Hog Wild

by Cathy Pickens

  “Huh?” So they had narrowed in on it already.

  “A toxicologist in Charleston recognized it immediately, from the grotesque faces and rigid muscles. Apparently they both got megadoses. Suse Knight had a box of chocolate candy. A square red box of liqueur chocolates.”

  My brain raced around, trying to connect the dots. “But there are still more pieces that don’t fit than do.”

  He shrugged. “That’s what makes it a good story.”

  “And a scary one.”

  We both sat, lost in our thoughts.

  “The sheriff have any suspects in sight?”

  “The sheriff?” Noah’s lip curled, his snurlish attitude back in a flash. “You’re kidding, right? What a joke she is.”

  I was tired of his sarcasm. “Guess they do everything better where you come from. That why you didn’t stay? It was too perfect, so you had to move on?”

  Even if I, too, thought L. J. was a joke, she was our joke. He hadn’t been here long enough to earn the right to make fun of her.

  I expected him to come out swinging. Instead, he blinked, gave a halfhearted shrug, and looked away. I’d hit a soft spot. Hmm, the newsman had a story. I didn’t have time to dig for it, at least not today.

  “I got to run.” Best let him get over whatever had him in such a stew. I rolled back the chair I’d borrowed.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” I turned back. He was probably the best source. “You know anything about somebody opening the old Yellow Fork summer camp, up on the mountain?”

  “No.” His tone said, And why should I care?

  “A guy called today, wanted to meet with me. I hadn’t heard that anybody had bought it, until this Tim McDonald called.”

  ‘Tim McDonald?”

  I nodded.

  “Where is this place? Yellow Fork?”

  “Up the mountain, past where the road splits.”

  He scribbled himself a note, retreating back into his preoccupied universe.

  “Okay, then,” I said.

  I left him sitting in the clutter and confusion of the Clarion and walked the block to Carlton Barner’s office in time for my appointment. Everything huddled around the courthouse: the newspaper, the lawyers’ offices, the Law Enforcement Center. Quick commute time.

  Most of the Dacus lawyers had offices in converted houses of differing sizes and styles within walking distance of the courthouse. The Barner Law Firm was housed in a single-story bungalow, with painted cement steps, a wooden porch, and a familiar come-home feel.

  While Lou Wray didn’t exactly welcome me, she didn’t snarl or ignore me, which had been her normal greeting during the couple of months I’d camped out in a back office. This time, she didn’t even make me sit in the waiting room. She escorted me to Carlton’s small conference room, usually reserved for real estate closings, and even offered me coffee.

  “No, thanks, Mrs. Wray. I appreciate it” If she was extending an olive branch, I wasn’t going to whack it off. “How’ve you been?” I didn’t know enough about her to ask about her family.

  “Fine,” she said, stopping in the doorway. “And you?”

  “Fine. Thanks for asking.”

  I smiled. She nodded primly and left. Detente.

  I grabbed a blank legal pad off the credenza and scribbled an outline of the points I wanted to make with Carlton. The more I’d thought it over, the more I liked the solution I’d come up with for Harden Avinger’s final resting place. Now I just had to convince his executor of its genius.

  Carlton breezed in and proffered his hand. Even though he wasn’t scheduled for court, he wore a tightly knotted tie and blue blazer, his long delicate gray pants carefully creased, not a hair around his bald dome out of place.

  I didn’t waste any time. “Carlton, I’ve got a proposition, a solution that both honors Mr. Avinger’s wishes and saves Mrs. Avinger from undue embarrassment.”

  Carlton cocked his head, attentive but noncommittal.

  ‘The letter he left specifies that the epitaph be engraved on the monument. Doesn’t mean the epitaph has to be visible, does it?”

  His lips pursed with skepticism, but he waited for me to explain.

  “What if Innis Barker engraves the epitaph as written, then covers it with a more appropriate—and less libelous—epitaph.”

  “I. . . don’t know.” Carlton leaned back as if moving away from me and my proposal. At least he was going to give it some thought.

  “If she’d actually done something to harm him,” I said, “that would be one thing. But I haven’t found anyone who says she did anything but take good care of her husband throughout their marriage.”

  I didn’t report the consensus that Carlton’s client had been a jerk of monumental proportions. “Surely you don’t want to be party to his last tragic joke.”

  He sucked in a slow lungful of air and let it out. “A’vry, I’m going to have to think about this one.” He shook his head. “There’s the letter of the law and then there’s the spirit. I. . . don’t know.”

  “Carlton, you’ve known both Harden and Maggy Avinger. There’s also just doing what’s right.”

  “We can’t be absolutely certain something didn’t—that he didn’t know something we don’t.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to accuse her.

  “Both his own doctor and the hospice nurse who was with him when he died said unequivocally that he died of a disease process, that there was no way he was poisoned.”

  Carlton studied the toes of his wingtips at the end of his outstretched legs.

  “Let me think about it.”

  That was abrupt. “Fine.” I’d hoped for a resolution, but I’d settle for anything short of an outright no.

  On the short walk back to the office, I thought about the Avingers and the Shoals, about marriage and the end of marriage, and suspicion. Did L.J. have any suspects? Was Alex Shoal on the list? If she wasn’t, she certainly would be once L.J. got wind of Lionel’s double life—or double wife. I could see why Alex Shoal might want him dead, but she’d had to track him down. Did she find him and send that box of chocolates? Was her surprise at where and with whom he was living a ruse for my benefit?

  In any event, it didn’t make sense that Alex Shoal would send chocolates to Suse Knight. Surely Lionel had been old enough not to have to fix any paternity tests, at least old enough to know where babies came from and take precautions.

  If his wife—his real wife—had killed him, somebody ought to give her a button. Could what he’d done to her, forcing her to live hand to mouth, squandering her father’s money, hiding his inheritance from her, leaving her in debt, could that constitute domestic abuse? Interesting little legal puzzle, since a South Carolina statute lets a convicted spouse killer serve only one-fourth the sentence if she—or he—can show abuse. All pure speculation, though.

  Something far from speculation: I needed to get those anonymous letters to L.J. The more I wandered around the edges of all that had happened recently, the more I wanted to back away from the edge. I needed to track down Cissie Prentice and get her letter, too. The more they had to work with, the better. The less I had to do with it, even better.

  19

  Wednesday Afternoon

  I found an apple in the office’s communal refrigerator. Something Melvin had bought, so I’d have to remember to replace it. That and some peanuts would tide me over until supper. I also grabbed a gallon-sized plastic bag from among the various sizes Melvin had neatly stored in a drawer.

  Cissie Prentice answered her phone on the second ring and seemed relieved when I said I wanted to pick up her letter. Poison letters, as I’d begun thinking of them.

  “Oh, gawd, Avery. Please. Get the thing out of my life. After you told me I should hang on to it, I stuck it in a drawer and haven’t looked at it again. But every time I walk by that cupboard, I know it’s there. It gives me the creeps.”

  “Will you be home later this afternoon?”

  “Sure, until my tennis gam
e.”

  As I hung up, I wondered what Cissie Prentice did when she was at home. Thanks to one or more of her earlier divorce settlements, she didn’t have to work and could hire a maid.

  As I gathered my satchel and whatever else I’d need so I wouldn’t have to return to the office, I heard a familiar toodle-oo from the hallway.

  Great-aunt Hattie, followed closely by her younger, more padded sister Vinnia, appeared in the door.

  “Avery, honey. Have you time to talk a minute?”

  “We were talking, coming home from a meeting at church—Oh, were you leaving? We—”

  “—decided to see if you were free for a bit.”

  “We need to talk. Do you have time?”

  “—some advice. It’ll just take a minute.” Vinnia finished up the tumble of words. They stood side by side, so familiar and yet so out of context. From the strained look on Vinnia’s soft face, they obviously hadn’t come to admire my new office.

  I had to reexcavate two chairs for them.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I rolled my chair around the desk to join them. They sat in two mismatched side chairs, Hattie’s sensible lace-up shoes planted firmly on the floor while Vinnia, shorter and plumper than her lanky older sister, had to perch on the edge of the chair so her low-heeled navy pumps could reach the floor. Vinnia and I were both height challenged.

  “Don’t look so worried, dear. It’s not bad news. Are you sure you have time?” Vinnia emphasized the word “bad” in a way that drew my attention. As usual, we both turned to Hattie for the details.

  Hattie eyed me in that direct, no-nonsense way that had tamed many a high school biology student over her decades of teaching. She’d been retired twenty years; her legend endured for a reason.

  “We trust this conversation will be confidential. We need legal advice, Avery.”

  My imagination offered a rush of possibilities: a traffic ticket? car accident? Aunt Letha punched someone at the church meeting they’d just left?

  I looked at Vinnia to see if her usually expressive face revealed more than the sharp angles of her older sister’s face did. Vinnia just smiled back at me, placid.

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “We need you to look at Father’s will and our brother’s—your grandfather’s—will and tell us exactly what our rights are.”

  “Your rights?”

  Hattie pulled thick bundles of papers from the outside pocket of her walking jacket. She didn’t offer them to me immediately. Instead, she studied me as if she had something to decide. Maybe whether to trust me.

  “We need to know. . . in what way we own the house.”

  “O-kay.” I wasn’t following her.

  “Avery, honey,” Vinnia leaned forward conspiratorially, her hands clasped in her lap. “We really need to keep this quiet. We don’t want this to cause any trouble. We’re not even sure yet, well—” She shrugged.

  “Whatever you say here is completely in confidence. If I can’t help you, we’ll find—”

  “Oh, no!” Vinnia cut me off. “There mustn’t be anyone else. We—”

  “That’s enough.” Hattie gently reasserted command. “Avery, we want to know if we can sell the house, or our part of it. We wondered who really owns it. You must know, though, that Aletha refuses to hear any of this. She’s vehemently opposed to any such change. You understand.”

  I certainly did. Aletha, my great-aunt Letha—Hattie’s and Vinnia’s older sister—was an awesome force who had served, after their mother’s death decades earlier, as the family matriarch. Hattie’s easy assumption of command came from years as a teacher, but her skills were no match for the naturally superior and equally well-honed skills of her older, larger, more imposing sister.

  “Why do you want to sell the house?”

  Vinnia made conciliatory patting motions with her plump, pink hands. “Now, we’re not sure we do. We’re just—”

  “Looking at our options. We’re not young anymore. We have to think about the future.”

  Not young, true, but in my life, my three great-aunts had always been tireless constants, and when it came to changing any of those constants in my life, I was with Aunt Letha; I just didn’t want to hear any of it. None of it.

  “But what—”

  Hattie read my unanswered question. “We’re looking at some long-term options. Maybe an apartment or cottage in one of those new retirement communities.”

  “Ava moved into one. It’s all the way over near Clemson,” Vinnia explained. “They have a nursing facility if you need it, and someone cleans your room if you want, and they even cook your meals and come looking for you if you don’t show up.”

  Sort of like the county jail, except with old people, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Sounds kind of—regimented. Why do—”

  “We’re looking at several places. It would just be nice not to have to worry about maintaining that rambling old house.”

  “Ava has the cutest little apartment with a patio and flowers.” Vinnia beamed.

  I shivered. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and hum and stomp my feet so I wouldn’t have to hear any of this. I had lived in cute little apartments with patios and a condo with a balcony. The thought of their bland sameness absorbing the rich lives of my great-aunts distressed me.

  I tried to keep a look of professional openness on my face. “What do you have there?” I indicated the bundled papers Hattie still held. Three thick sheaves of paper, each folded in thirds, were bound with rubber bands.

  “Our father’s will.” She handed it to me ceremoniously. “And our brother’s will—your grandfather’s. And the deed to the property.”

  I accepted them each in turn and held them, making no move to unbind and open them. To lawyers, wills are usually matter-of-fact, though on occasion they offer interesting intellectual puzzles, attempts to navigate the arcane rules of trusts and estates while accommodating the to-be-deceased’s wishes to reward or punish loved ones. When the document in your hand marks the last will and testament of a grandfather in whose legal footsteps you found yourself tottering like a toddler, it was no longer predictable or arcane. I could almost feel his hand on it.

  I stared at the folded papers a bit too long. These ladies had known me all my life; their silence hinted that they knew some of what I was feeling. After all, they were surely wrestling with their own uncertainty.

  “Aunt Hattie, Aunt Vinnia.” I hoped I sounded professional. “I’ll read these over, see what they say, see how the property was transferred.”

  “Avery, understand we don’t like going behind Aletha’s back. We’ve talked to her about this. Rather, we’ve tried to talk,” Hattie emphasized. “Aletha just makes a rude sound and marches out of the room.”

  Vinnia nodded, her brows knit together.

  “I understand.” Boy, did I understand. Aunt Letha was a force of nature.

  “We just need some information. We’re not set on any course. We got to thinking and realized how little we know. Father passed away and left the house to Avery, as the oldest and only male child. When he died, Aletha took the lead in getting his estate probated, and neither of us had any reason to pay attention to how the ownership was divided.”

  My grandfather—and my namesake—had died when I was in law school.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I wanted to say, Listen, Dad will keep doing all your home repairs. I’ll come bring your meals. You can’t leave. But that’s not why they’d come to my office. They were treating me like an adult. The least I could do was return the compliment. Even if my brain was screaming, But I don’t want things to change. Not this much.

  “Are you going to Lydia’s opening night on Friday?” I needed to change the subject.

  “Absolutely,” said Hattie as they stood to take their leave.

  “We wouldn’t miss it,” said Vinnia, slipping her flower-embroidered purse onto her arm. “We talked about having dinner for everyone before the play, to celebrate, but your moth
er wisely pointed out that Lydia and Frank would be too distracted to enjoy it. So we’ll do something Sunday, after church.”

  “Great,” I said, escorting them to the front hall.

  “You still have an awful lot of work to do here, don’t you?” said Hattie, surveying the jumble of boxes and paper and teetering stacks of books.

  I could only nod.

  “It’s so nice that Avery’s books will have a good home now,” said Vinnia, beaming. “They were packed away too long.” She leaned over and clasped my wrist in her warm hand. “He would be so pleased.”

  “I hope so,” I said, almost in a whisper.

  My office phone started ringing before we could spend more time getting misty-eyed.

  “We’ll talk to you later.”

  I waved goodbye and stepped back into my office.

  “Avery. Noah Lakefield. Forgot to ask when you were here. Something I’m working on reminded me. Would you be willing to be my tour guide? At your convenience, of course.”

  Wow. Didn’t see that coming. Maybe my visit had jostled him out of his peculiar mood. “I’ll have to dig around,” I said. “See if I have a pith helmet and a whistle. What you got in mind?” My voice sounded a tad sarcastic, even to me. Noah didn’t seem to notice.

  “The Chattooga River. I’ve watched Deliverance on that old movie channel. Here I am, so close. I ought to see the icon itself.”

  “Uh, sure.” How to explain to him that most folks around here despised James Dickey, his book, the movie, and Ted Turner for broadcasting it incessantly? And how to explain that you couldn’t just go see the river the way the movie showed it? There wasn’t an overlook, and it wasn’t a Disney ride. I didn’t say any of that.

  “Great,” he said. “Tomorrow morning work for you? I’ll pick you up.”

  “Uh, sure, I can do tomorrow. But I’ll have to meet you.” I’d planned to stay the night at the cabin. I could spare a little time to show him his icon before I had to head into town in the morning, but I wasn’t about to first drive all the way back to town to pick him up. “You know the little store right before the crossroads, where the road forks toward Cashiers and Highlands?”