When Frank Perkins opened the front door to his home, his welcoming smile slipped, as though the punch line to a promising joke had turned out to be a dud. “Hammond.”
“May I come in?”
Choosing his words carefully, Frank said, “I would be very uncomfortable with that.”
“We need to talk.”
“I keep normal business hours.”
“This can’t wait, Frank. Not even until tomorrow. You need to see it now.” Hammond removed an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to the attorney. Frank took it, peeped inside. The envelope contained a dollar bill. “Aw, Jes—”
“I’m retaining you as my lawyer, Frank. That’s a down payment on your fee.”
“What the hell are you trying to pull?”
“I was with Alex the night Lute Pettijohn was killed. We spent the night in bed together. Now may I come in?” As expected, the declaration rendered Frank Perkins speechless. Hammond took advantage of his momentary dumbfoundedness to edge past him.
Frank closed the front door to his comfortable suburban house. Quickly recovering, he came at Hammond full throttle. “Do you realize how many rules of ethics you’ve just violated? How many you tricked me into violating?”
“You’re right.” Hammond took back the dollar bill. “You can’t be my lawyer. Conflict of interest. But for the brief time that you were on retainer, I confided something to you which you’re bound by professional privilege to keep confidential.”
“You son of a bitch,” Frank said angrily. “I don’t know what you’re up to. I don’t even want to know, but I do want you out of my house. Now!”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I said that I spent—”
He broke off when the open archway behind Frank filled with people who were curious to see what the commotion was. Alex’s face was the only one that registered with Hammond.
Frank, following the direction of Hammond’s stare, mumbled, “Maggie, you remember Hammond Cross.”
“Of course,” said Frank’s wife. “Hello, Hammond.”
“Maggie. I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Actually, we were having dinner,” Frank said.
One of his nine-year-old twin sons had a smear of what looked like spaghetti sauce near his mouth. Maggie was a gracious southern lady who had descended from valiant Confederate wives and widows. The awkward situation unfolding in her foyer didn’t ruffle her. “We’ve just now sat down, Hammond. Please join us.”
He glanced first at Frank, then at Alex. “No, thanks, but I appreciate the offer. I just need a few minutes of Frank’s time.”
“It was good to see you again. Boys.”
Taking each twin by a shoulder, Maggie Perkins turned them around and herded them back to where they had come from, presumably an informal eating area in the kitchen.
Hammond said to Alex, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Frank was kind enough to invite me to dinner with his family.”
“Nice of him. After today, you probably didn’t feel like being alone.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Besides, it’s good you’re here. You need to hear this, too.”
Finally Frank butted in. “Since I’m probably going to be disbarred over this anyway, I think I’ll go ahead and have the drink I desperately need. Either of you interested?”
He indicated for them to follow him toward the rear of the house where he had a home study. The plaques and framed citations arranged in attractive groupings on the paneled walls attested to the honorable man that Frank Perkins was, personally and professionally.
Hammond and Alex declined his offer of a drink, but Frank poured himself a straight scotch and sat down behind a substantial desk. Alex took a leather love seat, Hammond an armchair. The lawyer divided a look between them that ultimately settled on his client. “Is it true? Have you slept with our esteemed assistant county solicitor?”
“There’s no call for—”
“Hammond,” Frank brusquely interrupted, “you are in no position to correct me. Or even to cross me, for that matter. I should kick your ass out of here, then share your confession with Monroe Mason. Unless he already knows.”
“He doesn’t.”
“The only reason you’re still under my roof is because I respect my client’s privacy. Until I know all the facts, I don’t want to do anything rash which might embarrass her any more than she’s already been embarrassed by this travesty.”
“Don’t be angry with Hammond, Frank,” Alex said. There was an honest weariness in her voice that Hammond hadn’t heard before. Or perhaps it was resignation. Maybe even relief that their secret was finally out. “This is as much my fault as his. I should have told you immediately that I knew him.”
“Intimately?”
“Yes.”
“How far were you willing to let it go? Were you going to let him indict you, jail you, subject you to a trial, get you convicted, put you on death row?”
“I don’t know!” Alex stood up suddenly and turned her back to them, hugging her elbows close to her body. After taking a moment to compose herself, she faced them again. “Actually I’m more to blame than Hammond. He didn’t know me, but I knew him, and I pursued him. Deliberately. I made our meeting look accidental, but it wasn’t. Nothing that happened between us was by chance.”
“When did this meeting-by-design occur?”
“Last Saturday evening. Around dusk. After the initial contact, I exercised every feminine wile I knew to entice Hammond to spend the night with me. Whatever I did,” she said, her voice growing husky, “worked.” She looked across at him. “Because he did.”
Frank finished his drink in one swallow. The liquor brought tears to his eyes and caused him to cough behind his fist. After clearing his throat, he asked where all this had taken place. Alex talked him through the chain of events, beginning with their meeting in the dance pavilion and ending in his cabin. “I sneaked out the following morning before dawn, prepared never to see him again.”
Frank shook his head, which seemed to have become muddled either by a sudden infusion of alcohol or by conflicting facts he was finding difficult to sort out. “I don’t get it. You slept with him, but it wasn’t… you didn’t…”
“I was her insurance,” Hammond said. It was still hard for him to hear her admit that she had set him up, that their meeting wasn’t kismet or the romantic happenstance he wished it had been. But he had to get past that. Circumstances demanded that he focus on matters that were much more important. “If Alex found herself in need of an alibi, I was to be it. I was the perfect alibi, in fact. Because I couldn’t expose her without implicating myself.”
Frank gazed at him with unmitigated puzzlement. “Care to explain that?”
“Alex followed me to the fair from the Charles Towne Plaza, where I’d met with Lute Pettijohn.”
Frank stared at him for several beats before looking to Alex for confirmation. She gave a small nod. Frank got up to pour himself another drink.
While he was at it, Hammond took the opportunity to look at Alex. Her eyes were moist, but she wasn’t crying. He wanted to hold her. He also wanted to shake her until all the truths came tumbling out.
Or maybe not. Maybe he didn’t want to know that he had been as gullible as the horny young boys and dirty old men who had paid half-brother Bobby for her favors.
If he loved her, as he professed, he would have to get past that, too.
Frank returned to his chair. Twirling his refilled glass on the leather desk pad, he asked, “Who’s going to go first?”
“I had an appointment with Pettijohn on Saturday afternoon,” Hammond stated. “At his invitation. I didn’t want to go, but he had insisted that we meet, guaranteeing that it would be in my best interest.”
“For what purpose?”
“The A.G. had appointed me to investigate him. Pettijohn had got wind of it.”
“How?”
“More on that later. For now, suffice it to say that I was close to turning my findings over to a grand jury.”
“I assume Pettijohn wanted to make a deal.”
“Right.”
“What was he offering in exchange?”
“If I reported back to the A.G. that there was no case to be made, and let Lute carry on his business as usual, he promised to support me as Monroe Mason’s successor, including sizable contributions to my campaign. He also suggested that once I achieved the office, we would continue to have a mutually beneficial arrangement. A very cozy alliance which would have enabled him to continue breaking laws and me to look the other way.”
“I gather you turned him down.”
“Flat. That’s when he brought out the heavy artillery. My own father was one of his partners on the Speckle Island project. Lute produced documents proving it.”
“Where are those documents now?”
“I took them with me when I left.”
“They’re valid?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Frank was no dummy. He figured it out. “If you proceeded with your investigation of Lute, you’d be forced to bring criminal charges against your father, too.”
“That was the essence of Lute’s warning, yes.”
Alex’s face was soft with compassion. Frank said quietly, “I’m sorry, Hammond.”
He knew the commiseration was genuine, but he waved it aside. “I told Lute to go to hell, that I intended to uphold my duty. When I turned my back on him, he was screaming invectives and issuing threats. The temper tantrum might have brought on the stroke. I don’t know. I never turned around. I wasn’t in there for more than five minutes. Max.”
“What time was this?”
“We had a five o’clock appointment.”
“Did you see Alex?”
They shook their heads simultaneously. “Not until I got to the fair. I was so pissed off at Pettijohn, I was in quite a temper when I left the hotel. I didn’t notice anything.”
He paused to take a deep breath. “I had planned to go to my cabin for the night. On the spur of the moment I decided to stop at the fair for a while. I saw Alex in the dance pavilion and…” He looked from Frank to her, where she was seated on the love seat, listening intently. “It went from there.”
The room grew so silent that the ticking clock on Frank’s desk sounded ponderous. After a time, the lawyer spoke. “What did you hope to accomplish by coming here and telling me this?”
“It’s been weighing heavily on my conscience.”
“Well, I’m not a priest,” Frank said testily.
“No, you’re not.”
“And we’re on opposite sides of a murder trial.”
“I’m aware of that, too.”
“Then back to my original question: Why did you come here?”
Hammond said, “Because I know who killed Lute.”