Sharyn McCrumb - If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

The child, a boy named after his late father, lived, and was raised in his Southern home by two of Philip Todhunter’s spinster aunts. The maiden ladies had decided that they preferred child raising in Southern prosperity to the status of poor relations in the homes of their New England kin. In time they grew accustomed to the conventions and the climate of Virginia, and they never returned to the North. Philip Todhunter, Jr., was raised with Calvinist strictness, and complete silence on the subject of his mother. He managed to fritter away most of his inheritance by the turn of the century, but he left a son, in whom no trace of the stern, cold Todhunters remained, in either accent or temperament. That young man, born in 1900, became a millworker, married a local girl, and lived in comfortable poverty, enlivened with country music, stock-car racing, and that old-time religion, a stranger to the ways of both his patrician grandmother Lucy and his ambitious grandfather, the murdered Major Todhunter-if murdered he was. No satisfactory explanation for the crime had yet been found.

By the time Philip Todhunter’s great-granddaughter was born in 1940, the family was entrenched in the lower middle class, so thoroughly Southern nationalists that they would have been grieved to learn of Major Todhunter’s wartime affiliations. His murder was a dimly recalled family legend. Whether Lucy’s bloodline left a fatal legacy remains to be seen.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR EX-WIFE IS TONIGHT? “Some of the local women’s group had that bumper sticker made up,” A. P. Hill told her client. “They asked me to bring you one.”

Cackling with laughter, Eleanor Royden held up the sign for the guard to read. “Tell them I love it!” she said to A. P. Hill. A week’s stay in the county jail had taken its toll on her appearance, but her raucous high spirits were intact. She looked haggard now, and the lines on her face seemed deeper. The harsh prison shampoo had stripped most of the blonde from her gray hair, giving her a faded look that added a decade to her age.

A. P. Hill rummaged in her handbag. “I brought you the Rancé soap you asked for. The guard said it was all right to give it to you. Would you like some special shampoo for tinted hair?”

Eleanor Royden pulled down a lock of coarse gray hair and inspected it. “Not much point in that, is there? I think the tint is kaput. I must look like the prom queen from hell. I hope Jeb doesn’t see me like this.”

A. P. Hill studied her client carefully for signs of disorientation. “Jeb is dead, Eleanor, remember?”

“Well, sure he is. I spent three bullets making sure. Damn the expense of the extra ones, I said. He’s worth it. I just meant I wouldn’t want him to see me in case he’s haunting the courthouse or something.”

“I don’t think that’s one of your problems,” said A. P. Hill.

“Probably not. He and Mrs. Bimbo are probably haunting the Pinehurst golf course, or else they’re in Satan’s tanning parlor, getting a really bronzed look.” She chuckled.

A. P. Hill made a mental note to deny all journalists’ requests for interviews with her client. Eleanor Royden was irrepressible and highly quotable. She could easily become so notorious that a fair trial for her would not be possible anywhere in the hemisphere. At least she wasn’t hysterical and frightened. Remorse in an accused murderer was a desirable trait, but A. P. Hill wouldn’t have wanted to handle a client afflicted with the loud, wet variety.

“I brought you the bumper sticker in case you needed cheering up,” she told Eleanor Royden. “Apparently, the gesture was unnecessary.”

“I appreciate it, though, Sunshine. I may not be sorry I shot those two reptiles, but being in this place is absolutely the pits. So, yeah, I think I needed a day-brightener.” She smirked mischievously at the young attorney. “Thank you for sharing, dear.”

A. P. Hill winced, catching the sarcasm. “Don’t mention it,” she muttered. “Upon consideration, I’m not sure it’s anything to be cheerful about.”

“I heard there’s another bumper sticker, too. A guard told me. One that says: Free Eleanor Royden So She Can Shoot More Lawyers !”

“That’s definitely not good,” said Powell Hill. “If you become notorious, you might inspire a lot of jokes, and maybe some tabloid headlines, but the stereotyping is risky. If people see you as a cartoon Annie Oakley, they won’t feel any sympathy for you. If the jury decides that you are a pistol-packing vigilante, they will have no qualms about sending you to jail. Do you want to be famous or free?”

“Can I think it over?”

“Yeah, for about a nanosecond. This is the soundbite era, when broadcast news sums up an issue in a sentence, and you don’t get a second chance to project a favorable image. Nobody feels sorry for a gloating killer. What if the media’s take on this story is that Jeb and Staci were two tragic lovers, gunned down by a raging jealous witch? Or to put it in your terms, suppose the movie version stars Harrison Ford and Demi Moore as Jeb and Staci?”

“They weren’t like that,” said Eleanor Royden. “They ought to be played by the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Raptors. They were stupid, selfish, greedy raptors, and I was their prey.”

“Your life depends on our ability to convince the jury to see them that way. If those twelve unimaginative people think you gunned down Harrison and Demi in Technicolor, they’ll put you away for a very long time.”

Eleanor Royden considered this prospect. “I still think Sally Field ought to play me,” she said at last. “That’s my idea of a defense. What strategy did you have in mind?”

“We need a plausible defense. I thought about temporary insanity, but that’s a very hard sell to a conservative jury.”

“Good,” said Eleanor. “Because frankly, Sunshine, I hate the idea. I’m not going to stand up there and say I was crazy to shoot those two pit vipers. They tormented me for a couple of years, and they had every legal and financial advantage over me. I took it for as long as I could. Finally, the only thing I could use to even the score was my trusty nine-mm. Taurus.”

“Let’s talk about the gun, then,” said A. P. Hill, abandoning philosophy. “It was registered to you. How did you happen to have it?”

“For protection,” said Eleanor, shrugging. “I worked in real estate, remember? A couple of years ago here in Roanoke, a woman realtor went to show a house. The prospective customers robbed and killed her and left her body in the vacant house. After that, we all got nervous. I went down to the local gun store, and picked up the Taurus on the clerk’s recommendation. I even went to the shooting range a few times to learn how to use it. How to load, shoot quickly, fire at targets in dim light, and so on. I must say it came in handy- especially that last bit.”

“No,” said A. P. Hill. “You must not say things like that. Haven’t you been paying attention? I want to see a woman pushed over the edge by mental cruelty, and now racked with guilt and remorse over what she’s done.”

Eleanor Royden shook her head. “I’d have to be Sally Field to pull off that performance.”

“I was afraid you’d say something like that.” Powell Hill sighed. “I want you to be examined by a psychiatrist. Will you agree to that, Eleanor? The medical evaluation might consider a defense that hasn’t occurred to me yet.”

“How about Test Control as a Public Service’?” said Eleanor with a grin.

A. P. Hill was not amused. “ Will you talk to a psychiatrist?” she demanded.

“I suppose so.” Eleanor sighed. “It would be a pity to spoil the festivities by going to an unsimpatico place like prison. I promise to behave. Now, will you get me some cigarettes and an Egyptian cotton towel, Sunshine? Benson & Hedges cigarettes, and a two-hundred-and-twenty-thread-count, undyed cotton towel. I’ll definitely go crazy if I don’t get some creature comforts around here.”