The only possible sources of any substantial fees were four old product liability cases Mack had signed up and then neglected for years. The chain saw cases, once a potential bonanza, at least in his opinion. She had almost forgotten about them, though she did remember typing his blustery letters to the manufacturer a long time ago. When he lost his enthusiasm, the cases got shoved to the bottom of the pile.
While he was in the hospital, Freda obtained his phone records and saw the mysterious calls to and from a law firm in New York City. She made notes and filed them away. About a month after Mack left, two FBI agents paid her a visit and asked some random questions, but it was obvious they were going through the motions. Though she was still angry over the firing, she had no loyalty at all to the FBI and gave them nothing.
She left Clanton and eventually settled in Tupelo where she worked as a real estate paralegal in a prosperous law firm. She was at her desk Tuesday afternoon when a private investigator appeared. Tight sports coat, thickly knotted tie, pointed-toe boots, gun on hip. His line of work was obvious. She had seen a hundred of them in her career as a legal secretary and could spot one on the other side of the street.
He introduced himself as Buddy Hockner and handed her a business card. He said he was doing some investigative work for a lawyer over in Clanton.
“Which one?” she asked. In the recent past she had known all of them.
“Walter Sullivan.”
So this was not a messy divorce or a garden-variety car wreck. If the Sullivan firm was involved, the stakes were probably higher. She could not think of any reason Walter Sullivan needed something from her.
“I remember him,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
Without asking, Buddy plopped down in the only chair on the other side of her desk.
“Have a seat,” she said.
“Have you had any contact with your old boss, Mack Stafford, recently?”
“Why would I tell you if I did?”
“I come in peace.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Mack is back. Any word from him?”
This amused her and she offered a smile, the first. “No, I’ve heard nothing from Mack since the day he fired me. Almost three years ago. Look, I’m pretty busy and I’d rather not discuss this on the job.”
“Got it. Can I buy you a drink after work?”
“One drink. I’m not much of a talker.”
They met two hours later in a downtown bar. They found a dark corner and ordered drinks. Buddy laid everything on the table and promised her he had nothing to hide. From time to time he worked for Mr. Sullivan, who, on behalf of Lisa’s family, had been hired to poke through Mack’s dirty laundry. They strongly suspected some money had been taken and kept away from the divorce and bankruptcy proceedings.
Freda was saddened to hear about Lisa’s health. The two had never been close but they had managed to get along, no small feat in Mack’s world.
She said, “Mack never had any money. There was nothing to steal.”
Buddy reached into a pocket, pulled out a sheet of paper, and handed it to her. It was a copy of a certified check for $50,000, drawn on a bank in Memphis, and made payable to Lisa. He said, “This was part of the divorce settlement, about the only thing of value she got.”
Freda shook her head and said, “Mack never had this kind of money. He kept about five thousand dollars in the law firm checking account, but even that ran low at times. He paid me thirty thousand a year, I never got a raise, and there were a couple of years when I made almost as much as he did.”
“Did he have an account with a Memphis bank?”
“Not to my knowledge. He banked in Clanton, though he hated to. Hated the fact that somebody at the bank knew how broke he really was.”
“So, where did the money come from?”
Freda had always resented the way Mack had simply vanished, the way he abandoned his wife and two daughters. After he disappeared, she, too, had been implicated by the local gossip. There were rumors that she was involved in his shenanigans and so on. That was one reason she left town. She owed him nothing. Hell, he’d fired her on the spot and watched as she cleaned out her desk.
She took a sip of her vodka soda and said, “I got his phone records, don’t ask me how. The day he fired me, he took a call from a New York law firm, came at twelve-ten when I was at lunch, and then he evidently left the office and had a few beers. When he returned around five p.m. we had our fight. He’d missed two appointments, something he never did because he needed the clients. I never saw him again, don’t want to see him now.”