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

Bill was shocked at her flippancy toward the disabled physicist. “Oh, look here, you mustn’t-”

“Don’t be so patronizing,” she said. “Anyhow, let me tell you about Stephen Hawking. I know he’s paralyzed with ALS and for the past decade he has only been able to move the little finger of his left hand. But a couple of years ago, he left his wife for another woman!”

“How?” said Bill, momentarily diverted from the legal problems of maritime mammals.

She threw up her hands. “How should I know! He just rolled away. He took off with his nurse. It was in Discover magazine a while back. When I read about that, I said: this is absolutely the last straw! If you can’t trust a man even when he’s paralyzed from the neck down, you don’t have a cat’s chance of getting any of them to be faithful. I said to hell with it, and I decided that if feminists can become political lesbians, then an animal-rights person like myself ought to be able to become a political delphinogamist. Human males are no damned good.”

“Now you’re stereotyping my species.”

“Oh, rubbish. It’s a fact. Men remind me of those poor male spiders who keep trying to mate even after their heads have been bitten off. I mean, it is your entire raison d’être . No, I’m through with Homo sapiens. From now on, give me a dolphin.”

Bill was beginning to conclude that modern relationships for men very much resembled trying to mate while having your head bitten off, but he wisely returned to the original topic. “Even so, I’m afraid you can’t marry a dolphin. Not legally anyhow. I suppose you could get a scuba-diving Unitarian to come to the holding tank and-”

“I want it to be legal. It’s a matter of principle.”

“But dolphins aren’t intelligent. I mean, they sort of are, but-”

“Marie Osmond is married, isn’t she?” snapped Miri. They both laughed. “And all joking aside, intelligence is not a criterion for matrimony.”

“Good thing, or none of us would be here,” said Bill.

“I mean, learning-disabled people can marry, can’t they? Even if they can’t read or write?”

“Yes, all right, I concede that point,” said Bill. He was beginning to think that the law had lost a great trial attorney when Miri Malone took up art with bathtub toys. “But there are laws, you know, against having sex with a helpless creature. I know there are statutes on the books concerning sheep, and chickens, and who-knows-what-else. I think those proscriptions could apply to dolphins.”

She let out a whoop of laughter. “You don’t know much about dolphins, do you?”

“Not a great deal, no. But my brother-in-law is- was -a marine biologist.” For more reasons than one, Bill wished that Cameron Dawson were present. He was running short of arguments, and he had exhausted his limited supply of knowledge about seagoing mammals.

“Ask your brother-in-law then,” said Miri. “It’s common knowledge. Dolphins are notorious for trying to mate with their trainers at marine parks like Sea World. Believe me, it wouldn’t be rape. In fact, our whole relationship was originally Porky’s idea.”

“Porky?”

“My intended. It was just a physical thing on his part at first, but I was able to learn some of his language, and so our relationship progressed into a much deeper friendship.”

Bill knew that if the words Free Willy flashed into his mind one more time, he would fall to the floor, shrieking helplessly. A movement from the kitchen doorway caught his attention, and he turned to see his sister, beckoning for him to come back inside. Bill reached in his pocket and drew out a business card. “Here’s where to find me,” he told Miri. “I charge sixty bucks an hour. If you really want to pursue this matter legally, give me a call.”

“Thanks for rescuing me,” he said to Elizabeth as he closed the door behind him. Miri was walking in the garden. “I seem to attract them. That woman wants to marry a dolphin.”

“I expect she’s a Pisces,” said Elizabeth. “But I don’t know that I’ve rescued you. Edith is on the phone. She said that A. P. Hill asked her to call you.”

“That’s odd,” said Bill. “They’re never that anxious to reach me. I gave them this number in case of some emergency. We’ve never had one, but Powell is always prepared for every contingency. What does she want?”

“Well, she asked if I could interview some witnesses tomorrow for A.P.’s murder case, but that wasn’t the main reason she called. Ask her yourself.” She handed Bill the telephone and went back to join the party.

“Edith?” said Bill, half expecting to hear the crackle of flames in the background. “What’s wrong?”

“Calm down,” said his secretary. “Nobody is repossessing the copy machine. A.P. asked me to phone because there has been a development in one of your cases.”

“Which one?”

“The Morganatic Marriage case.”

“Not another wife!” wailed Bill. “Listen, I’ve had a very trying day here, and-”

“A trying day is exactly what your partner reckons you’re in for. You see, the old buzzard himself, Chevry Morgan, keeled over dead last night, and wife number one says the police are asking all sorts of awkward questions about it. They seem to think it’s a case of murder. Your client is understandably nervous about the implications of that.”

“How did he die?”

“They’ve pumped for poison,” said Edith. “He’s been sent off for an autopsy. Wonder if they’ll find a brain?”

“Now, Edith, the man is dead.”

“Yeah. This time I believe he did get a message from the Lord. But apparently the Almighty had a little help in deporting old Chevry from the world.”

“They think somebody deliberately poisoned Mr. Morgan? They haven’t charged Donna Jean, have they?”

“No. She’s at home, but we got the impression that she’d be awfully glad to see you.”

“I’m on my way,” said Bill.

After delegating the tracking down of Bill MacPherson to the secretary, A. P. Hill had set off to Roanoke to interview a possible character witness in the Royden murder case. Most of the Royden acquaintances she would leave for Elizabeth MacPherson, but she wanted to hear firsthand what Marizel Farrell had to say about her former best friend.

At Eleanor Royden’s suggestion-grudgingly given-A. P. Hill had contacted Marizel Farrell by phone. After endless reassurances of confidentiality, Mrs. Farrell had provided the attorney with directions to her home in Chambord Oaks. The upscale subdivision was much as A. P. Hill expected. A bronze sign in Old English lettering mounted on one of the stone pillars marked the entrance to the development. The two-story brick houses all looked as if they had been designed by the same architect, differing only in the placement of the Palladian windows, or in the facade: phony Colonial, sham Tudor, or faux chateau.

Marizel Farrell’s house turned out to be a white brick faux chateau, set among clumps of azaleas and strategically placed dogwood trees. A bas-relief of mallards in flight graced the simulated wood mailbox. A. P. Hill pulled into the drive, vowing for the umpteenth time in her life that suburbia would never take her alive. She retrieved her briefcase from the backseat and went up the patterned brick walkway to interview the murderess’s best friend.

Marizel Farrell did not seem altogether impressed by the diminutive young attorney standing on her doormat. Powell Hill was wearing low-heeled shoes, no makeup, and tiny pearl earrings. “You’re Eleanor’s lawyer?” Mrs. Farrell said doubtfully, as if she suspected that the leather attaché was a sampler case of Girl Scout cookies. “Well, come in, then, Ms.-er-Hill. Sorry,” she said, with an anxious smile, “I was kind of expecting a grown-up.”