Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 Read Online Free PDF

A. P. Hill snatched the picture from her partner’s outstretched hand. From the sepia photograph a lovely but earnest-looking young woman gazed back at her with big, intelligent eyes. Flora Dabney looked a proper Edwardian gentlewoman in her coat with wide lapels and a frilled blouse with a jabot of lace at her throat. Her dark hair was brushed away from her forehead and tied with a ribbon at the back, a style that eschewed glamour, but did not hide her wholesome good looks.
    â€œI think I’m in love,” said Bill.
    â€œShe looks too intelligent for you,” said A.P., handing back the photograph. “She doesn’t say what she wants?”
    â€œNo. Women seem determined to be mysterious in my presence. Where are
you
going this afternoon, by the way?”
    His partner smiled sweetly. “Just out. Now try not to do anything that will get you disbarred.”
    Bill was still laughing merrily as A.P. left the office. She glanced at her watch. Nearly oneo’clock. Just as well that she’d packed her gear this morning. She hated to leave the car parked downtown with the rifle in the trunk, but it couldn’t be helped. Now she had to go into the ladies’ room and change. It wouldn’t do to show up in her present outfit: a pink linen coat and skirt and high heels. Better stow them in a locked briefcase in the trunk, just to be safe, after she changed into her other set of clothes.
    Anyone loitering about on the sidewalk in front would have insisted that A. P. Hill did not leave the building that afternoon. However, a teenaged boy in a hat and overcoat might have been observed leaving the second-floor ladies’ room with a briefcase.
    Â Â Â An hour later Bill was still attempting to make sense of the vagaries of feline paternity when an elderly woman appeared in the outer office. She wore a black silk dress and pearls and she had posture that a general would envy. She took in her surroundings in one piercing glance. But when she saw Bill peering at her through the open door of his office, her demeanor changed to one of fluffy amiability. She smiled as she came in, motioning for him to sit back down.
    â€œA. P. Hill?” she said eagerly.
    â€œNo, ma’am. She’s my partner, but she’s not here right now. And our secretary’s gone, too. I’m Bill MacPherson.”
    The woman in black surveyed Bill’s shabby surroundings. Her sharp eyes flickered over the framed diploma and the secondhand furniture. They paused momentarily on the gaily appareled rodent leering at her from the corner.
    â€œI think you’ll do fine,” she declared, settling happily into the captain’s chair Bill had purchased from Goodwill for the comfort of his clients. “I thought I’d drop by today because Lydia had to come downtown anyway to do her incessant courthouse research. I just know she drives them all crazy down there in the records office. Tracing her family tree, you know. She can’t quite prove a connection between her people and Robert E. Lee, so now she’s trying to find out the maternal grandmother of the man he bought Traveller from!”
    Bill blinked, trying to find his way into the conversation.
    â€œThat’s why we thought it would be such fun to have A. P. Hill as an attorney. She might know something about the general’s family connections that the Danville Courthouse doesn’t have a record of.” She stopped herself, as if she had just realized that the young man might see this preference as a personal slight. “But of course our legal business has nothing to do with the war at all,” she hastened to explain. “It’s just a simple little old transaction. I bet you could do it standing on your head.”
    Bill pictured Mr. Trowbridge bursting in andshouting, “Is it legal for an attorney to plead a case while standing on his head?” He smiled and ventured a question of his own. “Were we