Sycamore Row

will?”
    “Objection,” Jake said. “She’s already answered that twice.”
    “Okay, yes, well, I just wanted to make sure.”
    “It’s in the record.”
    “Sure.” Having scored big, Zeitler was reluctant to move on. He established that Lettie drove the Cadillac on that day only; she rarely saw pill bottles or drugs around the house; she suspected he kept his meds in his briefcase; at times he was in severe pain; he never talked about suicide; she never witnessed bizarre behavior that would suggest he was under the influence of medications; he was not a drinker but occasionally kept a few beers in the refrigerator; and he kept a desk in his bedroom but almost never worked at home.
    By noon Tuesday, Lettie was ready to quit. She had a long lunch in Jake’s office, again with Portia, then took a nap on a sofa.

    Death by deposition continued on Wednesday as Jake took charge and quizzed Herschel Hubbard for several hours. The morning session dragged on with stultifying dullness, and it didn’t take long to establish that Herschel had accomplished little and taken few chances in his career. His divorce had been the most exciting event in his life. Such hot topics as his education, work experiences, businesses, former homes and apartments, relationships, friends, interests, hobbies, religious convictions, and political leanings were covered in depth and proved to be stunningly boring. Several of the attorneys nodded off. Portia, in her third day of real legal action, struggled to stay awake.
    After lunch, the lawyers reluctantly returned to the courtroom for another session. Jake managed to liven things up a bit when he began trying to pin down how much time Herschel had spent with his father in the past several years. Herschel tried to give the impression he and the old man were close, but had trouble recalling specific visits. If they spoke so often on the phone, what might the phone records reveal? Jake asked. Any cards and letters from Seth? Herschel was sure he had them but he wasn’t so sure he could produce them. His lawyers had instructed him to be as vague as possible, and he succeeded beautifully.
    On the subject of Lettie Lang, Herschel claimed to have been around her quite often, during his many visits to see his beloved father. In his opinion, Seth was quite fond of her. He admitted he never saw them touch in any way, but there was something in the way they looked at each other. What, exactly? Not sure, but just something between them. She was always listening, always in the shadows tryingto eavesdrop. And as his father got sicker, he depended more and more on Lettie, and they grew closer. Jake asked if he was suggesting they were intimate. “Only Lettie knows that,” Herschel replied, implying, of course, the obvious.
    Portia fumed as she glanced around the table. She assumed that every person there, except for Jake, believed her mother was sleeping with a withered and decaying old white man, and doing so to get his money. But Portia kept her head low, and, as a professional, maintained a poker face as she filled another page with notes that would never be reviewed.
    Seven hours of probing were more than enough to establish Herschel Hubbard was a less than interesting person who’d had a strained and distant relationship with his father. He was still living with his mother, still reeling from a bad divorce, and, at the age of forty-six, barely surviving on the income from a student hangout. What Herschel desperately needed was an inheritance.
    As did Ramona. Her deposition kicked off at 9:00 on Thursday morning, and by then the lawyers were cranky and fed up with the case. Spending five consecutive days in deposition was a rare event, though not unheard-of. During a break, Wade Lanier told a story of deposing a dozen consecutive witnesses over ten straight days in an oil spill case in New Orleans. The witnesses were from Venezuela, most did not speak English, and the interpreters were not that fluent. The lawyers partied hard every night, suffered through the depositions with awful hangovers, and two of them entered rehab when the ordeal was over.
    No one had more stories than Wade Lanier. He was the senior lawyer and had spent thirty years in courtrooms. The more Jake watched and listened, the more he respected Lanier. He would be a formidable foe before the jury.
    Ramona turned out to be as dull as her brother. From their depositions, it slowly became apparent that Seth Hubbard was a