Life Support Read online

  “Take your time, Mr. Simpson,” Alexia interjected. “I want you to be sure about your answer.”

  Simpson cleared his throat. “Two parcels of land worth $450,000.”

  Alexia picked up the first sheet of paper and handed it to the witness. “And what is the estimated value of your share at the beginning of this fiscal year?”

  “$925,000. But that’s highly speculative.”

  “Would you be willing to transfer your interest in the LLC to your wife as part of the property division in this case and let her bear the risk of loss?”

  Simpson’s face grew red. “Who told you—,” he sputtered.

  Byron Smith stood to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “On what grounds?” the judge asked.

  “May we approach the bench?” Smith requested.

  “Yes.”

  Alexia joined Smith in front of the judge.

  In an intense whisper, the older lawyer began, “I didn’t know about this—”

  “Because his client didn’t tell him,” Alexia responded dryly. “He probably didn’t tell him how he was able to buy two pieces of real estate worth $450,000 on a $40,000 a year income.”

  “Can we take a break so I can talk to my client?” Smith asked.

  The judge frowned. “Ms. Lindale has him on cross-examination.”

  “Then can we have a session with the court in chambers?” Smith asked.

  “That’s fine with me,” Alexia said.

  The judge raised his head. “Very well. Court will be in recess for fifteen minutes while I consult with the attorneys. Mr. Simpson, you may leave the witness stand but may not consult with anyone.”

  Alexia gathered the files from her table. Marilyn Simpson leaned forward. “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “They’re on the run and want the judge to help them out of it. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  The two lawyers followed Judge Garland from the courtroom to his chambers. The judge took off his robe and hung it on a hook behind the door.

  “Alright,” the judge said. “What do you want to discuss?”

  Smith began, “Your Honor, Ms. Lindale’s allegations regarding my client’s financial status were not revealed in pretrial discovery. I need a continuance to review the records she is using to cross-examine Mr. Simpson.”

  “Did you ask her to provide this information?” the judge asked.

  “Yes, I requested all documents supporting her client’s claims for child support and alimony.”

  The judge looked at Alexia. “Your response?”

  Alexia opened one of her folders. “The request for production of documents states ‘all financial, personal, or business records of the party which in any way support her claims for child support and alimony.’ The request is for Mrs. Simpson’s records, not those of her husband. I furnished her records to Mr. Smith within the time required by the rules; Mr. Simpson’s decision not to provide his attorney with his records was not my responsibility.”

  “Let me see,” the judge responded.

  Alexia handed him the information. Both lawyers waited while the judge quickly read the filings.

  “Very well,” he said. “I’m going to allow Ms. Lindale to proceed with her questioning.”

  Smith hesitated and then looked at Alexia.

  “What do you want?” the lawyer asked.

  Alexia was ready. “One-half of his interest in the LLC together with another $250,000 in cash. Child support of $2,000 a month per child through college with comprehensive health insurance and payment of four years’ tuition at the South Carolina average for private institutions at the time each child begins matriculation. Alimony of another $7,500 a month for five years or until my client remarries, whichever comes first, and total indemnification for any unpaid taxes on returns through the current tax year.”

  The older lawyer’s face flushed. “My client doesn’t have that kind of cash or income flow. There had better be plenty of room for negotiation.”

  “Not at this point.” Alexia patted the folder in her lap. “Tell him I know about KalGo and see if he agrees.”

  Forty-five minutes later the judge dismissed the jury and put the terms of the agreement on the record with the court reporter. There had been no further negotiation. Greg Simpson had raised a white surrender flag rather than face further dissection of his secret business dealings. When Simpson capitulated, Alexia agreed that the court reporter need not prepare a transcript of anything except the terms of the settlement. There would be no hot trail for the IRS to follow. Alexia walked triumphantly from the courtroom. Marilyn Simpson joined her.

  Alexia turned to her client. “I’ll prepare a property settlement, alimony, and child support agreement consistent with what was stated in court and send it to your husband’s lawyer by the first of next week.”

  “Can he back out of it?”

  “Not without risking jail for contempt of court. The basic terms of the agreement are on the record in front of the judge. It’s all out in the open now.”

  Greg Simpson and his attorney exited the courtroom and brushed past Alexia and Marilyn without speaking. Her face sad, Marilyn watched her soon-to-be ex-husband as he retreated in defeat.

  Alexia noticed and asked, “What is it?”

  “Did I do the right thing?” Marilyn asked.

  “Of course,” Alexia responded curtly. “You’re getting a good settlement for yourself and your children. Your husband made his choice when he filed for the divorce.”

  “I know, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as I thought it would.”

  Alexia softened. “It’s impossible to put a price tag on a broken relationship, but it will feel better when you get the checks every month and don’t have to go back to work at a convenience store. I’ve seen too many women who didn’t seize the opportunity to get what they deserved and lived to regret it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Marilyn sighed. “I’m just hurt. Knowing he intended to hide all that money even when he was under oath made me wonder what else wasn’t right in our marriage.”

  Alexia didn’t answer. Her private investigator was sure Greg Simpson had a mistress in Savannah but couldn’t connect the dots before the case was called for trial. Without proof, Alexia didn’t burden Marilyn Simpson with rumors of adultery. Clients who suspected their husbands of infidelity often told Alexia that not knowing the truth was worse than having their suspicions confirmed; however, when incriminating photographs left no doubt of unfaithfulness, the women’s reactions to the stark reality of betrayal always exceeded their previous concerns. When fully exposed, the face of evil is always worse than imagined. In Marilyn Simpson’s case, adultery wouldn’t have made a difference. Alexia knew modern-day divorce proceedings focused on money, not morality.

  Lawyer and client parted in front of the courthouse. Marilyn walked toward a blue minivan. Alexia unlocked the door of her silver BMW and put the thick folder that contained the Simpson file in the passenger seat.

  The afternoon weather in Santee was the type natives loved and tourists avoided. It was cold enough that the summer’s insect horde was no longer poised to feast on every inch of exposed human flesh and too cool for visitors to splash in the ocean that lay five miles to the east. Alexia had a native’s perspective. The death of the insects grown fat on the flesh of hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to the Grand Strand every year was a welcome event. The cooler weather also didn’t keep Alexia out of the water; it beckoned her to spend more time on the marsh and in the ocean.

  Growing up, Alexia had lived in four states and two foreign countries, but her favorite place on earth was the South Carolina coast. The five years her family lived in Charleston had been the happiest of her life. So during her second year of law school at the University of Florida, she spread out a map on the kitchen table in her tiny apartment and drew a line fifty miles up and down the East Coast with Charleston in the middle. The line became the area where she focused he
r job search.

  Because her grades were not good enough to open the door to a prestigious Charleston law firm, she began exploring opportunities in smaller communities where female lawyers would have been an anomaly thirty years before but now occupied a recognized niche in the legal field, especially in domestic relations practice. Many women embroiled in a divorce were fed up with men in general and wanted a female attorney to represent them when litigating with deadbeat husbands. With her strong sense of justice and willingness to represent the underdog, Alexia quickly developed a reputation as a divorce specialist who had a knack for ferreting out information that obtained a better result for her clients. When Marilyn Simpson’s pain subsided, she would tell her friends about her lawyer’s exploits, and the steady flow of clients into Alexia’s office would continue.

  Alexia had clerked for Leggitt & Freeman in Santee during the summer following her second year in law school. Pleased with her work, the firm had offered her a job before she returned to Gainesville for her final year of study. Six years later at the age of thirty-two she was on the verge of attaining partnership status. Alexia’s monthly draw as a partner would be less than her current salary, but she would have the opportunity to share in the larger pie of the firm’s total revenue when it was divided each December. Prestige as a partner was an additional, intangible benefit.

  It was a three-minute drive from the courthouse to her office. Leggitt & Freeman occupied a single-story, cream-colored stucco building set amid palmetto trees and surrounded by large clumps of dune grass. Everything about the office was designed to create an image of stability and prosperity. A branch bank stood across the street and a fancy café was a few doors down. Banks, boutiques, restaurants, and real-estate offices had proliferated in the area as development spread inland from the crowded coastal area. Santee was too far from the beach to advertise itself as an oceanside resort, but local business leaders had found a lucrative and less messy alternative to hordes of ill-tempered tourists—golfing communities.

  They were everywhere. Fields that had been farmed by tenant farmers for generations now boasted million-dollar homes overlooking lush fairways. People with accents as homogenized as those of TV actors and actresses shopped at new stores owned by national chains. There were retirees from the northeast who viewed the price of large homes in South Carolina as a bargain and people from other areas of the South who had dreamed of living near the beaches where they had vacationed when their children were small. Wherever they came from, the new residents bought homes in the golfing communities. Some actually played golf, but most just wanted to live in a relaxed, upscale environment.

  Alexia opened the front door of the office and stepped into the reception area. Except for sea scenes on the walls, the waiting room didn’t reflect anything about the coast. A deep red, oriental rug was surrounded by leather couches and chairs. On one wall hung high-quality photographs of all the partners who had worked at the firm since it was founded by Mr. Leggitt’s father before World War II. Each man’s name was engraved on a small brass plate on the bottom of the frame. It was an unusual feature, more suited to a boardroom than a law office, but Mr. Leggitt’s father had started the tradition, and like most traditions, it had developed an inertia that perpetuated the practice. Once she became a partner, Alexia’s picture would join the others—the first woman on the wall.

  Alexia’s office was on the back side of the building. Her secretary was Gwen Jones, a slightly overweight woman in her fifties who dyed her hair a reddish brown, always dressed in bright colors, and kept a perpetual tan. At the sound of Alexia’s footsteps, Gwen looked up in surprise.

  “What happened?” she asked. “I didn’t expect to see you until after the jury went home for the night.”

  Alexia responded with a small, triumphant smile. “We settled it. Marilyn is set for life.”

  “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks. It felt good. Up to the last minute, I wondered if Greg Simpson had an escape hatch, but he was busted in open court. Do you have time to type the settlement documents if I dictate them this afternoon?”

  Gwen pointed a ring-bedecked finger toward Leonard Mitchell’s office. “L. M. loaded me down with paperwork for a deal he’s trying to put together. I don’t know when he needs it, but he acted like it was a rush job. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “No,” Alexia responded.

  Alexia often faced resistance when she asked the partner to set aside his work so Gwen could help her on an urgent matter.

  “It will be easier to do it myself.”

  Alexia went into her office and shut the door. The exposé of Greg Simpson’s hidden business dealings had been one of the more dramatic triumphs of her career. It wouldn’t be reported in the local newspaper, but by the end of the week the legal community would be buzzing with the result. Simpson was a sleazy cheat, but it’s rarely possible to neatly unravel a web of deception. Alexia didn’t have a complete picture of Simpson’s involvement with KalGo, but after the exposure of the Nesbitt deal, Byron Smith wasn’t willing to call her bluff. The questions in court were routine; the hard work had been the behind-the-scenes investigation.

  Alexia had personalized her office with items collected from all over the world. It was like a mini-museum. On one end of her credenza crouched a primitive sculpture of a roaring lion she’d bought in Tanzania. On the other end rested a hand-painted tray from the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. An intricate tapestry from Greece adorned one wall, and a collage of photographs of Alexia in front of famous buildings across Europe decorated another. Most of her early travels were with her mother. Lately, she’d been sojourning on her own. After the hectic pace of life at the office, she longed for times of prolonged solitude.

  For more than a year, a picture of her former fiancé, Jason Favreau, had occupied the place of highest prominence on the front corner of her desk. Jason, a tall, dark-haired engineer, shared enough common denominators with Alexia that most computer dating services would have predicted a storybook romance. Both had international pedigrees: Alexia’s mother was a Russian who defected to the United States in the 1960s and married a man from Ohio, while Jason’s father was a Frenchman who married a woman from California. Jason was fluent in French, and Alexia spoke passable Russian. They both loved to travel, read, swim, and listen to classical music.

  Shortly after their engagement, Jason went to Marseille to supervise a large construction project. Ten weeks passed with excruciating slowness until Alexia was scheduled to fly over for a five-day visit. The night before she was to leave, Jason called and told her not to come. One of his father’s cousins had introduced him to a French girl, and they were in love. Two months later, they married and moved to Quebec.

  After her tears dried, Alexia tore up Jason’s picture and scattered the pieces in the ocean, but a measure of pain remained. Having experienced betrayal and misplaced trust, her empathy for her jilted clients increased, and she poured herself more fiercely into her work. Her daily diet of divorce work soured Alexia’s taste for romantic relationships, and her mother was worried that she’d be an old maid. Alexia deflected her comments with statements that she was too busy for men and needed time to forget what had happened. In any event, the sampling of suitable men in Santee for a woman like Alexia was sparse.

  She turned on her computer. A fast typist, she was almost through with the first draft of the Simpson agreement when the light for an interoffice call came on and the phone buzzed. It was Mr. Leggitt.

  “Alexia, I heard about your exploits in court today,” the senior partner said. “Can you come to my office? I have something important to discuss with you.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m finishing up the agreement. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Alexia smiled. Her marriage to Jason Favreau hadn’t worked out, but her partnership with Leggitt & Freeman was about to be consummated.

  3

  Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.

  THOMAS KYD
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br />   Rena crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

  It was a long way to the boulders at the bottom of the gorge, and the chance that a person could strike the unforgiving rocks and live to tell about it was negligible.

  Baxter’s body was in plain view. He’d fallen directly below the spot where she peered over the edge and come to rest with his back arched over a smooth, tan boulder. His right leg was twisted in an unnatural manner that left no doubt it was broken. His face was turned away from her as if looking downstream toward the place where the water regrouped and entered the woods. Straining her eyes, she tried to detect any hint of life in her husband’s broken body. Nothing moved except the water cascading into the valley below. Human beings have an amazing capacity for survival, but a skier hitting a tree with a fraction of the same impact wouldn’t live to the bottom of the slopes.

  Spray from the waterfall was splashing on her husband’s clothes. It would have been chilly to a conscious person sitting on the rock, but it was apparent Baxter didn’t feel anything. Wherever people go when they die, Baxter Richardson had made a quick, unexpected journey. Rena didn’t believe in a hereafter. It was all she could do to endure each day.

  She sank down with her face against the cool rock and sobbed with a mixture of shock at what she’d done and relief that it was over. The childhood monsters she’d mentioned to Baxter didn’t hide in the woods near the top of the waterfall. They lived as memories of the years she spent after her mother’s death with Vernon Swafford in a ramshackle house where her worst tormentor sat across the dinner table from her and threatened her with death if she ever told anyone the truth. During those years of pain, what should have been a sharp line between fact and fiction blurred and sometimes Rena didn’t know what was real and what was nightmare.

  When she was fifteen, her stepfather was arrested and put in jail for thirty days after a barroom brawl. Left alone, Rena ran down the road to a store and called her mother’s older sister in Spartanburg. She waited an hour until her Aunt Louise arrived in a dilapidated car, which to Rena looked like a heavenly chariot. They hurriedly collected Rena’s meager personal belongings and fled.