Miz Sara Goes on Maneuvers

As Marcy and I straightened up things in the office, she looked at me, and I could see she had a question. "Well, what is it?" I finally asked.

"Miz Sara," she said, "I just don't get it. How could those two people have been carrying on an affair like that without Jim and Mandy knowing about it? You'd think they would have had some clue."

"Not necessarily, Marcy," I told her. "In my experience, good and honorable people tend to have faith in those close to them. They expect others to act the way they do; they aren't constantly on the lookout for untrustworthy behavior."

"So good people are just naïve and vulnerable?" Marcy asked.

"Dishonorable people can certainly take advantage of them," I acknowledged, "but I've found that they are at a similar disadvantage. Because they cheat and lie, they assume that everyone else will act the way they do, and they can get surprised just as easily."

"Take Vera Martindale. She thought Harriet Sheridan would divorce Walter when she learned of his infidelity. She didn't count on Harriet's willingness to forgive her husband. She expected her to throw him out, and her plans were thwarted when Harriet didn't act that way."

"Or take our two cheating spouses. I believe our little gambit on Monday will work because they expect everyone else is just like them. That makes them vulnerable."

We finished getting everything in order for Monday, but before she left, Marcy turned back to me with a big grin on her face. "I believe you must have read a little bit about military strategy too, Miz Sara."

"What do you mean, Marcy?"

She smiled. "After listening to what you've got planned for Monday, I think you may have taken a chapter from Operation Desert Storm."

This time I understood her reference. "We'll just have to see if our little two-pronged attack is as successful as General Schwarzkopf's," I said with a wink.

After an anxious but uneventful weekend, Marcy and I were both in to work early on Monday. I had some filings that had to get to the courthouse first thing, but after they had been made, the two of us nervously killed time until Jim Davenport arrived about 11:00. He'd thoughtfully brought along some sandwiches, and we all picked at them, but we were too keyed up to eat much.

Marcy left at noon; Jim and I stayed in the office.

Finally, I glanced at the clock, which now read 12:30.

"Okay, Jim, it's time," I said. "Remember: stick to the script."

He nodded, picked up his cellphone and dialed. I didn't want to say anything to Jim, but this was the one weak link in our plan. If there was no answer, we would be out of luck. But I had felt it highly likely that a call from Jim's cell would not go unanswered, and I was right.

"Jerry," Jim said, "I'm glad I caught you. Listen, all that surveillance finally paid off. You were right: Mandy is having an affair! She left the office at noon, and I followed her to your home. Shortly after that, a man drove up and went inside with her. They're there now."

Even sitting across from Jim, I could hear Jerry's exclamation through the phone.

"I'm sure, Jerry" Jim reiterated. "She met him at the door with a big embrace and a kiss. They're in there now; if you hurry, you can catch them together."

This time I clearly heard Jerry yell, "Sonuvabitch!" and then hang up the phone.

I stood up. "I have to get going, Jim. As soon as you've made your other call, please lock up the office when you leave." He too stood up, and I leaned over the coffee table to give him a little hug. "I hope this proves to be just the right thing for you," I told him. "Remember: it will get better."

"Thank you for everything, Miz Sara," he said, and surprised me with a hug. Then I headed for my car.

As I drove, I thought about Jim. I hoped that he would enjoy his cruise. It was something he'd long wanted to do, and I hoped the experience would not only serve to put some distance between himself and his marriage but also provide him with a pleasant diversion. At the same time, I knew that he'd always planned to take the cruise with Peggy; now he was going alone. I felt he had some rough times ahead.

My GPS was working well for a change, so my trip took exactly as long as I'd planned. I parked my car in the driveway and marched up the walk to the front door, giving two sharp raps. I heard the scurry of feet within and then the door flew open to reveal an attractive woman in her late forties clutching a dressing gown around her. Her hair was mussed and her make-up smeared. I had expected that.

"What's going on, Jerry? Is everything . . ." Then she stopped as she realized that her visitor was not whom she was expecting. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Good day, Mrs. Davenport. I'm Sara Cannon," I replied coolly. "May I come in?"

One of the nice things about growing old is that you can get away with things a younger person can't. Peggy Davenport was hesitant, but she pulled the door open and stepped back. I strode briskly into her living room. "We can talk in here," I said.

Flustered, she sat down across from me and pulled her dressing gown more tightly around her. "Do I know you," she asked in confusion.

"No, Mrs. Davenport, but I know you. And you don't have to worry about Jerry Hamilton. I doubt very much that your lover will be returning here today."

She gasped, but attempted to bluff her way through her surprise at my words. "I don't know what you're talking about," she sputtered. "I think you'd better leave."

I smiled thinly at her. "Oh, I will, Mrs. Davenport. But first I have something to give you." I reached across the table and handed her a sheaf of papers.

"What is this?" she asked, looking at the papers blankly. Then, some of the words must have caught her eye, because she looked at the top sheet more closely. "This is a divorce petition!"

"That's right, Mrs. Davenport. Jim Davenport is suing you for divorce. I'm his attorney, and now you have been duly served."

"This is absurd," she sputtered. "He has no reason to want a divorce."

"Apparently, you haven't looked all the way through the papers I gave you," I said evenly.

She began to shuffle impatiently through the pages of the petition, when she suddenly realized that the last few sheets contained images rather than type. Then she gasped again when she saw the photographs that Marcy had taken of Jerry and her in flagrante delicto. As she stared at them, she clutched her gown to her throat; then she flung the whole package to the table like it was some poisonous snake.

"Where is Jim?" she demanded. "I have to speak with him. This is all a mistake. I have to make him understand what happened."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," I told her calmly. "Jim left today for a month-long cruise, and he has no desire to see or speak with you about this matter. From now on, any information you wish to convey to him will have to come through me. You'll find my telephone number at the end of the petition."

"That isn't fair," she exclaimed. "I have the right to speak to my own husband. He has to listen."

"I'm afraid when you and Jerry Hamilton conspired to betray him so contemptuously, you forfeited any such right. You no longer have nor deserve any claim on his attention or his affection."

I could tell her thoughts were darting in all directions, and she suddenly came back to something I'd said earlier. "Wait a minute, where is Jerry? Why won't he be coming back? What have you done with him?"

"You needn't look to Mr. Hamilton for assistance," I said. "He has problems of his own. As we speak he is being served with a similar divorce petition by Mrs. Hamilton."

She just stared at me with her mouth open.

"My business here is almost concluded, Mrs. Davenport, but before I go, I have a bit of advice to give you. I know how desirous you are of a wealthy lifestyle, but I'm afraid you're going to have to learn how to live in reduced circumstances. The financial settlement your husband is proposing is quite fair, but it will not leave you well off. You'll want to have your own attorney review it, but I strongly suggest that you accept Jim's offer. The petition I handed you is based on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. If you decide to play games, we can easily amend those grounds to adultery, in which case the photos you've seen and a recording of your conversation with Mr. Hamilton at the time will all become part of the public record. I really don't think you want that to happen, Mrs. Davenport."

She was about to reply when the phone began to ring. She turned to answer, but apparently thought better of it. As she turned back, I spoke up. "You'll want to be sure to return that call, Mrs. Davenport. I'm pretty sure it's your daughter calling to demand an explanation. Jim has already told her about your whole sorry affair."

She gasped yet again and then collapsed back down on the sofa, tears streaming from her eyes.

I stood up. "That concludes my business with you today, Mrs. Davenport. I'll show myself out."

I walked over to the door and grasped the knob, then turned back to face her. "One more thing, Mrs. Davenport, I'd take care with that gown and your sofa. The evidence of your infidelity today is leaving stains."

She leapt up and turned, only to spot the damp sticky splotch on the cushion of the sofa. I heard her wail as I walked through the door, and I wondered whether it was the stain on her sofa or her reputation for which she was crying.

When I got back to my office, Marcy was waiting. I recounted my visit to Mrs. Davenport, and I'm ashamed to admit that we both took an unhealthy amount of glee in her dismay. Then I demanded that Marcy tell her half of the story. She was eager to do so.

"I got to the Davenport house just after Mandy. She let me in and I found a seat out of the way in the dining room. We had to wait a while, but then we heard Jerry's car drive up and screech to a halt." She giggled, "He came running up to the front door, and he was so upset he had trouble getting his key into the lock."

"When he finally got the door open, Mandy was standing there waiting. Jerry got very red in the face when he saw her. 'Where is he?' he demanded. 'I know you've got a man in this house!'"

"'You're right,' Mandy told him. 'He's waiting in the living room.'"

Marcy grinned. I could see she was enjoying this.

"Jerry went storming into the living room, and I could see him from where I was sitting. His face was bright red, and then it suddenly turned pale when he saw Mandy's father sitting there. Her Dad stood up and gave that man a tongue-lashing that would have made my old drill sergeant proud."

"You should have been there, Miz Sara. Mandy went to stand next to her father and then turned to Jerry. 'You think you're pretty smart to carry on with Peggy Davenport," she told him, "but you don't know everything. You think you got your job and your title because you're such a hotshot. Well, you're wrong -- the reason you got hired is because my father owns the company. He arranged to have you hired after we got married, and now that we're getting a divorce, he's going to arrange to have you fired!'"

"Then Mandy motioned to me, and I came into the living room. Jerry was startled; he had never seen me before and didn't know who I was or why I was there. So I just marched right up to him and handed him the envelope with his copy of the divorce petition. When he tore open the envelope, the first thing he saw were the photos I'd taken of him and Mrs. Davenport. When he saw that, Miz Sara, his shoulders slumped like a flat tire, and he just turned and walked out of the house."

Marcy grinned again. "It was perfect, Miz Sara. He was a beaten man."

Then her smile disappeared. "But after he'd gone, Mrs. Hamilton began to cry her heart out, and her Dad just held her. They both were pretty upset, so I slipped out and came back here."

She looked at me reflectively. "I guess it's a lot like warfare, Miz Sara. Whether you win or lose, both sides take casualties."

After all the excitement of the two confrontations, the conclusion of the case was somewhat anticlimactic. The surprise of being caught in infidelity combined with the shock of losing his job and his wife knocked all the wind out of Jerry Hamilton. He didn't contest the divorce or the financial settlement we proposed. Splitting Jerry's and Mandy's assets required that they put their home on the market, but in the poor economy they got little more than what remained on their mortgage. Peggy wound up moving into an apartment, but at least she was debt-free and employed.

Jerry didn't fare as well. Losing his job in the midst of an economic downturn proved to be a bigger blow than losing his marriage. After a fruitless search locally, he finally left Atlanta to look for work elsewhere. Mandy hasn't heard from him since.

For some reason, Peggy Davenport lost all interest in Jerry once she found out he had lost his job. Instead, she contacted me repeatedly to try to arrange a meeting with Jim to seek a reconciliation. But he absolutely refused to have any contact with her, and ultimately she had to accept the inevitable. We left the grounds of the divorce as irreconcilable differences. There were some negotiations over the division of property, but ultimately Jim offered her the house in lieu of alimony and other considerations. He told me he didn't mind giving up the house because he could never see himself living there again.

Peggy had hoped that the equity in the house would provide the basis for maintaining her lifestyle, but she was disappointed to find that its value was far lower than she had expected. After the sale, she wound up moving to Birmingham to live with her sister.

There was one last little bit of irony in the case.

Winter was mild and we had a beautiful spring in Atlanta. Often, an early spring means a long hot summer, but this time the mild temperatures stayed with us all the way into May. The weather was so pleasant that Marcy and I decided to enjoy another picnic lunch in Piedmont Park. We were just spreading out the food on our blanket when a man approached us.

At first I didn't recognize him because his hair was longer and he was wearing a well-trimmed beard, but something about his eyes gave him away. I stood up and went to give him a hug. "Jim," I exclaimed, "how wonderful to see you!"

"Hi, Miz Sara, hi, Marcy," he said, almost shyly. "It's been a long time."

"It has been a long time," I agreed, "almost eight months. How are you doing?"

"Much better," he said. "I had a bit of a rough time when my divorce became final, but a lot of good things have happened to me, and that's really helped." He gestured with his hand and a pretty blonde woman sitting on a blanket under some trees waved back.

"So I see," I said with a little smile.

"I've been meaning to come and see you and Marcy for some time now," he went on. "I wanted to thank you again for all you did last year." He smiled. "The story about your meeting with Peggy made me feel a whole lot better."

I didn't say anything. Even now I wasn't sure whether I had done the right thing in confronting her that way. But it was clear that Jim had no doubts, and perhaps that was the important thing.

"There's something else I wanted to tell you, Miz Sara," Jim went on. "I had some news from my old company recently. It seems the reason they let some of us go was to make the company more attractive to a corporate suitor. Well, it worked: a big multinational corporation has just made a bid to acquire them."

I looked at him puzzledly. "That's very interesting, Jim, but how does that affect you?"

He smiled. "When they let me go, they let me keep my stock options. At the time, they had no value because they were under water, so Peggy didn't want them in the divorce settlement. But after the takeover bid, based on today's share price, they're worth almost a million dollars!"

"Congratulations, Jim!" I exclaimed. "What wonderful news. I'm so glad for you."

"Thanks, Miz Sara." As he started to rejoin his lunch companion, he turned back for a moment. "I hope Peggy hears the news," he said with a grin of satisfaction.