Pawleys Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  She gave me a long look, read my business card, rose from her ancient chair, embossed with the crest of a fifth-rate undergraduate school, and picked up a cardboard box, holding it out toward me. “Running your own errands, are we?” She snickered.

  This old goat actually snickered at me.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the box from her. “And you’re working for your son. At least his client got a job from his daddy. Have a nice day.”

  I didn’t close the door behind me. Let the old bitch do it herself, I thought and smiled as wide as the Cooper River.

  I threw the box in my trunk and zoomed off to the courthouse on Broad Street. I parked and was racing up the steps when I saw him. Julian Prescott was coming down the steps with someone. But I couldn’t see his friend’s face. My vision tightened on Julian’s eyes like a hawk. He was beautiful. It was almost as though he could feel me there because he took a deep breath long before his face found mine.

  “Abigail? Can it be you?”

  “Yes. It’s me. How are you, Julian?”

  He hugged me, I smelled him and, oh, God, he smelled like heaven on this earth. I mean, what was this smell thing anyway? Why did it excite me that the son of a bitch who dumped me smelled good? Well, I’ll have none of this again, I thought. I was fine by myself and if I felt the need for a man it surely wouldn’t be Julian Prescott.

  “Well, I’m fine! I am absolutely delighted to see you.”

  “You are?”

  Every bit of shame and humiliation came rushing back.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Judge.”

  “Okay, yes, of course!”

  Judge? Well, that was some fast-breaking news to me. “Judge?” I said, finding my voice.

  “Yeah,” he said, “after Lila left me for another lawyer…”

  “She left you? You’re divorced?”

  Julian looked across the street trying to think of what he wanted to say. “Yes. I’m divorced. How do you like that? I mean, I could understand leaving me, but for another lawyer?”

  I smiled at that. He was the same Julian, witty, handsome…single.

  “You’re right. Who would be crazy enough to choose two lawyers in one lifetime? Go find a basketball player or some other, uh, what are you looking at?”

  “I’m just looking at you, Abigail. How’s John?”

  “John passed away three years ago. Heart attack during knee surgery.”

  “Oh! God, I hadn’t heard that. I’m so sorry.”

  I watched his mind move along and remember that he had heard about it—first Ashley died, then John, then I dropped out of sight. Surely he remembered. It was the buzz of Columbia for a year or more. But it was such an awful story to even think about and he had trouble of his own at the time. Maybe he was just trying to be polite by feigning ignorance. Glossing things over so that we didn’t relive our past right there on the steps of the courthouse. But the troubling point was that he knew and preferred not to acknowledge it.

  “Hey!” I said, looking at my wristwatch. “I have a few minutes. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee? Catch up a little?”

  “Maybe some other time. I’ve got to be somewhere right now. In fact, I’m already late.” He looked at me for a few seconds, during which I remained cool and tried not to let my disappointment show. “But it is great to see you again, Abigail. You look wonderful!” He gave me a peck on my cheek and hurried down the steps, turning back to wave, knowing I was just standing there watching him like a schoolgirl. I was furious.

  I listened to the click of my heels of the hard floor of the courthouse. I couldn’t stop thinking about Julian and how embarrassed I was that he didn’t even want to have coffee with me. I had not seen him in years! He couldn’t deny that he was still attracted to me. Why didn’t he say, Give me your phone number or Do you have a card or Are you practicing law in Charleston now? No. He just said, see you around, great seeing you, girly girl, gotta go. He didn’t ask for my phone number because he didn’t want it. He was not interested in my marital status. He was not interested in me. Period. Screw him, I thought; he was probably shacking up with some stupid idiot twenty-year-old who had a daddy thing.

  I filed an answer and counterclaim on Rebecca’s behalf to request full custody, fifty percent of the assets and alimony and the order of protection, detailing Nat’s behavior. Then I went to see the docketing clerk to see if there was a court date available near Labor Day. I wanted this disaster straightened out as soon as possible so that Rebecca could get her children home from camp, back in school and into some counseling, which I knew they desperately needed.

  Still upset by my encounter with Julian, I did the only logical thing. I went to Saks to buy some “lawyer clothes.” I looked in the mirror and decided I needed some “lawyer armor.” This was a case for Armani. One black suit, one navy suit, and three pairs of pumps later, I had a gaping wound in my wallet, but I was ready for battle.

  “How short do you want this skirt,” the gal from alterations said.

  “Shorter,” I said. Let’s see Judge Julian Prescott drool a river on Broad Street, I thought. In my war chest of depreciating assets, I still had great legs.

  “Can you ship this to Pawleys?”

  “Sure thing,” Rosalie, the clerk, said. “As soon as the alterations are done, and that should be by about next Friday, we’ll ship them right out.”

  “Any chance of getting them before then?”

  “Sure! If you need them, I’ll put a rush on it.”

  I gave her my card and said, “Could you call me when they’re ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Listen. I haven’t bought clothes in a long time, so if anything comes in that looks like it could do the job in a courtroom, please call me.”

  “Oh, are you a lawyer?”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.” I thought about it for a minute. I liked hearing myself say that I was a lawyer. I had missed it.

  “What kind of lawyer are you?”

  “An undertaker.”

  We both laughed and she said, “I’ll bet you are!”

  On the way back to Pawleys, I called Everett Presson.

  “Everett? Abigail here. Got a minute?”

  “Sure! How’s it going?”

  “Slow but sure. Listen, what else have you got in your bag of tricks?”

  “What do you mean? Like surveillance equipment? New gadgets?”

  “Yeah, that and something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I want Nat Simms’s computer. If I include it in the request for production part of discovery, he’s just gonna…”

  “Erase the hard drive?”

  “You got it.”

  “You want me to go get it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Abigail! Are you asking me to actually go in this guy’s…”

  “I don’t want to know how you do it. I just want the computer, and I don’t want him to know we’re coming to get it. Don’t get caught!”

  “Well, let me see what I can do. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, it would be great if you could get an undercover cop to sell him some pot.”

  “That’s a piece of cake. Maybe.”

  “And Everett? If there’s a way for you to track his whereabouts…”

  “Are you kidding? I have this new GPS deal. All I have to do is stick the button under his car and I can tell you how many times a week this bum goes to church. Hell, I even just bought myself a briefcase with a camera in it, and I can film him having dinner in a restaurant.”

  “The Gadget King! That might come in handy,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe his table manners.”

  Everett had no idea what I was referring to, but he was astute enough to read between the lines. “You really want this guy, don’t you?”

  “I’m gonna nail his tail to the battery wall, Everett.”

  “And, I’m gonna help. Jesus, I hate guys like him.”

  “Me too.”

  We hung up, and all the way
back to Pawleys I fantasized about what I would find in Nat’s papers. I walked in the house and dumped the box on the dining room table. The late afternoon light streamed in through the windows, highlighting a haze of millions of particles of dust. Truly, something had to be done about the state of my house before I developed asthma or black lung disease.

  I poured myself a glass of diet soda and began looking at the evidence. I don’t know why I was so optimistic, because once I started sorting through everything, I saw I was missing months of MasterCard statements, phone bills and so on. But at least I knew what kind of charge cards he had and I would simply subpoena the records from the banks. It would take more time, but I would get the complete puzzle put together eventually. The missing statements were an annoyance because that would delay my readiness to take Nat’s and Charlene’s depositions. But I still had a few friends at the banks and maybe they could speed things along for me.

  It was time somebody explained to Nat Simms that this was not a joke. When there was a request for production, you were legally responsible to comply.

  I called Harry Albright’s office and spoke to his witch mother.

  “Is Mr. Albright there?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” she snorted, in her officious manner. “He’s gone for the weekend.”

  I left my name and number and hung up, frustrated, knowing my frustration had just begun. That was the thing about practicing matrimonial law—the danger of losing was hidden in the cloak of tedium.

  I could already predict the future of this investigation. I would find the name of a cheap motel on his Visa card statement, one carelessly used early in the relationship, before the affair was fully fledged.

  I envisioned the whole revolting scene. Old Nat renting a room, desperate in a moment of passion. Charlene, a little sweaty from the humidity and reeking of some cheap cologne from the drugstore and the dry cleaning fluid that stiffened her synthetic clothes, hiking up her skirt and rubbing Nat’s pants leg right there in the reception area. The smells of curry and onions wafting all around them, coming from a hot plate in the back room. Pale thin children with wide dark eyes, peering through a flowered curtain made from a bed sheet. A large picture of the Hindu deity Ganesha hung on the wall next to a calendar from a local bank. And the dignified man from Pakistan or India or Nepal who takes the charge card, refusing eye contact with Nat and Charlene, embarrassed by the indignities of his immigration life, hating the fact that his livelihood depended on the continuing immorality of his new countrymen.

  I could see the whole sordid business like a movie in my head.

  Once I found the first puzzle piece, I would subpoena the records of the hotel and find Nat’s name or Charlene’s name and the room paid for that time on another credit card, probably from one of the banks in the photographs. I would subpoena the bank of that credit card and discover that the statements were being sent to a post office box. Next, I would subpoena the post office, only to have revealed that the box was rented in a fictitious name. On and on it would go. One carefully hidden and then found piece of information would lead to another and another. I would need every shortcut I would find to move this show down the road. Everything was on my side except time.

  That was the sordid reality of divorce in these duplicitous times. My father used to say, Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. So did Sir Walter Scott. Neither one of them knew how dead on they were. It was my job to untangle Nat’s web of deception and I would do it, one strand, one lie, one nasty little detail at a time.

  I was startled by my cell phone. It was Byron.

  “Hey, Miss Abigail. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure. What’s going on?” I took the handful of envelopes I was holding and threw them back in the box.

  “You sound aggravated. You okay?”

  Well? It was nice of him to ask, wasn’t it? “I’m fine—just doing paperwork.”

  “Oh, good. Well, I found you somebody to straighten out your house.”

  “Tell me about her. Or him.”

  “She’s got a college degree in business, but she’s got to save money to go to graduate school. She’s a neat freak and she’s a little hyper, but she’s honest and works like a tornado.”

  “She sounds perfect. Neat freak is good and hyper doesn’t bother me. Honesty is essential. Who is she?”

  “My little sister, Daphne. She’s a ball of fire! Would you like to meet her?”

  “Absolutely. Send her over. And Byron?”

  “Yes’m?”

  “Thanks.”

  I could feel him smiling through the phone. Byron knew he irked me sometimes, and he was pleased to have me even somewhat in his debt.

  Thirty minutes later, I heard a rap on the screen door. I looked up to see a skinny-as-a-stick young girl of about fifteen or sixteen standing there.

  “Hello?” I said. “Can I help you?”

  “No, ma’am! I’m Daphne and I’m the one who’s gonna help you! Can I come in?”

  “You are?” Gosh! She didn’t look old enough to babysit, much less graduate from college! She couldn’t have weighed one hundred pounds.

  I held the door open, and Daphne walked straight into the middle of the living room. She stood there with her hands on her nonexistent hips and looked around. She ran her finger over the coffee table and an end table, grunting in disgust at the tip of her finger. Then she started talking.

  “Byron say you live by yourself and that you are very smart.”

  “Yes, well, that’s nice of him…”

  “And he also say that you probably ain’t much of a housekeeper…”

  “Well, I have other priorities and…”

  “Humph.” Daphne walked up to me, wiped her hand on her skirt and extended her hand for me to shake it, and I did. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too.” I looked in her face for a glimmer of Byron’s features. Her nose was small and narrow. Her cheekbones were high and pronounced. Her smile was wide open with the kind of authenticity that made you like and trust her immediately. In contrast to Byron’s height and girth, all this tiny girl Daphne had in the way of family resemblance was attitude. “Do you want to look around?”

  “May as well,” she said, not waiting for my lead.

  I explained to her that I wanted to convert my parents’ bedroom to an office, and she agreed that it would be the nicest place to work.

  “You can watch the ocean while you figure things out,” she said. “Byron said you’re a lawyer?”

  “Yep, that’s right. With one client. But it’s a good one.”

  Although Daphne probably had no earthly idea what I meant, from the condition of my house and having one client to claim, she surmised that I wasn’t exactly wealthy.

  “You sure you can afford me? My work is the best, but it ain’t no bargain.”

  “I think so,” I said and laughed. “I’d sell my jewelry to get help at this point!” She laughed with me, and over the next few minutes the deal was cut.

  “Yeah, this is some mess you got here,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  I watched her walk away back to her little red car, and I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself. She was a little ball of fire all right and probably just what I needed to get my home and my business in order.

  THIRTEEN

  BURN THIS!

  IT was about seven o’clock Saturday night when Everett called. I was so deep in thought and focused on preparing subpoenas that the ring of my cell phone scared me half to death.

  “Everett?”

  “Got it!”

  “What? The computer?”

  “Yep!”

  “You’re the best! Okay, so now we have to get it to a technician who can copy the hard drive and tell us what’s on it!”

  “Already did that!”

  “And…?”

  “Pay dirt! The mother lode! Porn sites, teen chat rooms, you name it, we got it!”

  �
��Oh, Everett! You’re wonderful!”

  “All in the line of duty, Ms. Thurmond. And, I returned his computer. He’ll never know, except that I left one wire unhooked. Let him sweat a little, right?”

  “Suits me.”

  “I can bring it to you Monday morning, if you’d like. I’m playing golf at Diamond Back up on the north end of Myrtle Beach, so I’ll be in the neighborhood. I loaded all the data on an old computer I had in the gadget museum.”

  “Your garage?”

  “Yup. Wait until you see…”

  “You know what? I’m so glad you did all this. It’s one less thing for me to handle.”

  “Hey, I know you’re flying solo on this mission…”

  “Well, pretty soon I’m gonna have to make you a partner!”

  I thanked Everett again, we said good-bye and I figured it was probably time to call Rebecca. She answered and I didn’t like the sound of her voice.

  “What’s the matter, Rebecca? It’s me, Abigail.”

  “Oh, God, Abigail…” Her voice was cracking and she began to sob.

  “What’s the matter? What is it?”

  “I called…I called the kids at camp and they told me that Nat had…Nat’s attorney called them…he said I couldn’t talk…”

  “To your own children? What is he? Crazy?”

  “And they didn’t want to talk to me!”

  “That’s even more insane.” I listened to Rebecca cry her heart out for a few minutes, and then I said, “I’m coming to pick you up. You gotta get out of that condo. I’ll get a pizza and we can talk it all out. Besides, I have a load of stuff to show you.”

  “Okay.”

  By the time I got there, I was so mad I wanted to pound Nat Simms and Harry Albright into a bloody pulp. How dare they do such a thing? I knew how. Intimidate the witness. They would do what they wanted and see what they could get away with. I could take care of this with a phone call to Mr. Albright Monday morning and another one to the camp. But in the meantime, Rebecca was stinging from Nat’s cruelty and black and blue from his stupidity. She was so uninformed about the law that she probably thought if Harry Albright made that phone call, it was legal to do it. And worse, that she deserved it.