Payment in Kind

"Anyways," she continued, "I started puttin' on those little things and hanging out near the pool to get a nice tan, pretty soon the boys were swarming like bees. I knew when Marsh was about to come home, and when it was time, I'd flirt with 'em until them boys thought they were gon' hit the jackpot. Marsh'd come home from school, come out to the pool and get so mad about what a slut I was, how I couldn't keep my cunt clean, then he'd take me inside and fuck me with everything he had with that little pecker of his.

"So, I guess in worked in a sense," I offered, "but not much long-term cure for your problems."

"No. I had a plan. I would act like his little plaything, but every chance I could get I was rippin' him off to make money to get out. I'd buy the most expensive thing on the rack, then return it for cash. I set up a bank account in a bank he never went to and deposited what little cash I'd made sewing and all of the other money I could lift off of him without him knowing about it. I thought about blowin' some of the guys around the pool for cash, but I knew it would get back to him and he'd understand that something was up. Over the next year, between this and that and the other, I managed to put together a little over ten thousand" she concluded.

"So, what happened?" I asked.

"Allie is what happened. When she came, it ended that thang" Dell responded.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Because you're not the only one who understands how things work Mr. Betts" she answered.

"First thing was I had to wait it out to make sure the baby was Marsh's. I insisted that we stop the parties for the baby's health and Marsh agreed. We were always drinkin' or smokin' weed and I didn't want none of that for her.

Anyways, I'd been careful all along, I thought, but somehow, I'd managed to get pregnant. It was the last thing I wanted and since I thought I'd done everything right I had no idea who the father was. I probably banged twelve different guys the year before I got pregnant. Marsh kept telling me for nine straight months to get rid of the baby, that he was afraid that it wasn't his, that he wouldn't raise some other guy's baby and act like it was his. He kept telling me he'd get a paternity test as soon as the baby was born and that if 'I didn't pass it' he'd shame me, dump me like a sack of coal. I kept tellin' him that it was his, even though I had no idea. If it was or wasn't. I just knew I wanted something different from what I was doing, and this baby was going to give it to me.

It was bullshit! I'd screwed all of them other guys because he wanted it! He brought them over! I didn't ask for 'em!" Dell emphasized before looking around the diner to make sure she hadn't been heard.

"But I knew damned good and well that he was tellin' the truth" she whispered. "He was gonna dump me like yesterday's trash. When Allie's DNA matched Marsh's I was happy, but he was miserable. He didn't want a baby, didn't want anything to tie him down, including me. Wanted to stay in Dallas after school, didn't want to come home, didn't want a damn thing to do with the family business. Probably wanted to divorce me then, but Max and Lenora made him come home and sober up. Told him that if he didn't get his ass back down to Sandstone County, get his shit together and act like a real man, they'd cut him out of the will completely" she rambled to a finish.

"Was life at home any better when you got back?" I asked.

"Yeah, it was good, really good for a few years. Lenora didn't think much of me at first, but she could see I was a good mom. I took care of Allie and worked my ass off around the house. She respected that, least when she wasn't drunk. Max pushed Marsh, hard. Wouldn't let him screw off like he'd done at SMU. Made him learn everything about oil and gas. Made him be the company man when they drilled the wells, made him watch when they built the gathering lines, made him go out in the middle of the night to let the trucks in that hauled the oil out."

"Say that again" I said, "about going out in the middle of the night."

"They made him go out at night and let the trucks in. It was always real late, 10;00, 11;00, midnight, and they didn't get done until 4;00 or 5;00 in the morning most mornings. Marsh hated it, but he said the family didn't trust anyone else to do it cause the oil companies would rip you off if you let them. Made no sense to me. Don't they have valve-counter or somethin' on the pipelines? I never could tell why they sold some into the pipeline and some into trucks at all. Hell, there must have been twelve, fifteen tankers a night most of the time we were married. Once Max died, Marsh hired a Mexican guy, Hector, who he has do it. Lenora couldn't make him go out at night. Course he's left and now Marsh's got some other guy."

"Do you remember what the trucks looked like?" I asked, "Did you ever see one?"

"Sure, some little mom and pop out of Magnolia Arkansas, Ark-Tex or something like that. Dark Blue, Yellow top on the cab."

"Okay, and Hector? What was his last name?" I asked. Dell looked truly puzzled as to why I'd want to know the name of a guy whose job was as menial as counting trucks and watching gauges.

"Rondon" she said, "Hector Rondon, like the ball player in Houston."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. You said it went well for a long time, right?"

"Yeah, sorta."

"Sorta?" I asked.

"Marsh was never faithful. Not once, not when we were at SMU and not when we got home. I caught him banging half the staff in the house. They knew it, I knew it, Max and Lenora knew it, everyone did. But it wasn't ever enough. He wanted to swap me, all the time. He'd talk about it day and night while we were screwing, how much he liked seeing me go down on another guy, lick his balls, take it in the ass, he'd drum on and on about it like a damned record. Then he set up a reunion with his old buddies in New Orleans and it was like old times. Five of 'em at once. All guys I'd screwed when he was in college. Oh yeah, he got the gang back together alright."

Dell's words were harsh, but a certain wistfulness had crept into her voice and unless I failed in my observations, and I was keenly focused on her at the time and unlikely to do so, her nipples had measurably hardened from the discussion of the group sex. There was much more buried there than Dell wanted to mention. It might become important, and it might not.

"Again, why not leave?" I asked.

"Don't be stupid Harper!" Dell said savagely. "I knew I didn't have a chance in hell of ever getting Allie in a custody fight. Every fuck I'd ever done would suddenly become my idea. All Marsh's shit buddies would like rugs and say I wanted it, that I asked for it, that I egged it on, and that Marsh was nowhere around. I'd go from being somethin' to a nothin' overnight and I'd lose Allie to boot. Only hope I had was to keep going until Allie got old enough to leave.

"I played it the same way I did in college. Marsh started going online and setting up bangs in Las Vegas, LA, even London, Barcelona. New guys--total strangers. I don't have any idea how he'd make contact, but every time we traveled out of Sandstone on vacation as a couple, whether it was to Houston or Abu Dhabi, I knew what was waiting for me at the end. A room full of cock. I worked at it all over again--made the little shit so jealous he saw red, every time. As soon as the door shut with the last guy gone, he'd tie me up and strap me good, weird little fuck would eat me out, cleaning up all their cum, then beat me red, then ass-fuck me, always ass...fuck...me," Dell said bursting into tears once again.

"I'm know I just keep repeating that I'm sorry, and I know that doesn't do much good, but I am sorry that there are guys in the world like Marsh, and guys in the world like the ones you met in those hotels," I said.

"That's not why I'm cryin'" Dell whispered, wiping her nose. I waited her out.

"I'm cryin' because I wanted it. I wanted those men. I loved it Harper. It was the only thing I had, so when those men laid eyes on me for the first time, I wanted their eyes to pop right out of their heads. I went back to the gym, back to the clothes stores, I was the ultimate fuck, and I made sure I wore out every man who ever came in me. Marsh would show me the follow-up messages. Lots of these guys were sheiks and shit he'd met in the oil business. They'd offer him $25,000, $50,000 for just one night with me, one even offered $250,000. He'd always laugh it off and say, 'Why should I sell you when I can give you away?'"

"All that shit ended when he started looking at Allie," she volunteered. "I knew then that I couldn't outwait him for her to get old enough to leave on her own. I knew he'd do the exact same thing to her that he'd done to me. He'd screw her. Then he'd make her like it. Then he'd make her hurt, and he'd make her to like that too, just like he'd done me. And then even that wouldn't be enough. Then there would be other men, just like for me. That's when I started backing him down. My mama stood up for me, I was gonna stand up for Allie. I let him know I meant business and that wasn't nothin' gonna come from it. I started going to the gun range."

"You were just going to kill him?" I asked.

"If I had to. I'd kill any man that laid hands on her against her will, I still will. Or I'll leave and take her before I ever see that happen," she said quietly.

"If I can help it, you'll never face that decision," I said raising the legal pad which was now thick with notes. "You've given me an incredible amount of ammunition. In any fair setting, we'd immediately be able to get a TRO suspending all contact between Marsh and Allie, but this isn't a fair setting, and there are consequences from kicking the Dedier Hornet's nest. We have to blow it up--set it on fire. You've given me some things that are great leads, and I'm going to spend some time drilling down into them now and get to work following them up. But I have to tell you that unless we find something more, something that changes the calculus completely, we'll still just be in a pitched battle with a guy holding all the cards."

Dell looked at me solemnly and said "I know you'll do everything you can. They was wrong about you. You didn't used to be good, you're good right now."

I blushed at her compliment and the air between us went still.

"You've been asking me questions all morning. Do you mind if I ask you some?" she asked.

"Sure" I responded uncertainly. It was totally normal for clients to ask about the court process, and these were the questions I expected.

"How did it make you feel when you heard about...what I'd done...with Marsh and all those other men?" she asked.

I was taken aback. "Why do you want to know that?"

"Because you're the only person in the world other than me and Marsh who knows about it all," she responded, then added "and I think you're a good man, so I'd like to know what a good man thinks about something like that."

The enormity of her revelation hit me like a train. This poor woman had been carrying the burden of a life filled with hate, contempt, and derision. The sin was not hers, at least not hers alone, but his. She'd made rough choices, arguably bad choices, but under circumstances so harsh they were unimaginable. Others would have folded under the pressure and abandoned their child, or life itself. Today, for the first time in her life she'd shared a part of her pain with someone, and she was looking for absolution.

"I try to think about these things the way a jury would--lots of different people. A fair chunk of them will be horrified at Marsh. The women will hate him. The men will be a mixed bag.

"I'm being totally honest here," I said, pausing. "Officially the men will understand that they're supposed to condemn the activity, but a part of them will say 'She liked it, she asked for it. If it had been all that bad, she would have left. And some of them will be drawn in by your looks and wish they were a part of it."

"Now, I can't tell you what I would have done if I'd been you. My life has been lived in a different galaxy than yours" I began. "I had love, true love, from early on. Honest love from a great woman, I had great kids, and a great family. I go to church. You know that. The Old Testament talks about Job, and how God decided to test him to see if he'd remain faithful while everything was taken away from him. Even with the loss that Dorothy's death brought to me, I've never been challenged the way you've been. I wasn't raised poor, I wasn't shoehorned into a marriage by a cheat, I wasn't forced to do things in my sex life that I didn't want to do, with people I didn't want to do it with. So, I'm in no position to judge you.

But I can tell you this. If I can't make a jury understand from this record that you were living in a gold-plated hell, I'll give up my license" I finished.

Dell wept again and, for the first time reached across the table to gather my hand into hers. My heart jumped at her touch, and I must have flinched some, for she laughed and said "I don't bite Harper. Well, least not until I'm made to" she smiled mischievously. I flushed crimson.

"Don't worry, I think you're safe...for now..." Dell whispered, and I flushed again. I continued to take her story, but her touch and her words inflamed my imagination. I took a long bathroom break to clear my head, then did the very best I could to get every detail I needed and set up a protocol for further contact through Penny. Marsh's recent interest in running the church's youth group was particularly interesting. It wasn't in his pattern. He certainly wasn't beyond doing something that looked like public service to gain recognition and standing in the community, but this was different. Marsh Dedier was about as far from being an exemplary Christian as any man in history, so this recent activity set off alarm bells.

By the time that session and two others were complete, we had all the information we needed. Penny created Dell's request for medical records, both in Sandstone, LA, New Orleans, and Dallas at the site of each medical treatment for Dell's beating. She personally walked them through the hospitals and other health care providers so that there would be no wagging tongues. I fed all the details I could to Terry Clavell and waited to see if he could deliver me a nuke.

Chapter Five

The Divorce

A week after my last interview with Dell a fat envelope arrived by hand delivery at our office. I heard a whoop from Penny out of the front office and scurried to the front to see what was up.

"You're not gonna believe this!" she crowed and handed me the package.

The top document was an invoice from Clavell investigations. I knew from the bottom-line charge that Terry had hit his mark. The memo read: "$90,000. $30,000 FOR EACH TIME I HAD TO SLEEP WITH THAT OLD BITCH."

Beneath the invoice were a series of black 8.5 x 11" glossy photographs over an inch thick, then a three-inch thick folder of business records. The first photograph was of the Pinetree Inn in Henderson Texas, the kind of place with "a room where you do what you don't confess." There were a first few orienting pictures showing open curtains and the placement of remote cameras on them. Then there were camera shots taken from inside one of the rooms from the remotes. Terry had been careful and methodical as usual, establishing that what he had captured was in plain public view--providing of course that someone was standing right outside room 109 of the PineTree Motel.

The hunch that Marsh was showing an unnatural interest in the flowering youth of his church had born ugly, rancid, fruit. Marshall Eugene Dedier was captured committing repeated violations of Texas Penal Code Sections 21.01 and 21.02 by exposing himself to a minor, by engaging in sex with a minor, by engaging in deviant sex with a minor, by administering illegal substances to a minor for the purposes of inducing the aforementioned crimes. That was Nuke enough. Marsh tied the bow together by having the bad taste and even worse judgment to commit these crimes upon the youngest daughter of District Judge Antone Volse.

We had a hundred megaton nuke. I reached out to call Sheriff Tom, then put the receiver down.

"Penny, get me the Texas Rangers."

They arrested Marsh Dedier as he walked out of the S.I.S.D school board meeting a week later. My interview with the Texas Rangers' field chief the next day went from incredulity that I would even dare to involve the Rangers in a simple divorce, to intrigue within a couple of photographs, and outrage at six. A helpful tip to the Sandstone Register led a reporter to be present to capture the moment when the Texas Rangers handcuffed Marsh and ducked him into their Suburban. The Rangers simultaneously seized Marsh's cell phones and his computers, the location of which had been surreptitiously, and accurately, supplied to the Rangers by counsel to Ms. Delta Rucker Rainer.

Dell and I couldn't wait for Marsh's ultimate, if inevitable, conviction. As soon as I had the photographs, Dell and I signed a retainer agreement. Dell still had no cash, and I was already on the hook for over a hundred and thirty thousand in expenses. Dell had signed a marital property agreement with Marsh, an ironclad one which gave her none of the Dedier fortune in the event of divorce. My agreement was to take 20% of any sum recover above what Dell had contracted to accept on divorce, which was zero.

Judge Volse recused himself from the criminal dispute, of course. Elyse went off to a boarding school back East. Marsh hired the hottest gun in the criminal defense world, a man in Houston who'd gotten the rich and famous off from far worse offenses. Visiting judge Spofford was assigned. Spofford was old, mean, and uncorruptible, he denied Marsh bail and moved him to Huntsville as a flight risk. Nine months and three million in wasted fees later, the jury convicted Marsh on every count for which the DA had secured indictment. Judge Spofford sentenced him to four sentences of 50 years apiece, to run consecutively. Marshall Eugene Dedier would spend his remaining days in prison.

Dell and Allie moved out of the Dedier mansion the morning after Marsh's arrest. The two took up residence in a seedy upper-floor apartment on the square, and Dell began working for The Buttercup Diner. Meg Simpson knew that, despite her connection to the very rich, Dell had nothing. But Meg was good that way and talked the landlord into letting Dell and Allie live free for the first two months. The property hadn't been leased for years for good reason--it was a piece of crap.

The afternoon after Marsh's arrest, I called Raleigh Simpson, the Dedier's current personal counsel and Meg's son. Raleigh, like his mother, was good people, honest, very smart, and experienced enough to know when someone was pulling his leg and when he was facing the real deal.

"Raleigh, I'm going to be representing Delta Ann Dedier. Given recent events involving Marsh, she intends to file for divorce. She believes that it would be in the family's best interest for their divorce to remain essentially private and to have a plain vanilla property division. If this does not occur, however, I'm sending over the form of petition which we will be filing" I concluded.

"I don't know what kind of property division you could be talking about Harp. Dell signed a marital property agreement. I know because I drafted it. I'd be surprised if she has over $50K in property to her name" Raleigh responded.

"Well Raleigh, that's why I'm sending the complaint. The prenup was involuntary, the worst kind of involuntary, and after you become acquainted with the facts, I am sure you'll agree with me about that. Oh, and we'd like to talk to you and Lenora about the property division tomorrow. We'll sending the form of marital property agreement incident to divorce as well. To break the news, Raleigh, its' going to pay her $84 million dollars free and clear."