Life Support

by Robert Whitlow

  The first evening, Alexia ate a leisurely dinner at a restaurant recommended by the owner of the inn. Toward the end of the meal, a handsome man about her own age approached her and offered to share a bottle of wine with her. He had kind, friendly eyes, and she accepted. He was a businessman from Marseille who had lived for almost a year in Seattle. Through tentative conversation that kept them laughing at misunderstandings, they talked about life in America and France.

  “May we take you places you’ve never been before?” he asked as he filled her wineglass with the last drops from the bottle.

  “What places?” Alexia asked.

  “Where Cézanne looked when he painted his famous paintings. No tourists see the places I know. We can have a meal on a sheet. What do you call it?”

  “A picnic.”

  “Yes. We will bring the wine and cheese and bread.”

  The invitation made Alexia feel feminine and attractive but not stupid. “No, thanks,” she said.

  The man’s passionate appeal for her to reconsider his invitation was denied, but he left with a good-natured twinkle still sparkling in his eyes. Walking back to the inn, Alexia wondered if she had made a mistake.

  The next morning she ate an ephemeral pastry for breakfast and rode a bicycle into the countryside. Beyond the bounds of the city lay a picturesque rural area whose soul was revealed in the works of the impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. She had no guide but didn’t need one to enjoy the views of haystacks and hedgerows.

  Each day, Alexia went shopping. In Aix-en-Provence, she bought a straw hat in the town market. The second day, she spent more than an hour in a tiny, unorganized dress shop that made up in style what it lacked in selection. She found a sleek dress with a French flair that she wore when she went out for dinner. No one intruded on her quiet meal, and she remained alone with her thoughts.

  From Aix-en-Provence, she went to the Camargue, a marshy delta area west of Marseille and home to les chevaux, the horses who roamed in semiliberty along the coast and splashed through the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It was Alexia’s first chance to see the French cowboys who guarded the herds. The men were like colorful gypsies on horseback, quite different from drab, unshaven cowboys of the American West. She picked one out for Gwen and took his photograph. The man came over to her, and they had a halting conversation in French. Alexia didn’t have the vocabulary to conduct a cross-examination in French and couldn’t determine if he picked up his dirty socks and scraped the mud from his boots before entering the house.

  She spent the night in Les Baux-de-Provence, a small village surrounding the ruins of a medieval castle, and stayed at L’Oustau de Baumanière, a place frequented by both Winston Churchill and Elizabeth Taylor. It was very expensive, but Alexia had planned to splurge. She ate leg of lamb cooked in a salt crust and boiled squab with couscous topped with tomato vinaigrette. The wine cellar boasted ninety thousand bottles. Many were local; others were imported. Alexia learned that “imported” meant the producing vineyard was more than fifteen miles away.

  One sunny morning she was sitting at a street café in Beaucaire Tarascon, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to decipher a French newspaper. The news couldn’t hold her interest so she folded up the paper and simply watched the people passing by. In a few minutes, a small boy and girl, each no more than six years old, came down the street holding hands. The love and trust between the two children was so pure and innocent that Alexia couldn’t take her eyes off them until they rounded a corner. It was a living memory richer than any photograph could capture.

  The next day she drove to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the main town in the Provence region. It was the end of the bullfighting season there. Although no bulls are killed in French arenas, the sport was too close to cruelty to suit her taste, so she avoided the town’s arena. Instead, she went for a long swim in the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The water felt good, but she missed Boris’s black head plowing through the water beside her.

  The small hotel where she was staying featured a sweeping panorama of the water. That afternoon, she sat alone on the terrace as the sun descended and said good-bye to Jason Favreau for the last time. All the towns she’d visited were places they’d planned to see together. She’d kept her end of the bargain but had to connect the dots of her journey with one line instead of two.

  Leaving the terrace, she walked down a narrow stone path to the water. The small waves gently touched the shore. Alexia took off her sandals and stepped into the edge of the water. A graceful sailboat was leaving the nearby harbor. As it caught the evening breeze, the crew released a huge spinnaker that billowed out and caused the boat to move quickly toward the horizon.

  Alexia’s thoughts followed the boat as she considered her own future. She was plowing through life and needed a new sail filled with a burst of wind to send her speeding toward her destiny. She exhaled and cleared her lungs for a new breath of air. She wasn’t sure what the future held, but she wanted to run before it with a fresh breeze driving her forward.

  Alexia spent her final day in Provence near Avignon. One of the main attractions of the area was a stone church built in the twelfth century. When she walked into the cool, dark interior, she thought about her recent encounters with Ted Morgan at Sandy Flats Church and wondered what he would think about the ancient structure. Today, no exquisite piano music beckoned her when she passed through the narthex into the sanctuary. The church was quiet as a tomb, and she missed the vibrancy of Ted’s music. Several ornate stained-glass windows offered muted light. Alexia approached one that depicted Jesus walking on the water and tried to find the place where his eyes would gaze into hers. She moved back and forth but never made contact with the image.

  She arrived in Marseille with several hours to spare for a final shopping spree. In an art shop, she found an eighteenth-century watercolor portrait of a Frenchwoman who bore a remarkable resemblance to herself. It was more expensive than anything Alexia had bought and would be hard to transport on the plane. She hesitated as she stood before it. A young female clerk came over to her, glanced at the portrait, then looked at Alexia.

  “C’est vous,” she said with surprise.

  Alexia laughed. “Non. Je suis American.”

  “Okay,” the clerk said. “I speak English.”

  “Who is she?” Alexia asked.

  “I do not know. I will ask Monsieur Benoit.”

  Alexia watched the clerk speak rapidly to a middle-aged man with a well-trimmed goatee. The man gestured and pointed in several directions. The clerk returned.

  “He says it is a woman who lived in a big house. On the waterfront. She was a member of the royal family of Monaco and married a rich merchant.”

  The storekeeper could be lying, but any resemblance to royalty is flattering. Marriage to a rich merchant also had a nice ring to it, and the woman probably sailed about the Mediterranean in a yacht with bunches of billowing white sails.

  “I’ll buy it. Box it up so it can be taken to the airport.”

  Alexia spent the flight from Paris to Atlanta curled up in her seat. There was a vacant space next to her, and she was short enough that she could tuck her legs beside her and rest. She closed her eyes and relived her favorite scenes from the week. Top billing wasn’t won by a picturesque landscape or the exquisitely decorated interior of one of the quaint inns. It was the simple, uncomplicated moment of the two children who loved each other.

  The plane landed in Atlanta and dumped her into the massive bustle of the Hartsfield Airport. It was a shock to her system after adapting to a slower pace of life that wasn’t always pushing forward to the next event. She had a two-hour layover until her flight to Charleston. While she waited at the gate, she called the voice mailbox for her number at the office. It was Sunday afternoon.

  The computerized voice announced, “You have seventy-four saved messages. Press one if you want to listen to your messages.”

  Alexia hung up. Calling the office had been a mistake; listeni
ng to the messages while she sat in the airport with no resources to respond would be compounding her error. Gwen said she would take care of any emergencies. Whether she did or not, nothing could be done until Alexia walked through the door on Monday morning.

  She arrived home too late to pick up Boris and Misha from the kennel. Dark and lonely, her house waited for her at the edge of the marsh. The night air was cooler than when she’d left for France. She unpacked her suitcases and found the perfect place for the portrait on the wall near the front door. While Alexia was hammering a nail to hang the picture, the phone rang. She ran into the kitchen and glanced at the receiver. The caller ID flashed unknown.

  “Hello,” she said.

  A weak, female voice said, “Alexia? Is that you?”

  From the few indistinct words Alexia couldn’t determine the identity of the caller.

  “Yes,” she responded. “Who’s calling?”

  “Rena Richardson. I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”

  The feeble voice didn’t match Alexia’s memory of Baxter Richardson’s wife.

  “If I’m in trouble, will you help me?”

  “What’s wrong?” Alexia asked.

  “I’m at the Greenville County jail.”

  19

  Magistrates may punish by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or imprisonment for a term not exceeding thirty days, or both, all assaults and batteries and other breaches of the peace.

  S.C. CODE 22-3-560

  Shocked, Alexia asked, “What are you doing at the jail?”

  “It’s Ezra’s fault. He’s using the power of attorney Baxter signed before we were married to take money out of our checking account. I called the bank and found out that I have less than a thousand dollars left. When I confronted Ezra at the hospital, he refused to talk to me, and I lost my temper. I slapped him, and someone called hospital security. They took me to a room in the basement of the building and locked the door. I calmed down in a few minutes, but they refused to let me leave. Ezra must have called the police because two policemen came to the hospital.”

  Rena’s voice grew stronger as she continued to talk. “One of them put handcuffs on me and threw me in the back of a patrol car. It was humiliating. A detective wants to ask me some questions, but I refused to talk to him until I could talk to my lawyer.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m sitting in a room by myself. I think it’s one of the places where lawyers meet with their clients.”

  “Can anyone hear you?”

  “No. I shut the door.”

  Alexia slid a writing pad across the kitchen counter and picked up a pen.

  “How hard did you hit him?” she asked.

  There was silence for a second. “It made a noise and stung my hand.”

  Rena had an athletic build. Alexia suspected she could deliver a significant blow if she wanted to do so.

  “Did he fall down?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Or try to hit you back?”

  “No. The orderly in the ICU waiting room got between us. Everyone was yelling and stuff. I’m not sure what happened until they dragged me to the elevator and took me to the basement.”

  “Have you seen Ezra again?”

  “No.”

  Alexia turned and leaned against the kitchen counter. She knew there was a plausible basis for outrage against Ezra. Whether it justified a punch was debatable, but she had little doubt that Ralph Leggitt was helping Ezra Richardson transfer Baxter’s property into hidden places so Rena couldn’t touch it. A joint checking account would be the tip of the iceberg. The senior partner’s actions put any continued representation of Rena by Alexia at odds with the firm’s involvement with Ezra. Alexia could only give one response to Rena’s request for help. She spoke as firmly as possible.

  “Rena, you have to get another lawyer. If you and Ezra are at war, my law firm can’t be involved. I wanted to help your family work everything out, but I can’t represent you in a dispute with your father-in-law. In the meantime, don’t talk to the police until you can retain another attorney.”

  Alexia was not prepared for the sound that came through the receiver. It was a wail that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. The only thing she could compare it to was the cry of a wounded animal.

  “Rena?” she asked sharply.

  “No! You are the only person who knows the truth!” Rena cried out, her voice broken and hysterical. “Please don’t abandon me! You’ve got to help me!”

  Alexia bit her lip. It was hard to resist a woman’s cry for help, but she had no choice. She wracked her brain for a solution.

  “Calm down, so you can listen.”

  She waited until Rena’s sniffles subsided.

  “This is a bit outside the rules,” Alexia continued, “but I’ll help you find a lawyer. I had a case against a firm in Greenville. I know they have some good lawyers. I’ll call someone in the morning and try to arrange an appointment.”

  “No!” Rena responded emphatically. “You told me you were representing me, and I trusted you! You can’t dump me on someone else!”

  “I’m not dumping you,” Alexia protested. “I can’t represent both you and your father-in-law. I have no choice but to send you to another attorney. Our firm can’t be involved in a dispute between the two of you.”

  “Is your law firm helping Ezra rob me?”

  Alexia winced and evaded the question. “I’ve been out of the country and haven’t talked to anyone at my office. I’ll look into the situation first thing in the morning.”

  “But what do I do now?” Rena asked with renewed desperation. “I don’t want to go through what happened with that awful detective who harassed me after Baxter fell. He came by the hospital two more times this past week.”

  Alexia stood up straighter. “Did he try to talk to you?”

  “No, except to ask how Baxter was doing. But I know he’s trying to come up with something against me. The second time that he showed up Ezra was in the waiting room. They went outside, and Ezra didn’t come back for almost an hour.”

  Alexia started to ask Rena more questions about Ezra but stopped. The more she talked, the greater Rena’s expectation that an attorney-client relationship existed between them.

  “Okay, where is the detective?”

  “In another room. He let me use my cell phone to call you.”

  “Tell him I want to talk to him.”

  Alexia heard a heavy door shut and then the sounds of a radio dispatcher talking to patrol officers.

  “Here he is,” Rena said.

  A deep male voice said, “Detective Vinson Lilley. Who am I talking to?”

  “This is Alexia Lindale. I’m a lawyer in Santee where Mrs. Richardson lives.”

  “Are you her attorney?”

  Alexia looked at the ceiling before answering. “Yes. Has she been charged with anything?”

  “Not yet. I want to take a statement from her to determine probable cause for an assault and battery charge. She refused to talk to me until she could contact you.”

  Alexia was skeptical. The detective probably wanted an incriminating statement from Rena that would only bolster what he had already decided to do.

  “Have you interviewed anyone else?” she asked.

  “Yes, I spoke with the two hospital security officers who removed Mrs. Richardson from the ICU waiting room, and I took a statement from the complainant, Mr. Ezra Richardson.”

  Alexia couldn’t believe Ezra would try to turn a face slap into a criminal charge. If he was doing what Rena suspected, he deserved to be slapped.

  “Is Mr. Richardson pressing charges?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you that my client’s husband is in a coma with a broken neck?”

  “He informed me that his son is a patient in ICU.”

  “What did Mr. Richardson tell you about the incident?”

  “That information is part of my investigatio
n.”

  “Which is not an answer to my question,” Alexia responded sharply. “What did Mr. Richardson tell you precipitated the incident?”

  “Ms. Lindale, I’ve told you enough already, and I’m not going to let you cross-examine me about my investigation of this case. No charges have been filed against your client, and I want to give her the chance to offer an explanation before I decide what to do. Either she answers my questions or I proceed based on the evidence I already have.”

  Alexia had heard enough. “Please put Mrs. Richardson on the line.”

  In a few seconds, Rena asked, “What do you think?”

  “Walk away from the detective so we can talk.” Alexia waited until the sound of the police dispatcher in the background faded. “Did you hear his side of the conversation?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Most of the time it’s a mistake to talk to the police. I think it’s likely that he has already decided to file an assault and battery charge against you. If that’s the case, there is no use giving him additional information.”

  Rena’s voice rose higher. “But what if they put me in a cell? I can’t imagine being locked up! I’d go crazy!”

  Keeping her voice calm, Alexia asked, “How much cash do you have in your purse?”

  “About $300.”

  Alexia did a quick calculation and summoned back bits of information about the criminal process she’d picked up in the past. As a young associate she had handled a few indigent criminal cases for people who couldn’t afford a lawyer.

  “Any assault and battery charges will be a misdemeanor because there wasn’t any serious threat of injury. That means your bond to leave the jail will be a thousand dollars or less. Any bondsman will make your bond the amount you have in your purse. Most of them will even take credit cards.”