easier to suspect Dr. Randel or Rulill Evans, with their passionate and professed dislike of Harden, than to suspect Maggy. Frankly, though, I couldn’t see any of them playing angel of destruction. That left Maggy the widow of someone who gave meanness a bad name. Why had she stayed married to him? Silly question. A Southern woman of a certain age and a Baptist to boot. Divorce? Unthinkable.

  I’d have to ask Mom and Dad what they knew about the Avingers.

  “Knock, knock, anybody home?”

  Maggy came through the front room into my office. I was momentarily flustered, interrupted by the very woman whose good sense I’d been mentally questioning. I needed to hang bells on the doors to give me some warning.

  “You’re here. I brought you that copy of the death certificate you wanted.” She presented me with a manila envelope and stared at me a moment too long, as if trying to make up her mind about something.

  To fill the silence, I said, “I talked to Dr. Randel this morning—”

  “Avery, I’m—a bit embarrassed.” She cut me off. “We didn’t talk about money this morning. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I can’t—I just can’t afford much of your time. I wanted to make that clear. I got carried away and didn’t think—”

  “Listen.” I made gentle patting motions with my hands, what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. “Don’t worry. It’s not taking much time. Let me come up with a plan of attack first, then we can talk money. Okay?”

  Attorneys are supposed to discuss fee arrangements with clients up front. Wasn’t that somewhere in the Code of Professional Conduct? Or just common sense? In my previous life, I didn’t set the fees for my services—and I didn’t have clients who had trouble paying. What was I doing here? I had a familiar flicker of doubt about my decision to give up on a lucrative city law firm for a small-town general practice. Had I exhausted my options? Was coming home to Dacus really what I wanted?

  Maggy let out the breath she’d been holding, but the worry wrinkles between her eyebrows didn’t completely ease.

  “I don’t want charity. I like to pay my bills.” Her chin jutted out, but her eyes gave a gentle pleading.

  “I understand. But I haven’t done anything to solve your problem yet. I’m still mulling over the best way to approach it. We’ll talk on Monday, when I have a better idea, okay?”

  She looked relieved. “Okay.” Not that I’d dealt with many grieving widows, but hadn’t said anything about missing her husband. Then again, given what I’d learned about her husband, what would she grieve?

  She turned toward the front parlor, then spun around, a smile brightening herface. “I just happened to think. You’re new back in town. Are you busy tomorrow? You might enjoy meeting some folks or renewing some acquaintances. And it’s for a good cause. We’ve gathered a group for a plant rescue operation—to save some native plants ahead of the bulldozers. At a new development on the mountain.”

  “On the mountain?”

  She nodded and fished in her shoulder bag for a paper. “Here’s directions to the site. A beautiful cove forest. We need to save what we can, don’t you think?”

  I glanced at the map, which had a couple of pages attached explaining the what and the why of plant rescue. Too much to take in at a glance.

  “We won’t get started until mid- to late morning,” she said. “Give the sun a chance to warm things up a bit. Just bring some gardening gloves and a trowel or shovel. We’ll have everything else. I think your mother is coming, or you’re welcome to ride with me.”

  ‘Thanks. I’ll let you know,” I said.

  If someone was saving some part of the world, my mom was probably scheduled to be there.

  I walked Maggy to the door. She started to say something but a sound on the porch caught her attention, and she turned to open the door for another visitor.

  Mack MacGregor and his work boots thumped across the porch, a look of welcome surprise on his face.

  “Maggy, how nice to see you.” He smiled down at her from his lanky height, one heavy-knuckled hand clutching a large potted prayer plant to his chest. “Didn’t know to expect you here or I’d have brought you one, too.” He wiped his hand across his jaw as if checking whether he’d remembered to shave.

  Maggy laughed. “Lord, Mack, I don’t need another plant to take care of. Looks as though you have just the thing for Avery’s office, though.”

  “I hope so.” He indicated the leafy plant. “Can I set this somewhere for you?”

  Suddenly I was six years old again and Mr. Mack was presenting me and my sister with red roses to wear at the Mother’s Day church service. He’d made the presentation of our corsages such an event every year, I’d felt so special, so grown-up.

  “That’s beautiful! Thank you so much. Would it go right here?”

  I indicated a spot beside the front door, where the plant could see the sunshine if it squinted across the deep-set porch and looked hard.

  “That’ll work.” He ceremoniously set it down and centered it in front of the door’s glass sidelight. “Just a little office-warming present.”

  “You’ll need a small table, Avery,” Maggy said. “If you don’t have o
ne, come by the house. I’ve got just the thing. Mack here would probably tote it over for you. He’s my back-door neighbor, you know.”

  Mr. Mack nodded. “You’d think we’d see each other more often, wouldn’t you?” He stared down at Maggy, searching her face for something.

  “Isn’t that always the way it is?” she agreed. “Folks are just too busy. And speaking of which, I’ll see you two later.” She was doing a good job not letting on about what had brought her to my office, Southern sidewalk casual.

  Mr. Mack watched as she walked down the sidewalk to her car. “I’ve been so worried about her since Harden died.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Sure. We shared a back fence for thirty years. Back when Lucy was alive, the four of us played bridge together.”

  Watching his face, I saw that look I’d first noticed when I was a little girl. He’d reminded me of a sad, long-faced puppy. Or Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. I’d first noticed that sad expression about the same time he’d begun delivering the roses from his garden, the year his wife had died.

  “Here I am wasting your valuable lawyering time.” He opened the door, then turned back to me. “You really need to get a sign out front, Avery. Some folks might not be able to find you.”

  “I know.” I kept picturing a discreet wrought-iron post, white framed sign, black script lettering.

  “That husband of hers.”

  He was looking down the sidewalk with a distant expression.

  “Maggy’s?”

  He nodded, one fist jammed deep in his overall pocket. “Something Harden told me before he died, I just haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. About how he had the chance to buy extra life insurance, at a really good rate, something from the navy, after he knew he was sick. He refused. Said he didn’t want her being well off after he was gone, said somebody’d marry her for her money. Can you believe that?”

  He shook his head. “It’s made me sick at my stomach ever since. Because I know she struggles.”