Ben Reach and Sam Nixon, MD, ran a secret agency. It was sometimes an employment agency and sometimes a housing agency, and often both, but its customers and patrons never realized it. They thought the curmudgeons just by coincidence ran across opportunities to help folks, their friends, sometimes clients, sometimes patients, sometimes strangers, sometimes a combination. They did not charge for their services but gathered much personal satisfaction from rendering them.
The idea for the agency came about because they often saw in their professional practices people alone, sometimes rich people needing companionship or care or both, sometimes not-rich people needing a place to live or work or both. When they were able to match up these people it delighted them. They called it their “agency” as an inside joke. Joanne was in on the joke, as was Doc’s nurse.
Their age often meant those who looked for them for help were old too, though not always. Sometimes they were young and about to be (or just) divorced. Sometimes they had young children to raise, sometimes they had aging or ill parents or siblings or spouses to care for. Often by marching up wealthy folk who needed or wanted help with less wealthy folk who could give it but needed work to make money or living quarters to both they could score a win-win. But the work of the agency was not without its risks.
Take the case of Robert Whittle of Thomasville, formerly of Philadelphia, since retirement a resident of his Split Gum Plantation, in his family since 1890, and Alice Grimes, R. N. mother of Nancy, age nine and autistic.
Robert was recently widowed and afflicted with heart failure, though Sam believed with careful medication and moderate but regular exercise (walking around Split Gum) he could live a long while. Alice was recently divorced from a run-off husband and left alone to care for Nancy unless she could arrange for her widowed mother to come live with her from Atlanta and share Nancy’s care and home schooling. The curmudgeons, acting as the agency, arranged a deal by which Alice came to be Robert’s caretaker-nurse and to live with her mother and Alice in a cottage on Split Gum, thereby eliminating shelter costs for their family.
Things seemed ideal for all concerned until a year later when Robert and Alice announced their intention to marry. Robert’s son and daughter descended on the curmudgeons claiming they had set up their father with a Gold Digger and threatening to sue them. The curmudgeons were ready for them.
After Robert’s children had vented to Ben and Sam for a half hour, filling Ben’s conference room-library with venom, Ben said,
“Do you remember when you were last in this room shortly after your mother died and I explained the estate taxes to be paid after your father died? I do. You lamented that when your father died, about 40% of what he left would go to estate taxes because he and your mother had already given or left you all they could without that tax.
“Well, your father’s remarriage to Alice is going to facilitate your getting another $13 million without gift or estate tax.”
The greedy expectant heirs looked at one another in disbelief, then amazement. Then Robert’s daughter said, “But what is she going to get.”
Ben had been waiting for that.
“He said to tell you, none of your business. But when I requested, he authorized me to tell you, less than she is giving you and less than the government would otherwise get. And he asked me to remind you he can remove you as beneficiaries whenever he chooses.”
A silence followed as this sunk in with Robert’s children. Then they rose and left in silence. When they heard Joanne wish them goodby at the office door, Sam said, “Break out The Macallan.”