So long. See you on the other side.
Seth Hubbard
After they passed it around the kitchen table and observed a moment of silence, they poured more coffee. Herschel cut a thick slice of the lemon cake and declared it delicious. The Dafoes declined.
“Looks like your father planned it all rather well,” Ian observed as he read the instructions again. “Quick and simple.”
Ramona blurted, “We have to talk about foul play, don’t we? It hasn’t been mentioned yet, has it? Can we at least have the discussion? What if it wasn’t a suicide? What if someone else did it and tried to cover it up? Do you really believe Daddy would kill himself?”
Herschel and Ian gawked at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. They were both tempted to rebuke her, to taunt her stupidity, but nothing was said during a long, heavy pause. Herschel slowly took another bite of cake. Ian gently lifted the two sheets of paper and said, “Dear, how can anyone possibly fake this? You can recognize Seth’s handwriting from ten yards away.”
She was crying, wiping tears. Herschel added, “I asked the sheriff about that, Mona, and he’s certain it was a suicide.”
“I know, I know,” she mumbled between sobs.
Ian said, “Your father was dying of cancer, in a lot of pain and such, and he took matters into his own hands. Looks like he was pretty thorough.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Why couldn’t he talk to us?”
Because you people never talked to each other, Lettie said to herself in the shadows.
Ian, the expert, said, “This is not unusual in a suicide. They never talk to anyone and they can go to great lengths to plan things. My uncle shot himself two years ago and—”
“Your uncle was a drunk,” Ramona said as she dried up.
“Yes he was, and he was drunk when he shot himself, but he still managed to plan it all.”
“Let’s talk about something else, can we?” Herschel said. “No, Mona, there was no foul play. Seth did it himself and left notes behind. I say we go through the house and look for papers, bank statements, maybe the will, anything that we might need to find. We’re the family and we’re in charge now. Nothing wrong with that, right?”
Ian and Ramona were nodding, yes.
Lettie was actually smiling. Mr. Seth had taken all his papers to his office and locked them in a file cabinet. Over the last month, he had meticulously cleaned out his desk and drawers and taken away everything of interest. And, he’d said to her, “Lettie, if something happens to me, all the good stuff is in my office, locked up tight. The lawyers will deal with it, not my kids.”
He’d also said, “And I’m leaving a little something for you.”
5
By noon Monday the entire bar association of Ford County was buzzing with the news of the suicide and, much more important, with the curiosity of which firm might be chosen to handle the probate. Most deaths caused similar ripples; a fatal car wreck, more so for obvious reasons. However, a garden-variety murder did not. Most murderers were of the lower classes and thus unable to fork over meaningful fees. When the day began, Jake had nothing—no murders, no car wrecks, and no promising wills to probate. By lunch, though, he was mentally spending some money.
He could always find something to do across the street in the courthouse. The land records were on the second floor, in a long wide room with lined shelves of thick plat books dating back two hundred years. In his younger days, when totally bored or hiding from Lucien, he spent hours poring over old deeds and grants as if some big deal was in the works. Now, though, at the age of thirty-five and with ten years under his belt, he avoided the room when possible. He fancied himself a trial lawyer, not a title checker; a courtroom brawler, not some timid little lawyer content to live in the archives and push papers around a desk. Even so, and regardless of his dreams, there were times each year when Jake, along with every other lawyer in town, found it necessary to get lost for an hour or so in the county’s records.
The room was crowded. The more prosperous firms used paralegals to do the research, and there were several there, lugging the books back and forth and frowning at the pages. Jake spoke to a couple of lawyers who were doing the same—football talk mainly because no one wanted to get caught snooping for the dirt on Seth Hubbard. To kill time, he looked through the Index of Wills to see if any Hubbard of note had handed down land or assets to Seth, but found nothing in the past twenty years. He walked down the hall to the Chancery Clerk’s office with the thought of perusing old divorce files but other lawyers were sniffing around.
He left the courthouse in search of a better source.
It was no surprise that Seth Hubbard hated the lawyers in Clanton. Most litigants, divorce or otherwise, who ran afoul of Harry Rex Vonner were miserable for the rest of their lives and loathed everything about the legal profession. Seth wasn’t the first to commit suicide.
Harry Rex extracted blood, along with money and land and everything else in sight. Divorce was his specialty, and the uglier the better. He relished the dirt, the gutter fighting, the hand-to-hand combat, the thrill of the secret phone recording or the surprise eight-by-ten snapshot of the girlfriend in her new convertible. His trials were trench warfare. His alimony settlements set records. For fun he blew up uncontested divorces and turned them into two-year death marches. He loved to sue ex-lovers for alienation of affection. If none of the dirty tricks in his bag worked, he invented more. With a near monopoly on the market, he controlled the docket and bullied the court clerks. Young lawyers ran from him, and old lawyers, already burned, kept their distance. He had few friends and those who remained loyal often struggled to do so.
Among lawyers, Harry Rex trusted only Jake, and the trust was mutual. During the Hailey trial, when Jake was losing sleep and weight and focus and dodging bullets and death threats and certain he was about to blow the biggest case of his career, Harry Rex quietly stepped into Jake’s office. He stayed in the background, spending hours on the case without looking for a dime. He unloaded volumes of free advice and kept Jake sane.
As always, on Mondays, Harry Rex was at his desk eating a hoagie for lunch. For divorce lawyers like him, Mondays were the worst days as marriages cracked over the weekends and spouses already at war ramped up their attacks. Jake entered the building through a rear door to avoid (1) the notoriously prickly secretaries and (2) the smoke-laden waiting room filled with stressed-out clients. Harry Rex’s office door was closed. Jake listened for a moment, heard no voices, then shoved it open.
“What do you want?” Harry Rex growled as he chomped on a mouthful. The hoagie was spread before him on wax paper, with a small mountain of barbecue potato chips piled around it. He was washing it all down with a bottle of Bud Light.
“Well, good afternoon, Harry Rex. Sorry to barge in on your lunch.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of a beefy hand and said, “You’re not bothering my lunch. What’s up?”
“Drinking already?” Jake said as he backed into a massive leather chair.
“If you had my clients you’d start at breakfast.”
“I thought you did.”
“Never on Mondays. How’s Miss Carla?”
“Fine, thanks, and how’s Miss, uh, what’s her name?”