Miz Sarah Enlists a New Assistant

"Actually," I interrupted him, "there are a couple of other people who will be joining us in a few minutes, but I'll introduce them when they arrive."

Howell looked at me uncertainly, but then apparently decided to let that pass.

"Very well," Howell continued. "Now, as I was saying, the purpose of this meeting is to reach an agreement on a property settlement, relying on the prenuptial agreement which Mrs. Cannon prepared as our guide."

"Excuse me, Mr. Howell," I interrupted again, "but wouldn't any discussion of a settlement be predicated on the issue of Marilyn Hart Marshall's alleged infidelity?"

"Of course," Howell piped up impatiently. "That's already been settled."

"Based on the sworn testimony of Emma Wolfolk," I added. I noticed that Ms. Wolfolk flinched slightly.

"That's right, Mrs. Cannon, Ms. Wolfolk witnessed Mrs. Marshall's indiscretion and has given her affidavit to that effect," Howell said impatiently. He spoke slowly, as though I were a child.

I ignored Howell and turned to General Marshall. "And you are willing to rely solely on Ms. Wolfolk's testimony, General, even though it means the end of your marriage to Marilyn?"

Marcy was looking at me quizzically; we hadn't discussed this.

Howell tried to regain control of the meeting, but General Marshall's deep voice overrode his. "Reluctantly, I am forced to believe what Ms. Wolfolk reported. I, of course, was in Washington at the time this all transpired. But Ms. Wolfolk was there and saw what happened. She has no reason to lie about it."

"Isn't this sufficient reason?" I asked, pulling a photograph from my file folder and passing it to him.

The General's face turned a bright red as he sat there looking at the picture, and his anger seemed to render him incapable of speech. Howell reached across and snatched the photograph from his hands, then gasped as he realized what he was seeing. The picture clearly showed the General lying nude on his back in a large bed. Astride him in what I believe is called the "reverse cowgirl" position was an equally nude Emma Wolfolk, her eyes closed in a grimace of passion.

Howell too was groping for words as he tried to take in the full ramifications of what he was seeing. But before he could gather his thoughts, we all heard a loud wail coming from Emma Wolfolk. "They know, Harm, they know."

"Shut up," the General hissed at her.

"No," she replied, "they know. It's over, Harm."

Then she grabbed the General's arm. "Listen, forget the money. It doesn't matter, we can still be together. We can go away like we talked about, just you and me. Please, honey, please, let's just go."

Howell tried to reassert himself. "You can't use that picture -- it's not admissible in court."

"Maybe, maybe not," I replied, "but I also have a sworn affidavit from a chambermaid who saw the two of them together in the General's room at the Omni. I believe in New York they give great credence to the testimony of hotel maids."

Howell sputtered, but I ignored him and turned my attention to Emma Wolfolk. "I'm afraid, Miz Wolfolk, that General Marshall will not be going anywhere with you, whether with or without any money from Marilyn Hart."

"Why not?" she cried.

"Because he's likely to be spending the next few years in prison. You see, General Marshall is not a general at all, he's simply a con man who's been impersonating an officer."

Emma fell back in her seat in shock, but the "general" rose, fists clenched, and began to stride menacingly in my direction. Before any of the rest of us could move, Marcy slid out of her chair and, crouching on one leg, whipped her other leg around, chopping Marshall's feet out from under him. The scene reminded me of my father using an old-fashioned scythe to cut weeds on the farm. And just like the Johnson grass Daddy hated, Marshall fell in a heap onto the carpet.

In an instant, Marcy had scooted over to him and forced her right knee into his back, shoving his face into the floor. Then she grabbed his arm and twisted it high behind his back. "Move again, 'General,' and I'll dislocate your shoulder," she snarled at him. Then, to my amazement, she looked up at me and winked! "I was number one in hand-to-hand combat in my basic training class," she said proudly.

When she'd performed her self-defense move, Marcy's skirt had risen to a very un-ladylike level. As she knelt over Marshall, she struggled to tug it down, but not before I noticed that her panties were green camouflage. "You can take the girl out of the Army," I thought with amusement, "but you can't take the Army out of the girl."

At that moment, the door to the office swung open and two men in dark suits entered. "Ah," I said, "my other guests have arrived. May I introduce agents Murphy and Riordan of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?"

The two agents swiftly handcuffed Marshall, read him his Miranda rights and led him away.

I walked over to Emma Wolfolk, who was slumped in her chair, crying piteously. When she saw me approach, she shrank back, but I gently touched her arm to try to calm her. "My dear, as I see it you are guilty of having committed perjury as well as conspiracy to defraud. But you're not the first woman to make a fool of herself for love, and I doubt that justice would be served by pursuing an indictment against you. However, I don't think you'll find you have many friends left here in Atlanta, and I doubt there's a married woman in the five counties who would let you get near her husband. My advice would be for you to start fresh somewhere else."

I walked back to Forrest Howell. He wouldn't look at me as I spoke to him. "My client will, of course, abide by the prenuptial agreement she signed. However, as you have learned today, it was the General, not Mrs. Marshall, who committed adultery. And it will be Mrs. Marshall who will be filing for divorce and asserting her claim against him. Of course, given the likely future of that unfortunate man, I very much doubt whether he will have any net worth for her to claim. For that matter, I also doubt whether Mason, Towson and Donovan will be able to collect any legal fees from your client."

I started to leave, but then turned back to Howell and added, "However, please feel free to pass on the news of our meeting today to your gossip-mongers. I'll bet Atlanta's Gossip Girl would love to have this story."

With that, Marilyn, Marcy and I departed. As we rode back in the car, I reached over and gave Marcy's hand a big squeeze. "Thank you so much for protecting me the way you did. I'm not sure what would have happened if you hadn't intervened."

"When I saw him start toward you, I froze for a second. I just couldn't believe that an officer would ever strike a woman," Marcy said. "But then I remembered that he wasn't really an officer and I guess I reacted instinctively the way I'd been trained."

When we arrived at Marilyn's house, she begged us to come in so we could talk some more about all that happened. Even though I was worn out from all the goings on, I acquiesced because I realized that she didn't know the full story.

"I guess I understand now about Emma and Harm," Marilyn said, "but how did you find out about the two of them?"

"That's right," Marcy added, "you never told me about that."

"I'm sorry for keeping both of you in the dark," I replied, "but it was absolutely imperative to keep that secret until we held the meeting. If even a hint of that had gotten around, Marshall might well have disappeared."

"But what made you suspect them in the first place?" Marilyn piped up.

"Well, Marcy and I were confused at first, but both of us believed that you were telling the truth. If you were telling the truth, then Emma had to be lying. But she had nothing to gain by doing so unless General Marshall was somehow involved. The problem was we had no way to prove that. Then I got some help from an unexpected source: Cora Hopewell."

Marcy looked up in surprise at the mention of the young woman she had helped so recently.

"She had taken a second job as a maid at the Omni," I explained.

Of course I had to stop at that point and tell Marilyn who Cora was and how we'd come to help her. As I was doing so, Marcy was fidgeting. When I ended my explanation, Marcy immediately spoke up. "But Cora didn't know either General Marshall or Emma Wolfolk. I still don't understand how she got involved."

"She didn't know them," I agreed, "but she likes to keep up with the latest gossip. When she read about the scandal and saw the pictures, she realized she had seen the General with another woman at the hotel where she was working. When she learned that I was representing Marilyn, she wanted to help us. But she didn't know how, so she went to Lucius for advice. He gave her the camera to put in the General's hotel room so she'd have proof; then he came to me. You know the rest."

"How ironic!" Marcy exclaimed. "All that gossip the law firm spread around really backfired on them. All it wound up doing was to alert the one person who could demolish their whole case!"

"But I still don't know how Harm and Emma got together in the first place," Marilyn protested.

"Marilyn, this is going to be hard for you to hear, but I'm pretty certain that he started a relationship with Emma while he was engaged to you. I think he seduced her and then convinced her that the only way they could be together was if she would help him swindle you out of half your assets."

Marilyn shed a few more quiet tears as she began to realize just how treacherous her Prince Charming had been all along.

"The thing is," I went on, "if their little scheme had been successful, I think Marshall would have abandoned Emma soon after he had divorced you. You see, Marcy had felt that something wasn't right about Harmon Marshall all along. After that first day she spent out at your house, she began researching the general. She started checking her military sources but couldn't find anything about him. That was when she began to think that he wasn't a general at all."

"But the medals, his trips to Washington," Marilyn protested.

"Anyone can fly to Washington," I reminded her, "and you can find almost any medal you like at a pawn shop." Marilyn groaned.

I went on with my account. "Once Marcy showed me what she'd found -- or rather hadn't found -- I made a call to the Atlanta bureau chief of the FBI. He's an old acquaintance of mine, and he was very interested in what we had learned. The Bureau ran a check and quickly confirmed that the general was an imposter.

"But then they began to dig deeper and discovered that this wasn't Marshall's first scam. In fact, he's wanted on a number of charges for flimflamming women around the country."

Even though Marilyn already knew that her soon-to-be ex-husband had lied and tried to cheat her, learning that he was actually a career criminal was very hard for her to take. And I had another blow to deliver. "The agents also learned that Harmon Marshall wasn't even his real name. The man you married had many aliases, but his mother named him Allen Snead."

"Anyway," I concluded, "pretending to be a general was pretty brazen, but he figured the chance to get his hands on an heiress's trust fund was worth it. If he could have pulled it off, he'd have disappeared and be living the good life from now on."

"How could I have been such a fool?" Marilyn moaned.

"Please don't be too hard on yourself," I consoled her. "It wasn't just you; he managed to con Emma Wolfolk and me and virtually everyone else in Atlanta he met. He's a gifted liar who's taken advantage of many people over the years, and the FBI is very happy to have him in custody."

One of Marilyn's qualities we'd observed several times was her ability to think about others even in the midst of her own troubles. She showed that again now. "Poor Emma. I can't help but feel a little sorry for her. Even though she was part of his scheme and told those awful lies about me, in some ways she was a victim just like me."

I was not so ready to let Emma off the hook. "It's true that Emma was deceived, but when she yielded to temptation, she not only abandoned her moral values, she betrayed her best friend. Now she's going to have to leave Atlanta the way Eve was sent from the Garden. Emma may not deserve prison for her sins, but she certainly deserves her banishment."

"Well, all I know is that I would have been in a bad way If it hadn't been for you and Marcy," Marilyn said. "I can never thank you enough for what you've done for me." Then she stood and hugged us both.

As we turned to leave, Marilyn caught Marcy's hand. "I have especially enjoyed getting to know you during all this," she said earnestly. "I hope you'll stay in touch with me."

"Marilyn might have lost one friend in this whole misadventure," I thought, "but it appears that she's made a new one."

As Marcy and I drove back toward Virginia Highland, there was little conversation. We both had a lot to think about.

When we arrived, I figured Marcy would want to get her car and head on home, but she followed me into the office instead. I could tell she had something to say, so I just waited until she was ready. Finally, she looked at me and said, "Miz Sarah, I think I owe you an apology. When you offered me this job, I wasn't very appreciative. In fact, I think I told you I really didn't want it because I wanted to help people in need."

She took a deep breath. "But the thing is, Marilyn needed our help every bit as much as Cora Hopewell did. It would have been an injustice to Cora if Jerrold had been able to hide that money from her, and I'm glad we were able to get her what she deserved. But it would have been just as big an injustice to Marilyn if that fake general had scammed her out of what was rightfully hers. And without us, Marilyn would have been every bit as helpless as Cora."

She sighed. "I still want to help the poor, Miz Sarah, but now I realize that there are a lot of folks out there who need legal help, whether they live in the projects or Buckhead. I wish I hadn't taken that attitude with you."

I took her hands. "Marcy, there's no apology needed. You spoke your mind, and that's what I wanted: someone who's not afraid to do so. If you've changed your mind as a result of what's happened, that's good too, because that means that you're open to new ideas and ways of thinking."

I dropped her hands and put my own on my hips. "You've done very well, young lady. You've shown intelligence and initiative, you have good powers of observation, and you've proven that you can work effectively with people from different walks of life. And it doesn't hurt that you know a few karate moves!"

We both smiled at that.

"Anyway, that three-month probationary period is just about up," I went on. "There's no question in my mind that you've proved yourself. Now the only question is: have I passed my probationary period with you? Do you still want to work with me?"

She paused just long enough to make me wonder if I had misjudged the situation. So I was startled when, with a big smile on her lips, Marcy suddenly snapped to attention, gave me a knife-edge salute, and said, "Ma'am, yes ma'am!"