Sycamore Row

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?”



“Jane, smart-ass. Jane Ellen Vonner, and she’s not only surviving life with me but seems to be having a ball and thankful to be so lucky. Finally found a woman who understands me.” He scooped up a pile of bright red chips and crammed them in his mouth.



“Congratulations. When do I meet her?”



“We’ve been married for two years.”



“I know, but I prefer to wait five. No sense rushing in when these gals have such a short shelf life.”



“You come here to insult me?”



“Of course not.” And Jake was being honest. Swapping insults with Harry Rex was a fool’s game. He weighed over three hundred pounds and lumbered around town like an old bear, but his tongue was stunningly quick and vicious.



Jake said, “Tell me about Seth Hubbard.”



Harry Rex laughed and sent debris flying over his desk. “Couldn’t have happened to a bigger asshole. Why do you ask me?”



“Ozzie said you handled one of his divorces.”



“I did, his second, maybe ten years ago, about the time you showed up here in town and started calling yourself a lawyer. Why should Seth concern you?”



“Well, before he killed himself, he wrote me a letter, and he also wrote a two-page will. Both arrived in the mail this morning.”



Harry Rex took a sip of beer, narrowed his eyes, and thought about this. “You ever meet him?”



“Never.”



“Lucky. You didn’t miss a damned thing.”



“Don’t talk about my client like that.”



“What’d the will say?”



“Can’t tell you, and I can’t probate until after the funeral.”



“Who gets everything?”



“I can’t say. I’ll tell you on Wednesday.”



“A two-page handwritten will prepared the day before the suicide. Sounds like a five-year lawsuit bonanza to me.”



“I sure hope so.”



“That’ll keep you busy for a while.”



“I need the work. What’s the ol’ boy got?”



Harry Rex shook his head while reaching for the hoagie. “Don’t know,” he said, then took a bite. The clear majority of Jake’s friends and acquaintances preferred not to speak with a mouthful of food, but such social graces had never slowed down Harry Rex. “As I recall, and again it’s been ten years, he owned a house up there on Simpson Road, with some acreage around it. The biggest asset was a sawmill and a lumber yard on Highway 21, near Palmyra. My client was, uh, Sybil, Sybil Hubbard, wife number two, and I think it was her second or third marriage.”



After twenty years and countless cases, Harry Rex could still floor people with his recall. The juicier the details, the longer he remembered them.



A quick chug of beer, then he continued: “She was nice enough, not a bad-looking gal, and smart as hell. She worked in the lumber yard, ran the damned thing, really, and it was making good money when Seth decided to expand. He wanted to buy a lumber yard in Alabama and he started spending time over there. Turns out there was a secretary in the front office who had his attention. Everything blew up. Seth got caught with his pants down and Sybil hired me to scorch his ass. Scorch I did. I convinced the court to order the sale of the sawmill and lumber yard near Palmyra. The other one never made money. Got $200,000 for the sale, all of which went to my client. They also had a nice little condo on the Gulf near Destin. Sybil got that too. That’s the skinny version of what happened, but the file is a foot thick. You can go through it if you want.”



“Maybe later. No idea of what his current balance sheet looks like?”



“Nope. I lost track of the guy. He laid low after the divorce. The last time I talked to Sybil she was living on the beach and having fun with another husband, a much younger man, she claimed. She said there were rumors that Seth was back in the timber and lumber business, but she didn’t know much.” He swallowed hard and washed it all down. He burped loudly, without the slightest trace of hesitation or embarrassment, and continued, “You talked to his kids?”



“Not yet. You know them?”



“I did, at the time. They’ll make your life interesting. Herschel is a real loser. His sister, what’s her name?”



“Ramona Hubbard Dafoe.”



“That’s the one. She’s a few years younger than Herschel and part of that north Jackson crowd. Neither one got along well with Seth, and I always got the impression he wasn’t much of a father. They really liked Sybil, their second mom, and once it became apparent Sybil would win the divorce and make off with the money, they fell into her camp. Lemme guess—the old man left them nothing?”



Jake nodded but didn’t say a word.



“Then they’ll freak out and lawyer up. You got a good one brewin’, Jake. Sorry I can’t wedge in and get some of the fee.”



“If you only knew.”



A final bite of the hoagie, then the last of the chips. Harry Rex crushed the wrapper, the bag, the napkins, and tossed them somewhere under his desk, along with the empty beer bottle. He opened a drawer, withdrew a long black cigar and jammed it into the side of his mouth, unlit. He’d stopped smoking them but still went through ten a day, chewing and spitting. “I heard he hung himself. That true?”



“It is. He did a good job of planning things.”



“Any idea why?”



“You’ve heard the rumors. He was dying of cancer. That’s all we know. Who was his lawyer during the divorce?”



“He used Stanley Wade, a mistake.”



“Wade? Since when does he do divorces?”



“Not anymore,” Harry Rex said with a laugh. He smacked his lips and grew serious. “Look, Jake, hate to tell you this, but what happened ten years ago is of no significance whatsoever in this matter. I took all of Seth Hubbard’s money, kept enough for myself, of course, gave the rest to my client, and closed the file. Whatever Seth did after divorce number two is none of my business.” He waved his hand across the landfill on his desk and said, “This, however, is what my Monday is all about. If you wanna get a drink later, fine, but right now I’m swamped.”



A drink later with Harry Rex usually meant something after 9:00 p.m. “Sure, we’ll catch up,” Jake said as he headed for the door, stepping over files.



“Say, Jake, is it safe to assume Hubbard renounced a previous will?”



“Yes.”



“And was that previous will prepared by a firm somewhat larger than yours?”