MacPherson's Lament

CHAPTER 8

MY BROTHER’S OFFICE is too small to accommodate visitors except on the most temporary basis, but since I needed access to a telephone, it seemed like a logical place from which to work. Bill did not seem to agree, even though I assured him that I would be completely unobtrusive and that he would soon forget my proximity, except when the phone was for me. Men are such territorial creatures; you would have thought there was another rooster on his dunghill the way he glowered at me, rattled his papers, and displayed exaggerated symptoms of claustrophobia.

Finally I pointed to the cloaked rodent on the bookcase. “Anyone who would consent to share an office with that,” I said, “has absolutely no business objecting to the presence of a charming relative who is merely trying to help.”

“I feel like I’m under house arrest,” muttered Bill, throwing open the window to let in a blast of steam from a Danville summer afternoon. “Why don’t you use A. P. Hill’s office? Or Edith’s desk? It’s her day off.”

“I’m a Ph.D.,” I reminded him. “I’m not going to masquerade as your receptionist. And as for using your partner’s office, I wouldn’t dream of intruding into her space because I haven’t met her,” I said in a voice of sweet reason. “Besides, she doesn’t need my help. You do.”

“You’re supposed to be finding the old ladies,” Bill replied. “And they’re not in here.”

The phone rang at that moment, forestalling my next remark, which would have been to explain that I was in the process of tracking the absconding Confederate women, but like any sensible person with management experience, I had delegated the task. First I went to all the local travel agents to see if any of them had assisted in the travel plans of eight elderly women. The initial answer had been negative, but they all agreed to check their records and get back to me. I had told them a pretty story about Great-Aunt Flora needing her prescription refill at once, which would no doubt inspire them to speedier efforts at locating my quarry.

I had told a similarly fanciful tale to a sympathetic young clerk at the local moving company. She in turn had promised to search through the last month’s paperwork for evidence of the vanishing old ladies.

Meanwhile, on a hunch, I’d obtained a list of all the hotels in the Cayman Islands, and was systematically calling them to see if Flora Dabney and her cohorts were in hiding there. I think it was extremely ungrateful of Bill to be churlish about my use of his phone line. Even when I told him I’d pay his miserable little long-distance bill, he wasn’t the least bit gracious about it.

Now, though, he looked as if he was regretting having put a stop to my phone inquiries. He was nodding into the phone with a decidedly agitated expression, and saying, “Yes, Mr. Trowbridge,” about six times a minute.

“Well, actually, I’m still looking into that last question of yours, Mr. Trowbridge,” Bill said, with the hollow laugh he uses when he’s lying. “I wanted to make sure I covered all the ramifications for you. But you can certainly give me another question now. Certainly. That’s what I’m here for. What would you like to know this week?” He began to scribble notes on his yellow legal pad, grimacing as he wrote.

After a few more minutes of sickening politeness, he hung up the phone and threw his pencil up in the air, making absolutely no attempt to catch it.

I retrieved the pencil for him, setting it carefully on his desk, and waiting to see if he would throw it again, at which point I planned to suggest that he purchase a dog.

“That was Mr. Trowbridge,” said Bill. “His wife put us on retainer to answer stupid legal questions for him. He has a very fertile mind-by which I mean that it is absolutely full of crap. He never seems to run out.”

“What is it this time?” I asked, to humor him. At least he was talking.

“He wants me to find out-get this: can an Indian tribe confiscate your property if they prove that their tribe once owned the land? If there’s an Indian burial or something on your property. He says that Israel seems to have used that logic to establish their nation, and he wants to know if it would work for the Shawnees.”

“How would he go about finding a Shawnee?” I asked. I knew that Cherokees were still around, but I thought that most of the other eastern Indian tribes had vanished.

“It may be hypothetical,” said Bill. “Or Mr. Trowbridge may be planning to declare himself the last of the tribe, and claim-who knows what? Monticello? Downtown Richmond?”

“I see. Good luck figuring out that answer,” I said. “Well, not the answer. It’s pretty clear that the answer is no. Nonpayment of taxes for a few centuries would disqualify them, if nothing else, but I suppose he wants the terms of some obscure treaty. It’s the whys and wherefores that will take time.”

“I haven’t got time,” said Bill. “I need to work on this house sale business before the bar association-”

The phone rang again, and Bill snatched it up with a hunted look on his face. “MacPherson and Hill!” he bleated. Then his face fell and he heaved a mighty sigh. “Oh, hello, Mother.”

I was poised to take the phone, thinking surely she must want to speak to me, her only daughter just back from Europe; but Bill ignored my presence, looking more miserable with every breath.

“Yes, Mother. I guess I was supposed to be in court today to see about that restraining order we filed against Dad about the goldfish, but something came up. What? Well, another case, actually. No, Mother, I don’t think your case is trivial at all. I do like goldfish, it’s just that-Well, I don’t care what your friend Frances told you, I… What? Fine! I hope you can afford him!”

“What was that all about?” I asked when the sound of a receiver being slammed down stopped ringing in my ears.

“I thought you were supposed to be unobtrusive!” Bill said with a snarl. “What are you? A backseat lawyer? If you must know, that was one of my clients. A Mrs. Margaret MacPherson, who shares many of your less attractive traits, such as a tendency to nag. And since you ask, she fired me from her divorce proceedings against my father. Our father. Are you happy now?”

“You haven’t told them about the mess you’re in, have you?”

Bill put his head in his hands. “No. I have not told my mommy and daddy that I am in imminent danger of going to jail for legal malpractice. I thought they might have enough to worry about as it is. A goldfish custody hearing, perhaps.”

I began to pace, which in Bill’s cubbyhole does not burn up too many calories. “I can’t believe Mother actually fired you, Bill. She always liked you best.”

“Yeah, right,” sneered my brother. “In her current mood, she considers Jack the Ripper just an average guy. She’ll probably hire a woman lawyer now. I wonder if Powell would take the case. At least she’s competent.”

“You’re all right,” I said. “You’re honest, anyhow. That’s a start.”

“It is if I can prove it. Right now I’m popularly supposed to have a million bucks salted away in the Cayman Islands.” He was out of his seat and through the door before I could protest.

“Where are you going?” I called after him.

“To the courthouse law library!” said Bill. “To check on Shawnee property laws.”

Doug MacPherson sagged against a park bench, listening to his heartbeat. He thought that if he took off his sweat-soaked T-shirt, he could watch his heart beat. A masochistic generation, these youngsters of the nineties. In his day, once you finished with boot camp, you tried not to exert yourself unduly and you certainly didn’t consider it recreation. But Caroline had insisted. Well, she hadn’t nagged; she had simply assumed that he would be as addicted to running as she was. And of course, physical exercise was so good for him. At the moment, though, all it seemed good for was ensuring that he would look fit and trim in his coffin!

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Caroline prancing back to see what was keeping him, little beads of sweat glistening on her golden forehead. He tried to subdue his breathing into a controlled wheeze so that she wouldn’t see his shoulders shaking with the effort.

“Hi, hon!” she said, handing him the towel from around her neck. “You didn’t get a leg cramp, did you?”

“Yes!” he gasped, thankfully seizing the excuse. It sounded better than the total collapse he was experiencing. He eased himself down on the park bench and began massaging his calf. The right one, he thought. I must remember which one to limp on. Aloud he said, “That darned calf muscle. It’s an old football injury from my days on the varsity at Georgia Tech.” (Well, he had attended Georgia Tech, and he had played varsity in high school, so it was almost true.)

Caroline pushed her dark bangs away from her forehead. Her lovely, vacant face furrowed with concern. “Gee, can you walk on it, Doug?”

“I can manage,” he said, still a trifle breathless. “I probably ought to take it easy for a while, though. Wouldn’t want to tear the muscle.”

He allowed Caroline to put her shoulder under his arm and guide him along, as he hopped and limped back to the car. “Well, I guess that puts the kibosh on running for a while,” he remarked, trying to mute the cheerfulness in his tone. “Maybe I could teach you to play bridge this week instead.”

Caroline wrinkled her nose. “Yecch! I hate card games. They’re so dreary.”

Doug felt a pang of disappointment. He quite enjoyed a rousing game of bridge, and what’s more he was good at it. He and Margaret almost always won a prize at the-he choked off the memory in mid-thought. That was the old Doug MacPherson, he reminded himself. If he was going to start over, he couldn’t live in the past. Besides, with Caroline there were better things to do than play cards. He pictured poor Margaret at home, watching soap operas and counting the goldfish, and sighed to himself, thinking how close he had come to death from sheer boredom.

“The leg feels better now,” he told Caroline. “Let’s try it again.”

I was sitting around watching the phone not ring and wondering if one could have an early hamburger in lieu of Scotland’s very civilized afternoon teatime when the door to the outer office banged, and a beautiful blonde walked in. Oh, goody, I thought. Can fistfights and shots of rye be far behind? Alas, women’s lives never live up to men’s fantasies.

She was very pretty in a wholesome track-team sort of way, with short-cropped hair and blue eyes that didn’t have time to be charming because they were boring into you for analysis. I endeavored to look pleasant, but since she was probably the sort of person accustomed to being fawned over, my effort made little impression. “May I help you?”

She frowned in my direction and then looked wildly around the office. “Good grief! Edith hasn’t resigned, has she?”

“Not to my knowledge,” I assured her. “But she isn’t here. I’m Elizabeth MacPherson. Can I help?”

She stopped pacing for a moment and stuck out her hand. “A. P. Hill. I’m your brother’s partner. I guess you know that.”

I nodded. What I didn’t know was whether Bill had confided his current legal difficulties to her. “He’s in the courthouse, I think. Mr. Trowbridge called with another legal question.”

A. P. Hill rolled her eyes. “I knew Bill should never have taken that stupid job. He’ll end up spending all his time ferreting out answers to useless questions-and he’ll neglect the real practice. I can’t stick around to keep him working on more productive matters because I have an out-of-town trial to deal with.” She sighed. “How is he?”

“Oh, he’s keeping busy,” I said somewhat evasively. “How is your case going? I heard it was a murder trial.”

“It’s a tough one,” she said. “Of course, it’s my first real trial, which makes it even more difficult for me.”

“They trusted you with a murder trial?” I didn’t mean to sound unflattering, but I wouldn’t want to risk my life in the hands of a novice attorney.

“Nobody else wanted to take it.” She shrugged. “By the time I’m through, it’ll hardly pay minimum wage. But I thought that if I did well for Tug Mosier, I could get myself noticed in local legal circles.”

“How’s the plan going so far?”

“I haven’t evolved any brilliant schemes for the defense. He was drunk at the time he supposedly killed his girlfriend, so I had a doctor give him a regression-therapy drug to see if it would help him recall the events of that night.”

“What if he remembered doing it?”

A. P. Hill fiddled with a pencil from the desk. “I would have pleaded diminished capacity, I guess. It certainly wouldn’t be first-degree murder. I was hoping he’d remember not doing it. It could have been a burglar, you know. I needed some kind of evidence that somebody else could have done it.”

“Reasonable doubt?”

“Yes. And I got it. Under sedation, Tug remembered a guy named Red going home with him. After that, he just stared at the wall and wouldn’t talk. I thought about trying again, but then I remembered one of my law professors saying that you don’t really want to know if your client is guilty, because it will detract from the zeal of your defense of him.”

“But I thought the whole point of the sedation was to find out if he did it.”

“Well, it was, but when I heard him mention another man at the scene of the crime, I thought the safest thing was to go with that. All I have to do is suggest to a jury that Red could have done it, and then they can’t convict Tug.”

“They can’t?”

A.P. groaned. “Of course they can. The jury can do whatever it wants. It’s my job to persuade them that they aren’t sure enough to convict Tug.”

“It would be interesting to know if he did it or not,” I mused. “Do you have the paperwork on the case?”

“Copies in the file cabinet. Why?”

“I thought I’d take a look at the autopsy report. I’m a forensic anthropologist.”

A. P. Hill did not look particularly impressed by this announcement. “I’ll get it for you,” she said. “Just leave it on my desk when you’re through. I have to go.” She scribbled a telephone number on a note pad and wrote Powell beside it. “That’s the phone number of the motel I’m staying in. I moved out of the old one because they kept forgetting to give me my messages.”

“I’ll see that Bill gets this,” I promised.

“Thanks. While you’re at it, tell Bill to start boning up on discrimination law in his copious free time. When this trial is over, I’ll have a new case for us.”

“A new client?”

She grinned. “Yeah. Me. We’re suing the National Park Service.”

Before I could ask her what she meant by that, she was gone. I started to leaf through the stack of papers. The case seemed rather ordinary, I thought. Very tragic for the family of the victim, but not exceptional for an attorney or a policeman. It was the sort of case you read about in small-town papers every Monday morning: drunken good old boy kills his girlfriend. I thought prison might not be such a bad idea for Tug Mosier. He didn’t seem to have any other prospects.

I hadn’t got very far in the case file when the phone rang again.

“Bill MacPherson, please,” said a voice like old razor blades.

“I’m sorry, he’s not here. May I take a message?” I didn’t want to talk to this voice long enough to explain who I wasn’t. He sounded like the kind of man who thinks female and secretary are synonymous anyhow.

“This is Agent Runge of the State Bureau of Investigation. When do you expect Mr. MacPherson to return?”

“Any time now,” I said as pleasantly as I could while my blood froze. “Shall I have him call you?”

“You do that.” He barked out his number and then hung up without saying goodbye. He probably thought I was scum just because I answered the phone for one of his suspects. I actually felt guilty when I hung up. In fact, I think if the agent had walked in at that point, I might have confessed to two robberies and an earthquake. I’ll bet Mr. Runge is pretty darned good at his job.

I made a note to Bill to call SBI Agent Runge at the number given. Do not whimper into phone, I added. I thought Bill ought to be warned.

Things were getting serious, though. It looked as though we were running out of time. I called some more moving companies and finally found one who remembered the old ladies. Yes, they had gone out to the Phillips Mansion and packed up all the furniture. Where had they taken it? I asked breathlessly, ready to solve the case.

“It’s in storage,” the man said. “We are waiting for further instructions.”

Old ladies: three. MacPhersons: nothing.

Spurred on by the ominous SBI agent and the cleverness of our opponents, I thought furiously for a while. Where would they go? How would they get there? Did they have a car? Maybe they bought one. How many car dealerships are there in Danville? Wait. If they didn’t have a car, how did they get to a dealership? Are there taxis in Danville? I grabbed for the phone book. It was going to be a long afternoon. I could tell that this was going to be tedious. If I had wanted to go around asking prying questions of total strangers, I would have become a social worker.

With all eighteen pounds of silver-striped Beauregard purring contentedly on her lap, Anna Douglas squinted at her sketch pad and looked again at the swirl of colors in the seascape in front of her. She really did have a lovely view from the patio of her room at the Comfort Inn. The motel was set parallel between the island’s main road and the ocean, so that every room offered a sea view. Anna, Jenny, and Julia Hotchkiss had adjoining ground-floor rooms with kitchenettes and sliding glass doors leading to small concrete patios. They were lounging in the salt air, with Anna sketching, Jenny dozing, and Julia working her way through a box of saltwater taffy.

Anna thought the island was most satisfactory. The few little shops on the island were all within walking distance of the motel, and the nearest restaurant had proved satisfactory. The latest issue of Home Guide that she’d found in the restaurant advertised several suitable one-story houses for sale on the island, but decisions regarding permanent residence would have to wait until the others arrived with the car. True, the island was a bit too crowded with summer tourists, and the one main road was clogged with cars, but there were compensations for these inconveniences. Winter would be very pleasant in this summer climate, a far cry from the bitter chill of Virginia. When the chauffeured car had brought the three of them on the long drive from the airport, Anna had decided to take up temporary residence in the Comfort Inn while she waited for Flora and the others to arrive. They had determined to meet at the island’s post office (across the street) at noon two days hence.

Meanwhile, Anna had busied herself by locating a licensed practical nurse to look after the two invalids and finding out the particulars of community life: distance to hospital, location of local churches, and so on. She took long walks around the island, noting landmarks and FOR SALE signs. Most of the island’s population seemed to be elderly, which pleased her immensely.

It was by no means certain that the group would decide to stay there once they were reunited, but Anna hoped that she could persuade them to do so. Anna never liked to feel that she was without a home. When she was a young girl, during the Great Depression, her parents had lost their home, and the memory of that banishment had remained in her mind all these years, like a shadow on an X ray. She thought she hadn’t minded so much losing the Danville mansion because the others kept assuring her that there was plenty of money to purchase another house. But now that she had been a transient for a while, the old feelings of sleeplessness and nagging anxiety had crept back. She wished that Flora would hurry up and get there so that they could get settled.

Anna looked down at her sketch pad. In the middle of the placid ocean, she had drawn the dorsal fin of a shark.

There’s an old country song that says, “It’s a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville.” It certainly is, especially if you have to do it by telephone, calling every car dealership in between. Having just done that, I believe I’d rather try it next time in the runaway freight train.

After many hours of absolutely cloying charm (which does not come naturally to me, despite my Southern upbringing) I managed to find a car dealer in Lynchburg who clearly remembered selling a Chrysler to a gaggle of old ladies who arrived by taxi and paid cash for their purchase. He didn’t know where they were headed, though, and I didn’t think that I could persuade the police to put out an all-points bulletin for a nonstolen car. Especially since I had no real evidence that the new owners were the old ladies from the Home for Confederate Women. According to the dealer, the car had been purchased by a woman calling herself Mrs. James Ewell Brown. Very funny. I guess they left off the general’s last name because that would have been too obvious. If they had added Stuart, even a car dealer might have figured out that Mrs. Jeb Stuart was probably an alias. And what were the rest of them calling themselves? Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Jackson, and Mrs. Bedford Forrest? Actually, I was beginning to feel a sneaking admiration for the feisty old dears, and if it hadn’t been for the imminent prospect of my brother’s going to prison, I might have been tempted to wish them Godspeed and forget the whole thing. As it was, I thought I’d better find them and try to work out a compromise thereafter.

It was nearly seven o’clock. Midnight in Scotland. I decided to call Cameron and give him a report on the situation thus far.

“I thought it would be you,” he said. “Even before I heard that four-syllable hello of yours. Nobody else would call at this hour.”

“Blame the time zone,” I told him. “I’ve been working all afternoon and couldn’t spare a moment earlier.”

“How are things in the colonies? I trust your parents are well?”

“I trust so, too,” I said. “I haven’t had time to contend with them yet. I’m not looking forward to it, either, mind you. But Bill’s problems had to come first.”

“And have you solved all the troubles of Clan MacPherson? Cleared your brother’s name, and all that?”

“Not yet I haven’t.” I told him all about Bill’s ill-fated house sale and the ensuing chaos when both the residents and the purchase money went missing, leaving Bill looking like a swindler with both an irate buyer and the assistant state director of art and antiquities after his hide. “The old ladies are still missing, and so is the money. If only I could find them, I could sort all this out. I managed to track them to Lynchburg. They took a taxi there and bought a white Chrysler from a local car dealer. Where they went after that is anybody’s guess.”

“North Carolina, I expect,” said Cameron. “And then South Carolina.”

“What?”

“You said it was anybody’s guess,” he replied smugly.

“Don’t confuse me,” I warned him. “There isn’t much time left. Already SBI agents are calling here asking for Bill in ominous tones.”

“Well, then you’d better get busy, dear.”

“Doing what?”

“Begin by returning a call from your cousin Geoffrey. He rang up earlier this evening for you. I told him you were in America.”

“Geoffrey! I certainly don’t have time to bother with him right now.”

“Nevertheless, you ought to call him. Because he told me that he met a group of old ladies who knew Bill, and that in his opinion they were behaving oddly.”

“Where is he?” I whispered. Geoffrey has the most maddening habit of being in the right place at the right time.

“Geoffrey? He’s in Atlanta. Shall I give you the number he left?”

“Yes, please,” I said evenly. “I’m going to hang up now and call him. And I only wish it were midnight in Atlanta.” Not that the lateness of the hour would inconvenience my cousin. Midnight is the shank of his evening. I dialed his number with shaking fingers, because there was an excellent chance that he was out at dinner or partying. (Geoffrey’s last quiet evening at home was believed to have taken place in 1983 during a flu epidemic.) Sure enough, the phone rang about ten times and nobody picked it up. I figured I had about five hours to kill before Geoffrey tottered in from his revelries, so I hung up, and cast about for something else to keep me occupied.

I went over and inspected the bookcase. Bill didn’t keep any books or magazines worth reading in his office, and Edith’s crossword puzzle books didn’t interest me either. I was about to go up to Bill’s apartment to watch television, not a pleasant prospect, because he has a tiny black-and-white set with no vertical hold. Surely there must be something else I could do, I thought. Short of dusting the office.

Suddenly I noticed the manila folder that A. P. Hill had left with me: the autopsy report on her murder case. I settled back in Bill’s chair and began to sift through the report. It began, as they often do, with “the body of a well-nourished female.” I suppose that’s a holdover from earlier decades when well-nourished bodies were less commonplace. I wondered, though, if some of my yogurt-happy jogger friends would merit some other opening remark. This is the body of a downright scrawny yuppie… It was a pleasant fantasy, enlivening an otherwise unpleasant chronicle of a young life wasted.

Misti Hale had been twenty-four years old at the time of her death. The report went on to describe the lividity of the body, the coloration, the bruises on her neck. I read through the report and looked at the photographs of the girl who might have been pretty. In graduate school I’d had courses in forensic pathology, and all this looked sadly familiar. I kept thinking, though, that there was something else I should be looking for, but I couldn’t remember what it was. All my notes were back in Scotland anyhow. I was about to put the folder aside, thinking that the missing detail might come back to me later, when the phone rang. I hoped it was Bill. I hadn’t had dinner.

“Calvin Trowbridge here,” said a male voice laden with Southern money. “Is Bill there?”

“It’s nearly eight o’clock,” I said, glancing at my watch. “He’s not in the office. Is it urgent?”

“No, just a thought. See, I have Bill on retainer to-”

“Oh, you’re the one! Well, he’s terribly busy. Why don’t you go to law school if you’re so keen to know all this stuff?”

I hung up before he could reply. I had considered many careers during my four-year stint as a liberal arts major, but public relations was never one of them.

At ten o’clock I gave up on Bill and went back to my motel room. (I could have stayed with my brother, but lodging two people in his apartment would be like trying to live in a squirrel’s nest.) I was still thinking about A. P. Hill’s case and trying to come up with more ideas for tracing the old ladies. Washing my hair did not get me any further along on either problem.

I waited until nearly midnight before trying to return Geoffrey’s call. The chances of waking him up were slim, but I’d hope for the best. After two rings he picked up the phone, sounding as disgustingly bright and cheerful as ever.

“This is your cousin from Scotland,” I told him. “And don’t make any snide remarks about Queen Elizabeth I calling Mary Queen of Scots that, because I’m in no mood for Trivial Pursuit.”

“Actually, it was James I to whom she referred,” purred Geoffrey, “but I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time with intellectual banter. You haven’t the gift for it. I did just want to tell you a story that might interest you. Cameron hinted that there were family problems in the Old Dominion. Would you care to elaborate?”

“No. If you have anything useful to tell me, I’ll feed your hunger for gossip. Otherwise you will have to depend on supermarket tabloids for your weekly quota of sleaze. Now what’s so important that you called Scotland to talk to me about it?”

“Actually my main reason for phoning was to see if you knew anything about the Lime Kiln Theatre in Lexington. They have a wonderful repertory company and put on a series of plays-”

“Yes, I know about them, Geoffrey. I suppose you were thinking of auditioning?”

“Well, I thought I might enjoy the acting experience. And I’d much rather spend a summer in Virginia than in Manhattan. Besides, they do a play called Stonewall Country about the Civil War, and I thought I might try out for the role of Jeb Stuart.”

“Rubbish! He was a general. You’re too young to play a general.”

“Au contraire, my little Visigoth. Jeb Stuart became a general at the age of twenty-nine. And he was by all accounts colorful and handsome. I am perfectly suited to the role.”

“He was a braggart and a show-off,” I conceded. “So there might be some justification in casting you in the part. I’d like to see you engulfed in a red beard. But I’m sure you didn’t call me to discuss your acting career.”

“No. That was only to give you some background so you’d understand why I was at Stone Mountain wearing a Confederate uniform.”

I sighed. “No, Geoffrey. Even with the background you provided, I cannot make that leap. Why the devil were you trick-or-treating in a state park?”

“Have you ever been to Stone Mountain? On the side of it is a huge bas-relief of Lee and his generals. Quite inspiring. I’d driven down to Atlanta to visit all the historical sites and also to visit a wonderful costume shop in the Underground, where I found quite a fetching Confederate uniform, in which I look unutterably dashing.”

“Let me guess. You bought this Confederate uniform. Did it have a fringed gold sash and a plumed hat, by any chance? I thought so. And you just could not resist nipping down to Stone Mountain to prance around-”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Oh, all right. Go ahead.”

“That’s better. Where was I? Oh, yes. Stone Mountain. I was strolling in the parking lot, trying to get the feel of being a general, when a little old lady came up to me and admired my uniform. We started to chat, and when I told her about my hopes of going to do theatre in Lexington, she said that she and her friends were from Virginia, and of course I asked what town, and she said Danville, and then we played Southern chess: do you know my friend-so-and-so?”

“Old ladies?” I was suddenly interested. “Were there eight of them?”

“I only counted five,” said Geoffrey. “But the one I talked to knew Bill. After a moment she seemed to realize that admitting this had been a mistake. She became decidedly uneasy. And then her friend came along and hustled her off before I could find out what was going on. It seemed fairly strange to me, because usually little old ladies want to talk your ear off, and they’ll tell you their life stories without the least provocation, so I wondered why this lot was so evasive.”

“Well, the State Bureau of Investigation would like a word with them, for starters,” I said. “They seem to think that Bill murdered them.” I explained the simple little house sale to Geoffrey.

“And people wonder why chivalry is dead,” he murmured. “So they conned Virginia out of a million five and left Bill to talk to the authorities. That would explain why they seemed so fidgety.”

“Where were they going?”

“By the time I asked that, the old lady’s bossy friend had turned up and was trying to elbow her toward their car. She said they were going to an island to meet friends.”

“Probably the other three fugitives,” I said.

“Well, I did ask who they were going to see, because they were acting as suspicious as all get-out, but I had to make my question charming and innocent-sounding, on account of their nervous states. As she walked away, the sweet old lady said, ‘We’ll be visiting Major Edward Anderson.’ I remember the name because he was a comedian that Captain Grandfather used to like, but it seemed odd to me that they’d be visiting an old-time comedian.”

“Maybe they knew him. Would he be about their age?”

“I’m sure he was much older. He played Rochester on the old Jack Benny show. And I never heard anybody call him major. I knew that the old dears were trying to be vague, but sometimes people tell bits of the truth when they’re trying to be misleading.”

“And some people are misleading when they’re trying to tell the truth.”

“Well, I thought it was worth looking into. If I could do it without expending any particular effort.”

“You’ve never been mistaken for Mother Teresa, have you?” I asked, but sarcasm is wasted on Geoffrey.

“Don’t be ungrateful. I called Mother to see if she knew an Edward Anderson, thinking he might be a politician or a social lion in Georgia, but she’d never heard of him. I suppose I could consult a library, if it’s a question of Cousin Bill going to prison.” Geoffrey yawned, not from the lateness of the hour, but at the prospect of exerting himself on someone else’s behalf.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” I told him. “But feel free to pursue the matter if the spirit moves you, Geoffrey.”

“There’s not a reward out for the old dears, is there?”

“No. Everyone else thinks Bill has murdered them. I suppose we could call you to testify if it comes to that.”

“I saw only five of them,” he pointed out. “He could have murdered the other three.”

“Thank you for that vote of family confidence, Geoffrey. I’ll take it from here.”

“Good. And if I’m cast as Jeb Stuart, you will come and see the show, won’t you?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” I’ll be rooting for the Yankees.

After that I went to sleep, but I must still have been reviewing the events of the day because I kept dreaming about making phone calls and trying to find Misti Hale’s name in the phone book so I could call her up and ask her how she died. Something must have been percolating through my subconscious, though, because around six A.M. I sat bolt upright in bed, realizing that I had been mulling over that autopsy report and that there was something odd about it. It might have been a simple omission of a detail on the part of the coroner, but it wasn’t there. If A. P. Hill was any good at all at being a lawyer, she could take that fact and run with it. I wondered if I could catch her before she left the motel.

I drove back to Bill’s, marveling at how little traffic there was. Of course it was six forty-five in the morning, and I don’t suppose that rush hour in Danville starts until about five to eight. I had my pick of parking places.

I pounded on the door to Bill’s tiny apartment, knowing that he had to have heard me. No place in his apartment is all that far from the door. “Open up, Bill!” I called out. “It’s your sister. Without a search warrant.”

The door opened a fraction, and I could see rumpled blond hair and an unshaven face peering out at me. “What do you want?” he asked between yawns.

“The key to your office and a cup of tea,” I said sweetly. “I see that I woke you. No rush. Any time in the next minute or so will do.”

Bill glared. “Why do you want the key?”

“To call your law partner. I have some information that may help her case.”

“Her case?” he wailed. “What about me?”

“I’m still working on it.” I snatched the key and fled downstairs.

A few minutes later, I was talking to A. P. Hill, who was wide awake at this hour, as I suspected she would be. She probably alphabetizes her underwear drawer. “I looked over that coroner’s report, and I have some information for you,” I said after the initial civilities.

“I don’t see what you could have found without doing any lab work,” she said.

“They did the lab work. And either they forgot to record one significant finding or there’s something strange about Misti Hale’s death.”

“You mean she wasn’t strangled?”

“Sort of. There were bruises on her neck, all right, and her body had been in the car for a couple of days, so the lividity and coloration weren’t much help, but what I would expect to find noted on the report was evidence of petechial hemorrhaging.”

“Which is?”

“Red dots, especially noticeable in the eyes. They are actually small hemorrhages in the capillaries under the skin, and the condition is most evident in the whites of the eyes. The pressure put on the blood vessels during strangulation causes the tiny ruptures. But in the autopsy report on Misti Hale, no petechial hemorrhages were mentioned.”

“But you said there were bruises on her neck.”

“Right, but if there weren’t any hemorrhages, then she didn’t die from that. In grad school, we heard about a case like this. I have a hunch that Misti Hale was one of those rare and unlucky people whose blood pressure goes down under stress instead of up. You know, like a possum.”

“She passed out?”

“Way out. Someone took her by the throat, and she went into shock almost immediately. Her blood pressure plummeted and her heart stopped. So she didn’t die from strangulation, but from shock. It would have been very fast. Seconds.”

A. P. Hill was not impressed with my diagnosis. “Hmm,” she said. “But whoever had his hands around her throat still killed her.”

“Maybe not on purpose. Her assailant might have stopped in a couple of seconds. He may have been trying to shut her up. But she had this blood pressure trouble, and she passed out and died. It’s not conclusive proof, but you could argue that it was not an intentional homicide. You could get expert witnesses to back you for manslaughter.”

“He might get off with time served for that.” A. P. Hill sounded thoughtful. “And I could get expert witnesses to testify to this condition.”

“Sure. If I were you, I’d start calling the UVA med school and go from there.”

“Thanks. I’ll look into it. Unless you’d like to-”

“Sorry. I have to figure out what Major Edward Anderson is doing on a Georgia island.”

“Friend of yours?” The disinterest was back in her voice.

“No. Somebody mentioned it, and I got curious.” I was tempted to tell her about Bill’s problem, but he would have killed me for betraying his confidence.

“Major Edward Anderson. Well, there’s the famous one, of course.”

“The comedian. Rochester. I thought of that.”

“Comedian? Oh, on Jack Benny. No, that was Eddie Anderson. I was talking about the Confederate officer. Wasn’t he in charge of battery positions at the beginning of the war?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. He was only a major. But in my office there are some reference books on the Civil War, and bound copies of Civil War Times Illustrated. You might check those. Of course it might be the wrong man.”

“It’s worth a try. Thanks.”

Twenty minutes later, I was reshelving all of Powell Hill’s reference books when Bill came in, holding two steaming mugs of tea.

“Took you long enough,” I said. “Unfortunately, I can’t drink it.”

“Why not?” His tone suggested that I had just refused the Holy Grail.

“Because there aren’t that many rest areas between here and I-95,” I told him as I started out the door. “I think I’ve found your old ladies.”