Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 (13 page)

Huff drove his rental car out to Lucktown, north of Danville, to look at a historical marker on the site of the old railroad depot. Rejecting Bill MacPherson's suggestions of various local motels, he took rooms for himself and his attorney in an ornate Queen Anne-style bed and
breakfast on the elegant section of Main Street known locally as Millionaire's Row. He took long walks in the warm June sunshine, admiring the late Victorian houses that line Danville's grandest old thoroughfare. In these graceful old mansions the city's tobacco and textile barons had entertained each other—and even generated a bit of minor history. On the corner of Main and Broad streets was the birthplace of the Langhorne sisters; Nancy became Viscountess Astor, the first woman to sit in Britain's House of Commons, and her sister Irene became the model for the Gibson Girl, created by her artist-husband, Charles Dana Gibson.

Huff spent a good bit of time in one of the oldest houses on Main Street, once the residence of William T. Sutherlin and now the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. For a week in April 1865, the massive gray sandstone building topped with a glass cupola had been the last capitol of the Confederacy, sheltering Jefferson Davis and his cabinet after the fall of Richmond. Huff wandered around the rooms of restored Victorian furnishings, with plaster ceiling work and its elaborately carved furniture. He told the curator that he was thinking of buying an antebellum home, and that he needed ideas on how to decorate it. However, he spent a good bit of time reading Jefferson Davis's last speech, penned in the drawing room. And he asked if there were any local
memoirs dating from the Civil War in the library upstairs. He paid scant attention to the displays of quilts and local artwork in the basement of the museum, but he was most interested in finding out whether there had been any additions to the house in modern times—and where outbuildings had stood a century before.

When Nathan Kimball returned to the bed and breakfast at four o'clock, he found Mr. Huff sitting in the chair by the window reading local-history pamphlets with the air of someone studying for an exam. He looked up as the door opened. “Well?”

Kimball, who had long given up expecting courtesy from his client, ignored the brusqueness of the salutation. “Everything seems to check out,” he said, loosening his tie as he sat down on the bed. “Though, of course, if you were relying on bank financing, they'd want to do everything about three times, just to make sure. Still, I've looked over MacPherson's paperwork—title search, the terms of the deed, and so on. The house was left as a trust for the widows and daughters of Confederate veterans, but there was a clause stating that the board—that is, the residents and their attorney—could dispose of the house if it was no longer needed for its original purpose. I think it's safe to assume that there won't be any more widows or daughters turning up at this late date.”

“Not after a hundred and thirty-odd years,” Huff agreed.

“I mentioned that we were thinking of offering a million two, and he said he'd talk to his clients, but that he thought that they'd wait for other offers in that case. Apparently they have received other responses to their ad.”

Huff narrowed his eyes. “On whose authority did you offer them less than the asking price?”

“Well, I didn't think you'd mind,” stammered Kimball. “I thought I might save you some money, since the sellers seem to be in a hurry, and you once said you expected a discount for cash.”

“Tell MacPherson we'll meet their price. But we want to close tomorrow.”

   The walk from the law office to the police station took A. P. Hill up Loyal Street, past an old tobacco warehouse that was once Confederate Prison No. 6. Sometimes she would linger, looking at the old building, remembering the harrowing account she had read of conditions in Danville's military prisons. Today, though, her thoughts were on the more modern version of prison in Danville: the jail in which Tug Mosier awaited trial, unable to make bail.

She had examined the police reports about the murder of Misti Hale, but the results seemed inconclusive. They had been unable to locate any of Tug's drinking buddies from the
evening in question, and no witnesses saw him or anyone else enter his home that night. Misti Hale had been strangled, and there was no physical evidence—hairs, fingerprints, or anything else—to identify her killer. The evidence against Tug Mosier was circumstantial, but as she had learned in law school, many a man has been hanged on circumstantial evidence. (Well, been electrocuted, then, since this was Virginia.) If the prosecutor could find a motive or convince a jury that he had planned the crime in advance, he could be convicted of capital murder. In theory, Powell Hill did not disapprove of the death penalty, but in practice, she didn't want to feel eternally responsible if her client paid the extreme penalty because her defense was not adequate.

Tug Mosier's past did not help matters either. As his attorney, Powell could not present him to a jury as an upstanding citizen who had accidentally fallen under suspicion of a crime through no fault of his own. Mosier was an eleventh-grade dropout whose checkered job record seldom showed anything lasting longer than a year or paying more than minimum wage. He came from a broken home and had run away from his grandmother's care by the time he was fifteen. The grandmother had been dead for years now, and apparently there was no one else who cared what happened to Tug Mosier.

He had a string of run-ins with the law that stretched all the way back to junior high school: throwing bricks off the overpass and trying to hit passing cars. From there he progressed to drunk driving, assault charges for barroom fights, and an occasional larceny or bad-check charge. He had served time in various county jails, but never in prison. All in all, his criminal record presented a picture of an irresponsible man lacking in ambition and self-control, one with a penchant for violence—just the sort of man who could have killed Misti Hale in a drunken argument. Worst of all, Tug Mosier was not even proclaiming his innocence; all he could offer was a reasonable doubt about his own guilt. Powell Hill wondered if she could persuade a jury to give him the benefit of that doubt, considering his record.

The television news story last night hadn't helped, either. The news team had begun with a shot of an unshaven Tug Mosier, dressed in jeans and an undershirt, leering at the camera. Then they had cut to an interview with the grieving family of Misti Hale.
They
looked as worthy and upstanding as the Waltons, expressing their sorrow in dignified tones. Misti had been the wayward daughter of a well-liked local pediatrician. Dr. Hale's colleagues, friends, and former patients would naturally be outraged by the murder of his pretty daughter. Powell could imagine the television audience
chanting:
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
The story made headlines in the morning paper, too. She wondered if there was anybody left in Danville who didn't think that Tug Mosier was a human pit bull.

A. P. Hill had walked another half block before that thought came around again, and this time she really considered its implications. Would there be local prejudice in the case? Enough to jeopardize her client's right to a fair trial? She decided that before she went back to talk to Tug, she'd better go to the courthouse and find a Silverback. She had to find out how to go about getting a change of venue for Tug Mosier's murder trial.

   Bill MacPherson was up to his ears in tedious paperwork and silence was worth four dollars a minute, so naturally the phone rang. The trill of the bell so close to his ear annoyed him so much that he snatched it up at once, forgetting about Edith in the outer office.

“Hello! MacPherson and Hill.”

“Is that you, Bill?” The drawling tones of an elderly voice froze Bill as he sat gripping the phone. “I just had a little question. Thought I'd put you on it.”

“That's what I'm here for,” he managed to say. “How are you, Mr. Trowbridge?”

“Oh, I can't complain.”
I'll bet you can,
thought Bill. “Well, here's my question. Have you got a pencil handy to jot this down?”

“Ready when you are,” said Bill, striving to keep a note of impatience out of his voice.

“Well, I was just wondering. I was watching a cop show on television last night. Suppose a policeman arrested a guy who had a fake ID. Say he was calling himself Fred Jones when his real name was Bob Brown. So the arrest papers and everything will be made out in the phony name. Can the guy go all the way through the trial and sentencing and then produce identification to say who he really is, then claim that the charges don't apply to him because he was misidentified? Can he tell them to go find somebody named Fred Jones and put him in jail? Can he do that?”

Bill blinked. “No. We didn't cover that in law school, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work. You may be able to outsmart the state, but not as easily as that. I suppose you want me to check on it formally, though.”

“Sure, I'd like to know exactly
why
it wouldn't work. You could look it up.”

“Yeah. Okay. I'll see what I can do.” Bill sighed. “Give me a couple of days. I'll call you back.”

“That's fine,” said Trowbridge cheerfully. “You know, this is a lot of fun. It's one of the best presents the wife has ever come up with.”

What did she give you last year?
thought Bill.
A thumbscrew? Aloud he said, “I'll be in touch, Mr. Trowbridge. Goodbye.”

The next time the phone rang, about two minutes later, Bill had no trouble remembering to let Edith answer it. Seconds later she appeared in the doorway. “Nathan Kimball for you,” she said. “Good luck.”

Bill motioned for her to stay. “Yes?” he said into the phone. “Yes, this is he …  All right …  Yes, I understand … Tomorrow? But that's a lot of paperwork … I see. Well, if you put it that way. I suppose we could—I'll tell my clients and call you back. Ten minutes or so … Good. Until then.” He hung up the phone with a bemused smile. “You want the good news, Edith, or the bad news?”

“Give me the good news,” said Edith. “It'll make a nice change.”

“Mr. Huff has decided to buy the Home for Confederate Women. His lawyers have okayed the deal, and he's willing to pay the asking price without any quibbling.” Bill looked smug. “I mentioned that there had been other inquiries.”

“You mean the old guy who wanted to see it if we'd trade it for $65,000 and a trailer at Virginia Beach?”

“Well, it
was
an offer of sorts,” said Bill.

“Okay. The good news is Mr. Huff will buy the house for the asking price. And the bad news is—what? He wants to pay it in Confederate money?” asked Edith.

“No. The bad news is that we have to close the deal tomorrow.”

Edith sneered. “That's impossible. When my brother bought his house, it liked to have taken forever.”

“That was because he needed bank financing,” Bill told her. “Mortgages do take forever. But if Mr. Huff is paying cash—well, not
cash,
but transferring funds from his bank to ours, without borrowing any money from anyone—then all we have to do is the paperwork.”

“That must be the bad news,” said Edith. “That's a lot of documents to generate in one day's time. I suppose you'll be wanting me to cancel my evening's plans and work overtime.”

“I really need you,” said Bill. “But we'll be able to afford to pay you overtime from our commission from the sale of the house.”

“Well, that's good. It's nice to know that I could afford to eat if I ever had the time. I'd better get started on it. Have you called the old ladies yet?”

“That's my next move,” said Bill, reaching for the phone. “Just think! I've finished my first case. Won't Powell be pleased?”

“You bet. And astonished, too,” said Edith, strolling back to her desk.

It's amazing how much time lawyers spend on the phone,
Bill thought as he dialed the Home for Confederate Women.
Gab and write letters.
After four rings, the receiver was picked up, and
Bill heard Flora Dabney's voice. “Miss Dabney! Bill MacPherson here. I have wonderful news! Mr. Huff wants to buy your house. Tomorrow!”

Five minutes later Bill was standing in front of Edith's desk, with an expression of utter dismay.

Edith looked up from her computer terminal. “Well? She hasn't changed her mind about selling, has she?”

“No,” said Bill, perching on the edge of the desk. “It's not as bad as that. It's just that she says they can't come to the office tomorrow. Apparently, one of them has a doctor's appointment, and another one isn't feeling well enough to leave the house. I explained to her that Mr. Huff wants to finalize the sale tomorrow.”

“And what did she say?”

“She wants me to handle the whole thing.”

“Don't they want to meet this fellow who's buying their house?”

“Apparently not. We finally decided that I would draw up a power of attorney form and go over there now and get it signed. Then at the closing tomorrow, I'll sign the papers on their behalf.”

“Who gets the money, then?”

“Mr. Huff gives me a cashier's check or wires the funds or whatever, and it gets deposited in the firm's trust account. Then I deduct our commission, and pay the rest to Miss Dabney and her housemates. So that won't change.”

“Did you remember to call Mr. Kimball and tell him that tomorrow is all set?”

“Yeah, just now,” said Bill. “I also asked him about defendants who use phony names, but he was no help.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Just another one of Mr. Trowbridge's questions. I'd better get going now if I want to get all this done. I'll be back as soon as I can. Want me to bring back a pizza?”

“Are you buying?”