Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

I had to believe that was why he had invited me in.

Now he walked from his house to his office each morning, Monday through Saturday, and returned home each night around six, carrying a brown leather satchel under one arm. His caseload was mostly mundane and domestic-probate, real estate closings, property tax appeals. He politely declined to handle divorces or disputes between neighbors, surrendering that business to lawyers in other towns. He was a fixture at town council and county commission meetings but rarely if ever showed up for more social events like hockey games or euchre tournaments or even the annual Kiwanis Christmas brunch. Such aloofness was normally frowned upon in Starvation Lake, but Parmelee Gilbert was forgiven, more because of Carol Jo than his wife.

He picked up his tea and gestured for me to do the same. “You inquired about Mrs. McBride,” he said.

I sipped. He’d gotten the sugar just right. “Yeah.”

“Please. I want to make it clear that she is not my client.”

“Got it. But I heard-”

“You heard that she is curious about the existence of a life insurance policy connected with the unfortunate demise of her daughter.”

“That’s right.”

He propped a wingtip against the edge of his desk and pulled his left sock taut on a pale calf. “I am not in position to confirm that there was or wasn’t a life insurance policy involved in this matter,” he said. He repeated the sock pull on his right leg. “But I can confirm that I have agreed, as of this morning, to represent the Haverford Life Insurance Company of Traverse City.”

“This morning?”

He sat up straight, picked up his mug, and looked at me over the top of it. “That is what I said.”

“But you can’t confirm that Gracie had a life insurance policy?”

“That would, as you say, violate the attorney-client privilege.”

“We are on the record, yes?”

“Unless I say otherwise.”

So he was confirming that Gracie had a life insurance policy without leaving his fingerprints, all while staying comfortably on the record. Why else would Gilbert have been hired that very morning?

I imagined Shirley McBride storming into his office, demanding her cut of the insurance proceeds, threatening to go to the paper, which of course she already had. Now Gilbert was trying to keep things calm and accurate and within his control.

“Sorry,” I said. “This probably isn’t comfortable for you.”

“It’s my job.”

“So Shirley is the beneficiary?”

Gilbert gave me a tiny smile, then took it back.

“I didn’t say there was a life insurance policy. However, just for your information, if there was in fact a policy, I would not be at liberty to tell you who any beneficiaries might be, as that would indeed violate attorney-client privilege as well as the potential beneficiaries’ privacy.”

“Understood.”

I wished I had looked more carefully through the file folders and papers in the cabinet in Gracie’s Zam shed. The policy might have been in there. What a dope I am, I thought.

“In addition,” Gilbert said, “strictly for your background information, life insurance policies are frequently voided in cases where the insured has inflicted death on him- or herself. In effect, there would be no beneficiaries in such a case.”

“Right. And you think Gracie was a suicide.”

“Gus, for the record, I have not said that the deceased is in any way related to my being retained by the Haverford Company. I trust that whatever you write, if you write anything, will reflect that.”

“Understood. But why would someone who planned to kill themself bother with a life insurance policy?”

He sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap.

“Off the record?” he said.

“Off the record?”

“Yes,” Gilbert said, as if he went off the record as routinely as he tied his tie every morning. He looked down at his folded hands. “As you can imagine, I feel terrible for Mrs. McBride and everyone who knew the girl. The loss is no less, whatever the cause.” He stopped. I waited. He looked up, his eyes flitting to the photo of his daughter before returning to me. “But who can divine the workings of a single human heart? Who really knows what a person thinks and believes when he or she decides to do whatever they do?”

I thought of Gracie sitting on the edge of her cot in the Zam shed, alone, weary, bedraggled, alcoholic. Why would anyone have wanted to kill her? Who could possibly have had a motive?

“Yes,” I said. “But you have a client with money on the line.”

“I am not speaking for any client.”

“Sorry. Will I see you at town council Wednesday?”

“Back on the record. Always possible. My clients frequently have business before the council.”

“I’m sure I’ll be there.”

“Well then.” He stood. “I have an appointment to get to.”

“How can I help you?”

Pine County sheriff Dingus Aho leaned back against the front edge of his gray metal desk, thick arms folded across his thick midsection, one hand twirling a curl of his mustache. The room smelled of Tiparillos and, strangely, perfume. Dingus had kept me waiting outside his office for half an hour. He didn’t usually make me wait. I had only an hour or so to file my stories and write up the other junk waiting back at the newsroom. I cut to the chase.

“No way it’s suicide.”

“You knew her,” Dingus said. “What do you think?”

Since I had returned to Starvation a year and a half before, Dingus and I had come to an unspoken trust that we would not deliberately waste each other’s time. Even in the typical cop-and-reporter cat and mouse, there was purpose. He had his, I had mine, and he had learned that I might actually know things that he did not. In the hallway outside his office hung a framed copy of a Pilot front page. The banner headline read, “Police Uncover Porn Ring.” We had helped each other on that story. Dingus could have had a byline.

Darlene merely tolerated my relationship with Dingus. I knew it rankled her that the sheriff could seem more forthcoming with me than with his own deputies. I told her that a big part of his job was managing information, and sometimes he had to pay more attention to someone digging for it than to people who were beholden to him for their jobs. “Bullshit,” she replied. “It’s because you’re a boy.”

“Hell, Dingus,” I said. “I didn’t know Gracie. She didn’t live here for years.”

“You guys were in Detroit together.”

“No. We were just there at the same time. We might as well have been living on different planets.”

He stopped twirling his mustache and squinted one eye. “And you had no idea whatsoever what she was doing down there?”

“Nope.”

“You know, of course, I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation.”

I’d heard that line before. He wouldn’t have had me into his office if he didn’t want me to know something. Or wanted something from me.

“What’s with the leaks to Channel Eight?” I said. “You want to get on TV? Or are you just trying to help D’Alessio get laid?”

Dingus ignored that and moved around behind his desk. His swivel chair groaned as he sat. He moved a half-filled doughnut box aside, reached into a drawer, and came out with a glossy black pamphlet. “I like this,” he said, waggling it in front of his face. “Some vagrant gave it to me in Florida when I was down there for a conference.”

I saw the title on the pamphlet cover: Hiding from God. Dingus read aloud: “‘When we open the newspaper, we see for the most part bad news. We see more of the dark side of humanity than the good and decent side.’ ” He looked over the top of the pamphlet at me. “Here’s the best line: ‘The newspaper is simply a snapshot of the darkness that is within each one of us.’ ”