Rituals of the Season

that this part won’t change for either of us.

“She called me this morning,” Reid said abruptly. “Wants to come by the office Monday.”

“Dotty?” I asked.

“Tracy.”

“Why?”

He stared at me blankly and I patiently rephrased the question. “Why was Tracy coming to the office, Reid?”

“Martha Hurst. See Dad’s file.”

“Who’s Martha Hurst?” asked Dwight, who was still in the Army back then.

Truth to tell, the name wasn’t much more familiar to me because Martha Hurst’s trial took place the summer I was cramming for my bar exam. Except for the brutality of the crime and that a woman had killed a man instead of the other way around, it wasn’t all that different from a dozen more where domestic disputes play out in violence. Brix Junior—Brixton Stephenson Senior died before I was born, but my family still can’t remember to drop the “Junior” from Reid’s dad’s name—was Hurst’s court-appointed attorney. I assume he mounted the best defense possible. What I mainly remembered is that a jury found Hurst guilty and a judge sentenced her to death, and that’s what I told Dwight.

“Gonna strap her on that gurney in January,” Reid said plaintively. “Give ’er the big needle. Tracy said so.”

Which must mean that all of Hurst’s appeals had finally been exhausted.

“What was Tracy’s interest?” I asked. “She wasn’t around when that woman was tried and sentenced.”

He shrugged. “S’posed to explain Monday.” He yawned deeply and his eyes unfocused. He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and leaned his head on his hands.

“Come on, bo,” Dwight said. “Time to get you home. Deb’rah?”

I was already digging through my cousin’s pockets for his car keys.

Dwight half carried him downstairs and put him in the truck and I followed them to Reid’s place, where we put him to bed.

I tried again to get him to speculate as to why Tracy wanted to see Brix Junior’s file on Martha Hurst, but it was useless. He just kept moaning, “Poor Tracy,” so we pulled the covers up around him and left him to sleep it off.

On the drive back to Dwight’s, with the heater warming my cold feet, I asked why he thought Tracy’s death was personal and deliberate.

“And it wasn’t any random sniper either, if that’s what you’re asking. Whoever pulled the trigger probably knew who he was shooting.”

“How can you tell?”

“For starters, think how cold it is. Tracy wasn’t wearing her coat or her gloves and she had a baby with an ear infection in the backseat, yet the passenger-side window was down.”

“She was talking to whoever shot her?” For some reason, that made it more horrible. “I guess you won’t know what kind of gun it was till you get the bullet back from the ME.”

“No bullet,” he said gloomily. “The shot came from such close range that it tore through her throat and smashed through the window on her side of the car. I’ve got guys out walking the median with metal detectors, but I’m not holding my breath.”

I told him about the death threat Portland said Tracy had received recently. Like me, he thought it unlikely that someone convicted for domestic manslaughter could have arranged Tracy’s death, “but we’ll certainly check it out.”

“Want me to call John Claude? Ask him to let me look at Brix Junior’s files on Martha Hurst?”

“I’ll get up with John Claude,” he said. “You concentrate on the wedding and let me handle this investigation.”

“Just trying to be a good helpmeet,” I said innocently.

He looked down at me with a grin. “Oh yeah?”

“I won’t meddle,” I promised, “but I do know more legalese than you do and I might could pick up on something in the files that you’d miss.”

“Don’t bet on it. Besides, Tracy’s death probably doesn’t have a thing to do with Hurst’s execution.”

I meant it when I said I wouldn’t meddle. On the other hand, Doug Woodall was bound to be at the bar association’s dinner for us the next night. What could it hurt to ask Tracy’s boss if he knew why she was interested in Martha Hurst?

CHAPTER 4

Sisters ought never to receive any little attention from their brothers without thanking them for it, never to ask a favor of them but in courteous terms.

Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

Although some of my farm-bred brothers are better than others at reading a blueprint, every one of them has building skills; and back in October, as soon as they heard I was marrying their lifelong buddy, they put their heads together and decided that their wedding gift would be the new bedroom and bath we planned to add onto my house. If Dwight and I would buy the materials, they would do the work, and they’d get it finished well before the wedding.

Or so they promised.

The house had been torn up for two months now, and when I was there earlier in the week, it looked to be