The Tolling of Mercedes Bell: A Novel (40 page)

The Taylor case was a disaster. Her home situation was a disaster. Thoughts of what she would say to Germaine haunted her. Fear of her pending test results crept into her veins, cold and cloying. Her heart jumped into her throat. Her mind leapt from one terror to the next. Her breathing was shallow, leaving her light-headed. She felt completely isolated and trapped.

I
N THE AFTERNOON SHE DROVE
to Jack’s office. She had the tiny key with her and was anxious for the bottom drawer to disgorge its contents.

Melanie was on the phone and waved when Mercedes strode past her desk. Without bothering to put down her briefcase, she walked to the doorway of Emerson’s office, where he was squinting at the screen of the boxy white computer monitor. He looked up when she entered and met her serious expression with one of his own. The smirk had disappeared.

“Hi,” he volunteered.

“Hi.”

“I hear Jack is sick.”

“Jack is seriously ill, Emerson.”

“I was going to go see him last night, but I got tied up.”

“It’s better if you don’t.”

She stared at him, watching the color climb up his neck into the cheeks. “Was this some kind of game to you?” she asked.

No response.

“Certain things have come to light in the last couple of days. It would be better for all concerned if we were to call a truce and start leveling with each other.”

“About what?”

“I know you’ve known all along about Jack’s ‘other life,’ shall we call it, and didn’t care to share that information with me.”

“Mercedes, it was not my place to do that.”

“I can appreciate that, but we’re now in a bit of a bind.”

“
We?
”

“You and I. Melanie and Germaine. Jack’s clients. Janine Reneau. Darrel.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It is very doubtful that Jack will be able to work again.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I wish I were. Melanie has no idea of what I’m about to tell you, so please keep it in the strictest confidence.”

Emerson waited.

“Jack has AIDS, in his brain, and is at death’s door with pneumocystis. He cannot speak. He doesn’t know where he is or who I am.” Horror splashed across Emerson’s face.

“The doctor says that even if he survives this round, he has to stop practicing law at once. I need your help, Emerson. Jack needs your help. He’s probably had HIV for a good while for it to have progressed so far. It’s entirely possible his judgment has been compromised for months or even years. His legal exposure is—”

“I get it,” he interrupted.

“We need to make a coordinated plan for how to handle his clients. We need to let them know he’s ill, but not raise suspicion
about his—and your—work for them. Eventually we’ll need to tell them to find other counsel and take their files with them. For as long as possible I have to protect Germaine from knowing that I’ve been exposed to the virus, so I want no one else to know. No one at all. Will you help me?”

He nodded. She could see the wheels turning.

“I’ll be in his office for a couple of hours, if you want to talk.”

“Mercedes, I’m sorry,” he answered. He was in shock.

“I know you care for Jack, and I’m sorry for your situation. I want us to be allies.”

She walked past Melanie, who was dealing with a delivery man and fielding phone calls. She closed the door to Jack’s office and sat in his chair. There was a burgeoning pile of new mail on the desk.

She dug the small gold key out of her coin purse and slipped it into the lock in the bottom drawer. It fit perfectly. She opened the drawer all the way.

Unlike the others, it was in pristine order, with files labeled in Jack’s bold handwriting.
Client Trust Account. Disability Insurance. Estate Plan. Income Tax. Legal Malpractice Insurance. Life Insurance. Personal Correspondence. Prenuptial Agreement. Real Property. Reconciliations.

She began with the disability insurance file. To her amazement and profound relief, there were four substantial disability policies in place. She read the declarations pages and added up the figures in her head. Jack had spoken about wanting to protect her and Germaine before they were married, and he certainly seemed to have accomplished that. In fact, there would be an abundant tax-free monthly income if ever—no,
when
—he was declared disabled.

She pulled out the insurance applications, spread them out on the credenza and compared them. It seemed lavish even for Jack, at age forty-one, to have four policies. Each application was dated
months before their wedding and all within a few days of each other. Each one included a question about whether the applicant had applied to any other company for disability insurance. “No” had been his answer on each form. But here they all were, so how could that be true?

She pulled out the life insurance file. Again, there was more than one very large policy on Jack’s life and a policy on her life as well, for which she recalled filling out an application before the wedding. The beneficiary for all was the Soutane Family Trust. But why, she wondered, did she not remember there being more than one policy on Jack, or that they were so large? And why would he buy term insurance instead of whole life? He had been working on the estate plan before the wedding, a logical thing for a probate attorney like Jack to do. She recalled thinking how kind it was of him to think of the future in such a pragmatic way. And here she was about to reap the benefits. Tears filled her eyes as she imagined Jack’s big arms encircling her.

The estate plan file was full of the legal documents Jack had created. There were medical and legal powers of attorney, advance medical directives, the trust, and their wills. Her hands trembled as she slowly worked her way through the file.

She pulled out the legal malpractice file, and inhaled sharply when her brain registered what she saw. His coverage was in the millions of dollars and was designed to blanket a great span of time. The numbers seemed out of all proportion, even with his propensity for extravagance. Martin Macey’s word for Jack
—strategic
—popped into her head. There was a knot in the pit of her stomach.

She stared out the window and watched a turkey vulture circle the brilliant green field next to the office building. A scene from Thanksgiving dinner began to replay itself in her mind. Janine was describing Jack’s father to Germaine. Mercedes could plainly see the
old lady’s sweet face and hear the quaver in her voice as she praised Dr. Soutane. How kind he was to her, how fine and elegant, what an excellent physician. Jack had objected, with a look of bitter reproach on his face. His father, he’d said, was “underinsured and irresponsible.” It suddenly made perfect sense. He’d made certain he would never find himself in that position. But at what cost?

She opened the drawer containing all the check registers. She paged through his checkbook to view a few months’ expenses. A staggering amount of money was going out the door each month for disability and life insurance. The malpractice coverage must come out of the business account. She’d have to dig into the finances over the weekend.

The intercom buzzed. Melanie announced a call from Dr. Sinclair.

The news was grim. Jack had had another small seizure and had not been conversant since the day before. They had moved him into intensive care. The pneumonia was not yet responding to the antibiotics. He was unconscious and everything possible was being done for him. They agreed that it would serve no purpose for her to visit that afternoon.

She asked about the medication she’d found in the glove compartment. Dr. Sinclair said only that the pills were appropriate for Jack’s condition, and that he’d become allergic to one of the antibiotics.

“I’m so confused,” she said. “I don’t understand why there are so many things he kept from me.”

“Perhaps he told you all that he could. None of us ever really knows another person, Mercedes. We can know some of the layers. We can be intimately familiar with another’s personality, how they appear in the world, some of what they think, some of their skills, and their family history. But the inner person, the psyche, the child within, is deeply cloaked.”

“You sound like a shrink.”

“The mind and body are not separate pieces of a puzzle. They’re enmeshed in a million subtle ways. In my practice, and especially in treating AIDS patients, I’m always learning about these interconnections. We see layer upon layer peeled away, particularly when the virus is housed in the brain. And as those layers peel away, an entire universe shows itself: loveliness, cruelty, altruism, fear, a lifetime of memories, a person’s sense of time, his identity—everything.”

“I see.”

“If you love Jack, have compassion for his flaws. You will surely see them all before this is over. Right now let’s concentrate on bringing him back so you and he can talk. Let’s concentrate on helping
you.
Did you take an HIV test?”

“Yes. The results will be back in two days. I’m trying not to think about it. But now I have another question. Did Jack go to you for the HIV test before we were married?”

“No, and there’s nothing in his medical records here about a test prior to the one we gave him when he was admitted. Did you investigate the insurance situation?”

“Yes. There’s quite a bit of disability, life, and malpractice coverage.”

“Smart man. I’m very glad to hear that. I’ll help you get the disability claim going.”

After hanging up, she stared out the window while some of his words sank in. How could she have been so blind? She’d been too busy to see the truth, busy looking for what she had wanted to see. She had wanted to believe so many exalted notions about Jack, but most of all that they were each other’s true love, destined to be together, to bring out the best in each other, unafraid to reveal all and share all. And from these recent revelations she had a new context for understanding other things she’d seen and not grasped— his supposed patience with her for waiting until they were engaged
before having sex, that shocking night in Florence when she’d first met the frightening side of him, their weirdly inconsistent sex life, his mysterious late-night meetings with “clients.” It had never occurred to her to question those. Now she questioned everything.

She opened the top drawer and pulled out the photos Jack kept there.
The good old days. The good old carefree days before a woman entered the picture.
She propped them up around the perimeter of the desk. It was clear that Jack and Damon had been in love. She could stop pretending she didn’t see it. Damon was such a charming man and a good friend to Jack. Who could not love Damon?

Melanie knocked on the door and entered. She was anxious for any news of Jack.

“They’ve just taken him to intensive care. They’re discouraging visitors. He’s unconscious and the antibiotics are not showing any signs of working.”

“How are you holding up?” Melanie asked.

“I’ll be better when Germaine’s back. I’m trying to understand our budget, or lack of one. How are you doing?”

Melanie shrugged; her eyes were very sad. “I keep imagining he’s just out of the country on one of his trips, and he’ll walk in the front door full of energy, with three new deals to work on.”

“I suppose he
is
in another country. We just don’t know when or if he’s coming back. This pile of mail is rather intimidating. Is there anyone Jack has talked to about the accounting?”

“Only Rose, before she quit.”

“Do you have a phone number for her?”

“Sorry, I don’t.”

“Maybe I can figure it out on my own. What about all this correspondence from insurance companies? I’m seeing an awful lot of past-due notices. Doesn’t Jack pay his bills on time?”

“Sure he does—when he can.”

“What does that mean?” Her tone of voice was sharper than she wanted it to be.

“He always makes payroll first.”

“But don’t payments for client bills come out of the client trust account?”

“They should.”

“But sometimes they don’t?”

“It’s a cash-flow situation.”

Another uneasy feeling had taken root.

“But I’m not involved with that,” Melanie added quickly. “Jack handles the money.”

“Not now he doesn’t! I need to figure this out, and fast.”

Melanie fidgeted with the edge of her cardigan. “I’ll get you a box for those files.” She left to go find one.

Much of the correspondence on top of the desk was from insurance companies addressed to Jack as the trustee of various family trusts. Mercedes recognized the names of many of the guests at their wedding.

Emerson knocked lightly on the doorjamb. He seemed more relaxed and conciliatory.

“Any news?” he asked.

“Nothing good.” With her eyes, she signaled the direction in which Melanie had left. “Do you think you can manage Jack’s court appearances for now?”

“I’ll get continuances for those I can’t.” He saw the photos arrayed around the top of Jack’s desk and stepped closer.

“Do you mind?” he asked tentatively.

“Go ahead. I’m the last to know, evidently.”

He picked up the photo of Damon resting his head on Jack’s shoulder to get a better look.