The Lawyer Who Leapt
The Lawyer Who Leapt
Daytona Beach Book 2
By Frank W. Butterfield
Books By Frank W. Butterfield
Nick Williams Mysteries
The Unexpected Heiress
The Amorous Attorney
The Sartorial Senator
The Laconic Lumberjack
The Perplexed Pumpkin
The Savage Son
The Mangled Mobster
The Iniquitous Investigator
The Voluptuous Vixen
The Timid Traitor
The Sodden Sailor
The Excluded Exile
The Paradoxical Parent
The Pitiful Player
The Childish Churl
The Rotten Rancher
A Happy Holiday
The Adroit Alien
The Leaping Lord
The Constant Caprese
The Shameless Sodomite
The Harried Husband
The Stymied Star
The Roving Refugee
The Perfidious Parolee
The Derelict Dad
Nick & Carter Stories
An Enchanted Beginning
Golden Gate Love Stories
The One He Waited For
Their Own Hidden Island
Metaphysical Novels
This Morning, Over Here
Daytona Beach Books
The Sailor Who Washed Ashore
The Lawyer Who Leapt
© 2018 by Frank W. Butterfield. All rights reserved.
No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder.
This book contains explicit language and suggestive situations.
This is a work of fiction that refers to historical figures, locales, and events, along with many completely fictional ones. The primary characters are utterly fictional and do not resemble anyone that I have ever met or known of.
DB02-K-20181115
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
Historical Notes
More Information
[T]he story here will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offense against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness—with the same object, in both cases, to present the truth always in its most direct and most intelligible aspect; and to trace the course of one complete series of events, by making the persons who have been most closely connected with them, at each successive stage, relate their own experience, word for word.
—Wilkie Collins
The Woman In White
Prologue
Affidavit of Mrs. Inez Johnson
Tuesday, September 23, 1947
My name is Mrs. Inez Johnson. My husband is Mr. Leland Johnson. He is the President of Fidelity Trust Bank at 270 North Beach Street, Daytona Beach, Florida. We live at 301 North Halifax Avenue, Daytona Beach, Florida.
On the evening of Saturday, September 6, 1947, my husband told me that our son, Roland (herein referred to as Skipper), had agreed to no longer see his long-time friend Howard Kirkpatrick (herein referred to as Howie). My husband and I had been concerned for some time about the nature of their friendship. On several occasions, and starting in December of 1946, my husband had told Skipper that he believed that the two boys should not remain as close as they had been to that point. Skipper would usually agree but then take no action, much to his father's annoyance.
At some time before the sixth, my son arranged to have a friend, whose name I do not know, help him devise a plan where it would appear as though Skipper had disappeared from his fishing boat, the Mary Belle, in the Atlantic. He planned to convince Howie to go with him out into the open sea, on Sunday, the seventh, where he would attack Howie, knocking him unconscious and would then escape from the Mary Belle on this friend's speedboat.
Late on Sunday, the seventh, Skipper arrived at our home, having been driven there by this unknown friend. When I asked Skipper about the Mary Belle and Howie, he told me of his plan and its success. I asked him to report the boat as adrift to the Coast Guard and he refused. I then confronted my husband who insisted I remain quiet and let Howie make his own way back to land. My husband then told me he had arranged for Skipper to be married to the daughter of a business acquaintance, Mr. Roger G. Thompson, from Saint Augustine, Florida. Skipper and Pauline Thompson were to fly up to Atlanta from Saint Augustine in a private plane early on Monday, the fifteenth, and to be married there in Atlanta. My husband had arranged to buy a house in a fashionable part of that city for the two to live in as man and wife and for Skipper to begin a job at Southern Merchants Bank in downtown Atlanta. He also told me that Mr. Thompson had the same concern about Pauline and her friend, a girl whose name I do not know, as we had about Skipper and Howie.
I expressed my reservations about the legality of this plan, since I knew it might very well violate the Mann Act and was, in fact, tantamount to kidnapping since Pauline had not consented to leaving.
During the day of Monday, the eighth of September, I became increasingly worried when the Mary Belle was not seen coming through the inlet. My husband had hired a local of Ponce Park, whose name I do not know, to immediately telephone us when he saw it. On the early morning of Tuesday, the ninth, we received word that Howie had been seen piloting the Mary Belle through the inlet and was heading north up the Halifax River. Later that morning, I overheard my husband call Mr. Thomas Jarrell, an attorney retained by Howie, and question him about Skipper's whereabouts. When I looked into my husband's office, I observed Skipper watching his father carry on this conversation. To my eyes, Skipper was upset. I believe he may have been crying.
The next several days in our house were almost intolerable. My son moped around the house, obviously upset and, as the days passed, increasingly so. My husband refused to go into the office except for a couple of hours each morning and each afternoon, under the pretext that he was worried about Skipper, whom everyone believed to be lost at sea based on my husband's own slanderous lies.
I received call after call of condolences by well-meaning friends, both in person and over the telephone. Finally, I refused to answer any such inquiries, instructing my maid to turn all such callers away.
On the evening of Sunday, the fourteenth, my husband instructed my maid to pack a traveling bag for Skipper. He then forced our son to dress in an overcoat and, under cover of darkness, the two made their way to the marina where they boarded the Mary Belle.
I slept fitfully through the night. At approximately 5:30 in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of my husband returning. When I saw that he was carrying Skipper's traveling bag, I lost my mind for a brief while. Once I came to my senses, my husband told me they had fought and that Skipper had fallen into the ocean. Despite his best efforts, my husband claimed to have been unable to save Skipper before he drowned and his body sank. Later that morning, we received word from Daytona Beach Police Chief Thomas Johnson (no relation) that Skipper's body had been recovered north of Daytona Beach.
In spite of my husband's entreaties, I refused to atte
nd the coroner's inquest or the opening day of Howie's trial.
I believed this version of my husband's story until this morning when I read of the testimony in open court that Skipper had been hit on the head with an oar. I rushed to DeLand, prepared to testify to the jury of all I knew, only to arrive in time to see the State's Attorney withdraw charges against Howie and to watch, in shame and horror, as my husband was led away by a bailiff for questioning.
I attest the previous to be true, to the best of my knowledge. I offer this affidavit of my own free will and do attest that none have coerced me to do so.
My forwarding address is care of my father, Dr. Lionel J. Markinson, 740 Park Avenue, New York, New York. I may also be reached by telephone in that city at TR3-2292.
Attested to this day, September 23, 1947, in Daytona Beach, Florida.
/s/ Mrs. Inez Johnson
So witnessed, September 23, 1947, in Daytona Beach, Florida.
/s/ Miss Marveen Dodge
/s/ Mr. Ronald H. Grisham
Chapter 1
761 S. Palmetto Avenue
Daytona Beach, Fla.
Wednesday, September 24, 1947
A quarter before 9 in the morning
Tom Jarrell whistled as he walked down Palmetto, headed to work. It was a beautiful morning, nice and cool following the previous day's tropical storm sideswipe. Tom felt as though fall might have arrived even though he knew better than to expect the kind of autumnal vision offered up in the Norman Rockwell covers of the Saturday Evening Post.
Tom didn't care, though. He was happy and deeply satisfied in a way he couldn't ever remember feeling before. As he strolled along, keeping out of the way of the occasional passing car, he thought about the night before, one where he and Ronnie Grisham had made a kind of passionate love that he never thought possible.
Back in April, his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Missy, had been killed out on the DeLand Highway when a truck hit their car, head-on. After that, Tom had fallen apart. He'd begun to drink and stay drunk. After being fired from a local law firm, he'd finally realized he needed help.
So, he'd gotten on the train and headed to Chicago and then on into Wisconsin where he'd spent a few weeks at Lakeside Sanitarium under the care of Dr. Alexander Meisner. The good doctor had helped him come to terms with the tragedy he'd just been through and to find a way back from the edge of dipsomania. Since he'd returned to Daytona Beach, at the end of July, Tom hadn't had anything to drink. Or, not much.
One of the more intensive aspects of Dr. Meisner's therapy had been to tell Tom how his affection for Ronnie Grisham was a stunted expression of a desire for true male friendship. Instead of expressing that desire through sexual contact with Ronnie, Dr. Meisner had suggested Tom should maintain a cordial, but less intimate, friendship with the man.
Tom had tried that, but it had nearly driven him back to the bottle. Instead, and it would definitely have been frowned on by Dr. Meisner, Tom had taken up Ronnie's suggestion to start up a law practice. The two began to work together, opening up an office at 106A Beach Street, hiring Marveen Dodge to be their secretary, and taking on such clients as they could find.
That was how they'd met Howie Kirkpatrick, Tom's first important client. Howie had wandered in the office a few weeks earlier, afraid he'd murdered his best friend (and, as it turned out, his lover) out on the Atlantic. Tom and Ronnie were able to discover the truth and, just the day before, the charges against Howie had been dismissed.
Unfortunately, during his trial, word had gotten out about the nature of the relationship between Howie and Skipper Johnson. Tom had suggested the young man take a road trip up north and let the dust settle around town. Howie had agreed and, using Ronnie's car, had left town.
Over dinner the night before, Tom found himself unable to contain his passion for Ronnie any longer and they had spent the night rekindling an affair they'd had while Tom's wife, Sarah, was still alive and that truly began back in high school, in Tallahassee. According to Ronnie, she had known about their shared passions and had approved. That was news to Tom, but he tended to believe that Ronnie was telling him the truth.
Earlier that morning, Tom's maid, Alice, had walked into the house a little earlier than he was expecting. But, much to his surprise, she had been quite pleased that Tom and Ronnie had finally spent the night together. Tom was still not quite sure what to make of that, but the memory of her laughter on the other side of the bedroom door made him smile.
. . .
As Tom made his way to the top of the stairs just outside his office, he smiled one more time, thinking about Ronnie. The two had shared one lingering kiss in Tom's bedroom before Ronnie had left through the front door, taking Tom's car for the morning. All he would say, as he left, was that he had an important meeting. He didn't mention who it was with and Tom didn't care.
Opening the outer door of the office, Tom stopped short when he saw Marveen. She was sitting at her desk, her eyes glaring daggers at him as she did. Looking through the inner door that led into his office, Tom immediately understood why.
Sitting behind his desk, as if he owned the place, was Mr. Eugene Mayer, his former employer and mentor. Mr. Mayer was dressed in his usual seersucker suit, light blue, and had placed his straw hat in the middle of Tom's desk. The older man smiled at Tom and said, "Good morning."
Tom cautiously walked into his office. He removed his hat and his coat, hanging both on the rack, and stood about three feet from his desk. "Good morning, Mr. Mayer. How are you this morning?"
"Well, I'm fine, Tom." His smile broadened a bit. "Congratulations, my boy. You did a great job in court yesterday."
Tom nodded. "Thank you."
The older man waved his thanks away. "Don't mention it." He turned to his right and looked out the window above Beach Street. "Nice view you have of the river here. Better than mine, I can tell you that. Looks like they're making good progress on replacing the concrete bridge."
Still standing by his own desk, Tom said, "Yes, sir."
Looking up at him, Mr. Mayer asked, "Have you given any further thought to my proposal?"
Without hesitation, Tom replied, "I have and, as generous as it is, I'll have to take a pass."
Mr. Mayer's dark eyes narrowed. "Are you sure, son?"
Tom nodded. "Yes, sir. It's certainly very generous."
Looking around the office, Mr. Mayer said, "Well, I can't imagine how many years it will be before you make as much as I was offering you for just one year." He picked up his hat and then stood. "I'm afraid, Tom, that when I leave this office, I won't be able to offer you the job again. It's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of offer."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
Putting his hat on his head, the older man frowned. "I don't think you do."
Tom wasn't sure what to say in reply to that. When Mr. Mayer had offered to re-hire him two nights earlier, Tom knew it was as much a warning as anything else. He'd been summoned late on Monday night to the man's big house on the other side of the river. Mr. Mayer had offered him an annual salary of ten thousand dollars. Tom knew that the offer was an attempt on Mr. Mayer's part to keep him close. And, he could hear Ronnie from the night before, "you only do that with your enemies." Mr. Mayer saw him as a threat. Tom didn't know why, exactly, but he knew it was true.
As tempting as it was to go back to his old job, the truth was that he had plenty of money to stay afloat for a year or two without much business at all. The work had been coming in, in dribs and drabs. There was some interest about town in what he could offer as a lawyer.
Mr. Mayer puckered his mouth, like he did when he had a point to make, and said, "You see, Tom, in a town like Daytona Beach, there's only room for so many practicing attorneys. If you're in with Thornton and myself, there will always be plenty for you to do. In time, we'll bring you in as a partner and then, before you know it, you'll have a house on the river like mine." He smiled but there was nothing friendly in the expression. "Surely, you want to do well, don'
t you, son? I'm sure that's what Sarah would want."
Tom stiffened at the mention of his late wife's name. That was a low blow and further deepened his resolve to keep the law firm of Mayer & Thornton at a distance. Forcing himself to smile, Tom said, "I appreciate your concern and your generosity, but I like working for myself."
Mr. Mayer walked around the desk and then stopped between Tom and the door. He turned and nodded. "I understand." He looked over towards the window facing the river. "One last chance, Tom." Keeping his eyes on the window, the older man sucked in through his teeth, something Tom remembered him doing when he was angry.
Tom shook his head. "No, sir, but thank you anyway."
Mr. Mayer nodded, turned, and walked through the door. He looked back at Marveen, who had been quietly sitting at her desk. Lifting his hat, he said, "Good morning, Miss Dodge." He walked through the open exterior door and quietly made his way down the steps. As soon as Tom heard the door at the foot of the stairs close, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Marveen stood and looked at Tom through the doorway. "What a creep."
Tom grinned a little, walked over to his desk, and sat in his chair. He looked at his secretary and asked, "How long was he here?"
She crossed her arms. "He was here when I got here. We need to change the locks."
Tom nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe. Or maybe Ronnie or I forgot to lock up when we left."
She shook her head. "Not likely. Ronnie always remembers to lock the door."
Tom sighed. "You're right." He leaned forward. "How was your date last night?"
Marveen blushed slightly. "We had a swell time. Bill is a great dancer. He took me to the Trocadero and we had dinner and danced." She sighed contentedly. "It was quite a night."
"I'm glad to hear it." Teasing her, he said, "That's two nights in a row."
She nodded. "Mother thinks I need to play a little hard to get, but I'm not getting any younger and I like Bill. He's nice." She looked up. "How'd you know Bill and I went out?"
"You look happy."
She smiled and nodded. "Oh! There was a telegram on the floor when I walked in this morning." She rolled her eyes. "I guess Mr. Mayer couldn't be bothered to pick it up."