Jon found nothing of consequence in the first client’s file and put it aside. Lucy’s file was much bigger, probably because it had been the touchstone which set off the entire scandal. Jon looked wearily at the file as it perched on the front of his desk; this job was going to take much longer than he’d anticipated and the results would likely be negligible.
But, as Bruce had said, at least they could say they’d tried.
One hour, a headache, and several leg cramps later, Jon had gone through the entire thing save for one last thin manila folder. It contained a small collection of attorney notes and memos, some printed and some handwritten. The information was interesting; similar to the first client’s personal chronology of Walt’s mendacity, the story of Walt’s theft of Lucy’s money was related through messages and summaries, all from Bruce’s perspective.
The story began with a memo to the file when Lucy first became a client. She’d been accompanied by Fuzzy, and according to Bruce’s memo, Bruce had to ask Fuzzy to leave the meeting so as to preserve attorney-client privilege. Bruce’s missive indicated that Fuzzy had complied “but only after being assured that after the meeting was over we could all retire to the conference room for a drink of Old Garnet.”
This file was more painful for Jon to read because he knew that this was the ugly, raw account of Walt’s downfall. As he noted the dates and events on Bruce’s memos, his mind drifted to Pepper at that time of her life. She’d been an unknowing, happy teenager, with no reason to suspect that the life she knew was about to irrevocably change for the worse. The notes toward the end of the affair were particularly sad, with Bruce recording Lucy’s few encounters with Glenda and Pepper after the accusations were made public and Walt was indicted.
Jon then came to a long printed memo dated shortly after Walt’s conviction which described Lucy’s last encounter with Glenda, as she had related the incident to Bruce:
Lucy called today, very upset about Walt’s recent conviction. Told her that she’d done the right thing to report him; had to talk her down a bit. She said that while she was upset about that, she was more disturbed by a chance meeting with Glenda in Minnick’s.
Glenda and Lucy were alone near the milk when Glenda approached Lucy. Glenda was in tears, said that she was so sorry, has wanted to apologize personally to her for months but knew she couldn’t talk bc of criminal case. Said she hopes to pay her back someday, but doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to do it bc of scandal and now divorce.
Glenda told Lucy that when she recently served divorce papers on Walt, that he called her, cussed her out. Said he’d decided long ago to leave Bourbon Springs/never return if he got convicted, and Glenda had given him one more reason never to come back. Lucy said Glenda asked ‘what about Pepper?’ Walt said even she wasn’t enough to keep him in Craig County or ever bring him back because everyone had betrayed him, he’d only gotten behind paying a few people, and everyone had overreacted.
Lucy told Glenda not to worry about the money, but that she hoped they could still be friends, but Glenda wasn’t warm to the idea. Lucy said Glenda was sad, ashamed, and that both women parted in tears.
Jon rose, went to the bathroom, and threw up.
After retching, he sat on the toilet lid, put his head in his hands, and cried.
Walt Montrose had abandoned his wife and child.
And while the law had perhaps forced him to pay a modicum of child support after he had gotten out of prison, he had financially and emotionally turned his back on the wonderful, warm woman Jon loved more than anyone on earth.
Yet Walt had returned and offered Pepper a plausible story that was nothing more than the most hateful lie Jon had ever encountered.
A story concocted to help his own relicensing case, to show to the bar authorities some reason for staying away from the family and town he had deceived and betrayed.
A vicious story to justify his absence that could not be challenged—
Or could it?
Jon bolted upright with Nina’s words ringing in his ears:
“…we can even use hearsay…”
That’s what the story was: hearsay. Glenda Montrose was gone.
But Lucy Davenport was alive.
The sickening rage in Jon’s stomach hardened into righteous resolve.
Now that he’d found the proverbial smoking gun—something that had never happened to him in his years of law practice—he was determined to report this finding to Nina. It was the thing she’d wanted, the thing Bruce had directed him to do.
Jon rushed back to his office and picked up the phone, ready to call Nina to tell her that yes, no doubt about it, Walt is a liar.
He had the receiver in his hand and had punched in Nina’s number when it hit him that he was about to commit one hell of an ethical violation.
The kind of thing that could get him suspended or disbarred.
Just like Walt.
Jon put the receiver down and then planted his forehead directly on his desk.
His unfortunate choice of posture didn’t help him think of a way around the attorney-client confidentiality attached to that damn memo.
Because the record of Lucy’s conversation with Glenda over twenty years earlier was protected. Lucy had told Bruce, her attorney, about the unhappy encounter and Bruce had duly made a note to his file, where it had been stuck for the last two decades. Classic client confidence.
And as Bruce’s law partner, Jon had the same ethical duty to Lucy Davenport. He had to keep her confidences.
So he just couldn’t pick up the phone and tell Nina—or even Pepper.
Unless Lucy gave permission.
After some very quick computer research on relicensing cases, Jon scooped up the file and rushed down to Bruce’s office to report his discovery.
“Nina Cain can’t use that!” was Bruce’s first objection to asking Lucy for permission to reveal the information.
“She said she could, and she’s right. I looked it up.”
Jon handed Bruce a copy of some of the rules regarding relicensing and pointed out the provisions which specifically allowed hearsay, which was someone testifying as to what someone else had allegedly said.
Bruce threw the papers down and scowled. “So they can use it. But we don’t have Lucy’s permission. And we’re not gonna ask either.”
“Why the hell not?” Jon bellowed in shock. “This is exactly the thing—the only thing—they need to prove Walt’s lying about why he never came back to Bourbon Springs! This could completely torpedo his case!”
“Yeah, but at what cost, Jon?”
“You mean Pepper?”
He’d thought about how the revelation of the lie would kill her. But worse that she think her father had reformed or really cared for her all along. That was a recipe for further disaster because she’d end up trusting him again only to have her trust broken somewhere down the road. Because men like Walt weren’t good at keeping promises.
“No,” Bruce said, “I was thinking about the distillery.”
Jon blinked in confusion. “What the hell does the distillery have to do with this?”
“If we go to Lucy Davenport with some request that’s bound to bother her, Goose will get wind of it and go through the roof for talking to his mother and getting her all upset. You told me yourself that Lucy didn’t want to be contacted.”
“This is different, Bruce. We know she has information,” he protested. “She probably doesn’t even know about the bullshit story Walt’s putting out since Nina hasn’t contacted her and her own son says she doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“And if we ask her about it and upset Goose, a partial owner of our best client,” Bruce said, leaning forward over his desk, “they’ll fire our asses so fast that we’ll both be out on the street in no time and looking for a pot to piss in come next week!”
“Wait—you’re saying we bury this out of fear of losing business?” Jon cried. “You’re the one who told me to go looking for this—now
you tell me to sit on it?”
“How the hell can you explain this to Pepper?” Bruce asked. “Have you even thought about that? You bring this out and you could lose that woman!”
“And that would be like lying to her,” Jon said. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Well, you’re not going to ask Lucy Davenport about this, that’s for damn sure, so get your feelings or scruples or whatever together and get over it.”
“Like hell I will,” Jon said in a low, angry tone. “And you’re forgetting something damned important. You haven’t even thought about Lucy. We have an ethical obligation to tell her and ask her what she would like to do. We have to give the client the choice.”
“We already know her choice, Jon,” Bruce said. “She’ll say no.”
“That’s an assumption.” He walked to the door. “That’s the answer you want so it’ll be less inconvenient for you. Because apparently it’s too risky for you to try to get at the truth!”
“You son of a bitch!” Bruce came out from behind his desk and stood in front of it. “How dare you call me a coward!”
Jon put his hand on the doorknob and stopped. “Takes one to know one,” he muttered to himself, thinking of the lie he’d told Drake.
“If you walk out of here and go to Lucy Davenport, we’re done, Jon,” Bruce thundered. “Our partnership will end. I can get Drake back in a heartbeat if I have to. Because I’ve had it with you, all your drama and problems! I don’t need it anymore!”
“I understand,” he said and left Bruce’s office.
22
Although she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the interview with Nina Cain, Pepper was nonetheless eager to meet Walker’s sister, and knew she’d enjoy having some female company for a change.
Because for most of the past several days, Pepper had been surrounded by males.
Jon, Rolly, the new horses, and even a new barn cat they’d named Backstretch had been there every time she’d turned around. Needing an escape, she’d e-mailed Nina and suggested that after they were done at GarnetBrooke, they go across the road and check out the distillery café for lunch.
Pepper figured Nina and Hannah knew each other and would be anxious to exchange complaints about Walker and CiCi since both women had been shut out of their wedding. Pepper also needed to go to the distillery to talk to Goose about how much they needed her as a tour guide in the upcoming weeks. Goose was finally back at work full-time, and Hannah seemed to be doing much better.
Jon had spent the last two nights at GarnetBrooke. He’d first declined her invitation to come over the night following their first in her bed, citing something going on at work. He’d sounded preoccupied and worried, moods she’d continued to sense in him over the subsequent days and nights. She’d felt it when they’d made love. He’d seemed needier, more desperate, as though he couldn’t get enough of her. As a result, they’d stayed up rather late the past two nights and Pepper was a little sleep deprived. After lunch, she planned to return to GarnetBrooke and take a long nap.
“Sorry I’m acting like such a tourist,” Nina said as she stood outside on the patio overlooking the expanse of the farm.
Nina Cain was tall and thin with short blond bobbed hair. Her delicate features resembled Lila’s, although the two could not be mistaken for each other due to the height difference. She was dressed in dark gray slacks, a gray wool turtleneck sweater and cropped pink jacket. She looked professional yet comfortable and approachable as the women braved a breezy spring morning. Pepper was sporting a pair of her best black dress slacks and a deep maroon sweater; knowing that she was going to the distillery always made her feel obligated to wear the brand color.
Nina was agog at the vista; it was a reaction Pepper would never get tired of witnessing in her visitors. Even though she’d lived at GarnetBrooke for almost two months, the view every morning from her bedroom upstairs—whether it be sunny, snowy, rainy or even foggy—was mesmerizing.
“I’d give you a tour today, but we’re not quite ready for visitors yet,” Pepper said.
“Now I have a reason to come back to Craig County. And I can visit Walker and CiCi too, of course,” Nina added with a laugh.
They returned to the house and sat at the kitchen table for the interview. Pepper had made a pot of coffee and put out a few cookies, trying to dress up the happening into something that resembled a social occasion rather than a data-mining event of her unhappy personal history.
To Pepper’s relief, most of Nina’s inquiries involved simple facts, like when her parents got divorced, and how many times she saw her father after his conviction.
She could only relate two episodes leading up to the day at the cemetery. Those had been trips she’d take on her own initiative to see her dad, trips she’d never even told her mother about for fear of upsetting her. Once she turned eighteen, she had gone to the prison to see him, at a facility in southern Kentucky. After his release, she’d traveled to see him once in Louisville, where he’d made his new home.
“Why did you make those efforts to visit?” Nina asked.
“I missed him. At first, that is. But when he wouldn’t come back to Craig County at all—well, I wrote him off. He didn’t come to my college graduation or even my wedding.”
“And did he tell you why he wouldn’t come back?”
“Not then.” Pepper described the first phone call from her father and then the cemetery scene. “When I saw him that one time in Louisville years ago, I asked him when he might come back to Bourbon Springs to see me. But he put me off, saying that he didn’t think people wanted to see him. I got the feeling he was a little afraid of returning, and I can understand why, considering what he’d done to people here.”
Nina had been taking notes and she put down her pen and stared at her witness and her hostess.
“Do you believe him? The reason he gave you for not coming back—that your mother wanted it that way?”
“It makes sense,” Pepper said, reaching for a cookie.
“Is that the same as believing?”
“I believed it enough to forgive him, so, yes,” Pepper said a little defiantly.
“I take it your mother never mentioned this to you—his reason for staying away?”
“No. We rarely spoke of him after a while, when it became apparent he wasn’t coming back.”
“What did your mother say about that?”
“Typical bullshit stuff to cheer me up, like we’re better off without him, and if he doesn’t want to be around us, we don’t need him anyway.”
Nina wrapped up with a few questions about Pepper’s background and work history, then finally put her arms atop her legal pad and gave Pepper a searching look.
“So,” Nina intoned, “do you have any idea where they went?”
“Where who went?”
“Walker and CiCi!”
Pepper laughed and was relieved at the sudden change in the topic of conversation. She reported that she had no idea where the newlyweds had gone.
“But I’ll bet Hannah has some ideas.”
Nina checked the time. “Is it too early to get lunch at the distillery? I want to hear what Hannah Davenport suspects.”
“If she suspects it,” Pepper said, “she knows it.”
* * *
Jon stood on Lucy Davenport’s front porch, file under his arm. He was trembling and his stomach hurt.
Without further input from Bruce, he’d made the decision to contact Lucy about what was in her client file, and, therefore, about Walt.
That phone call yesterday had been strained and awkward to say the least. And when he reported what he’d found in the file and read it to Lucy, she’d started to cry. She remembered the conversation with Glenda and had never told a soul, except her attorney. Lucy hadn’t understood why he was contacting her and said she didn’t want to be involved, but Jon begged to come see her and explain it to her. She put him off one day, and Jon knew why—she had given herself time to change her mind.
>
But no phone call came to cancel the home appointment, and Jon stole away from the office with the file in the late morning.
When she opened the front door, she looked a little red-eyed and Jon figured she’d been crying again. But she smiled, invited him inside, and ushered him into a family room which overlooked unfarmed, hilly acreage punctuated by clumps of trees and diagonally bisected by a creek.
With her back to the window, Lucy took a seat on a sofa and Jon sat in a chair to her right. He put the folder down on a coffee table in front of them, opened it, and wordlessly handed her the memo.
Lucy’s chin quivered as she read, but she didn’t cry. Jon had the sense that she’d somehow gotten that out of her system and was ready to talk. But he wasn’t sure whether she’d be willing to do more than that.
“That’s just the way it happened.” She placed the memo on the coffee table in front of her and frowned.
“Mrs. Davenport—”
Lucy put her hand on her chest. “Please, Jon, call me Lucy. I’m only Mrs. Davenport on forms and at the doctor’s office. And when I hear that name, it makes me think of poor Emma Davenport, God rest her precious soul. Everyone calls me Lucy. You shouldn’t be an exception.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here to ask you something I didn’t reveal on the phone. I only told you I wanted to talk.”
“But what could you need from little old me?”
“I’m asking your permission to tell the office of attorney regulation about this.” He picked up the sheet of paper and returned it to the file.
“Why? It’s ancient history when it comes to Walt Montrose,” she said, nearly hissing the man’s name in disgust.
“But it’s a recent lie, Lucy. And a terrible one. Not a fib or white lie. It’s something cold and calculated to help himself, when the truth is something much more hurtful.”
Jon pulled out some legal research to show that if it could be proven Walt was lying, it would sink his chances to be a lawyer again.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 82