“Humor him, Amelia. Humor me.”
“It has no value. Either on the open market or to the museum.”
“That may be.”
“Not ‘may be.’ Is.”
“Okay. It’s little more than a trinket. The Confederate Army handed out hundreds—”
“Thousands.”
“Thousands of them. But the medal is valuable to Patterson Knox. It came down through his family from his great-great-great-grand something or another, and he’s named after that particular ancestor. I don’t need to remind you—”
“But you’re about to.”
“—that Patterson Knox contributed over one hundred thousand dollars to us last year. Mrs. Knox is—”
“On our board of directors. I’m not stupid, George. I get it. It’s just that you and I approach these issues from different directions. As a curator, it’s my job to protect the integrity of the museum.”
“That’s my priority, too.”
“Yes, but as director you must also pander to people who keep our doors open. It galls me to display junk in order to ensure that a large donor continues donating.”
“I hear you. But—”
“Never mind. I recognize a dead end when I run into one. I don’t concede defeat, but I acknowledge the futility of further argument, which I believe you had won even before it commenced. However, I had to give it my best shot.”
“I would expect nothing less from you. Put Mr. Knox’s medal in a corner somewhere.”
“With a spotlighted brass plaque extolling his and Mrs. Knox’s generosity?”
“It doesn’t have to be a large one.”
* * *
Continuing her testimony, she said, “We’d just concluded our meeting when my cell phone rang. I recognized the school’s number and answered immediately. It was Mrs. Abernathy, the headmistress. She was extremely upset.”
“Why?”
“A man had come to the school, barged his way into her office—”
“Objection. Hearsay.”
Lem Jackson countered. The judge ruled in his favor and Amelia was asked to continue.
“The man demanded to know if Jeremy had been to the school that day. He hadn’t, but Mrs. Abernathy had difficulty convincing him of that. Finally he left, but only after she threatened to call the police.”
Jackson reminded the jury that Mrs. Abernathy earlier had testified to the same, and that she had identified Willard Strong as the irate man. He then asked Amelia if it had been her ex-husband’s habit to visit Hunter and Grant at the school.
“No. To my knowledge he’d never gone there, not even on visitation days. Our divorce had become final. Given the incident at the birthday party, his visits with the boys were supervised. He resented that, bitterly, and hoped to have the restriction revoked. But in the meantime, he was adhering to it.”
“Did this call from the school’s headmistress alarm you, Ms. Nolan?”
“To put it mildly. When she described the man to me, I recognized him as Willard Strong. My knee-jerk reaction was to go immediately to the school. But Mrs. Abernathy assured me that Hunter and Grant were in her office, that they were safe, and that they knew nothing about the incident.
“Nevertheless, I wanted to see them myself and make certain that they were all right. Mrs. Abernathy offered to personally deliver them to me at home. I left the museum immediately to meet her there.”
“Did you talk to anyone?”