Joe did as he was told. He nursed the drink, sitting back and shutting his eyes. I could see the lines on his face relax as the bourbon did its work on the central nervous system. His fingers released, and he relaxed his grip on the arms of the captain’s chairs at our table. He slumped back in the chair and began nodding ever so slowly.
"All right," I said in my most soothing voice, "let's talk about what you have on your mind now."
Joe continued nodding. "I don't know, Jennifer. With all this mileage I'm putting on and jetting here and there, it seems like problems snowball. Lately, I've probably been making mountains out of molehills. That bourbon you just gave me is the best medication I've had in six months. How about a refill?"
"Coming right up," I said and went through the highball ritual a second time. This time, he nursed it I guess for the rest of the night. I was certain that that would be the end of what he had come to say. There are certain things a wife does not want to hear about, especially from a husband who's away a lot on the road. What about those road problems? They come unstuck and disappear after only a few swallows. So, we came to that place together where he knew that I simply did not want to hear what he had to say.
Was that so wrong? Was it wrong for a wife to want to keep her life like it was? Was it wrong for a wife to erect a wall and tell the world, “Thou shalt not cross here”? I didn’t think so. I had my life as I liked it, except I didn't care for Joe being gone two weeks out of every month. His absence just made my job that much harder with the kids, the bill paying, the friends who wanted to see you, and all the rest of it. It would've been much easier with him at home full-time. But that wasn't the road he had chosen for his professional practice, so I had let go of that part.
So I sat in my trial, and I listened to the witnesses try to poison the jury's mind. I wondered how anyone could ever make them understand what Joe and I really meant. As the days went by inside that courtroom, it became increasingly clear to me that this jury was going to decide about me and about my life without knowing anything real about me.
And if they put this girl under oath, if they tapped into my empty core, they would know even less.
And that scared me to death.
17
Joe’s Tape Recording
Jennifer found the key to Joe's bank box, and off she went. The next day, she appeared in my office with a tape recording. We listened together:
Son of a bitch, girl, I really screwed the pooch this time. Here goes nothing.
I'm Joe Ipswich. I was born in Arizona and raised by my single mother until her death from an automobile-pedestrian accident while she was running behind my jogging stroller one morning on Camelback Road and 24th Street. From the asphalt, they took me to St. Joseph's Hospital and, three days later, the social workers' calls had turned up no family to take me on, so I was placed with Christian Social Services. Eventually, I was adopted by a woman who taught remedial mathematics to middle-school children. Every night after school, she returned home without fail to dote over me during her private hours. My take-over mother was loving, supportive, and my best friend for many years. But the death of my birth mother had carved a hole deep inside my heart that no make-up mother's love could ever fill. Maybe it was a weakness about me or maybe it's always that way. I don't know, and I never beat myself up about it. But I did start looking, about my eleventh year, for the love of a woman to fill that hole.
My search continued up to my marriage to Jennifer and after. Why did it continue after Jennifer and I married? Was it because she wasn't enough? That's like asking why the sky is blue. It's blue just because. I kept looking just because. It was Elise's turn next, and it was Elise I married in France. Her love came as close as any to filling that hole and freeing me from that old, gnawing pain. Lovely Elise, I couldn't do enough for her.
I wasn't rich in that I never had a huge corpus of money to buy a building or a staffed yacht or a Johnny Depp dollop of island.
But I earned fifty-thou a month into my forties, so there was always more than enough to go around.
Naturally, the nascent millionaire seeks to fix himself the more he gets, and so I took that French wife for myself.
Elise knew about Jennifer and my American family—the French are savvy like that and can take in sunlight when it's available, accepting that sometimes there will only be shade. Americans, not so much. Jennifer, you knew nothing, suspected nothing, and would never find out until after I had passed on. Poor Jennifer, but that's how it is with Americans. Americans demand a perfect place-setting and woe to the idiot who brings along an extra fork—you understand what I'm saying. Shade, sunshine, forks—metaphors for worldly.
On 9 October 2014, the French authorities reported an autochthonous Zika virus case in France. The client reported symptom onset on 29 July 2014. No travel history to Zika endemic countries was reported for the patient or partner. Since this notification, French authorities reported an additional two probable autochthonous Zika cases, identified through active case-finding in the same area and same timeframe (symptom onsets of the three cases from 6 to 15 August 2014). All three patients had recovered.
Epidemiological and entomological field investigations by French authorities were still ongoing to determine the possible route(s) of transmission for these cases to prevent further spread and detect possible associated cases.
It was probable that the three cases resulted from the vector-borne transmission of Zika in this neighborhood in late July/early August. This was probably the first episode of local vector-borne transmission detected in metropolitan France and in Europe.
Elise Ipswich (née Umana) was the first patient.
I met Elise Umana during that investigation into the Zika case. She was early twenties, highly educated, and needed treatment. The afternoon she came in to see me, she was voluble. Not angry, just full of questions. She wanted to know how she might have contracted the disease. Turned out that a pianist from French Guiana was the likely contact, likely transmitted by sexual intercourse. That didn't sit well, but she held her tongue.
Elise was tall, willowy, with dark, flashing eyes and European teeth—never perfect like the American smile but perfect in their naturalness.
She was married to Howard Umana. She told me she was an inveterate world traveler, a member of the French women's Olympic water polo team, and a once-a-week teacher of French to people whose native language wasn't French. The kind of woman that men find immediately attractive and valuable, the type of woman who is so seductive in her exemplary life that she attracts not only good men, but the worst of men as well. Zika is why she came to see me in my medical practice.
When I met Elise, I knew my search was over. She filled my heart and then some. She divorced Umana.
Çidde quickly joined us, and she was just a bonus because she was a genius at knowing how much I loved her and responding in kind. Doctors keep track like that. Quid pro quo—the kid's love for her old man was just what I needed when I felt my sails buckle in the headwind.
Here's how the kids stacked up. My two American kids received the daddy gene. Our son is a water skier. He's had his chance at a National Scholastics mathematics award at the ripe young age of nine and has immediately blown it off in favor of the lake. His choice, and he was entitled to make it, right? My daughter is eleven and has already skipped fifth grade because there was nothing there she hadn't already taught herself online. They are gifted in mathematics, but custom water skis and computers running Mathematica stole away their hearts. Who was I to complain? I'd served in the Army, to the horror of my mother, even dropping out of med school to go to war. Carriers always swim upstream against their better talents, and neither their mother nor I could prevent that. So, we didn't even try.
Now I'm sick. I've been to my internist, and he can't find the reason for my illness. He's recommended two specialists, a cardiologist and an infectious disease specialist, and they can't seem to give me anything definitive. I only know I'm unhealthy, and I'm fading. I believe I'm dyin
g and am powerless to stop it.
I will die before I try and explain Elise to you, Jennifer. If I tell you about her now, I will die alone, and I cannot stand that—the hole in the heart and all that. But I will say her name on the way out the door, a warning of sorts.
"Elise," I will whisper.
Elise, indeed. She is a gentle soul, a butterfly. She will not harass you or fight with you. She'll let her needs be known from my estate and gratefully accept what can be worked out. Please don't try to beat her down or let some greedy American lawyer sue her just to run up his bill. She doesn't deserve all that. She's as innocent as you, my precious Jennifer.
18
Michael
I received a very distressing phone call one morning before trial. The call was placed from Paris from Elise Ipswich.
My secretary buzzed me and told me it was long distance and that the woman on the other end was crying. She didn't quite get her name but thought it was Lisa. I picked up the phone and said hello.
"Mr. Gresham," said a crying voice, a woman's voice that sounded distant, "you don't know me, and I'm sorry I'm calling you like this, but my name is Elise Ipswich and I need desperately to talk to someone who knows Jennifer Ipswich. I got your name from Dr. Ipswich’s medical practice when I called her office. They told me you might be able to help me with my problem."
I said, “Why don't you take a deep breath and see if you can pull yourself together just a bit. You're coming across a little garbled, what with your crying and all. I'm very sensitive to what you're going through right now, Mrs. Ipswich, and I'm certainly going to listen to you and do whatever I can to help your situation. Let's just both count to five and try this again."
We counted to five.
"All right," I said, “I understand you were married to Joseph Ipswich in Paris. Is that correct?"
"Yes," she said. "Joseph and I were married for five years until his death. We had a very warm and loving marriage, and he met all of my needs and the needs of our daughter, Çidde. Our daughter is a special needs child because she is HIV positive and has a congenital blood problem on top of that.”
“Yes, I read your email.”
“Well, thank you. Her diseases are held at bay only by the medications I give her daily. Those medications cost one thousand euros per week. Joseph was paying for those while he was alive. I work as an associate agent at LVP Partners here in Paris and I take home four thousand euros per month. Like I said, I'm just an associate, and competition for these jobs is very heavy, I'm lucky to have my job, and I will certainly not be making any more money until I become a full agent.”
“You realize my client is Jennifer Ipswich, yes? You probably shouldn’t be baring your soul to me.”
“Please, I have nowhere else to turn except to my husband's assets and to try to make sense of what he owned and see if I can come to some sort of agreement with your Jennifer.”
“I understand. Please tell me what you would like to do.”
“Previously, I sent the email and asked for one half of Joseph's life insurance. He told me he had the policy and that I was a beneficiary on the policy. I called the life insurance company, but they wouldn't give me any information at all. They did tell me, though, that I was not a beneficiary on any policies with their company. That broke my heart. I had always trusted Joseph to take care of our daughter, and I'm still in shock that he never got around to putting me on that policy, or at least putting Çidde on that policy.”
"I can really sympathize with your situation, Mrs. Ipswich," I said. "To be quite honest with you, I approached the topic with Jennifer. She thought about it just for a fraction of a second and then immediately discarded the idea of parting with any portion of the life insurance proceeds.”
“Oh, that’s almost hateful, isn’t it?”
“Her position is that she has paid for half of those policy payments ever since the policy was issued, and she doesn't feel like her investment should be rewarded to someone else. I hope you can understand. I know this doesn't help your situation, but all I can do is report my client’s position."
"Do you think I'm going to need a lawyer in America?"
"Honestly? I don't know how else you're going to have your needs met except by getting a lawyer at this point.”
“I’ve been in touch—"
“I cannot advise you, but if you were my family member, I would definitely say you needed a lawyer. Please do let me know if you contact an attorney by having her or him give me a call. My hope is that this matter can be resolved with a few telephone calls and maybe a conference between the four of us. Any more than that, I'm not allowed to say at this time. I hope you understand."
"All right then. To be honest, I've already spoken with someone, and his name is Frank Wilder. I will have Mr. Wilder call you today, and maybe we can get an agreement right away so I can continue paying for my daughter's medications and pay my mortgage on our maison de ville. Thank you so very much for speaking with me and we will talk again soon, I'm sure. Goodbye for now."
"Goodbye for now and thank you for calling."
19
Michael
I hung up from that telephone call and immediately called Jennifer. They said she was busy with a patient. She called me back five minutes later.
"Michael?" she said. "Am I late or something? I thought we weren't starting until nine today. I had just enough time to see some patients before court. Is that why you're calling?"
"No, we do start at nine o'clock, and I'll be leaving for court in about half an hour and will see you there. But in the meantime, I just had a very distressing telephone call from Elise Ipswich in Paris.”
“Why is she calling my lawyer? To make more trouble for me?”
“To make a long story short, she has now hired an attorney, and his name is Frank Wilder, who I know to be a very competent domestic relations attorney here in Chicago. In fact, Frank is known to be a family law attorney who will stop at nothing to win a case for his client. I cannot think of an attorney I would less rather have come into this case than Frank Wilder.”
“You will crush him, Michael. I have great faith in you.”
“Well, while it might be my goal to arrive at a quick settlement of any disputes between you and Elise, my opinion is that such an opportunity will not present itself until Frank has run up one hell of a bill with his client.”
“Did you warn her about him?”
“No, because she is going to demand that you pay him because you refused to settle this case the first time Elise came to you. He is devious, and he will stop at nothing to win. He will be able to make a pretty good argument that you should pay his legal fees because you have, as we both know, refused to bargain with Elise. Right now, I'm awaiting his call, and I'm assuming you will want me to represent you in that case just like I'm representing you in the criminal case. Would that be correct?"
"Of course, I want you, Michael. Why would you even ask? As far as Frank Wilder, one of my physician friends had him in her divorce maybe a year ago, and she wound up owning the entire house. So, I'm a little bit familiar with how capable he is. But on the other hand, I feel like the equities are with me because I neither created the situation nor am I responsible for it.”
“Sometimes judges can overlook the equities and make a mess of things. Settlement is always best.”
“This woman entrapped my husband, I'm sure, and I believe that any family law judge is going to be sympathetic to my position. I cannot imagine being ordered to turn over one-half of anything Joe and I owned together. In fact, I would be shocked if that actually happened.”
“You need to hear me, Jennifer. It does happen, it can happen, and in this case, there’s a good chance it will happen. There’s a good chance she’ll be awarded fifty percent.”
She ignored me. “Let me be clear. I'm going to ask you to be even tougher than this Frank Wilder and tell him that under no circumstances will I negotiate and under no circumstances will I agree to turn over h
alf of anything I worked so hard for.”
“You need to re-think your no-negotiation position.”
“Michael, please understand that while my father was a surgeon and did very well, he had his children on their own as soon as they graduated from college. There was no money after that.”
“Well, college is often the end of parental—"
“No! My situation was a little bit different because I was going to medical school, but after those four years, no more checks from home. If you can imagine, I was a resident physician sharing a two-bedroom apartment with two other resident physicians and my husband. It was a situation where one of us occupied the bed in our bedroom while the other one was doing rounds at the hospital. So that's how I went through my residency, paying my own way every step of the way. I do not appreciate someone coming after me now and trying to walk off with one half of everything I put together since then. No, I will not negotiate, and that's final."
"I'm going to put in your file that I have recommended upfront that you agree to share one-half of the life insurance proceeds with this Elise Ipswich. I think that she is entitled to that, and I think you're making a big mistake in not negotiating with her and trying to find a quick out.”
“Paper my file like you’re doing CYA? I don’t like you doing stuff like that, Michael.”
“Like I said before and I'll say it again, if you insist on taking a position of no negotiation, there's a very good chance Frank Wilder is going to wind up having his legal fees paid by you. It's not a financially healthy situation, and I do not agree with the direction you're going with this, Jennifer. However, I'm only the attorney and will do what you say."
"Yes, please do what I said. I'll see you in half an hour at court, and maybe we can get this damned criminal case over within the next few days. Thank you, Michael, for calling, and goodbye."
Girl, Under Oath (Michael Gresham Series) Page 7
