If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

She shrugged. “Tolerable, I guess. Things are about the same at home, but you can get used to anything after a while.”

“You don’t have to get used to it,” said Bill, fighting the urge to raise his voice. Honestly, Donna Morgan was the modern counterpart to “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck.” “Your husband cannot get away with having two wives. Trust me on this. Here, I’ve written a couple of drafts of a stern letter to Chevry, explaining the errors of his ways and the possible legal ramifications. I wanted you to take a look at it before I type up a final copy for mailing.”

Donna Morgan took the letter and read it slowly, blinking and whispering an occasional word aloud in her bewilderment at the intricacies of legal phrasing. “I’m sure it’s very nice,” she murmured politely, handing it back.

Bill slid the letter into the Morgan folder, along with local newspaper clippings about the case and a few photocopied pages from law books. He could tell by Mrs. Morgan’s expression that she had not understood the contents. “In short, what it says is that we wish to warn Reverend Chevry Morgan that he is in violation of the state law against criminal conversation-that’s being unfaithful to one’s spouse. It’s actually illegal. I wonder if people realize that.” He broke off for a moment, thinking about MacPherson pere.

“I never heard of anybody getting taken to court on account of it.”

“Neither have I,” Bill admitted.

“Mostly, they get shot,” said Donna Jean.

“Yes, well, there are other ways of handling it,” Bill assured her. “The letter informs your husband that he may have broken several other laws as well as the one covering infidelity. It further states that if he does not cease his relationship with Miss Reinhardt, we plan to threaten him with legal separation, which will cost him support money on your behalf, and we conclude by saying that we may bring the local law-enforcement people into the picture, to see if they feel like arresting him for anything.”

“That seems harsh, Mr. MacPherson. Not like a wife ought to speak to her husband.”

“Well,” said Bill, “you didn’t write the letter. I did. Lawyers are trained to be harsh. Most people who are willing to listen to reason don’t hear from us, and we have to be stern to get the attention of the rest.”

“I don’t know if that letter will help or not,” said Donna Morgan. “You see, there’s been a development.”

Bill clutched the edge of his desk. “Not another wife?”

In spite of herself, Donna Morgan smiled. “No, sir. It’s just that Tanya Faith and me had a big fight the other evening, and she set Chevry against me, so he’s decided to move out with her.”

“Your husband has left you?” Bill pictured a sensational divorce trial and wondered if he ought to invest in a new suit.

“Not exactly left me,” Donna Jean replied. “He said he’d had a new revelation from the Lord, telling him that he wasn’t meant to keep two wives under one roof. Chevry says a woman’s home is like a hen’s nest, and that every hen has to have one of her own. He wants to give Tanya Faith a place that belongs just to him and her, and he’ll move back and forth between her house and mine, every other day, or some such plan.”

Bill blinked. “He’s buying another house?”

“No, but there’s an old one that belongs to the church. They bought it for taxes years and years ago, when they purchased the adjoining land to build the new parking lot. The old place was used as the original parsonage. It was built about 1860, same as the church was, but the church has been modernized through the years, and this place hasn’t. It’s big and imposing. I expect it was pretty once, but it’s in a sorry state now. Still, Chevry is real handy with tools and drywall, and of course he can get the carpeting wholesale, so he thinks he can put it to rights. He’s been working on it in the evenings after he finishes his day job. I’ll take him over his dinner and a change of clothes for evening services, and then he’ll go back and work another hour or two before bedtime. He’s been feeling poorly lately. I tell him he oughtn’t to overwork himself, but he’s burning to get the place fixed up so that Tanya Faith can have it.”

“How do you feel about that?” Bill was fascinated by this new development.

“I don’t know,” said Donna. “At first I was relieved to get shut of Tanya Faith, prissing around my house and giving herself airs. She won’t hardly lift a finger to help in the kitchen, you know. Bone lazy. And she goes whining to Chevry if I try to make her do her part. If she had her own place, I wouldn’t have to put up with her, and maybe Chevry would see what a useless little tart she is.”

Bill MacPherson sighed. He had never wanted Phil Donahue’s job. After more than the usual number of years in law school, all he wanted was a nice steady income, helping people draft their wills, drawing up deeds for home buyers, and defending the occasional teenage vandal or careless motorist as they faced the terrors of the legal bureaucracy. Now it had come to this. He was the fundamentalist Dear Abby, advising the parties in a bigamous marriage about how to promote their domestic tranquillity. He knew he was supposed to be on Donna Morgan’s side, but he found it difficult to see life from her point of view. Every time Bill tried to put himself in Donna’s place, he imagined rage and an urge for colorful revenge. These qualities were notably lacking in Mrs. Morgan the Elder. It was most perplexing. Bill felt further than ever from understanding women.

Bill tried to reason with his client. “Whether or not Tanya Faith does housework is not really the issue, Donna Jean. I don’t think getting her out of your house is going to solve the problem. The problem is that your husband is committing adultery. Bigamy. Almost statutory rape. He’s a sexual outlaw, Mrs. Morgan, and having two zip codes is not going to fix any of that.”

Donna Jean Morgan nodded. ‘You go ahead and send Chevry that letter,’ she said. “I hope it will persuade him to send Tanya home. I just wish he’d hurry up and finish that house so that Tanya can move out.”

“How long is it likely to be?” asked Bill.

“He’s got the lights rewired, and last Saturday some of the men of the church helped him fix the pump on the old well so he’d have running water. Now what he’s doing is mostly painting and prettifying.” She gave a disapproving sniff. “He’s letting her pick the color of the carpet. He didn’t let me pick the color of anything in our house. Said the Lord meant for the man to be the decider in all things.”

“Well,” said Bill, “let’s see if we can settle this matter before Chevry gets struck by lightning.”

“Are you free for lunch?”

Bill MacPherson saw his sister, Elizabeth, in the doorway, looking tense and weary, as she usually did these days. He had been planning to invite Jerry Lawrence to lunch at Ashley’s, in hopes that the assistant district attorney would be willing to trade legal second opinions for a buffet lunch. Bill wanted to know how strongly the state felt about formalized fornication, in re the Chevry Morgan menage. That inquiry would have to wait, though. He could see that Elizabeth was in need of company, and he felt guilty that MacPherson and Hill had been unable to provide any assignments to occupy their new investigator.

“Sure,” he said, with a perfunctory glance at his appointment book. “I’m free until-well, until Thursday, actually, but something will probably turn up. Let’s go to lunch.”

“How are things with you?” Bill asked, when they had settled into a booth at the restaurant. He hoped that his sister would say, “Fine,” as convention demands, but since those who are ill or otherwise preoccupied with themselves always take this pleasantry as a serious inquiry, Elizabeth spent several minutes answering his greeting in clinical detail.

“I wish you had something for me to do,” she finished plaintively. “I think too much-and there’s really no point in brooding over things I can’t change.”

“Powell has a murder case,” said Bill. “But her client has confessed, so I don’t suppose there’s much to investigate. She may want you to track down character witnesses, though.” He brightened at the thought. “I’ll ask her.”

“A murder case? Anything interesting?”

“Nothing you ought to mention to Mother,” said Bill. “Powell is defending Eleanor Royden, the ex-wife of a Roanoke attorney. She shot and killed her husband and wife number two.”

“Sore loser?”

“Apparently there was some provocation. I don’t know too many of the details.”

Elizabeth lost interest in the domestic murder in Roanoke. “What are you working on?”

“I have a bigamist,” said Bill. “And a bad-check case. A house closing next week. Sorry.”