A Clean Kill

by Mike Stewart

  Sheri turned to look out at the yard and slowly, almost imperceptibly, nodded her head.

  “And,” I said, “as I already explained, if this thing goes to trial at some point, I would not want to handle it. You and I would both be happier if I handed it off to someone who tries cases like this every week.”

  Sheri Baneberry smiled her pretty smile again. “Lawyers usually get a retainer or something, don’t they?”

  I nodded.

  “Is five thousand okay? That’s what B.J. suggested.”

  Now I smiled. “Five thousand’s fine. But let me talk to your father first. It may be the kind of thing that only takes a few phone calls. If it looks more complicated than that, you can give me the check. I’ll put it in a trust account and bill time and expenses against it.”

  I looked down at my plate of cold turkey and dressing smeared with congealed gravy. “Sheri, do you happen to know where Bill and B.J. keep the scotch?”

  “Follow me.”

  The Monday morning after Thanksgiving, I sat watching silver raindrops explode and collect into rivulets on the panes of my window. My office was in the Oswyn Israel Building in Mobile—an old place where plaster is plaster and not Sheetrock and the windows actually have panes. Down the short hallway, I could hear the soft patter of a computer keyboard as my secretary, Kelly, typed something.

  I was watching the late-November rain and thinking a little about reasons the INS should allow one of my clients to stay in the country, when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Is this Tom McInnes?”

  I said it was.

  “This is Jim Baneberry. You talked to my little girl, Sheri, on Thanksgiving about handling a lawsuit for us.”

  “No. Not exactly. I agreed to look into things for the family. To more or less analyze the case and report back to you and your daughter.”

  “Well, we don’t need you.”

  “That’s fine. You mind if I ask why?”

  “I got a real law firm to take it. Not some guy out on his own. And they didn’t try to hold me up for a five-thousand-dollar retainer.”

  I took a breath and reminded myself that the man had just lost his wife. I’d always heard that there are stages of grieving. Apparently, I’d caught Sheri’s father dead center in the anger stage. “That’s not what happened, Mr. Baneberry.”

  “I know what happened. I wasn’t born yesterday. Somebody’s mother dies and you come swooping around like a … I won’t say it. But you aren’t gonna pull that on my family. Like I said, I’ve got a major law firm on this now. And if you bother me or my daughter again, I’ll tell them to come after you, too.”

  I took a couple of breaths and turned back to gaze at raindrops puddling like lines of mercury along the bottom of each windowpane. In the distance, the rippled lead of Mobile Bay stretched out beneath fog and rain. As evenly as possible, I said, “Mr. Baneberry? Which ‘major firm’ did you hire?”

  And he hung up on me.

  I fished out a business card Sheri Baneberry had given me and punched in the number. She answered her own phone.

  “Sheri?”

  “Yes. Is this Tom?”

  “Yeah. I just got a call from your father.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Her voice sounded tight and hoarse. “I talked myself red in the face last night trying to get him to understand why I hired you. I don’t guess it did much good.”

  “Not much.”

  “Are you still going to help me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Dad’s going to gum things up, though.”

  “It looks that way, Sheri. After the doctors and the hospital get a load of your father and his trial lawyers, well, they’re not going to be in a very cooperative mood, to say the least. So, considering all that, what we need to do is move fast and find out as much as possible before they start gumming up the works.”

  “I’ll call Mom’s doctor and see if she’ll talk to you. I’ve known her forever, and I think she’ll be normal about it.” She sighed. “I guess your job just got complicated.” Some of the stress had sifted out of her voice. “I’ll go ahead and send you the check, you know, the retainer we talked about.”

  I told her I’d send over a runner that afternoon with a contract of representation. “By the way, Sheri, which law firm did your father hire?”

  “Just a minute.” I heard scuffing sounds, and she came back on the line. “Here it is. I don’t have the lawyer’s name, but the firm is called Russell and Wagler.”

  “Shit.”

  A second passed before Sheri said, “That bad, huh?”

  “Depends on which side you’re on.”

  Two

  Lush landscapes streamed by in shades of charcoal, stripped of color by heavy clouds and pouring rain. I was just north of Daphne, headed south from Mobile. The gray-tone groves and rolling pastures grew more manicured, the houses backed farther away from the highway, and suddenly I was in town. I turned off Highway 98 and headed east.

  A blinding flood of fat raindrops swamped the windshield. I reached down to flip the wipers on high and switch from low beams to fog lamps. I could now see lower, if not better. But I kept the halogen bulbs burning. They were highlighting gusts of rain and throwing shimmering zigzags across wet pavement.

  Inside the Jeep, the heater puffed hot air on my feet as Dean Martin sang “Silver Bells.” December was still two days away. I switched off the radio and listened to the pulsing whisper of wind billowing across the blacktop, making the Jeep sway a little as it went, and to the soft steady swoosh of water passing beneath my tires and washing over the windows.

  When I had spoken with Dr. Laurel Adderson by phone, she had been subdued yet concerned—maintaining a perfectly measured professional distance. Yes, she had been Mrs. Baneberry’s longtime physician. Yes, it was a terrible loss and most unexpected. And no, of course she wouldn’t mind meeting with me if it would help ease the family’s pain.

  She had asked me to meet her just outside Daphne, which almost made sense. It was, after all, the town where Dr. Adderson lived and practiced medicine; and it was where Kate Baneberry had lived and died. So it would have been the perfect meeting place if only Dr. Adderson hadn’t insisted we meet at the Mandrake Club. She knew that in her offices I might have been tempted to ask to see medical records. I tried suggesting that we meet at the hospital. But that was where the treatment and death records were stored. So, without arguing, Dr. Adderson had simply said, “No.”

  We would meet at her club, where coffee, hospitality, and sincerity would no doubt be the only things offered the visiting lawyer. And where the good doctor could stand up and leave—or even have me politely expelled—if the conversation grew uncomfortable.

  Dr. Laurel Adderson was handling me a little, keeping me at bay. And that was fine. Handling and being handled are activities that take up most of a lawyer’s day. Besides, if I was going to do my client any good, I desperately needed to meet with Dr. Adderson before Russell & Wagler got at her.

  And it was on my way home.

  If you want someone to do something your way, make it easy for them. I was making it easy for the doctor by driving to her hometown for the meeting, and she was making it comfortable for me by inviting me to drop in at her warm and welcoming club halfway through a rainy-afternoon commute.

  We were jockeying for position, like two kids fighting over a football in a pile of dead leaves. And we both knew it.

  As I left Daphne behind, the drenched and shimmering blacktop wound through orchards and across horse farms with long stretches of white fence and occasional farmhouses too large and too perfect for farmers. Lightning flashed to the south, and, like a child, I counted the seconds until hollow barrels of thunder rolled across the sky.

  Seven miles outside the city, a paved road interrupted a line of white fencing. Next to the road stood a monument—no more than six feet high and three feet wide—constructed of old brick and sheltered by copper roofing. Bolted
to the brick and safeguarded from the elements by a center-pitched roof was a bronze plaque that read THE MANDRAKE CLUB.

  I turned in and followed the road around a sharp curve, where the pavement split around a walled gazebo. I stopped and rolled down my window. A security guard stepped out. The club’s name was stitched on the front of his cap. Water cascaded from his visor, and a see-through gray raincoat covered his uniform.

  “Yes, suh?”

  I told him my name. “I’m here to see Dr. Laurel Adderson.”

  “Yes, suh. Just a moment, suh.” The guard stepped back inside the structural embodiment of his authority and checked my name against a clipboard. Then he leaned out of the door and, using a slow karate-chop motion, signaled for me to proceed down the road.

  After rounding another hard curve, the clubhouse came into view and I realized two things. One, the road had been purposefully designed into an S-shape to hide both the guardhouse and the clubhouse from nosy peasants on the county highway. And two, Dr. Adderson belonged to one hell of a nice club.

  Nestled into a grid of hundred-year-old pecan trees, the Mandrake Club looked at once old and new. Like the sign monument out by the highway, the main building was constructed of ancient brick and the steep roof was sheathed in seasoned copper. Atop the second-story roof and centered over the main entrance, an octagonal turret with a pointed roof supported a weathervane cut in the shape of a prancing horse.

  Except for the pecan trees, nothing about the place was really old. But it had the too-perfect weathered ambiance that only big money can afford and only old money knows enough to want.

  The road circled in front of the clubhouse—no doubt designed for dropping off Southern belles—and then curved down and to the side, where a parking lot lay hidden by thick rows of longleaf pine.

  I stepped out into the waning rainstorm, locked the Jeep’s doors just for spite, and followed a brick walkway through the pines to a covered catwalk that ran along the building to the front entrance, where I got yes-suh’d again.

  The uniformed doorman pulled open the door as I approached and, not being a rube myself, I glanced at his nameplate before saying, “Why, thank you, Harvey.”

  I glanced back to see if Harvey was impressed, and he closed the door.

  Inside, the floors were hardwood, the walls were made of brick and dark paneling, and the rugs and furniture looked middling expensive. Someone’s budget had tightened by the time the furniture was put in, but it was still, as I said, one hell of a nice place.

  At 4:20 on a Monday afternoon, no one was in evidence in the entry hall. I started out on my own to find “The Gun Room,” where Dr. Adderson had said we would meet. Whether by some flaw of character or streak of useless genius, I walked straight to the club bar and quickly found someone who I assumed was the bartender.

  A muscular, ethnic-looking fellow with hollow cheeks nodded hello.

  I asked where The Gun Room was.

  The bartender’s face remained immobile.

  I tried again, “Excuse me …”

  “It’s at the other end of the building.” His deep voice was thick with accent—something like the way a French-Canadian would sound if he had learned English in Brooklyn. And it occurred to me that I’d heard that jumbled dialect somewhere before.

  I said, “Thank you,” and he just held my eyes. He didn’t look angry. He looked like he was thinking deeply about … something.

  I glanced back as I left the room. The bartender had vanished.

  Two minutes later, I found The Gun Room and Dr. Adderson, both of which looked rather old and well built. She rose from a table covered in white linen and walked across the room with her hand outstretched.

  “You must be Mr. McInnes.”

  I said it was nice of her to meet me, and she said, “Nonsense. I just hope it wasn’t too much to ask you to drive way out here in this rain.”

  Dr. Adderson knew full well that her club was no more than ten minutes out of my way, and I knew that she knew. But she was setting a courteous tone. Nothing wrong with that.

  She turned back toward her table. “Come over here and we’ll get you some coffee or something.”

  I followed and took a seat across from hers. After I had ordered a large latté from the waitress, I took a minute and looked around the room at a pretty amazing collection of fine English and American double shotguns hung from sets of brass stirrups. It was beginning to dawn on me that there probably was not a golf course out back.

  I turned to the doctor. “What kind of club is this?”

  She smiled. “The kind for people who agree with Mark Twain, that the game of golf is nothing but a good walk ruined. We’ve got enough land here for a course, but no one wants it. The club started out as a stable for hunters, what most people would call jumping horses. Now we’ve got stables and some riding trails, and we’ve contracted to ride on some of the adjoining properties. There’s a pool, of course. The room we’re in is a tribute to the gun group, which is where I fit in. We’ve got a sporting clays range and a kennel with some of the best pointers and retrievers in the state. Just north of here we have a tract of land under lease for quail hunting and dove shoots.”

  Something was tugging hard at a childhood memory. Finally, I asked, “What’s that smell in here? It smells kind of like an old hardware store.”

  Dr. Adderson smiled again. “It’s gun oil. Hoppes Number Nine. I like it.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t mean it wasn’t pleasant. It’s just not your usual tea-room smell.”

  “I’m not sure most of our members would like hearing this called a tea room, but … I agree it’s a nice background scent. To me, it always smells like my father’s den.” She motioned at the walls. “You can’t have all these antique side-by-sides in here without spreading a little gun oil around to fight corrosion.”

  I was looking over the doctor’s head at what appeared to be a heavily engraved L. C. Smith double from around the late 1920s. “Well, I’ll give you this. You’re sure not trying to put on the poor-country-doctor act for the lawyer.”

  Laurel Adderson didn’t smile. “Sheri Baneberry tells me you’re not that kind of lawyer. I was led to understand that you couldn’t care less how much I’m worth. I was led to believe that you wanted to find the truth.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that I assumed you wanted to meet here instead of your office or the hospital so I wouldn’t be tempted to ask for medical records.”

  No bullshit from this one. She said, “That’s right.”

  “So you’ll have to excuse me for expecting some bobbing and weaving.”

  The waitress brought my coffee. As she put it down, Dr. Adderson said, “You’re excused. Now what can I do for you?”

  “Tell me about Mrs. Baneberry. I need to hear everything you know about the food poisoning and her death. But first, let me just go ahead and ask you: Does it make any sense at all for a healthy, forty-six-year-old woman who has sought hospital treatment to die of simple food poisoning?”

  “Salmonella poisoning.”

  “Okay,” I said, “does it make any sense for Kate Baneberry to have died of salmonella poisoning under those circumstances?”

  Dr. Laurel Adderson took a delicate sip of tea from a china cup and said, “No, Mr. McInnes. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  Three

  At its Southernmost tip, Alabama drops down next to the Florida Panhandle and splits into two short prongs or legs. The water between those prongs is Mobile Bay, and the City of Mobile sits at the apex, or the crotch, of that split. Some—referring to the city’s sea-faring history and its location—claim that Mobile is the place, literally the birth canal, through which much of the deep South was born. Others—who are less impressed with the city’s Mardi Gras societies and unyielding social climate—say its founders prophetically placed Mobile exactly where an asshole should be.

  I loved the old place, or I wouldn’t have located my practice there. But, at the end of the day
, even I headed south to live on a more tranquil part of the bay, a place where slipping bare feet into worn boat shoes is considered dressing for dinner.

  Highway 98—the road I had taken into Daphne—runs down the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay through Daphne and Fairhope to below Point Clear, where it cuts across the right foot of Alabama and crosses into Pensacola.

  I followed the rain-washed highway as far as Point Clear, where I turned onto the familiar crunch of my gravel driveway a few minutes past seven. Inside the beach house, I placed a call to my mother to see if she and Sam had returned from their Thanksgiving cruise. It was something one of them had dreamed up to avoid another holiday spitting contest between my father and me. I got their machine and left a message. Next I punched in Sheri Baneberry’s home number with the intention of reporting on my meeting with Dr. Adderson. I talked to another tape recorder and hung up.

  Finally, I tried Susan Fitzsimmons’s new number in Chicago.

  Susan and I had a complicated relationship. Fall of the previous year, I had manipulated Susan into helping me find my brother’s killer, who took exception to our efforts, stabbed Susan, and shot me. Obviously, we both survived. Six months later, she and I became involved—the post-college euphemism for affection and sex—during my efforts to help a young friend of Susan’s who had witnessed a murder. Our relationship had lasted almost six months.

  But Susan missed what she wryly called “the safety of Chicago.”

  As she had become increasingly involved in my life, Susan had come to believe that I was attracted—“almost driven,” in her words—to dangerous people. I, on the other hand, wondered why so many dangerous clients and situations seemed to be attracted to me.