Chapter 10

Howard was pulling on the handle to the second drawer of his personal file cabinet, when Aunt Jean appeared at side door of her garage.

"Honey, Gail called. She sounded a little upset. She wants you to go to Atwood's office. She said you should come by before you go to work, but ... well, she did sound upset about something."

"Okay, I'll go on by there now. This is going to be a bigger job than I thought. I might need to box up some of this and take it with me."

"Hi Sweetheart, it looks like you'll are getting new furniture."

"Oh, is the truck here already? Atwood said they were going to deliver today, but I thought it would be later. I need to go tell them where to put things. He had to go to the bank for some kind of meeting. I think there was some confusion about the commercial file he closed yesterday."

"Aunt Jean said you wanted me to stop by on my way to work. She said you were upset about something. You want to tell me now or later?"

Gail looked at the door, to make sure no one was listening and whispered, "Howard, Atwood said we have to get a divorce. He said we've told people we are married and people think we are married. He said we've created a common law marriage. We have to get a divorce."

"Nope, I'm not going to divorce you. I might marry you for real, but I'm not going to divorce you. That's a hell of a way to propose to a woman, and I don't even have a ring to give you, but I'm not getting a divorce."

"Howard..."

"Gail, I'm going to work. We can talk about this later." He turned and walked out of the office, leaving Gail staring after him, her mouth open in astonishment.

Instead of trying to figure out such a confusing man as Howard Pleas, Gail went outside and began to tell the office supply deliverymen where each piece of furniture should be placed. Atwood told her there were several nice chairs for the front waiting room, plus a desk, a two-drawer file cabinet, two client chairs, and two bookcases for each office and all the tall metal lateral file cabinets should go into the back room. Every office would get a new office chair and she should use her judgment for everything else. She had to manage the space and she may as well decide where to place all the furniture. He planned to keep his smaller space for his one-man law firm and try to keep the commercial files on this side of the office.

She left the crew of men assembling the desks, file cabinets, and bookcases, to make a quick trip to the bank the abstract company used so she could open personal checking and savings accounts and sign up for a debit card. On her way back to the office, she stopped for hamburgers for herself and Petra and was back at the office, just finishing their lunch in the back room when Atwood walked in.

"Okay, girls, for the first time in I don't know how long, we don't have a rush closing on a Friday afternoon. Petra, go turn on the dumb telephone answering thing and we can have the rest of the afternoon without the telephones ringing. We can't do anything for anyone anyway, the telephone and computer people will be here all afternoon, and the best thing we can do is stay out of their way."

Gail started to say something, and then thought better of it. Instead, she asked Atwood, "I need to make some copies of all the Pleas paperwork, how much do I pay you for my copies?"

"Good Lord, Gail, if I can't afford for you to make a few personal copies, I better quit and go fishing right now. No, I'm teasing you. You just do what you want, I'm sure the extra hours I get out of you will more than pay for a few copies."

"Thank you."

While Petra was turning on the answering machine, Gail told Atwood what Howard said.

"Well, I'm not surprised. Howard is a lot like his dad. He may not go to mass all the time, but inside his head, he's Catholic. But you two have some other problems, too, I think." Atwood held up his hands, as if to say that he didn't want to hear about them. "And maybe you should concentrate on those other problems first. I'm not going to interfere, but you need to know that your old boss, Carlson Grayson, called me. He said a private investigator was asking questions, trying to learn if you were discharged for cause."

"Santos Aguirre," Gail said, nodding her head.

"What does Santos have to do with this?"

"Atwood, how much do you charge for a retainer? I need some legal advice."

"Gimme a dollar and come into my office so I can make notes while you tell me what's happening."

When Gail was seated, she looked around for a moment, "My goodness, where did all the files go?" Atwood's office looked very different from the first time she sat down to interview for a job she'd had only a week, one she was beginning to love more with every hour she spent as a escrow officer.

"Bless Petra's heart, she's listened to me complain every time she put a new file on my desk. She boxed up everything she could. I think I can almost see the entire top of my desk and I haven't been able to do that in a couple of years. I put this expansion off too long and now I'm glad I did. It gave you a chance to get here. Did I tell you I'm happy you found us? I am very serious about this, Gail. I really am pleased. Now, you tell me what kind of a mess you think you are in and we will look for a solution. If I can't find one, we will go talk to a friend of mine who practices a different kind of law and he will help."

"I'm not sure where to start. Maybe I should tell you a little more about me, and part of why I came down here on vacation. I haven't done anything wrong, but I probably haven't always been very smart, either. I almost feel like I'm going to confession and I'm not one of those who goes to mass, but I think inside my head I'm also a Catholic, and it's going to be a real problem for Howard. I'm divorced, which he knows and I don't know how he feels about that."

For the next couple of hours Gail told Atwood about her parents and their professions, which he already knew about, but she also told about the year she lived with her father and why her mother took her to live with him, describing herself as a little punk. She mentioned her marriage, the abuse, and the reasons for the divorce. When she told Atwood about her boyfriend, she admitted it was very poor judgment on her part, but she did not try to make excuses. With all of those failures, including a few financial difficulties, and being pregnant, heaped on her, she just felt she had to get away from everyone and everything associated with that past and do some real soul searching, not knowing what she would discover, but hoping for some kind of revelation, so she could live with her mistakes.

Petra interrupted to say Gail and Atwood needed to tell the computer technician where the new computers and printers should be placed. In a few minutes, the telephone installers were asking for an idea of where the new instruments should be placed, and where they wanted the new instruments they were getting for the older space. Atwood finally located the rough drawing of the floor plan he'd used for the men who built the walls inside the new space, including where outlets for the computers and telephones were already in place. Furniture men, telephone installers and the two computer technicians worked around each other as the office space finally began to look like a place where business could be transacted.

Gail and Atwood took cups of freshly made coffee back to his office, where Gail tried to tell the next events in their proper sequence—of picking up Howard, not even sure why she did so, and the miscarriage, which she hated that it happened but it was probably for the best in the long run.

She grew progressively agitated, leaning forward in her seat, as she explained about all the times Santos just walked into Howard's house as if he owned it and how his threats became more and more frightening. When she described the interview with the sheriff and the border patrol agent, Atwood sat up and began to take a greater interest in her story, occasionally asking her to go back to a previous event and give him more information.

"I hate to tell you this," Atwood said, "but it looks like a real hornet's nest was swarming and you just stepped in and knocked the nest down. You have likely saved Howard's life, although that could be debated, and he has likely saved yours, too. When Howard was suddenly faced with the loss of his ranch, it raised such a cry of public indignation that Santos backed down, or at least the county backed down, and of course the bank helped Howard with the loan."

"Atwood," Gail finally relaxed against the back of her chair, "did anyone ever do a thorough search of tax records, payment histories, or anything like that? I know mistakes are made, but did anyone, like Howard, or someone on his side, do any investigating that the county records were correct?"

"Now, that, I cannot say. This office did not and there is only one other office in the county which might have, but it is unlikely. They really don't do very much of that kind of work and usually call me for any help they need or to issue a policy which the bank would have required."

"Is it possible the past due tax issue was manufactured?"

"Gail, anything is possible. There is not a single person in this town, or many of the surrounding towns, who doubts Santos is involved in some illegal activities, but proof has never been found. And there is no telling how many public officials are in his back pocket. He is a wily character, but someone, whom I will not name, is certainly providing him with some very good legal advice; at least that's how it appears to many of us on the other side of his largess. He and his ilk do not help the future of this county—or the three or four others right along the border."

Gail tried to describe the several generations-old information Howard vaguely recalled his father speaking of, that an ancestor of Santos' took land he was not entitled to, in a family dispute. However, her information was so sketchy she wasn't sure which generation it was, or how long ago the dispute occurred.

Atwood said the old files, in his wife's garage, might provide some information, but they might also need to go to the state land office if they had to research too many years of previous records. The county records were not terribly accurate, which had caused some problems for him in the past, and he had occasionally resorted to state records for clarification, mentioning that his wife often translated things for him. Although he read Spanish, it was her natural language and nuances of word usage were much more common in Spanish than in English.

Gail added, "And the spelling and handwriting is atrocious. We laughed so hard in the classes I took about the way words were spelled, particularly the documents of Stephen Austin's era."

"Yes," Atwood agreed.

"Well, I guess if those furniture men are finally finished putting all the big file cabinets in place, I can get my carpenter in here to build the shelves we need in that long room in the back. I had thought I would bring the files into the office a few at a time, but I'm so curious now, I'd like to see those old files, from twenty and thirty years ago, and maybe some older than that. I'll bet we have some answers there, even if it's not the answers we want."

"Atwood, I don't want to completely change your schedule. We're disrupted enough with the move."

He assured her that it was not something he could do overnight. However, it is a project he could start working on. Petra needed a car and Olivia's birthday was getting nearer. The sooner he began the more problems he could solve.

"Howard, don't look at me like that. I simply asked, if you and I could have a conversation. If I promise not to yell at you, would you promise not to walk out?"

"Alright, but I'm not getting a divorce." He sounded so adamant Gail knew she would not be able to persuade him today. "So if that's what you want to talk about, we don't need to have a discussion."

When Gail got off work, she drove by Frank's house and asked Howard to take a ride with her. She did not want to have a discussion sitting on the bed, nor did she want to drive all the way out to the ranch. Howard suggested they go to the park. They were sitting in a public park, large plastic glasses of ice and sodas sweating on the picnic table between them, and trying to have a civilized conversation.

"I want you to tell me again what you can remember your father telling you, or at least tell me if you have remembered anything new that you didn't already tell me."

"No, I really don't have any new information. I remember once, and only once, Dad saying that our name, Pleas, is actually the first name, not the last name of someone. He said it happened when someone said "That land belongs to Blaz and this land is Plea's," you know with the apostrophe before the s, whatever that means. The way he told it, the son of one brother started using the last name Pleas and the son of the other family used the last name Blaz, or maybe Blaze, because their actual last name was too hard for people to say."

Crossing her fingers, Gail asked, "Do you know what the original name was?"

"No, I think Dad said it once, but it was like six or seven syllables. The only thing I can remember is that the first syllable sounded like Magoo, or maybe it was Maguna. I was young enough to associate it with the cartoon character Mister Magoo. Not much help, am I?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's better than remembering the last syllable. Now can we discuss what I told you this morning?"

"Yes, as long as it's a discussion and not a demand that we get a divorce."

"Okay, I understand. Howard, this is very hard for me. I feel like I'm intruding into your life. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you have done for me, for the past two weeks. But it's not fair for me to tie you to something like this."