by John Grisham
Fritz got an urgent call one day from his sister, who had found an astonishing document. It was a will handwritten by their mother, and in it she left $50,000 in cash to Lettie Lang. Fritz took off from work, sped over to Lake Village, met his sister after hours, and took a look at the will. It had been dated two months prior and signed by Irene Pickering. There was no doubt about the handwriting, though it was a much feebler version of what they had always known. His sister had found the will in a plain envelope stuffed in an old family Bible on a shelf with the kitchen cookbooks. They confronted their mother, who claimed to be too weak to discuss the matter.
At the time, Mrs. Pickering had $110,000 in a certificate of deposit and $18,000 in a checking account. Lettie had access to the monthly statements for these accounts.
The following morning, Fritz and his sister confronted Lettie when she arrived for work. During a nasty row, they claimed she had convinced or even coerced their mother into making the will. She denied any knowledge of it and seemed genuinely surprised, even hurt. They fired her anyway and made her leave the house immediately. They loaded up their mother and drove her to a lawyer’s office in Oxford, where the sister lived. While they waited, the lawyer prepared a two-page will that made no mention of Lettie Lang and left everything to Fritz and his sister, in equal shares, just as they had discussed many times with their mother. She signed it on the spot, died a month later, and the probate went off without a hitch. Fritz and his sister sold the house and property and split the assets evenly without a cross word.
Before Irene died, they quizzed her several times about the handwritten will, but it always upset her and she wouldn’t discuss it. They quizzed her about Lettie Lang, and this made her cry too. Eventually, they stopped these conversations. Truthfully, at the time she signed the will in the lawyer’s office she was not really thinking clearly, and things did not improve before she died.
Over coffee, Clapp listened with growing excitement. With Fritz’s permission, he was recording the conversation and couldn’t wait to play it back for Wade Lanier.
“Did you keep a copy of the handwritten will?”
Fritz shook his head and said, “I don’t recall doing that, and if we did keep it, it’s long gone. I sure don’t know where it would be.”
“Did the lawyer in Oxford keep it?”
“I think so. When we took Mother to see him, we gave him her prior will, one that was prepared by a lawyer in Lake Village, plus the handwritten will, and I’m sure he kept both of them. He said it was important to destroy prior wills because they sometimes show up and cause problems.”
“Do you remember the name of the lawyer in Oxford?”
“Hal Freeman, an old guy who’s since retired. My sister died five years ago and I was the executor of her estate. Freeman had retired by then but his son handled the probate.”
“Did you and the son ever talk about the handwritten will?”
“I don’t think so. I had very little contact with him, really. I try to avoid lawyers, Mr. Clapp. I’ve had some very unpleasant experiences with them.”
Clapp was savvy enough to know he had discovered dynamite, and he was experienced enough to know it was time to back off. Take it slow, share it all with Wade Lanier, and let the lawyer call the shots. Pickering began to inquire into Clapp’s reasons for pursuing Lettie, but was met with a wall of vagueness. They finished lunch and said good-bye.
Wade Lanier listened to the tape with his customary grim face and tight lips. But Lester Chilcott, his associate, could hardly suppress his enthusiasm. After Clapp was excused from Lanier’s office, Chilcott rubbed his hands together and said, “This ball game is over!” Wade eventually smiled.
Step one: No further contact with Pickering. His mother and sister were dead, so he was the only person who could possibly testify about the handwritten will, other than Hal Freeman. Two quick phone calls to Oxford verified that Freeman was retired, still alive, and that his old office was run by his two sons, Todd and Hank. Ignore Pickering, for now. No contact between Lanier’s office and Pickering because it would be important, at a later date, for Pickering to testify he had never spoken to the attorneys.
Step two: Find the handwritten will, at all costs. If it exists, find it, get it. But do so without alerting Hal Freeman, if possible. Find it, before Jake or somebody else does.
Step three: Bury this now and save it for later. The most dramatic and effective use of the handwritten will of Irene Pickering would come at trial, with Lettie Lang on the witness stand and denying any knowledge of the will. Produce it then. Make her a liar. And prove to the jury that conniving her way into wills handwritten by her old and vulnerable bosses was a devious pattern.
Such a strategy was loaded with hazards. The first and most obvious was the basic rules of discovery. Jake had filed interrogatories requiring his adversaries to divulge the identities of all potential witnesses. Lanier and the other lawyers had done the same; it was standard procedure in the new days of wide-open discovery where everything was supposedly transparent. To hide a witness like Fritz Pickering was not only unethical, but also dangerous. Attempting to produce a surprise at trial was often futile. Lanier and Chilcott needed time to plot ways around this rule. There were exceptions, but they were narrow.
Just as troublesome was the plan to find Irene’s handwritten will. There was a chance it had been destroyed, along with a thousand other worthless old files in the Freeman archives. But lawyers generally kept their retired files for longer than ten years, so the odds were decent that the will was still around.
Ignoring Fritz was also problematic. What if another lawyer tracked him down and asked the same questions? If the other lawyer happened to be Jake, then the element of surprise would be lost. Jake would have plenty of time to coach Lettie into testimony that might appease the jury. He could certainly spin the story. And he would rage at the violated discovery rules. Judge Atlee would not be sympathetic.
Lanier and Chilcott debated the idea of contacting Freeman directly. If the will was filed away and gathering dust, Freeman could certainly produce it without someone being forced to steal it. And, he would be a respectable witness at trial. But speaking to Freeman would blow their great secret. As a potential witness, his name would be revealed. The element of surprise would be lost. It might become necessary to approach him later, but for now Wade Lanier and Lester Chilcott were quite content to spin a web of silence and deceit. Cheating was often hard to cover and required meticulous planning, but they were skilled.
Two days later, Randall Clapp entered the Freeman Law Firm and informed the secretary he was there for a four o’clock appointment. The two-man shop was in a converted bungalow one block off the Oxford town square, next door to a savings and loan and just down the street from the federal courthouse. As Clapp waited in the reception area, he flipped through a magazine and took in the surroundings. No video cameras; no security sensors; a dead bolt on the front door; no chains; almost nothing to prevent even a half-witted cat burglar from sneaking in during the night and taking his time. And why would there be? Other than the usual mountain of paperwork, there was nothing of real value in the building.
It was a typical small-town law office, just like a hundred others Clapp had visited. He had already wandered through the rear alley and scoped out the back door. A dead bolt but nothing formidable. His man Erby could walk through either the front or the rear door faster than one of the employees using a key.
Clapp met with Todd Freeman and discussed some land he wanted to buy west of town, along the main highway. He used his real name, real job, and real business card, but lied when he said he and his brother wanted to put in an all-night truck stop. The legal work would be routine and Todd seemed sufficiently interested. Clapp asked to use the restroom and was sent down the narrow hall. Retractable staircase; at least two cluttered rooms chock-full of files; a small kitchen with a broken window, no lock. No security sensors anywhere. Piece of cake.
Erby entered the bu
ilding just after midnight while Clapp sat low in his car across the street and watched for trouble. It was January 18, cold, a Wednesday, and the students were not out on the town. The square was dead, and Clapp’s biggest fear was getting noticed by a bored policeman. Once Erby was inside, he checked in by radio. All was quiet and still. Using his trusty jack-blade, he had picked the rear door dead bolt in seconds. With an infrared penlight, he eased through the offices; not a single interior door was locked. The retractable stairs were flimsy and squeaked, but he managed to pull them down with little racket. He stood in the front window, spoke to Clapp by radio, and Clapp could not see his shadow inside. Wearing gloves and disturbing nothing, Erby began in one of the storage rooms. It would take hours and he was in no hurry. He opened drawers, looked at files, dates, names, and so on, and in doing so touched documents that had not been touched in weeks, months, maybe years. Clapp moved his car to a lot on the other side of the square and walked through the alleys. At 1:00 a.m., Erby opened the rear door and Clapp entered the building. Erby said, “Every room has file cabinets. Looks like the current files are kept in the lawyers’ offices, some by the secretaries.”
“What about these two rooms?” Clapp asked.
“The files date back about five years. Some are retired, some not. I’m still looking. I haven’t finished the second room. There’s a large basement filled with old furniture, typewriters, law books, and more files, all retired.”
They found nothing of interest in the second room. The files were the typical assortment of retired cases one would find in any small-town law office. At 2:30, Erby carefully climbed the steps of the retractable stairs and disappeared into the attic. Clapp closed them behind him and went to the basement. The attic was windowless, pitch-black, and lined with neat rows of cardboard storage boxes stacked four-deep. With no chance of being seen from the outside, Erby increased the glow of his penlight and scanned the boxes. Each had a code handwritten in black marker: “Real Estate, 1/1/76-8/1/77”; “Criminal, 3/1/81-7/1/81”; and so on. He was relieved to find files dating back a dozen years, but frustrated at the absence of any related to wills and estates.
Those would be in the basement. After rummaging down there for half an hour, Clapp found a stack of the same types of storage boxes marked “Probate, 1979–1980.” He pulled the box out of a stack, opened it carefully, and began leafing through dozens of files. Irene Pickering’s was dated August 1980. It was an inch and a half thick, and tracked the legal work from the day Hal Freeman prepared the two-page will that Irene signed on the spot through the final order dismissing Fritz Pickering as her executor. The first entry was an old will prepared by the lawyer in Lake Village. The second was a handwritten will. Clapp read it aloud and slowly, the scrawl at times difficult to decipher. The fourth paragraph contained a $50,000 bequest to Lettie Lang.
“Bingo,” he mumbled. He placed the file on a table, closed the box, gently put it back in its place, backtracked carefully, and left the basement. With the file in a briefcase, he stepped into the dark alley, and after a few minutes called Erby on the radio. Erby eased out of the rear door, stopping only to quickly relock the dead bolt. To their knowledge, they had disturbed nothing and left no marks. The offices needed a good cleaning to begin with, and a bit of dirt off a shoe or some rearranged dust was not going to attract attention.
They drove two and a half hours to Jackson and met Wade Lanier at his office before 6:00 a.m. Lanier had been a courtroom brawler for thirty years, and he could not remember a more beautiful example of “the smoking gun.” But the question remained: How best to fire it?
Fat Benny’s was at the end of the paved section of a county road; beyond it was all gravel. Portia had been raised in Box Hill, a dark and secluded community hidden by a swamp and a ridge with few whites anywhere near. Box Hill, though, was Times Square compared to the forbidding, backwater settlement of Prairietown on the backside of Noxubee County, less than ten miles from the Alabama line. If she’d been white, she would have never stopped. There were two gas pumps in the front and a few dirty cars parked on the gravel. A screen door slammed behind her as she nodded to a teenage boy behind the front counter. There were a few groceries, soft drink and beer coolers, and in the rear a dozen neat tables all covered with red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths. The smell of thick grease hung heavy in the air and hamburger patties sizzled and popped on a grill. A large man with an enormous belly held a spatula like a weapon and talked to two men sitting on stools. There was little doubt as to who was Fat Benny.
A sign said, “Order Here.”
“What can I do for you?” the cook said with a friendly smile.
She gave him her best smile and said softly, “I’d like a hot dog, a Coke, and I’m looking for Benny Rinds.”
“That’s me,” he said. “And you are?”
“My name is Portia Lang, from Clanton, but there’s a chance I might be a Rinds. I’m not sure, but I’m looking for information.”
He nodded to a table. Ten minutes later he placed the hot dog and the Coke in front of her, and sat across the table. “I’m working on the family tree,” she said, “and I’m finding a lot of bad apples.”
Benny laughed and said, “You should’ve come here and asked me before you started.”
Without touching the hot dog, she told him about her mother, and her mother’s mother. He had never heard of them. His people were from Noxubee and Lauderdale Counties, more to the south than the north. He’d never known a Rinds from Ford County, not a single one. As he talked, she ate rapidly, and she finished as soon as she realized it was another dead end.
She thanked him and left. Driving home, she stopped at every small town and checked the telephone directories. There were very few Rindses in this part of the world. Twenty or so in Clay County. A dozen or so in Oktibbeha County, near the state university. She had spoken by phone to a dozen in Lee County, in and around Tupelo.
She and Lucien had identified twenty-three members of the Rinds family who had been living in Ford County in the years leading up to 1930, before they all vanished. Eventually, they would find a descendant, an old relative who knew something and might be willing to talk.
26
On the last Friday in January, Roxy arrived for work at 8:45, and Jake was waiting by her desk, nonchalantly scanning a document as if all was well. It was not. It was time for a performance review and it was not going to be pretty. Things began pleasantly enough when she barked, “Jake, I’m sick of this place.”
“And good morning to you.”
She was already crying. No makeup, unkempt hair, the frazzled look of a wife/mother/woman out of control. “I can’t take Lucien,” she said. “He’s here almost every day and he’s the rudest man in the world. He’s vulgar, crude, profane, dirty, and he smokes the filthiest cigars ever made. I loathe that man.”
“Anything else?”
“It’s either him or me.”
“He owns the building.”
“Can’t you do something?”
“Like what? Tell Lucien to be a nicer person, to stop smoking, cussing, insulting people, telling dirty jokes, to sober up? In case you haven’t noticed, Roxy, no one tells Lucien Wilbanks to do anything.”
She grabbed a tissue and wiped her cheeks. “I can’t take it.”
This was the perfect opening and Jake wasn’t about to miss an opportunity. “Let’s call it resignation,” he said with compassion. “I’ll be happy to provide a good reference.”
“I’m being fired?”
“No. You’re resigning, effective immediately. Leave now and you’ve got the day off. I’ll send your last paycheck.”
The emotion turned to anger as she looked around her desk. She was gone in ten minutes, slamming doors behind her. Portia walked in promptly at 9:00 and said, “I just passed Roxy on the street and she wouldn’t speak to me.”
“She’s gone. Here’s the offer. On a temporary basis, you can work down here as the secretary and receptionist. You’ll be c
onsidered a paralegal, not a lowly intern. It’s a big promotion all the way around.”
She absorbed it coolly, said, “My typing is not great.”
“Then practice.”
“What does it pay?”
“A thousand dollars a month for two months, a trial run. After two months, we’ll take a look and reevaluate.”
“Hours?”
“Eight thirty to five, thirty minutes for lunch.”
“What about Lucien?” she asked.
“What about him?”
“He’s down here. I kinda like it up there, on the second floor, where it’s safe.”
“Has he bothered you?”
“Not yet. Look, Jake, I like Lucien and we work well together, but I sometimes get the feeling he would like to get a little closer, know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“If he touches me, I’ll slap his ass across the room.”
Jake laughed at the visual, and there was no doubt whatsoever Portia could take care of herself. He said, “I need to have a chat with Lucien. Let me handle it. I’ll warn him.”
Portia took a deep breath and looked around the office. She nodded, smiled, said, “But I’m not a secretary, Jake. I’m going to be a lawyer, just like you.”
“And I’ll help you in every way possible.”
“Thank you.”
“I want an answer. Now. On the spot.”
“But I don’t want to miss the trial. If I’m stuck at this desk, I’ll miss the trial, right?”