Suggestion of Death

by Susan P. Baker

  There were two calls and three hang-ups. The first call was from the editor of The Daily Sun. Knowing what he wanted—an answer—Jim didn’t return the call. He could afford to wait a few days, knowing he’d take the job as a last resort, but he wanted to give Edgar time to get back with him. It was a calculated risk, but one worth taking.

  The second call was from his agent. Jim crossed his fingers as he punched in the long ago memorized number. He didn’t believe in astrology and things like that, but it seemed to him that his planets must be lining up in the same house or whatever they did that was good. He knew his agent was going to tell him his first novel had sold.

  His life seemed to be coming back together. His wife was going to remarry him, and he was going to be offered the job he wanted, and his novel was going to be published. What else could he hope for? A two-book contract? A three?

  But his agent wasn’t in, and no one seemed to know anything about his book. Jim hung up, disappointed. Checking his watch, he realized he was running late for his appointment with Mrs. Peterson, so he quickly changed his clothes and drove across town to the courthouse.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Late morning in the middle of summer in the Texas Hill Country could be brutal—breezeless, cloudless, intense sun beaming down. A jailhouse crew of three trusties policed the courthouse grounds, picking up trash, blowing leaves off sidewalks, trimming hedges. Sweat glistened on their bodies, soaking their underarms and the waistbands of bright orange jumpsuits. Their distinct body odor—like something from the inside of a much-used dumpster—wafted across the courtyard. Jim casually wondered what the three of them had done. Obviously, they were not serious felons; they were without handcuffs or leg irons. They could be non-payers of child support. Like him. And like them, he’d smell like that if the judge put him in jail.

  He nodded at one of the men who stepped aside and stopped sweeping the handicap ramp so Jim could walk up it. That could have been him someday if Pat hadn’t agreed to marry him again. Of course he was assuming she’d appear on Friday and tell it to the judge.

  The cool interior of the courthouse was a relief, though the granite lobby floor smelled faintly of disinfectant cleaning solution. He got in line for the metal detector, removing his belt and pulling out his wallet. When it was his turn, he emptied his pockets into the plastic bowl and walked through. He could still remember when their county courthouse had no security system. Now, after the country had witnessed episode after episode of violence in courts, the county fathers had sprung for a system on the first floor only. Jim wasn’t one of the grumblers who didn’t like it. He was glad to be safe from any gun nuts when he went to court.

  The third floor corridor was almost empty. He pushed the clerk’s door open and came face-to-face with an elderly woman with a small girl in tow. Backing up, Jim let them go past. The woman seemed familiar, but he didn’t know from where. Probably the courtroom. She looked over her shoulder as she and the little girl rounded the corner toward the elevator.

  Jim bellied up to the counter and spotted the young woman who had waited on him the last time. “Mrs. Peterson in?”

  “She stepped across the hall,” the girl said, tucking her strawberry hair behind her ear. “Would you like to have a seat?”

  Did Peterson forget him? He stroked his chin. “I have an appointment with her.”

  “You’re Mr. Dorman.”

  “Correct.”

  “She said for you to wait. She had to see our boss about something, but she’ll be with you as soon as she can.”

  “Okay.” There was a single plastic chair with a crack above one leg that didn’t look like it would hold him. Feeling rather awkward, he leaned against the counter.

  The girl stared at him in-between her computer input. She typed something in, looked up at him and smiled, and typed something in again. She answered the phone and stared at him while she talked. No matter what she did, she would stop and glance at him from time to time, always smiling. Flirting with the older man. He looked for a nameplate, but there wasn’t one where he could see it.

  After a while, he cleared his throat. “Are you the only one working today?”

  She shook her head. “One lady is in court, and one is copying stuff across the hall. Why?”

  Jim pointed to a black metal desk opposite hers. “Just curious about the guy who was sitting at that desk the last time I was here. He off today?”

  “Noel? He doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Noel said he’d call him. Jim wanted an explanation for the list. “When’d he quit?”

  The girl came to the counter. She was in her late teens with skin that looked as soft as Hill Country peaches and smelled as sweet. In a low voice, she said, “You know, he just didn’t show up for work yesterday. It was the weirdest thing. He went home on Friday and never came back. Didn’t turn in his notice or anything. No one answers his phone, ‘cause I called him. Don’t you think it’s weird for someone to give no notice?” She glanced through the glass behind Jim and straightened her blouse.

  The outline of her nipples showed through the gauzy fabric. He might have been interested if she were ten years older, and he didn’t have Patty who had always been enough woman for him. She stood taller when she saw him looking, and said, “Not the first time I’ve heard of someone doing that, but still—

  “I mean you need to give notice so you can get a good reference, right? I thought it was weird, but Mrs. Peterson says it’s happened a number of times around here and not to worry about it.” The girl shrugged and licked her lips, rubbing them together.

  Now that the girl had started talking, she didn’t want to stop. “I never heard that before, but I’ve only worked here since I graduated high school last year. I’m sure if Mrs. Peterson says it happened, it happened. She’s been around a long, long time.” She leaned toward Jim over the counter, her voice growing ever softer “Don’t you think it’s strange that he’s never called in or anything, Mr. Dorman? And I owe him ten dollars, too.”

  Someone behind Jim coughed, and the girl winced like she’d been struck. Turning, he found Mrs. Peterson. Her gaze at the girl was icy at best.

  Jim ears heated up.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dorman. If you would like to follow me back to my office?” She walked around him and through the swinging door. Jim followed after. The girl he’d been talking with retreated back to her desk. She wouldn’t lift her eyes from her computer keyboard as he walked past. He felt sorry for her, but he hadn’t made her stand up at the counter and talk to him. Clearly she wanted to tell someone what she thought. He’d have liked to get her number so he could find out what else she knew but didn’t see how he could do it now with Mrs. Peterson present.

  At Mrs. Peterson’s invitation, he sat down in a more stable-looking plastic chair. Perhaps the one at the front was positioned to discourage people from hanging around the office. He glanced back at the girl. She seemed to be intent on her work.

  He didn’t know whether she would be able to hear their conversation since they were in the back of a large office behind a glass enclosure, but he didn’t intend to close the door unless Mrs. Peterson asked. He hoped if the girl was disgruntled enough, he might be able to turn her into an ally. He sure would like to find out more about Noel.

  Mrs. Peterson hung her jacket on a coat hook on a large wooden coat rack in the shape of the state of Texas. It had bluebonnets painted on a background of red, white, and blue. It was the kind of thing sold at fairs and flea markets. She sat in a worn secretarial chair and stacked computer printouts one on top of another until she’d cleared the area between them.

  Her smile seemed forced, front teeth clamped together, lips pulled away from them, and eyes with no shine. Gone, though, was the tough taskmaster attitude he’d observed moments earlier and in the courtroom. Though she had deep crow’s feet and well-pronounced smile wrinkles, she was not unattractive for a woman in her mid-to-late fifties.
Her blue eyes were the shade of the sky immediately preceding a thunderstorm. Large, gold-colored earrings matched the buttons on her dress and jacket.

  “I understand you’re doing a magazine article on errant fathers.” She picked up a ballpoint pen and began twisting it in her fingers.

  “Yes, ma’am.” His eyes remained on her constantly moving hands. “Actually, it’s about the reasons why they get behind—from their viewpoint. What they are doing about it. What they think they can do about it. How they feel about it.”

  “Well, I’ve heard every excuse in the book, I guess you could say. I’m not unsympathetic to them; it’s just not my job to do anything for them.”

  “What do you think are the most common reasons an obligor, I think you would call him, doesn’t pay his or her support?” He pulled out his wire bound notepad, wrote her name at the top of a page, and the words ‘Common Reasons’.

  “I see you’re catching onto the lingo.” Her lips continued to spread wide, showing a lot of teeth. “Let me see. The most common reason is they got laid off or otherwise lost their jobs. It’s probably not fair, but in order for them to get a reduction in child support if they lose their jobs, they have to file a motion to modify which means they have to hire a lawyer—unless they’re smart enough to do it themselves, which most of them aren’t.” She began doodling on a yellow Post-it note pad. “Present company accepted. You’re smart enough from what I’ve heard.”

  What she’d heard from whom? Or did she mean in the courtroom? He put those thoughts aside. He wasn’t there about his own case. “Thank you. But I intend to catch up on all my back child support as soon as I get a job.” He wasn’t inclined to tell her about his and Pat’s plans for getting back together.

  “That’s what they all say, but rarely do any of them do it. That’s what gets them into trouble. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s a shame, but we don’t have the funding to do anything for fathers.” She fingered the paperwork on her desk. “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but mostly it is fathers who get into this situation.”

  “So there’s money from somewhere to help mothers?”

  “Of course, it goes to the attorney general’s office to file contempt actions. I wish we had some funding to help the fathers. People who need a reduction have to hire their own lawyers. People who need enforcement have the state attorney general. Doesn’t seem fair. But what can you do?” She folded her hands on her desk pad. “The obligor must hire a lawyer. If they had the money to hire a lawyer, they would be better off paying it on their support obligation. If they do hire a lawyer, everyone, including the judge, looks down on them for not paying their child support instead. So—”

  “It’s a Catch-22. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” Jim glanced down at his notepad and flipped the page, writing as fast as he could.

  She snapped the metal clip on her pen with her thumbnail twice in a row and set the pen down. “Just about. If they ask me, I tell them to file the motion no matter what if they know they’re not going back to work soon or if they know they won’t be making the same kind of money. Otherwise they’ll never get their account back up to par.” She hesitated and glanced at Jim’s face. “But I’ve been instructed to only tell them if they ask. And I can’t help them file it.”

  “So if you tell them that, why don’t they?” He would skip discussing what she’d been told to do, at least for the moment. It really wasn’t the emphasis of his story. Anyway, he wouldn’t soon forget that the system favored mothers—or rather the people who had custody of the children—over all others. He knew that very well.

  “Other than not being able to afford to hire a lawyer? They don’t know how to do the paperwork themselves. The motion has to be done just so, or it’ll be thrown out. And nobody thinks they’ll really get that far behind, or they’ll really go to jail.” She straightened up another stack of papers.

  “Part of the problem in the past was we had a judge who would hardly ever put a man in jail for nonsupport. That’s not true now that Judge Lopez handles all child support cases. I thought the word had gotten out about Judge Lopez, but sometimes I’m amazed at the men who go to court and take their chances.” She chuckled and shook her head. “They get the most surprised looks on their faces when she orders them taken into custody.”

  “Don’t mean to sound lame, but ha ha ha.” He could think of a lot funnier things.

  “I guess you’d have to be there. It’s usually the ones who are real smartasses who go to jail.”

  “So putting them in jail is not her regular practice?”

  She pointed her finger at him. “Don’t get the wrong idea—she regularly puts them in, but it’s slowed down considerably since she first was appointed. Back then I lost count.”

  “What exactly is Judge Lopez’s status? I’ve figured out she’s not the elected judge, that she’s appointed, but how does that work? Does she have any special interest in child support cases?”

  “Not that I know of. Just some kind of connection, I guess, to get the appointment.” Her mouth turned down; her lip twitched. “There’s this administrative judge appointed by the governor. The administrative judge appoints retired judges or lawyers to these courts.”

  “I always thought in Texas we elected our judges.”

  “Me, too, but not so. She goes to different counties on different days and hears nothing but child support.” She sat back in her chair.

  “Okay, back to the guys who aren’t paying. So we’ve got men who think they’ll be able to catch up and don’t hire a lawyer, and then can’t catch up and end up in deep trouble. That probably goes for those who get sick as well.”

  “Right. That’s probably what we have the most of. Then we have those who don’t pay because they hate that—excuse my French—bitch-and-ain’t-going-to-give-her-a-damn-thing-no-matter-what-no-judge-tells-me.”

  Jim snorted at her accurate imitation. “You get a lot of those?”

  “A fair share. And a good deal of them will go to jail, too. They don’t care. Some of them eventually start paying, but some of them are a lifetime struggle for all of us. If they’d just put their children first and their anger at their ex-wives behind them, we’d all be better off.” She nodded curtly for emphasis.

  “What percentage would you say that is?”

  “Um—twenty, I guess. I’m not really sure. Maybe less, but they’re so much trouble that it seems like more.”

  “Is there any solution to that?”

  “Besides lining them up against a wall and shooting them?”

  A shiver ran across his shoulders like a little bug. He did a double-take. She must be joking, but her face was deadpan.

  “Excuse me if I’m rather cynical, Mr. Dorman. I’ve been in this business for over twenty years. Those kinds of people are the most annoying.”

  He started to say something snide about burnout but thought better of it. “So aside from actually shooting them, what can be done?”

  “Judge Lopez says we should send them to mediation. She says they’ve never gotten a chance to, and I quote, ‘vent their spleens’ and once they got all of those awful feelings out in the open and cleared the air with their ex-wives, things would be a lot better between them and for the children.”

  “What do you say?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. But we don’t have money for a mediation program so, as the lawyers would say, it’s a moot point.”

  He kind-of liked her. She’d dropped her façade and came across now as sincere. “Okay, so are there any other reasons?”

  “Sure.” She smiled again. “There are those who need a new set of tires for their truck and intend to catch up the next time. The trouble is, the next time it’s something else, so she is lucky if he ever pays what he’s supposed to.

  “It starts out like this: First, he’s just a bit short so instead of paying say two hundred, he pays one-seventy-five. The next time he maybe pays the full two hundred. The next time he may be short and only pay one hundred
. Then the next time two-twenty-five. Then something else happens. He goes on vacation or something, and he misses a whole payment. You see how it is, pretty soon he’s hundreds, if not thousands, behind.”

  He was starting to feel as disgusted as she sounded. “They go on vacation instead of paying their child support?”

  “Every day. And don’t forget the interest. Shocking how much it adds up to, and they don’t think they should have to pay that.”

  He couldn’t forget the interest. He was still reeling from the revelation in his own case. “So there’re a lot of reasons they get behind. You’ve been a great help, Mrs. Peterson.”

  “Oh, I do want to say that we do have a lot less of this behavior now that the attorney general is involved. Texas has had wage withholding for a long time so most of what I’ve been telling you has to do with those periods of time before the orders go into effect.”

  “Oh, okay, so it’s not as bad as before garnishment orders. Well, thanks a lot.”

  “Is that it?”

  Surprised, he ducked his head. “There’re others?”

  She ticked off more reasons on her fingers. “Some change jobs frequently so the orders don’t get to the new job for a long time, or they remarry one or more times and have more children with no consideration for the ones they already have.

  “Oh, and job-related injuries or even the non-job-related injuries. If it’s job-related or if there is some insurance to cover the injured party, now that Judge Lopez is here, the obligee usually gets all her money eventually. It comes from the lawsuit.”

  “They didn’t before?”

  “Well, if you leave it up to the obligor, he’ll only give her what he wants out of the proceeds. One of the judges who used to handle these cases—I never understood why—would never make them pay everything they owed from their recovery. Let’s say the man is ten thousand behind and his personal injury case is finally settled for twenty thousand. The previous judge would probably have told him to pay five of that twenty on the back child support.”