Up Jumps the Devil

I’d never seen anyone react quite like this to hearing they’re not going to inherit a penny. “The will doesn’t count, Merrilee, because he didn’t—”

She brushed that aside. “I don’t care about his money. Don’t you see? All these years, ever since Aunt Elsie died, I’ve been looking in on Uncle Jap, making sure he was all right, doing the sort of woman things Dallas couldn’t and Cherry Lou wouldn’t. And then when Allen came—Uncle Jap was never one for thanking people, not that I wanted to be thanked. Jesus says, ‘As you do it for the least of these, you do it for me,’ and that’s what I tried to do, but even so, it was hard to watch Allen taking and taking and Uncle Jap acting like he hung the moon. And now you tell me that he was going to will me half of what he had?”

She jumped up and gave me a hug. “Thank you for telling me, Deb’rah. Now I know that he did appreciate that I loved him and that he loved me back.”

“Aw, honey,” said Pete, looking as if he could eat her with a spoon. “Of course he loved you. Everybody loves you.”

Remembering how enthusiastically Mr. Jap had planned Allen’s future with a well-equipped garage, even if it meant selling off some of his land to get the cash, I had to wonder whether the equitable division in his will sprang from love and gratitude or was the result of John Claude’s power of persuasion and sense of fair play. John Claude would surely have pointed out to the old man that Elsie’s niece was just as deserving as his nephew.

“You go talk to John Claude,” I told Pete and Merrilee. “If he can’t help you with the ME’s office, come on back and I’ll issue you a writ or something.”

I convened court almost on time, but as soon as I decently could, I declared a fifteen-minute recess and phoned Birdie McElveen.

Birdie is a chain-smoking, hard-nosed supervisor of Colleton County’s Child Support Enforcement. More to the point, she’s a close friend of Aunt Zell’s and thinks I’m cuter than a speckled pup.

I didn’t have to explain to her why I wanted to know the financial situation between one Allen Stancil and his ex-wife Sally Stancil regarding their minor daughter Wendy Nicole, currently of 1212 East Lever Drive in Charlotte, the address I’d memorized from the dossier Dwight had compiled on Allen. It was enough for Birdie that I wanted the information and she was sure she could have it for me by mid-afternoon.

She was better than that. When we broke for lunch, a clerk arrived with a message to call her.

“There is a support order on record,” Birdie told me, “and the caseworker thinks he’s behind by about forty-five hundred dollars, but you know how it is—if the mother doesn’t holler, no one automatically goes hunting for the father. Besides, the caseworker says that he’s paid the support directly to the mother more than once. It’s supposed to be monitored and it messes up the paperwork if they don’t do it by the book, but the caseworker thinks he’s probably been giving her some of the money right along since she’s not screaming for help.”

Birdie paused and I could hear her lighting another cigarette.

“So then?” I prompted.

“So then I called Mrs. Stancil at her work. Said I was a supervisor in Child Support Enforcement, which I am.”

“Only not in Mecklenburg County.”

“I didn’t tell and she didn’t ask. Just said yes, ma’am, he did get a little behind, but he’s been making payments regularly. In fact, he came by this weekend and—”

“What?”

“That’s what she said. He was there, left this morning right after breakfast, but he gave her two thousand in cash and that caught him up with everything he owed her.”

“She didn’t happen to say when he got there, did she?”

“Sorry. I thought you wanted information on the father’s fiscal situation, not his physical whereabouts. If I’d realized—”

“That’s okay, Birdie. I didn’t realize it either. Thanks, though. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one,” she said with tart affection. “I’ll put it on your account.”

As I took off my robe and put on my jacket to go out for lunch, I wondered if Pete and Merrilee could be right. I hadn’t considered Allen a serious suspect and I didn’t think Dwight did either, but he’d acted broke when he fixed my alternator on Friday. Where did he get two thousand in cash to give his ex-wife this weekend?

My appetite gone, I headed down to Dwight’s office in the basement. He would have to be told.

But when I entered Dwight’s office, there sat Allen in his black leather jacket and scuffed cowboy boots, with a mournful look on his face.

“Hello, darlin’,” he said. “Ain’t this one hell of a note about Uncle Jap?”

20

« ^ » None of either sex or profession need fear the want of employment, or an ample reward and encouragement in their different occupations and callings.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

“What’s going on here?” I asked inanely.

“Stancil’s helping us with our inquiries,” Dwight said in a deadpan parody of a cliche-ridden British mystery we’d watched together a few weeks ago.

Allen didn’t quite catch the reference, but he understood the game. “Dwight here don’t know whether to tell me he’s sorry about Uncle Jap or read me my rights. You’re still a lawyer, ain’t you, darlin’? Reckon I could hire you?”