Rituals of the Season

Some of the moldings are original, as are the hardwood floors, but the walls and staircases have been moved several times over the last hundred years.

There’s a large, airy bedroom suite upstairs that can accommodate out-of-town witnesses and which Reid still uses as his personal cathouse whenever he can sneak the woman of the moment past John Claude’s suspicious eyes.

Downstairs, John Claude uses the double parlor on the front left and Reid has what was once the formal dining room. The old kitchen and pantries have been converted into a high-tech center for business machines and for the paralegals who assist Sherry Cobb, the office manager, whose own area was carved out of the formal entrance hall when the staircase was relocated to the back.

My former office on the front right now houses the firm’s law library and my desk has been replaced by a conference table. It’s been four years since I left the firm, but they still haven’t replaced me. I’m not sure if that’s because they can’t agree on a new associate or because John Claude’s holding my space in case I lose the next election.

While Reid hunted for the Hurst files in the storage room that had been fitted out with steel shelving, Dwight and I went straight on through to the sunroom at the back of the house. With the ease of old familiarity, I opened a set of louvered doors that hid a sink, refrigerator, and microwave. There was a bottle of good white wine in the refrigerator but Dwight passed when I offered it to him, so I made a pot of coffee instead. Julia Lee has always stocked the freezer with gourmet coffee from a grocery in Cameron Village, and we had our choice of several different packets. Soon the rich aroma of Jamaica Blue Mountain filled the sunroom.

“Smells good,” said Reid as he deposited two heavy archival file boxes on the long deal table. “Just a little milk for me, okay?”

Normally I would have told him to get it himself. When I worked here, the only people I ever fixed coffee for were my own clients, but since this was technically his coffee, not mine, I found some of those little plastic cups of non-dairy creamers in the refrigerator and handed him a couple, along with a full mug.

I pulled the lids off the boxes and both were full of manila folders wedged in so tightly that it was difficult to pull one out. No matter what his private thoughts on his client’s guilt or innocence, if the sheer amount of paper was any indication, Brix Junior had certainly gone through all the motions on her behalf.

I wanted to start reading immediately, but Dwight put the lids back on the boxes I’d opened. “Do I need to sign something for this?” he asked.

“We might as well do it up right,” Reid said. “Technically, it’s a privilege issue, but this close to her execution date, I really doubt if Martha Hurst would object.”

He printed off a receipt form and took it back to lay on the shelf after Dwight signed and dated it.

“You sure Tracy Johnson didn’t say anything to explain why she wanted to see these records?” Dwight asked when Reid returned.

My cousin rinsed the dust of the storeroom from his hands and dried them on some paper towels. “Sorry, not a clue.”

“I still don’t understand why she came to you on this,” I said. “You weren’t even out of law school when the trial took place. Why didn’t she ask John Claude?”

Again he shrugged, but this time there was something else in his eye. Something sheepish?

“Oh for God’s sake,” I said, slamming my hand so hard on the table that our coffee mugs rattled on the tabletop. “Have you slept with every available woman in this whole damn county?”

“You were hooked up with Tracy?” Dwight asked, instantly alert.

Reid held his hands up defensively. “No!”

I glared at him.

“Not recently anyhow. Not since last spring. April maybe. Or May. And don’t look at me like that. It was never serious. For either of us. It was just—well, hell, Deborah, don’t tell me you’ve never been there. She didn’t have anyone and I didn’t either. We played by her rules. She wanted to keep it strictly physical—no emotional entanglement—and that was fine with me.”

I bit back the sarcastic remark on the tip of my tongue and washed it down with a swallow of coffee instead.

“Not since spring?” Dwight asked. “Who was she with now?”

“Nobody, far as I know.”

“Oh please,” I said. “She hadn’t slept with you since May and you didn’t ask why? What? You thought you needed to buy fresh deodorant? Get a different mouthwash? Change the sheets?”

Dwight laughed and Reid bristled. “Believe it or not, dear cousin, Tracy wasn’t the only woman in Dobbs who —”

I held up my hand. “Spare me the list. Just tell us who Tracy was seeing now.”

“I don’t know,” he answered sulkily. “She wouldn’t say. Pissed me a little, though. Telling me she didn’t want any serious entanglements till the baby was older and then giving him an exclusive?”

“Was he local? Another attorney? Someone from the DA’s office?”

“Jesus, Deborah! How many ways are there to say ‘I don’t know’? We had sex. Damn good sex, but it came to a crashing halt more than six months ago. She didn’t say then, and for all I know, she’s had six more guys since then, okay?”

“You don’t know either?” Dwight asked me.

I shook my head. “But Portland and I are pretty sure she was seeing someone seriously.” I described Tracy’s kitten-in-cream look from last spring and repeated her comment about finding someone right under her nose.

“You think that’s who shot her?” asked Reid.