Parlor Games A Novel

A DESPERATE LETTER FROM FRANK



MENOMINEE—JANUARY 31, 1917



Dear May,

You damn fool. Don’t you see where this is headed? The jury will rule for me, and you’ll be in water as hot as Hades. I don’t believe for one minute you don’t have the money. That claim of poverty stinks to high heaven. Next you’ll be telling me Mr. Rockefeller begs on street corners.

You’ve got two choices: You can settle right now and agree to pay the money. We can keep the arrangement confidential and nobody but us and our attorneys will know the terms. That’d keep your reputation intact.

Or you can let this thing play out and have your loss splattered all over the Chicago, New York, and who knows what other newspapers. And if that happens, I’ve got a surprise waiting for you—a special visitor that you’ll recognize in the courtroom tomorrow. That should be enough to make you think twice about ducking your responsibility!

I hope you understand what’s going to happen if you refuse to come up with the money. All your assets will be claimed by the court. Think about it. Do you really want your precious jewelry auctioned off?

You’re a fool, May, a damn fool. I gave you a way out, but no, you’re dead set on your stubborn ways. If you let the jury decide this, it’ll be good-bye between us forever.





Your old friend,

Frank


If Frank thought threats of this nature were sufficient to force my hand, she guessed wrong. Only I did wonder who the “special visitor” might be. Surely she couldn’t have tracked Ernest down. After all, the judge had ruled that the London lawsuit was immaterial. I hoped to God it wasn’t that blackguard Reed Dougherty.





THE TRIAL

TO THE JURY



MENOMINEE—FEBRUARY 1, 1917



The blizzard passed in the night, and the town awakened to clear skies and temperatures hovering near zero. A stillness hung over the streets, as if everybody had paused to contemplate the sparkling white expanses coating rooftops, yards, and woods.

Except me. I was as jumpy as a racehorse at the starting line. With the trial’s judgment fast approaching, I could think of little other than flight. Yet here I sat in the courtroom, contemplating sunshine slanting through the windows.

“Mr. Powers,” intoned Judge Flanagan, “you may call your next witness.”

My attorney stood and walked around the defendant’s table. A streak of sunshine rippled over his head and shoulders as he advanced to the front of the courtroom. “Your Honor, I have a short statement on that matter. May I?”

“As long as it is relevant.”

“Your Honor,” he said, and, turning to face the jury, “gentlemen of the jury. The Baroness May de Vries has decided not to testify before you.”

Gasps coursed through the courtroom. The jury members gaped at each other, their jaws flopping open.

Powers forged ahead. “She loves this town too much to be subjected to scrutiny before the dear people she has known all her life. She considers Menominee her home town, her sanctuary.”

The judge frowned in that threatening way of his, and I feared he might cut off Mr. Powers’s statement.

If Powers discerned the judge’s intent, he disregarded it, sweeping a hand toward the windows. “For not far from this very place, beside St. Ann’s Church, rests her dear mother.”

“Mr. Powers,” said Flanagan, “the court has heard your announcement.”

This was too much for me—the mention of my mother, whom I grieved still, and Flanagan belittling the matter of my testimony. With tears blurring my vision, I scooped up my coat and rushed down the aisle. As I neared the door, a man rose and placed his hand on the knob.

My God—it was Reed Dougherty. He opened the door for me; I avoided his eye and rushed down the stairs to the first-floor foyer, nearly losing my footing. Steps beat down the stairs after me. No, I thought, I won’t speak to Dougherty. Not now, not ever again if I can help it. Why was he here—other than to persist in his torment of me? I’d never once mentioned him to Frank. How did she manage to find him? And what could he have to do with this trial? My stomach curdled. I dashed toward the ladies’ restroom at the rear of the corridor, determined to dodge him.

“Are you all right?” It had been Gene, my dear brother, bounding down the stairs after me.

I turned and ran to him. He rushed up and wrapped his arms around me.

“I can’t stay here,” I managed to say, the tears coming fast now. “Please, take me home.”



When Gene and Paul returned for lunch, they informed me I’d missed Mr. Sawyer’s closing statement. Paul asked if I wanted a report on it.

“Not really.” I stood over the stove warming up two-day-old venison stew. “But did you see that tall, lanky man at the back of the courtroom?”

“Never saw him before,” said Gene. “Must be some new reporter.”

“Did he talk to Frank? Or her lawyer? Or anybody else?”

“Not that I saw,” Gene said, fetching some bowls from the cupboard.

Paul eyed me. “You know him?”

“Just wondering who he might be.” I leaned over the kettle and stirred from the bottom, releasing the stew’s sweet meaty scent. I’d added a few spoons of Maman’s secret ingredient—molasses.

“Stew’s plenty hot,” I said.

“Sit down,” said Paul. “We’ll serve.”

As I turned toward the kitchen table, I caught Gene and Paul exchanging looks. “All right, you two. I know a conspiracy when I see it. What’s on your minds?”

“Good God,” said Gene, “you’re starting to sound like a lawyer.”

Tokyo’s toenails clicked on the kitchen floor as he followed me to the table. “Do you blame me? I bet you can’t think of anything but this beastly trial, either.”

At that they both hung their heads, guilty as charged. Paul opened the bread box, grabbed the half loaf left over from Wednesday’s baking, and sliced it. Gene set the table and served up the stew.

“Well?” I asked as they sat and scraped their chairs up to the table.

Paul lifted his spoon and held it poised over his bowl. “We’ve been thinking we ought to ask you a few things.”

“Mm-hmm.” I spooned up a mouthful of the steaming stew and chewed around a gristly hunk of meat. Although the stew wanted something to balance out the meat’s toughness, I had oversweetened the broth.

Paul shifted on his haunches. “If we lose, the judge might slap an order on the business. Use the inventory to pay off the judgment.”

I plucked the gristle from my mouth and held it down for Tokyo. He daintily nibbled at my fingers, extracting the treat. “We’re not going to lose,” I said. “We’ve got a signed release.”

Gene sprang upright in his chair. “But Sawyer claims it’s not legitimate.”

I calmly met his eyes. “He can’t very well explain away Frank’s signature.”

“He says it was obtained under duress.”

I sighed. This hardly warranted a response.

Paul rested a hand on Gene’s arm, as if signaling him to restrain himself. “We just want to put our minds at ease. We wouldn’t lose the business, would we?”

“No,” I said. “You’ll still have your business.”

Paul ignored the wisps of steam rising from his bowl. “Frank holds half interest in the house. Even if she loses, we figure she’ll want to be bought out.”

“Sure she will. She’s shown her colors, hasn’t she?”

Gene glanced at Paul, then turned to me. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

“I know that.”

Paul leaned toward me, resting his forearms on the table. “Do you?”

“Not handy,” I said.

“But you can get it, right?”

“Sure I can.”

“Where?”

I hated how Paul always questioned me. “It’s better if I don’t say. Do you think I was fool enough to declare everything in my list of assets? Now, don’t ask again. I’ve already said too much.”

Paul studied me, as if contemplating his next move.

I reached my hands out, resting one on Gene’s forearm and the other on Paul’s. “You’re my brothers. I won’t let you down.”

Gene raised his bowed head, as if ashamed of asking me about money in the first place, and nodded, regarding me with a feeble smile.

Paul swiped a hand over his mouth, shaking his head like the cynic he is.

I slapped their arms. “Now, eat your stew. There’s a trial to wrap up this afternoon.”



I knew my attorney well enough to understand he was at his best when granted free rein to spin out his case, uninterrupted by objections. His closing statement afforded just that opportunity, though my pleasure in it was dimmed by the presence of Reed Dougherty in the back row. I had, however, devised a plan to avoid him: My attorney had promised to stand by my side and fend off any questioners whenever I entered or exited the courtroom.

“Gentlemen, you have heard Mr. Sawyer’s case. It is based on the word of the plaintiff, on claims she’s made against the Baroness after their many years of friendship. At any point she could have withdrawn from the friendship, refused to take expensive trips with her, turned down invitations to parties. But she knowingly continued this association for over five years, from 1901 to 1903 and again from 1912 until just last year. She has freely admitted she enjoyed her association with the Baroness; even after they quarreled in 1903, she was overjoyed at the resumption of the friendship.

“This raises significant questions about the timing of her lawsuit. If she truly felt that she was being taken advantage of, she could have demanded to set matters straight at any juncture. But she didn’t. Until now. Why now? Because she has spent all her inheritance and sees the chance to replenish her funds by going after the Baroness’s money.

“The plaintiff claims that she was tricked into turning over her whole inheritance, that my client schemed all these years to part her from her money. But let us consider the beginnings of their friendship. When they met in 1901, my client bore the title of baroness, bought and sold property in Arkansas, and was welcomed at royal courts all over Europe. She and the Baron owned homes in Holland and London. And the plaintiff? She had recently embarked on her new law practice outside Chicago. Her parents provided her with an annual allowance of three thousand dollars to help her launch this practice.

“I ask you, gentlemen, how was my client to look upon this budding friendship? She, a world-traveled baroness and owner of land on two continents, befriending a young woman beginning what is an improbable career for a lady? What kind of an attraction would three thousand dollars per annum have been to a baroness? It is preposterous to assume she had any designs on Miss Shaver’s money. Quite the contrary, it was the plaintiff who stood to benefit from this new friendship.”

How I wished I could have cheered Mr. Powers on—so brilliant was his oratory. He recounted the early years of our friendship, further hammering home his point that money could not have motivated my decision to befriend Frank.

“The defense has introduced a release bearing the signature of Miss Shaver, a release that absolves the Baroness of any and all purported debt. You have been told by the plaintiff that she didn’t carefully read this release because she was ill at the time. I hope you will pardon my skepticism, but I simply cannot reconcile this claim with the plaintiff’s learned status and profession. You have seen her on the stand for many hours over these last two weeks. She is a woman with a keen intellect and a quick mind. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree. The University of Michigan—a most prestigious university—admitted her to its law school. She studied there, obtained her law degree, and passed the requisite exam to practice law in the state of Illinois. Her well-to-do parents raised her to understand the workings of the world well enough that she was able to travel independently between their home in Pittsburgh and her adopted city of Chicago. She ventured all over Europe and even to Algiers with the Baroness, exotic places most Americans never get a chance to see.

“Miss Frank Shaver is no fool, nor is she ignorant of the worth of a dollar. In truth, she is a highly intelligent, well-educated woman who knows how to conduct herself in the world’s capital cities. Her claim not to know the value of a dollar is ludicrous, her defense of not comprehending a release from debt insulting to this court. She is a lawyer, a lawyer with the best possible training and standing. No lawyer of such stature can pretend to misunderstand a contract of a mere sentence or two.”

Mr. Powers next confronted the insinuations by Sawyer that the release was obtained under duress or falsified. Powers handily concluded there was no way to prove this shaky assertion, pointing out that Miss Shaver herself admitted the document bore her signature, that she remembered the occasion on which it was signed, and that Mr. Gene Dugas had witnessed the signing.

“As for the Baroness’s family and friends, I sat quietly by while Mr. Sawyer referred to these parties as ‘henchmen of the Baroness.’ Every defense witness who took the stand was insulted by this lawyer. The plaintiff’s side made every attempt to disgrace them, not with solid charges, but with insinuation and innuendo—for that is all they had.

“But I will have my say now. Paul and Gene Dugas are upstanding citizens of this community. They have no criminal record. They have never engaged in any untoward financial deals. They are honest men who work side by side at this town’s automobile business. Many of the citizens of Menominee, Marinette, and the surrounding farms and towns have purchased automobiles from them. They are known to all who have had dealings with them as reputable businessmen. They shop at the same stores as you, they hunt the same woods, they attend the same church. These are honorable men.

“And as for Daisy Emmett, here is a woman who has served as a loyal assistant to the Baroness for over twenty years. And how is her fine and loyal character painted? As a henchman? This is the lady who took charge of the funeral for the Baroness’s mother at a time when the Baroness and her brothers were weighed down with grief. That is the sort of person Miss Daisy Emmett is, gentlemen, a faithful lady who has served her employer and cared for her own poor and crippled mother for many years.

“Let us look at the central charge here. The plaintiff and her attorney would have you believe that my client set her sights on a pot of gold, systematically mined it, and then cast Miss Shaver aside. I ask you to consider all aspects of this allegation. Was the plaintiff passive during the whole of this friendship? Of course not—she freely entered into it and gladly accompanied the Baroness on many pleasure trips. Was she made of gold? I have already explained that Miss Shaver was no paragon of wealth when she and the Baroness first became acquainted. To assert that the Baroness considered her a ‘pot of gold’ simply does not square with reality.

“Did my client cast Miss Shaver aside, as she claims, like a hot penny? Recall for yourselves how this friendship met its recent demise. It was Miss Shaver who pressed the issue of money upon the Baroness. After telling her own cousin, Mrs. Owens, that one didn’t worry about money with the Baroness, Miss Shaver suddenly decided to worry about her own, just when she depleted the money she freely spent accompanying the Baroness on trips. She was no unwilling guest on these cross-Atlantic adventures. Nobody kidnapped her and forced her to take the train to New York City to celebrate New Year’s Eve. No one handcuffed her and spirited her off to Montreal for a birthday party. Oh, no, Miss Shaver came to enjoy this life of luxury; she only cried foul when she realized she had spent all her inheritance.

“As for the Baroness, you may wonder why she refused to take the stand herself. But consider how the attorney for the plaintiff badgered her brothers and Miss Emmett, called them henchmen, insinuated they were liars. No, Baroness May de Vries loves this town too dearly to be insulted with lies and insinuations that are beneath her. This community is dearer to her than any place on earth. Her lovely mother lived out her last years here, and she is buried in this community of her friends and family. The Baroness will not allow the plaintiff’s attorney to tarnish her mother’s memory.

“I submit, gentlemen, that this lawsuit is intended to harass the Baroness into turning over a very large sum of money to Miss Shaver—money that is not hers to claim. The only just conclusion to this case is to find for the defendant, Baroness May de Vries.

“Dear gentlemen, my client and I thank you for your patience and your service in the name of justice.”