“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, grinning—an unnatural grin that displays his prominent incisors, a rim of his upper gum. He’s a huge man, I’m guessing over six feet, with massive shoulders and a neck so thick, his blocklike head seems too small for his body. He has the red nose of a drinker, a purplish web of veins spreading to his cheeks. The cat squirms in the crook of his arm, her back legs wedged between his arm and his chest.
“Oh, hi, Randall,” says Gail. “We were looking for her! Watch out, she’s going to—” But Beatrice is already clawing her way up his chest, onto his shoulder, and in one spectacular burst of determination she leaps away from him, almost flying, landing behind him in the grass.
“Damn!” he says, “Got a temper on her, doesn’t she?” And again that forced grin as he steps toward me, extends a hand. “Randall Mackay. You must be the law-yer.” He says “lawyer” like it’s a dirty word.
“I was just leaving,” I say. The cat peers at us through the branches of an oleander, wary.
“Come here, precious,” says Gail. “Come to mama.”
“No need to run away,” says Randall, to me. “Gail will tell you I’m harmless.” He smiles, heavy black eyebrows arching, one higher than the other. He’s outfitted for hunting: a green-gray camouflage jacket and matching pants, boots. “You must be a mighty busy law-yer. I left messages.”
I look him straight in the eye. “I am very busy, but I should have some time next week, if you’d like to call again and make an appointment.”
“Well, you’re here and I’m here,” he says, “so we might as well take advantage of this, uh, opportunity.” Gail has cajoled the cat into coming out from behind the oleander, has her safe in her arms. “You wouldn’t mind watching the cat while we talk, would you, Gail? Maybe she’d like to spend a little time outside while—”
“She don’t really like it much out here,” Gail replies. “Cats, you know, they like to be inside.”
“Fine,” he says, “the law-yer and I, we’ll go on up to the living room and you and our furry friend can stay down here.” He opens the door, stands back, and gestures for us to go in. “Ladies first.”
I remember what Judge Clarkson said: Steer clear of him. But I’ve been in situations much scarier than this, like when I was a young public defender doing my own investigation on a murder case, knocking on doors in a bad North Charleston neighborhood, asking lots of questions; or interviewing a new client at the county jail, sitting across the table in a tiny room listening to him tell me how he hadn’t killed anybody—You can’t kill a witch. She’s the devil’s handmaiden, put a curse on me, put a curse on my daddy, too. You don’t believe me? She’s right there behind you, working her curse on you, too! And there was the time, a couple of years ago, when I received four unsigned letters at my office, printed in a strange, cramped font, warning that I would be sorry if I continued to represent a local doctor in his divorce. That evening I left my office after a particularly stressful day, to find that all four tires on my car were flat. I suspected the doctor’s wife—she had mental problems—but I couldn’t prove she’d sent the letters.
“No problem,” Gail says to Randall. “You all just take your time. Beatrice and I, we’ll be fine.”
I follow Randall up the staircase. “Look around,” Randall says when we reach the living room. “You think this was a woman in her right mind? A fortune in stocks and bonds and she lived like this? Jesus.” He shoves a pile of books off one of the sofas, lets them fall to the floor. “I’ll get straight to the point. You don’t need to take notes—it’s not complicated.” The sofa gives a little under his weight. “My mother was always a little nutty. Lived in her own world, with all these books, played like she was a real historian, writing articles mostly nobody published unless she supported the magazine. Wasn’t much of a wife, couldn’t hide her relief when my daddy died, though God knows he was good to her, gave her everything she wanted.”
“Mr. Mackay,” I say, “My role in this case is to—”
“I know what your role is. You really let old Judge Clarkson pass the buck to you, didn’t you?”
“He’s retiring soon, and apparently he’s not in good health.”
“He didn’t want to deal with the cat,” Randall Mackay says. “And frankly I can’t understand why a successful law-yer like you would want to waste your time.… Anyway, as I was saying, my mother was always crazy, but in the last five years or so, that brain of hers went haywire. Burney Haynes—he was her law-yer—should have known that. I guess she must have paid him a bundle, so he didn’t want to cross her.”
“Are you alleging that your mother lacked the capacity to understand what she was doing?”
“Damn right I am.”
“But apparently you believed she was capable of living out here all by herself?”
“We hired some people to stay with her. She fired them all. I should have had her declared incompetent, put her in a home.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I just couldn’t do it to her. She loved this place.” His voice softens. “I guess you know something about how hard it is, when they get demented.”
“What?”
“Your mother.”
My whole body tenses. “How do you know about my mother?”
“Your ex—we hunt together sometimes.”
“You know Joe?”
“Friend of a friend,” he says. Again the grin, the arched eyebrows. “No need to get all huffy. I’m just pointing out that we have something in common. When it’s your own mother, you don’t think straight. But never mind all that, I have to protect myself now.”
“Then you should hire a lawyer.”
“I’d like to avoid that.” he says.
“But I can’t advise you, Mr. Mackay.”
“I’m going to cut to the chase. If I contest this trust, we’re going to use up a whole bunch of time and a whole bundle of money in unnecessary litigation. And at the end of all that, there’ll be some kind of settlement, so why not just get right down to it? I’m willing to work a deal.”
“My job is to choose the best caregiver for the cat. I’m not really concerned with—”
“But if I succeed in setting the trust aside,” he says, arching his right eyebrow, “all this nonsense about the cat goes out the window.”
“Again, Mr. Mackay, I can’t advise you.”
“But you can hear me out. The deal I propose is this: Let Gail keep the cat. She’s a good kid, and her boyfriend’s okay, too. Pay her that ridiculous salary, since that’s what my mother wanted, but they don’t need to live here in this house. Hell, they don’t even want to. And in exchange I won’t raise any objection to the trust. Everybody’s happy.”
“So you want to live here?”
“I’ll get the property after the cat dies anyway.”
“I don’t think I have the authority to make a deal like that, even if I thought it was advisable,” I explain. “My role as trust enforcer is to—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Judge Clarkson doesn’t give a damn who gets the cat or where the cat lives. If he did, he’d be handling this himself. He just wants to wash his hands of the whole thing, because he knows how crazy my mother is … was.”
“I need to get back to Charleston, but I’ll think about what you said.”
“I trust you will … no pun intended.”
“Just one question: What if I continue with my investigation, and I determine that one of the others—the librarian, or the nephew in New York—would be willing to move here, and would make the best caregiver for Beatrice?”
“Then the deal is off. Look.” He’s turning red, and though it’s cold in the room, his forehead is damp with perspiration. “My mother thought Gail would take good care of the cat, otherwise she wouldn’t be on the list. And Gail’s willing to take the cat. Why make it more complicated? Or is it that you just want to rack up a bunch of hours on my mother’s dime?”
“If you’re going to challenge the trust, you’ll need to hire a lawyer.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do. This house isn’t just a piece of real estate to me,” he says. “My great-great-great-great-great grandfather built it. That’s six generations. It’s in my blood. Look, I like cats, but I’m not going to let some damn animal keep me from getting what’s mine. Now,” he says, standing up, “I don’t want to take up any more of your time. You think it over, what I’ve said.”
“I will, but I want to reiterate—”
“You law-yers like fancy words, don’t you? You usually get, what, fifty dollars a word? So maybe for the fancy ones, you get a hundred, right?”
Just before he drives off he says, “Don’t let anything happen to that cat, you hear?” His truck, a big shiny black one, roars away.
* * *
Beatrice doesn’t want to part with Gail, or maybe she doesn’t want to leave her warm spot by the fire. She complains mightily about getting back in her carrier. “Poor thing,” says Gail, “she just got back home and now you’re going to … And she hates the car. You sure you don’t want to leave her with me?”
“I wish I could.”
“Can’t say as I understand all this legal stuff,” she says.
“I have to interview two other people. But it shouldn’t take long.”
“I don’t even know why she—Lila—even named them. That librarian lady—”
“Katherine Harleston?”
“Yeah, her. She’s nice enough, but her husband’s kind of, you know, a snobby-type Charleston person. I can’t see him moving out here. And the nephew, he lives in New York. Only been down once to see her, since I started working out here, anyway.”
“How long is that?”
“About five years. He’s, you know…”
“No, tell me.”
“I guess you’ll see for yourself. Anyway, I just can’t see him wanting to live down here.”
“By the way, how did Randall know I’d be here today?”
“I guess my boyfriend—my fiancé, I mean—might have told him. They’re friends.”
“Where does Randall live?”
“Over on the front beach,” she says. “Lila bought the house for him a while back, before the property values went through the roof.”
“So he doesn’t really need a place to live.”
“He’s just got a sentimental connection to this house, I guess.”
“But if he and his mother didn’t get along, I don’t understand—”
“Randall’s always been kind of a mystery,” she says with a shrug.
I look at my watch. “Thanks for all the information, Gail—and the house tour. I’ll be in touch.”
“No problem,” she says. “You take care of my precious Beatrice, okay?”
* * *
By the time I get back to my condo, I’ve come to a few conclusions:
—I don’t drive well with a complaining cat in the car. (How did I go ten miles out of my way before I realized I’d made a wrong turn?)
—I don’t trust Randall.
—Beatrice trusts Gail.
It’s clear that Mrs. Mackay believed Gail would be an adequate caretaker for the cat. Despite my reservations about Randall, what would be so wrong with his proposal: Beatrice goes to live with Gail, who’ll get $50,000 a year to take care of her. Randall gets the plantation free and clear and agrees not to challenge the trust. And—although I hate to admit I’m even taking this into consideration—I can rid myself of this cat.