by Amy Metz
“Chief, I don’t know what Ms. Culpepper has told you, but—”
He didn’t allow her to interrupt. He spoke over her. “It doesn’t really matter what she’s told me. It’s the cold, hard evidence that I’m interested in.”
“And you think you have that.” She said it as a statement and in a tone that suggested she seriously suspected he was mistaken.
Johnny sat and crossed one foot over a knee. “Now, you go on and give it a go.”
“Excuse me? Give what a go?”
“Do your best to convince me what you did isn’t about as low-down, underhanded, and dishonest as a person can get.” He turned to Hank. “I’ve been looking forward to this performance.”
“Chief, I’m sure it’s not the first time that you’ve been wrong, so it won’t be too big of a blow. But the fact is, this document,” she held it up and then dropped it on her desk, “was an early draft. Ms. Culpepper hemmed and hawed so long that some of these offers were no longer on the table. Finally, she just wanted to be done with the whole process, and she told me to settle. Which is what I did. I’m sure I could have gotten more had we gone to court, but she didn’t want to do that. And now she’s blaming me for her financial problems? Ha.” She looked as if she’d just eaten something distasteful.
“I didn’t say anything about financial problems.”
“You indicated the second and final document was unfair to Ms. Culpepper. I assumed that meant less money for her. Isn’t that what you said? Or did I misunderstand you?”
“Oh no. You heard me loud and clear. I’m not commenting on the state of Ms. Culpepper’s finances though. I’m commenting on your lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut morals that caused you to switch documents on your client.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. I’m not her keeper, Chief Butterfield. If she hasn’t learned by now that you never sign anything without reading it first, then maybe this was a valuable lesson for her.”
“Okay, ma’am. Let’s skip the appetizer and get to the main course.”
“I wish you would.”
“You sent this document,” he indicated the first folder, “and that is what she agreed to. You told her to come on down to your office and sign it. Now, however naive she may have been, she trusted you nonetheless. So when you presented her with a document to sign, never in her wildest dreams would she have thought that it wasn’t the same one which you’d just sent to her and to which she had agreed.”
“Is that or isn’t that Ms. Culpepper’s signature?” She pointed to the paper.
“You know it is.” Johnny returned her glare.
“Then we have nothing to discuss.” She handed him back the documents.
“All right then. I thought—hoped—you would see the injustice of the situation and set it right. I was offering you a chance to get out from under this bus before it rolls. But that’s all right. We’ll just build our case and take it to the state bar. ‘Cause I’ve got a hunch you’ve gotten greedy.” He stood and Hank followed him to the door. He turned back and said, “You might want to try to get in as many billable hours as you can. You’re gonna need the money to hire your own attorney pretty soon.”
“I didn’t know you hired the mute, Chief.” She indicated Officer Beanblossom with her hand. “Or does he actually talk?”
“Oh, he talks when I need him to.”
“So, what . . . you just brought him as a bodyguard? Afraid I’d do you bodily harm?”
“No, more like a corroborating witness. It’s always good to have one of those when dealing with a scheming, no-good, lying, dirty cur dog.”
“You’d better save your money, Chief. I may sue you for defamation of character.”
“Oh, you know better than that. A person only needs to worry about that if what they said isn’t true.”
As soon as the officers left, Dee Dee picked up her phone and began texting. She hit send and waited, not taking her eyes off the phone. Within a minute, a text bubble popped up, indicating the recipient was typing.
A smile returned to the lawyer’s face. She picked up the phone and punched in seven numbers.
“Judge Fletcher, it’s Dee Dee Petty. Do you have time to talk?”
She listened and then sat up straight. “Who’s been calling? Seriously? Can they prove it? Can you put a stop to it?” She listened for several seconds. “You’ve got to put a stop to it. Do whatever you usually do. Don’t you dare screw this up.”
She rolled her eyes as she listened again. Her hand on the desk fisted and her jaw set. She took several deep breaths and did her best to make her voice sound amiable. “Are you going to the Founder’s Day celebration? Maybe we can talk then.”
Dee Dee ended the call and punched in more numbers. “Louis? I think we should get together. We may have a problem.”
Louis went on one of his lecturing rants, and she listened. Finally, she said, “I know. But we can fix this. I have it handled. But I’m not sure about the judge. Okay. We can talk then.”
Dee Dee hung up and sat back. Looking out her window into the black night, she spoke to herself. “You’ll change your mind, Judge or I’ll change it for you.”
Mama always said . . . Knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow.
Instead of Jack and Tess going to all of the women’s houses, Caledonia invited the ladies on the list to her house under the guise of a divorce party. The women were a little taken aback when they arrived to see Jack there, but he soon charmed them and all doubts were forgotten.
Once everyone had arrived, Caledonia made sure they all had a beverage and then called the group to attention. “Y’all.” She held up her hands. “Y’all, can I have your attention, please?” Cal ran her hand down her thigh, smoothing her hot pink skirt.
The room grew quiet and Caledonia continued. “Take a seat. I have a little confession to make. In addition to this being a divorce party—”
“Here, here!” someone called out, followed by others repeating the phrase with glasses raised in the air.
“Yes, thank you.” She nodded. “But in addition to that, we’ve also invited you here because we’re on a fact-finding mission to uncover wrongdoing in Dee Dee Petty’s law office.”
First the room was completely silent, then everyone started talking at once, and it took several minutes to get the room under control again. Caledonia began speaking about what Dee Dee had done to her. Her story was accompanied with a lot of head nodding and sympathetic murmurings from the others. When she was done with her story, she said, “And we just figure if there’s one rat you can see, there’s gonna be fifty you can’t. So, I’m going to turn the meeting over to Jackson Wright.”
Jack quickly got down to business. “What Caledonia said is true: If Dee Dee has done this before, she’ll do it again, and we’re betting she already has. We aim to stop her, but there is strength in numbers. So what we’re asking is, did this happen to any of you, and will you help us bring her to justice?”
The room was dead silent. Finally, Lorena Hodges, a slim fifty-seven-year-old, spoke up. “She didn’t do me like she did Caledonia, but she sure as heck screwed me over.”
“What do you mean?” Jack motioned for her to continue.
“She convinced me I couldn’t get more and I should settle. I figured I didn’t have a choice.”
“Well, you sure as heck did,” Jack said.
Snooky Tuttle, a short, sixty-five-year-old brilliant redhead, spoke up next. “That woman racked up so many billable hours, I was going broke paying her. I figured I’d better settle before she took it all. I was paying more out than I’d ever take in.”
“Which is what she wanted, I’m sure.” Caledonia refilled everyone’s tea glasses. “It seems like it would be more fair to pay lawyers in correlation to what kind of settlement they get for you. The more you get, the more they get. Just paying them for hours and hours and hours . . . For what? They’re not invested in the outcome. What do the
y care what you get? It sucks.”
Pauline Whitaker, forty-two, and tall and thin as a beanpole, sat forward on the couch. “She did the same thing to me as she did to Cal. I told Dee Dee I wouldn’t cave, so she made sure that’s what happened in the end. I just don’t understand why she picked on me. What did I do to her?”
“Oh, pea pod,” Caledonia gushed. “You know, Tweedle Dee’s a puzzle. But it seems like one thing we all have in common is we stay home with our kids. So, on one hand I feel like she hates stay-at-home-moms, but when we try to stand up for ourselves, she doesn’t like that either.”
Shirley May Shaw, a meek, African-American woman of fifty was next. “You’re spot on, Cal. After she got done convincing me I was a useless waste of a human being for being a stay-at-home mom, I figured I was fortunate to have anything. I mean, I didn’t think it was right, but she beat me down. I just didn’t feel like fighting.”
“Shirley May, you have done a stellar job of raising those boys. They are exceptional human beings and don’t you let anybody tell you that your life choice was a waste. Lawyers are a dime a dozen. Exceptional parents are the rare commodity these days.”
“Hold up, y’all.” Jack gestured to a lady with a long nose and small eyes. “I don’t know your name.”
“Sara. Sara Lee.”
A wry grin crossed Jack’s face. “No, seriously.”
Her face clouded. “I am being serious.”
“Your name is Sara Lee? You expect me to believe your name is Sara Lee?”
She grinned. “I do, ‘cause it is.”
“It is, Jack.” Caledonia piped up. “I’ve known nobody-doesn’t-like-Sara-Lee for eons. But she gets that a lot. People think she’s pulling their leg.”
Sara, a tall, thin, sixty-year-old with a nasally voice said, “Anyhow, I love how these men don’t have a problem with their wives staying at home and making their lives cushy as all get-out until we ask for our due. It doesn’t matter to them that we never get a day off or that we work every holiday. I can’t tell you how many Mother’s Days I had to host for his mother. Nobody gave a pea turkey squat about me being a mother. Then, when we dare ask for our fair share in a divorce settlement, all of a sudden our contribution to the marriage was nothing. It’s sickening.”
“You’re right,” Shirley May cut in. “We act as teacher, chef, chauffeur, nurse, psychiatrist, entertainer, volunteer—think of all the money saved by playing all those roles and more. And she looks down on us because we stay at home?”
“Why does society devalue a woman’s choice to take care of her family over earning a paycheck?” Caledonia did a slow burn. “It seems like a person’s only value is based on whether they earn money. How did we get to a point of money over meaning? No, we don’t earn a paycheck. The return on our work is the fine human beings we raise. When did caring for a family make you less valuable in a marriage than the wage earner?”
The room erupted with all the women talking at once. Finally, Tess brought the meeting back to order.
“Can we return to the point here, people?” Tess clapped her hands. “Who else has a horror story to tell?”
Eva Crump, the youngest of the group at thirty-nine, spoke up. “I got screwed and realized it the second the divorce was final. I went to the judge to complain, and he made me feel about this big.” She gestured with her thumb an inch from her forefinger. “He said he wouldn’t allow me to waste any more of the court’s time and threw out my complaint.”
“Just as I suspected,” Jack murmured.
Snooky said, “Dee Dee told me not to go around talking about the settlement. She said there was a privacy clause in the contract and I could get sued if I talked.”
“She told me that, too. The witch,” Lorena shouted. “That’s how she was able to keep all this under wraps.”
“Oh my gosh.” Tess had a startled look on her face.
“What?” everyone said in unison.
“I just realized. We have two lawyers in town, right?” Heads nodded. “I’ll bet she and Louis were in on it together. They had to be.”
Jack rubbed his chin. “Maybe Louis convinced his clients to pay a little more to ensure they got a little more.”
Caledonia added, “And the payment went three ways: Dee Dee, Louis, and the judge.”
“Pretty nice setup if you ask me,” Jack said.
“Pretty low-down, underhanded, and rotten if you ask me,” Tess said.
“So what are we gonna do?” Snooky, Eva, and Sara lamented.
“I’m going to write up every one of these stories.” Jack swept his forefinger across the room. “Then we’re going to make an appointment with someone at the state bar association.”
Caledonia cut in. “I’ll turn over everything we’ve found. And then we’ll go to the Goose Pimple Gazette. I won’t use your real names. We’ll just say we have anonymous sources.”
“We’ll still have to be careful about accusing anyone,” Jack said. “We don’t want to get sued for libel or slander.”
“Oh, we’ll be careful,” Caledonia agreed. “The facts are salacious enough. They’ll tell the story. The reader can surmise the rest of it for themselves.”
A smile spread over Caledonia’s face. “So, if the state bar doesn’t put them out of business, the newspaper story will. I like it.”
Jack nodded. “When we’re done, nobody’s going to want to have anything to do with those two greedy goobers.”
Mama always said . . . Always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident.
A week and a day after the meeting at her house, Caledonia was on her way with Pickle and Peanut to the Founder’s Day celebration in the middle of town. The second Sunday of December had been set aside for the town’s Founder’s Day celebration for as long as she could remember.
White bulbs clung to every branch of every tree in the town green. A fat Christmas tree, covered in strings of large red, green, blue, white, and yellow bulbs, stood in the center of the gazebo, which was lit with strings of tiny white lights. It looked like a winter wonderland; all that was missing was the snow.
Christmas carols blared from the loudspeakers, and a group dressed as old-time carolers, complete with long skirts, bonnets and muffs, top hats and tails, stood by the gazebo singing along.
The boys wanted to go to the Hula-Hoop contest, and Caledonia wanted to go to the cakewalk, so they were parting ways for a short while. She said goodbye to them and stepped off the curb. Halfway across the street, Louis T. Howe called her name. As she turned to see what he wanted, a police cruiser screeched around the corner and barreled toward her. She was like a deer in headlights—frozen on the spot in the center of Main Street.
Suddenly, she was pushed from behind, emitting a loud “Oomph,” as she was propelled off the street. The cruiser sped past, missing them by inches.
Caledonia landed halfway on the grass and halfway on the sidewalk. A body was lying on top of her. It was several seconds before it moved and she was able to see that it was Louis. She sat up, stunned. The celebration had grown eerily quiet except for the music playing over the loudspeaker. All eyes were on Caledonia and Louis as they began to get their wits about them. It felt strange to be so scared while in the midst of such beauty and merriment.
Pickle and Peanut reached her first. “Mama, are you okay? Gosh a’mighty, you were almost killed.”
Caledonia shook off the fear and felt up and down her son’s arms and legs, irrationally looking for injuries. “Are my babies all right? Does anything hurt?”
“We’re okay, Mama.” Peanut held on to her and rested his cheek on the back of her neck.
“You’re the one who was nearly run over like a dog. Are you hurt?” Pickle hugged the other side of his mother. She held onto both of them and thanked God for keeping them safe.
Johnny came running up, asking a million questions in rapid-fire succession. “Caledonia, what in the world? Are you two all right? Did anyone see who was behind the wheel? I’ll tell yo
u what. I’ll have their badge. Did you—”
“Chief, I know jaywalking is against the law, but a simple citation might be the better way to go rather than running a body over.” Caledonia smoothed her long, blonde hair out of her face with shaking hands, offering an uneasy smile.
There was a crowd gathered around them now, and Tess and Louetta pushed through. Tess went to Caledonia, and Louetta stood next to Louis. “Louis P. Howe, you all right? Man alive, I’ve never seen anything like that in all my born days. You’re a hero. You know that?”
Tess rubbed Caledonia’s back, encouraging her to sit still until paramedics came.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Caledonia kept repeating.
Johnny surmised, “Your coat probably absorbed most of the impact of the fall, Caledonia.” He added wryly, “And I guess you absorbed most of the fall for Louis.”
It was a December day just past dusk with the temperature in the high thirties. Everyone had on coats and gloves. Pickle had on a heavy gray hoodie with the words “I’M KIND OF A BIG DILL,” accompanied by a picture of a dill pickle. Caledonia had on a puffy down-filled jacket. Louis tore his pants, but just as Johnny surmised, Caledonia had broken the impact on his upper body.
Johnny squatted next to Caledonia. “But I still want to have you both checked out. Sit tight. Paramedics are on the way.” He began motioning to the crowd to disperse. “Come on, folks. Nothing to see here. Everything’s fine. Go back to the frivolity and whatnot. G’won.”
Officers Duke, Witherspoon, and Beanblossom rushed up, and Velveeta pulled the chief aside.
“Chief, that was my car,” Velveeta said into his ear.
“Whaaaat?” Johnny pulled back. “You tried to run down Caledonia?”
“No, sir. I’m trying to tell you that my car was stolen. I had it over yonder by the bandstand. I stupidly left the keys in the ignition because I was gonna be moving it shortly, and well . . . I thought this was a safe community—”