Designated Daughters (16 page)

B
efore Dwight could turn the key in the cruiser’s ignition, his phone rang and Mayleen Richards’s name popped up on the screen.

“I’m just leaving Widdington,” she said. “Rouse’s story about his grandmother checks out. I talked to his mother, his aunt, and a cousin and none of them ever heard her mention a drowning. According to them, they weren’t close enough for that, and even if they had been interested enough to ask about her childhood, Letha never looked back. They barely remembered that she’d come from the Cotton Grove area.”

“Any word from McLamb or Greene?”

“No, sir.”

“See you tomorrow then.”

As the call ended, Dwight saw that he had a text message from ALE Agent Virgil Dawson.

“Bingo!” it read. “2 300-gal pots n a semi nr Wilson.”

He relayed the news of the traveling whiskey still to the department’s dispatcher so that their patrols wouldn’t have to keep checking every semi parked along their stretch of I-95, then headed back to Dobbs.

Even though his shift was technically over at four, it was four on the nose by the time Dwight got to the hospital and located the aide who had tended Rachel Morton that last day of her life.

He soon learned that all the towels and linens were stamped with the hospital’s name. Used ones were deposited every morning in canvas-sided carts that were trundled down to the laundry where everything was washed with scalding hot water and bleach to disinfect and whiten.

“If patients want to use their own familiar bedclothes, family members take them home and wash them. Every once in a while, though, a personal item will wind up in a laundry cart. If it’s something colored, somebody down in the laundry will pull it out and bring it back, but if it’s white, it might not get noticed till after it’s been washed and is getting folded. That’s what happened with this pillow slip.”

“We searched the carts on this floor,” Dwight said.

“Even the ones in the main wing?”

He nodded. “But not on all the floors.”

Normally a cheerful extrovert, the aide had a troubled look on her small round face. “Someone would have had to carry it away on purpose.”

“That time of day, would carts be out on the hall for anyone to use?”

She shook her head. “The empty carts come back before lunch and are stored in utility closets on each floor. The doors are marked
STAFF ONLY
, but they aren’t locked. Anybody could open a door and toss something in.”

“What about the old laundry chutes? We were told they aren’t used, but could they be?”

“Most of the ones in this wing are sealed, but there is one on the floor that still works and sometimes people who don’t know better will throw sheets and towels in it.”

She had put the lace-edged linen case in a plastic zip bag and now she held it out to Dwight. “Sally says she doesn’t want it back. Do you?”

After being washed and bleached, there was nothing they could learn from it, but Dwight knew a defense attorney could make a big deal out of its not being available if and when this case ever came to trial, so he had the aide mark it and gave her a receipt.

On the off chance that she might remember, Dwight described Furman Snaveley and asked if she had noticed him in the hall when she went back to the room that evening.

Earlier, the room had been so crowded that she didn’t recall seeing him at all, “but like I said before, nobody was here when I came back up with my pie. Miss Rachel was the only patient on that hallway, so I’d’ve noticed.”

“We’re not gilding the lily too much, are we?” Will Knott asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Marillyn Mulholland. Even though semiretired, she still kept her hand in here at the print shop her grandfather had founded back in 1901. “Where on earth did you find this old receipt pad?”

“You’d be surprised what turns up in old houses,” Will Knott told her. “Paper doesn’t take up much room and people don’t seem to like throwing away unused sheets of it.”

“Is that why you kept it?” she asked, gently rubbing the paper between her thumb and index. The cheap paper was foxed with age and had such a high wood-pulp content that it was flaking around the edges, but there was a blank margin at the top. Quite enough to work with.

“You never know when period paper might come in handy,” he said innocently. “So what do you think?”

“I’ll have to use my granddaddy’s old hand press, but I think it’s doable.”

Two hours later, they examined what she had produced after several attempts. She had torn a page from the old receipt pad Will gave her. It was ruled in pale blue and had columns for prices. She had matched the ink to print the name and address of a now-defunct hardware store in Beaufort, using a font that shrieked pre–World War I.

“Looks good to me,” Will said. “I like the way part of the store name’s missing. Like it was torn off carelessly.”

“How many should I print?” she asked, wiping ink from her fingers.

“Another four or five in case I mess up.”

When the ink had dried, he took a soft-leaded pencil with a blunt point and began to scribble, using an old Sears catalog as a price guide.

The latest victim of a break-in down in Black Creek Township had a bemused look on his face when McLamb and Greene caught up with him in a back field where his wife had sent them. He was tilling corn with a four-row cultivator in preparation for rain predicted by morning.

The tractor rolled to a stop beside the two deputies and the farmer cut the engine so they could talk. “I meant to call you guys. It’s the damnedest thing. Yesterday, I decided to try to call my phone again and a guy answered. Said he had a feeling the phone must have been stolen since his buddy let him have it for so cheap, but he’d paid for it and he wasn’t of a mind to give it back. I told him I’d give him what he paid for it and ten dollars on top of that, but he wouldn’t do it. Then I told him it had pictures of my mom’s eightieth birthday party and that seemed to get to him. He asked me my name and address and said he’d see what he could do. This morning, when my wife went out to mail a letter, she found a jump drive in the mailbox with all our pictures on it. Only there’s one picture we didn’t take. I was going to take it in tomorrow and show you.”

He followed them back to his house and led them into the den where an old PC sat on the desk. “I’ve heard they’re only stealing laptops. I guess this one’s too old and clunky to mess with. My wife transferred all the pictures last night and then uploaded all the albums to a cloud, whatever that is.”

A few clicks of his mouse and they were looking at pictures of a family celebration. At the end of a series of group pictures of people with lifted mugs and drink glasses was a picture of two young men in a barroom lifting mugs of their own.

“They must not’ve noticed they crashed the wrong party,” the man said. “I don’t recognize them, but I bet somebody will.”

The flash drive that he handed them had a cheap red plastic casing and probably sold for less than two dollars in any discount store that carried office supplies. “My wife tells me that this little gizmo has more memory than our first computer had. Can you believe it?”

Kaitlyn Lancaster adjusted the white silk ascot at her grandfather’s throat and smoothed the green velvet throw draped over his legs, then pushed his chair over to the full-length mirror in Mrs. Ashton’s bedroom. “Oh, Grampa! Look at you! You look like a million dollars.”

Mr. Lancaster inspected his image. This was the first time he had put on a suit in three years. His own suits were now too large but this one, a beautifully tailored summer-weight blend of pale gray linen and wool, had belonged to Charles Ashton’s late father and except for being a little long in the legs was a near-perfect fit.

“Humph!” said Mr. Lancaster. He turned his head back and forth and frowned as he tried to smooth the strands of white hair across his pink scalp. “I need a haircut. A real haircut in a barber shop, not you with the clippers, Katie.”

“We’ll pay for a haircut,” said Frances Jones, even though she still owned the barber set with which she used to cut her father’s hair after money became so tight in that big house.

“My dad had a Panama that might work,” Charles said. His black leather sandals creaked as he walked over to the closet and brought out an old hatbox.

“Do I really need a nurse’s uniform?” Katie asked.

“Sally thinks so,” JoAnn Bonner told her, tucking her hair behind her ears. Like her Aunt Frances, she wore a crisp white cotton shirt and a beige skirt. “One of my friends is a nurse. What size are you?”

From her own wheelchair near the bed, Mrs. Ashton lifted her small head and smiled at them benignly. “I’m so glad you all could come. Charles, dear, did you offer our guests some tea?”

Rusty Alexander set the screen of his laptop to its highest magnification. The picture in this online catalog was labeled “
…signed H N
.” Was it possible that Will Knott was that ignorant? “One man’s ignorance is another man’s bliss,” he told himself happily.

P
ork barbecue is the official entrée in eastern North Carolina and it’s served at almost every bar association dinner, so I expected to find it on my plate tonight along with the usual coleslaw, mushy string beans, and rubber hushpuppies. Instead, we were surprised when the waiters set before each of us a poached fillet of catfish on a bed of buttery spinach with a side of tiny new potatoes steamed in their red jackets and squares of tender cornbread.

I was amazed. “Are we at the right dinner, Por?”

Seated across from us at our table for six, Portland’s husband Avery gave us an exaggeratedly formal nod of acknowledgment. “You may thank the hospitality committee, ladies, of which, in case you haven’t noticed, I just happen to be the new chair.”

“The job is yours for life, as far as I’m concerned,” said my cousin and former law partner, John Claude Lee, who sat between Portland and me. “For the first time in years, I may not have to take an antacid pill after one of these meals.”

“You get my vote,” said Luther Parker on my right.

Luther is the district’s first black judge, the man who defeated me the first time I ran for the bench. We’ve been friends for years and he’s the only one I could have been gracious about losing to, not that I didn’t have a sour thought or two about it at the time. Happily, both of us had won reelection last time around.

“I’m just glad you didn’t scrap the pecan pie for crème brûlée,” said Reid Stephenson, who’s also a cousin and junior partner of my old firm.

“Now you wait just one minute, young man,” said Luther. “Crème brûlée’s my favorite dessert.”

“Then it will certainly be on the menu at the next dinner,” Avery promised.

“Bribing a judge?” I asked.

Luther drew himself up in mock indignation. “Are you suggesting that a judge can be bribed with some caramelized sugar on a teeny little dish of custard?”

“If the shoe fits,” I told him as I cut into my fish.

It was cooked to perfection: moist and flaky, the wine sauce was nice and lemony, and the spinach almost melted in my mouth.

The dinner was being held at a restaurant overlooking Crenshaw’s Lake. Reid and John Claude had driven out with Luther, and I came with Por and Avery. I had ordered a bottle of wine for the table but the two drivers took only token sips when I lifted my glass to toast the new partnership of Lee, Stephenson & Brewer. Talks had been going on for several months and the merger would become official on the first of June.

Portland would handle criminal defense with Reid, while Avery’s experience with taxes and estate planning would enhance the civil side that currently took up most of John Claude’s time. I thought it was a perfect fit, since Portland wanted to cut back on her hours until Carolyn was old enough for preschool, and I was totally pleased for all of them.

“So who gets my old office?” I asked. “Por or Avery?”

It was the one thing I really missed about leaving the practice. My office at the courthouse was about the size of a broom closet and I had to share the connecting lavatory with Luther.

Half a block from the courthouse, the firm occupies a white clapboard house built by John Claude’s great-grandfather shortly after the Civil War. Except for an electric light over the door, the outside looks exactly as it did in 1868. The interior’s been extensively remodeled and modernized through the years but the offices retain the original proportions. John Claude had the double parlor on the left of the front door as you enter, and I had used the lady’s parlor across the wide hall, with Reid’s office behind mine in what was once the dining room.

“I’ll be moving into your old room,” said John Claude. “I don’t really need that much space and the pocket doors still work, so my office can go back to being two separate rooms.”

“You really don’t have to do that,” Portland said. “There’s room for two desks in Deborah’s old office and I can take my laptop to the sunroom if Avery needs to confer privately with a client.”

It sounded like an ongoing argument, and my cousin shook his head. “Julia’s been itching to update those rooms for years.”

His wife is a frustrated interior designer and she had redone my office right after I was appointed to the bench, in preparation for a replacement that had never been hired.

I offered my sympathies to Portland and Avery. “If I know Julia, you’ll both be using the sunroom all summer.”

As pie and coffee were served, our current president stood to introduce the evening’s speaker, an earnest man from the attorney general’s office who talked to us about some of the new scams that were being perpetrated on the elderly and how attorneys should use all their powers of persuasion to convince their older clients to sign a durable power of attorney for financial management before they fell prey to con artists. “In layman’s terms, they need to appoint someone trustworthy to act for them in case they become sick or incapacitated,” he said. “You should also encourage them to execute a living will
and
a health care power of attorney.”

I know that these are standard procedures with John Claude and Reid, but several of the younger attorneys in the room were taking serious notes and the question-and-answer session afterwards lasted till nearly ten.

Portland listened politely but something about the set of her mouth made me think she was taking everything the man said with a grain of salt as big as a cow block.

“I’m not sure if Daddy’s done that or not,” I said on the drive back to Dobbs. John Claude was his personal attorney and neither had confided in me.

“Don’t you reckon he’s appointed Seth?” Portland said.

“Seth keeps the books for the farm, so he’d be the logical choice,” I agreed.

“Not you?” asked Avery.

I laughed. “Daddy’s come a long way in his eighty-odd years, but not to the point of trusting a woman to handle his affairs.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Avery said. “Even women don’t always trust women.” He told us about a client whose mother had been robbed of several thousands by a so-called financial advisor she had trusted. “And my client couldn’t do anything until her mother finally let her take a look at the bank records. Even then, it was hard to convince her that her own daughter, a woman who’s run her own business for twenty years, had more smarts about investments than the man who had taken her for a ride.”

“Maybe the mother’s in the beginnings of dementia,” I suggested.

“Oh please!” said Portland. “You know, everybody’s so ready to think that because a person’s old, they’ve lost the ability to act for themselves.”

“Hey, when did I say that?” I protested. “Can you imagine anybody telling Daddy he’s losing it? Or Aunt Zell?”

“Not you, but you’d be surprised how many do.”

From my seat behind them, I saw Avery glance over at Portland, who had subsided into silence. “Case in point?” he asked mildly.

“Mrs. McElveen.”

“Laurel McElveen?” I had a vague memory that Portland had just come from the funeral of Mrs. McElveen’s niece when we had lunch together the day Aunt Rachel died. “Sharp as she is? She can’t be much over sixty and she sits on half the boards in town. Who thinks she’s getting senile?”

“Her niece did. If she hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack, Mrs. McElveen’s convinced she would have had her committed by now.”

“Huh?” Avery and I chorused together.

“You didn’t tell me that,” he said.

“Everybody talks about caregivers, how much they put up with, how hard it is to be at someone’s beck and call. Like those Dedicated Daughters that your cousin Sally belongs to.”

“
Designated
Daughters,” I said, “not Dedicated.”

“And who designated them?” she asked indignantly.

“Well, usually they step in when no one else will,” I said and told them about the case I’d had last week, when a son who had shirked all the day-to-day responsibilities with his mother was right there for a full cut of her estate.

“Oh, I’m not saying there’s never a need.” Portland twisted around in her seat to face me. “But what about the ones like Mrs. McElveen who have to fight off the caregivers who think they know best when it comes to making sure there’s going to be an estate to cut up? During that time after her accident when she was on so many pain meds and having trouble thinking clearly, that niece came close to getting her to sign an irrevocable power of attorney and to put everything in a trust for her and three cousins. She says she was starting to feel like buzzards were circling over her head.”

“But don’t you see?” said Avery. “That’s exactly why the AG’s pushing this program. If she’d had a proper plan in place, her niece wouldn’t have had to die in order to protect her interests. Do you want me to talk to her?”

Portland didn’t answer. Instead she turned back to the front and stared silently through the windshield.

“Por?”

“Hmmm?” she murmured absently, as if deep in thought.

“Do you want me to talk to Mrs. McElveen about the safeguards she can take?”

“I’ll ask her. She’s got me drawing up a new will. At this point she’s ready to leave everything to charity and nothing to any family members.”

Avery started to say something more when suddenly the sky ahead lit up with a jagged bolt of lightning. A moment later, fat heavy raindrops spattered the windshield. By the time we got to their house, a few blocks east of the courthouse, the rain was coming down like a hydrant had opened up over us. I had left my car parked on their drive but there was room for Avery to pull past it and into the garage.

“Why don’t you spend the night?” Portland said.

“For a little rain? Don’t be silly. Look. It’s already starting to slack off.”

Avery, ever the gentleman, took my keys and pulled my car far enough under the edge of the garage that I could get in without getting wet. Before they’d let me leave, though, they made me turn on my phone in case Dwight got worried and tried to call me.

“I’ll be fine,” I said and hugged them both for caring.

Heading for home, I turned on the radio to help me stay alert. I’d drunk only a single glass of wine and that was over two hours ago, but it had been a long day and I couldn’t stop yawning. A local talk show was on and I started to switch to a music station when I realized that the topic was early-onset Alzheimer’s. The expert du jour was describing early symptoms. (Forgetting where you put your car keys isn’t one, in case you were worried, nor is forgetting to turn on your phone.) She also had suggestions for coping. An even-te
mpere
d cat or dog could help calm a patient, but contradicting him or insisting that he try to remember something could lead to agitation. Best was just to let him talk and go with the flow.

I thought of Mrs. Ashton mistaking me for her son’s kindergarten teacher and how Dwight had described Billy Thornton’s anger when he was pushed to remember Letha McAllister.

“Music can help, too,” said the expert. “Especially the music that was popular in the patient’s youth.”

Really?

Hmmm. It certainly wouldn’t hurt for Dwight to try.