by A. W. Gray
Around ten-thirty, the door leading from the street swung open. Sharon craned her neck to peer out into the reception area, and caught a glimpse of Russell Black’s craggy features as the older lawyer ducked into his office. She counted to sixty, giving him time to ditch his raincoat, then carried both sets of research papers past the reception desk, paused outside Black’s door to catch her breath, and walked in without knocking. “Russ, I’ve got some … oh.”
Black wasn’t alone. Seated across from him was an attractive brunette woman, around forty, wearing a light brown cotton sweater and pleated skirt. One corner of the woman’s mouth tilted in curiosity.
“Excuse me,” Sharon said, backing up. “I’ll come backwhen—”
“We were just talkin’ about you.” Black motioned Sharon inside, and she gently closed the door and took a forward step. “I want you to meet Deborah North,” Black said. “Midge Rathermore’s mother. This here’s Sharon Hays, my new sidekick.”
Deborah North’s wealth of brown hair had a few strands of gray mixed in, nothing that a little touch-up wouldn’t have gotten rid of. Sharon thought that dye jobs were the height of vanity, and Deborah North’s lack of effort to cover up her gray said a lot about the woman’s ego. Ms. North’s smile was pleasant, if a trifle strained. “Miss Hays? Glad to know you.”
Sharon stepped forward to shake hands. “The pleasure’s mine.” Formal and businesslike, the second-banana lawyer meeting her boss’ important client for the first time.
Black told Sharon to sit, and as Sharon placed both sets of notes on the edge of her boss’ desk and sank down in a visitor’s chair, Black said, “I was just fillin’ her in on the certification hearin’.”
Sharon nodded, not seeing that what she’d heard required any response on her part. What she really wanted to know was something she’d never ask: why this woman had come to her daughter’s aid by hiring a first-class lawyer, and then after doing so wanted to remain anonymous.
Deborah North’s purse was on the floor; she reached inside and brought out a tall pack of Virginia Slims. You’ve come a long way, baby. “Do you mind?” A strong woman’s voice, slightly husky in tone. Her question was directed at the room in general, but her gaze was on Sharon.
Though she didn’t smoke and never had, she wasn’t a non-smoking nut. She watched her own diet and got plenty of fresh air, but thought that people who went around condemning anyone with a tobacco habit had real problems, like those who openly sneered at gays in order to cover their insecurity over their own sexuality. “Go right ahead,” Sharon said.
Black produced a small glass ashtray which he slid to the front edge of his desk. Deborah North popped a cigarette into her mouth, then paused with her thumb on the flint wheel of a red plastic disposable lighter. She raised an eyebrow. “May I call you Sharon?” She flicked. Flame appeared. She puffed, inhaled, and blew out smoke as she bent to put the lighter away.
“I’d prefer you did,” Sharon said.
“Good. I’m Deb.” Deborah North balanced her cigarette on the ashtray. Rose-colored lipstick smeared the filter like a wound.
Black stood. “Listen, I need a coffee jolt and I’ve got a couple of calls to make. I’d wanted you ladies to get acquainted anyhow, so I’ll make myself scarce. No, keep your seats. I’ll use your place, Sharon.” He circled his desk and left the room. Just like that. This is Sharon, this is Deb, and now you two can talk things over. Sharon wondered briefly whether Black really had things to do. His motives were hard to figure.
When they were alone, Deb North said, “Russ tells me you have a daughter.”
Sharon nodded and smiled. “That’s right.” The first whiff of smoke entered her nostrils. Initially it was a shock to her senses, but she’d quickly get used to the fumes. Rob had smoked when she lived with him in Brooklyn Heights, and she’d finally reached a point that she didn’t even notice the odor.
“Then you’re going to be wondering about my relationship with Midge,” Deb said.
Sharon chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Only to the extent that it might affect Midge’s defense.”
“Thanks for being businesslike, but you really don’t have to. I’m not proud of myself where my children are concerned.”
Sharon lifted a hand. “Look, Deb, I don’t condemn.”
Deb picked up her cigarette. “Well, you should. So you’ll know, Russ leaving us alone wasn’t his idea. I asked him to. You already know that Midge had a court-appointed lawyer, don’t you?”
“Andy Tubb,” Sharon said.
“Right. I had a long interview with Mr. Tubb, and aside from listening to him quote his fee and lay out his glowing plans for defending my daughter, I just couldn’t get through to him. I think it’s important for Midge’s lawyer to understand a few things about her. That’s why when Russell Black told me his new assistant was female and a mother to boot, I decided to hire him and let Mr. Tubb go his separate way.”
Well, I’ll be damned, Sharon thought. She’d spent an extra two hours polishing up the old résumé the night before her appointment with Russell Black, when the guy already had checked up and had known all about her. Which explained why he’d fallen all over himself to hire her. If Midge Rathermore’s mother had told him that Midge needed a two-headed lawyer, Black probably would have conducted interviews at a freak show. Sharon wasn’t sure whether or not she should feel resentful. She’d have to think on it.
“A man,” Deb said, “would never even think about my relationship with my daughter, but a mother’s going to pick up in a second that there’s a problem. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m mostly to blame for where Midge is right now. And now that I’ve said that, ask what you want to know.”
Sharon watched smoke rise from the cigarette’s end. She wondered what Rob’s reaction would be if Melanie were to find herself in the same boat as Midge Rathermore. He wouldn’t understand, if he cared at all. “When did you and Midge’s father divorce?” Sharon said.
“It was final five years ago. Exactly two days before he married Linda Haymon. We were separated three years before that, and while we were separated he and Linda lived together. I haven’t really spent any time with my daughters in eight years.” Deb’s gaze lowered in guilt.
“And your last name, North. That’s your maiden name?” Sharon reverted to her training as a prosecutor, just asking the questions, not being emotional. Keeping her feelings in check in the Rathermore case was going to be tough.
Deb continued to watch her lap. “No. It’s another married name. You’ll already know that the Rathermore name means money. Do you know where Midge’s father’s money came from?”
“Not really. Oil, I suppose, that’s where most of the wealthy got it in this town.”
“You’re half right. Midge’s grandfather—William Rathermore, too, by the way, Bill was a junior—did get his money in oil, but what he really was was a thief. Do you know what slant-well drilling is?”
Sharon smoothed her navy skirt along her thigh. “No, I don’t. What I know about the oil business you could put in a thimble.”
“Well, it’s stealing, even though it’s pretty slick. What Rathermore Senior would do, back in the thirties, he would buy leases on land located near producing wells. The people selling the leases knew there was no oil underneath the land, and had the old man pegged as a nut. They sold him the leases dirt cheap and sat back to watch him go broke. He was crazy like a fox, though.” Deb glanced at the ashtray. Her Virginia Slim was burnt nearly to the filter. She flicked gray ash from the end, took a final drag, and stubbed out the butt.
“The old darling would drill,” Deb went on, “at a forty-five-degree angle, right into the wall of a neighboring well, and hijack the oil. Millions on millions of barrels he stole, and then when he had a nest egg of, say, fifty million dollars or so, he simply retired. Even today there are a lot of people in East Texas who wonder how he str
uck oil where everyone else drilled dry holes. They chalk it off to dumb luck.”
Sharon’s mind wandered, her gaze absently on the window beyond Deb North. The rain showed no signs of slacking, water pouring in sheets down the windowpane. She sighed. “That’s fascinating, Deb, but really I—”
“Don’t see what that has to do with Midge’s defense,” Deb said. “Please humor me, Sharon. It’s all I can do to keep from running screaming into the streets over what I’ve done to my little girl.” Deb had worry lines at the corners of her nose and mouth which her makeup didn’t quite hide. “Listen, Bill Rathermore, Senior, was only thirty-eight when he moved to Dallas and bought that big house on Lakeside Drive, and he was incredibly rich with nothing to do. He ran through eight wives in ten years, the fifth of which was Bill’s—my husband, Bill’s—mother. She was nineteen when Bill was born, and six months later the old man paid her off and moved her out just like he did the rest of his wives. Females to him were nothing but places in which to deposit his semen.
“I met Bill in college,” Deb said, “at the University of Oklahoma. I’m from Midwest City, an Oke City suburb. My dad worked for the water department, and the only way he could afford to send me to college was for me to live at home and drive back and forth to Norman every day. OU was Bill’s fourth school. He’d managed to flunk out of three, and nearly flunked out at OU as well, but he was my first exposure to real money. The first time I saw that house, but wow. I don’t know that there’s anything I wouldn’t have done to get in that family.” A tear formed suddenly and ran down her cheek. She bent to dig in her purse, found a Kleenex, and blew her nose.
Sharon leaned forward. “If you’d like to continue this some other time …”
Deb waved her off, looked for a wastebasket, disposed of the Kleenex. “I’m started now, and if I don’t finish what I have to tell you, I may never have the nerve again.” She took a deep breath and expelled air from her lungs. “So anyway. The first time I went home with Bill, just for a weekend between classes, was the only time I met the old man. He was in his late sixties then, and I was twenty, but that didn’t stop him from putting the moves on me. I’m not joking, Sharon. You’ve had a few moves put on you, right? You can tell.”
Sharon nodded. “You can’t explain how you know. But you do.”
“Sure. And as long as I’m confessing, I can’t swear that if Bill Senior had lived long enough, had been around after Bill and I got married, that I wouldn’t have wound up in bed with my own father-in-law. Not that the old man turned me on. It’s just that, that’s how much the money got in my eye.
“Anyway,” Deb said, “I didn’t ever have to be confronted with that lovely choice, because barely a week after that first visit Bill Senior was dead. Shot in a dive near Fair Park, the old bastard, sitting in a booth between two hookers. So, barely twenty-two, Bill inherited the whole enchilada, quit school, and married me. What a date with destiny that was. Just before I walked down the aisle, my own dad hugged the daylights out of me and said, ‘Honey, I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.’ I’ll never forget the look on his face.”
There was the muffled noise of a door opening and closing as someone entered the reception area from the street. Sharon tensed to rise, then relaxed. Russell Black had set up this conference, and Russ could damn well wait on the customers himself until the meeting was over. Sharon returned her attention to Deb.
“Bill,” Deb said, “when we were married … Well, he inherited his father’s attitude about women. Oh, he’d hump me most every night, but unless he wanted sex I might as well have been another stick of furniture. It’s not a real self-image booster, you know? Less than six months after the wedding I found out that, in addition to me, he was humping the maids, the neighbors, and anybody else who was willing. And you know what? I was so eaten up with being the wealthy Mrs. Rathermore, going to the Crystal Charity Ball functions and Cattle Barons’ ball and whatnot, that I looked the other way. I got to know a lot of rich women during that time, and I’ll tell you, I wasn’t the only one who knew her husband was screwing around. Most of those men look on their wives as just another possession.”
Sharon lifted her rump to scoot forward in her chair and crossed her legs. She was, she thought, getting too wrapped up in the story, and reminded herself to take it all in from a lawyer’s neutral viewpoint, realizing she was hearing only one side. “Deb,” Sharon said, “I’ve got to ask you something.”
Deb reached nervously for another cigarette and thumbed her lighter. “Yes?”
Sharon pictured Midge, the chubby teenage face impassive as she’d said that her father had had sex with Midge’s sister. Sharon said, “Did you ever have any indication that there might have been … any sort of incest within that family?” Sharon had had many discussions with Sheila Winston on the subject, and knew that incest is usually inherited, the children learning it from the parents.
Deb froze with the lighter a half inch from the cigarette’s end. “Why do you ask?”
“Something Midge said yesterday.”
“Did that bastard do something to her?”
Sharon blinked. “I’m not sure.”
Deb lit and inhaled through trembling lips. “It wouldn’t surprise me. I never saw any incest, but that’s about the only aberrant behavior I didn’t see while I was married to him. It kills me to confess this, but I lost so much self-esteem, I went along with whatever he wanted. I … God, how to say this.” She bent forward from the waist and regarded the floor. Sharon was speechless, wanting to comfort but not knowing how. Raindrops pelted the windows like a thousand tom-toms.
“All sorts of …” Deb was struggling to get a grip, but didn’t seem to be making it. She spoke as if choking on her words. “Once down in New Orleans, I solicited a hooker because Bill wanted a threesome. I was … the third, you know? I think even the hooker looked down on me. Another time, this was in Galveston at a convention, I picked up a young man in a bar and brought him back to our hotel so Bill could watch us.” Her gaze steadied somewhat. “The list goes on and on, Sharon, if you want to hear more.”
“I don’t want to hear anything,” Sharon said, “that we can’t use somehow in Midge’s defense. No reason for you to run yourself through the wringer unnecessarily.”
“Oh, but there is,” Deb said. “But you’re right, I should be doing it in a shrink’s office instead of a lawyer’s. I think we’d probably make better progress if you asked questions. That way you wouldn’t have to hear me go on and on.”
“Why don’t we talk about,” Sharon said, “the things that led up to your eventual divorce?”
Deb managed a bitter laugh. “That’s easy enough. It was just before Easter, the year Midge was five and Susan was three. I’d been out shopping for virginal-looking Easter outfits for me and the girls. We always attended services at First Methodist, mainly, I guess, because that’s where we were most likely to get our pictures on television. Family of the month, you know? I’m sure of this now, this was the Thursday before Good Friday. I came home in the early afternoon, a couple of hours early, and walked in on Bill. He had a woman in bed right in our own room. I wasn’t particularly shocked, frankly, given my husband’s habits, but this woman looked quite young, and seemed … prettier, more sophisticated perhaps, than his normal fare. Both of them had been drinking, I remember a quart of Chivas on the nightstand. There I stood in the bedroom doorway watching them thrash around, and all I could think of was, When will they be finished so I can go in and change? I’m not kidding, I just didn’t give a damn at that point.
“After they’d finished,” Deb said, “Bill gave me this big grin like he loved for people to watch him doing it, and then he said, ‘Deb, I want you to meet your replacement.’”
Sharon’s jaw dropped practically into her lap. “Son of …” She swallowed. “Linda Haymon?”
Deb nodded. “At first I thought he was putting me on,” s
he said. “But Linda didn’t think it was a joke. She said, formal as could be, ‘So pleased to meet you.’ That’s when I realized that the nightgown she’d been wearing—it was ripped and thrown on the floor—the nightgown was one of mine. Both of them started giggling like crazy.
“I ran to the downstairs bathroom,” Deb said, “and threw up for about an hour, I think.” She pulled at the hem of her skirt with shaky fingers, dragged on her cigarette, laid it in the ashtray, then quickly picked the cigarette up and puffed again. Her brown eyes were slightly bloodshot.
“I’ve seen a lot as a prosecutor,” Sharon said. “But that’s the strangest …”
“It gets even worse. I’ll tell you something else, I don’t think it was an accident that I walked in on them. I think my dear twisted husband planned the whole scene, and I think that if I hadn’t been a couple of hours early, he’d have had her hang around until I got home. He simply wanted to hurt me as much as he possibly could. God, I think he invented sick.”
Sharon’s flesh crawled, but she shook out of her trance to say, “Deb, we will probably want you to testify to what you’ve just told me. It shows the deceased’s character, and Linda’s as well. She’ll be the state’s star witness against Midge. Criminy, with testimony like this …” She reached across Russell Black’s desk for pen and pad.
“I don’t say it would be the funnest thing I’ve ever done,” Deb said. “But for my daughter, sure. I’d do it. It would be the very least, to make things up to her.”