Turning Angel

Drew leaves the visiting room without a word.

By the time I pick up Annie from school, I’ve taken several cell calls, and my phone is still ringing. Most of the calls have been from school parents, pumping me for information about Drew and Kate. But a few were more serious, and more disturbing.

One was from Holden Smith, the president of the St. Stephen’s school board. Holden had heard a distorted version of the afternoon’s fight from Steve Sayers’s father, and he was livid at Drew. About the only fact he had right was that Steve and Drew were being held in jail on felony assault charges. I did my best to explain that Drew wasn’t at fault, but Holden didn’t buy my argument.

“That’s not even the point,” he said. “We’ve got a member of the school board brawling with three of our students! That’s simply unacceptable. Drew should know better than to let something like that happen.”

“I told you he tried to stop it, Holden. The fight couldn’t have been avoided.”

“Okay, okay, but look what the fight was about. Everybody in town knows Drew was having sex with Kate Townsend, and that he might even have killed her. Do you—”

“Nobody knows that!” I snapped. “That’s pure speculation!”

“So what! Do you realize what that kind of rumor will do to St. Stephen’s? To our public image? Do you know what kind of lawsuits we’re going to get over this?”

“What are you telling me, Holden?”

A brief silence. “We want Drew off the board.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Everybody!”

“You want him to resign?”

“If he doesn’t, we’ll vote him off tonight in a special session. We have no choice.”

“That’s bullshit. The board could give Drew its qualified support, based on his years of dedication to the school. Did that thought enter anyone’s head?”

“Don’t even pretend that’s an option,” Holden said in a dismissive voice. “You know how this town works. And that brings up another issue. What about you, Penn? Are you Drew’s lawyer now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, if you are, you’re not going to be able to remain on the board, either.”

Holden was right about that. As a board member, I’ll be named in any civil suit arising out of the present situation. I can’t remain on the board and also defend Drew in a civil or criminal proceeding. Of course, resigning would cut off my flow of inside information, but I wasn’t about to align myself with gutless Holden Smith.

“Drew and I will both resign,” I said with disgust. “You’ll have our letters in the morning.”

“We’d prefer to have Drew’s tonight.”

I hung up on him.

While I drove along in a funk, Caitlin called me from Boston. Apparently, a reporter for the Natchez Examiner had called her and delivered a summation of the rumors spreading across town. Caitlin was stunned that I was being mentioned as Drew Elliot’s lawyer. She knows Drew, but only superficially, and she has no special reason to believe he’s innocent of the crimes being attributed to him.

“Exactly when were you going to tell me you were representing Drew?” she asked. “Or were you going to tell me at all?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to represent him.”

“I thought you didn’t practice anymore.”

“Drew is a lifelong friend, and he needs help. Right now, I’m acting primarily as a friend.” This wasn’t strictly true, but I’ve been deceiving myself as well as Caitlin about that. “When I see how this develops, I’ll make a decision about the legal side of things.”

“Penn, why didn’t you tell me about all this last night?”

Caitlin sounded hurt, but she hasn’t been very communicative to me about her recent situation either. “I couldn’t get you on the phone last night. You were at your party.”

“You could have called me this morning.”

“Yes, but you already had reporters working the story. You may even end up working it yourself.”

“We’ve been in that situation before, and we handled it fine.”

“But not without tension.”

A little laugh. “Tension’s okay. We can live with tension. It’s deception we can’t live with.”

“I agree.”

More silence. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just agreed with you.”

“You had a tone.”

“No tone. Look, things are breaking fast on this. I’ll call you tonight and give you a better idea of where I stand, okay?”

Her sigh told me she was far from happy with this arrangement. “Did Drew kill her, Penn? I’m asking as your lover, not a journalist.”

“You know I can’t answer that. Even if I knew the answer.”

“But he was involved with her?”

“You won’t report my answer?”

“No.”

“Yes. He was in love with her. But I don’t think he killed her.”

“Classic midlife crisis?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple. Drew says he and Ellen have been living a charade for ten years. He was starved for affection, and he finally found exactly what he was missing. And now here we are.”

“What about the two semen samples—”

“No more,” I cut in. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”

“I love you,” Caitlin said after an awkward silence.