retain an impression of responsibility and I remember
being surprised by how fluent his English was.
“Mayleen says Mike felt so sorry for the man, what
with all his troubles, that he’s hired him on after he got
kicked out of the camp he was staying at.”
“That’s right,” I said, as more of the details came
back to me. “His wife left him, didn’t she?”
“Went right back to Mexico after their baby died.”
Faye looked around to make sure no one was near and
leaned even closer. “I might not ought to be telling this,
185
MARGARET MARON
but Flip was on call that night and he helped deliver the
baby and
Her phone rang then and, judging by the sudden
professional seriousness of her voice, it sounded like an
emergency for someone, so I gave her a catch-you-later
wave because Reid walked past at that moment.
He held the door for me and we walked around to
the stairs. When we reached the atrium on the ground
floor that connects the old courthouse to the new ad-
ditions, the marble tiles were slick where people had
tracked in muddy water. A custodian brought out long
runners and laid them down to cover the most direct
paths from one doorway to another before tackling the
floor with a mop.
We paused to speak to a couple of attorneys, then sat
on the edge of one of the brick planters filled with lush
green plants to finish our coffee and enjoy the rain that
was sluicing down the sides of the soaring glass above
us. At least, Reid was enjoying it. My agenda was to get
him to tell me everything he’d told Dwight.
“I suppose his daughter scoops the lot? His house-
keeper told Dwight that he was close to her. Poor Flame
Smith.”
“Not too poor,” said Reid, half-distracted by the
weather he was going to have to brave to keep an ap-
pointment back at his office. “The daughter’s the resid-
ual beneficiary, but Flame’ll get half a million. I don’t
suppose you’ve got an umbrella you could lend me?
Flame took mine and John Claude keeps his locked up
for some reason.”
I had to laugh. I know exactly why John Claude
keeps his umbrella in a locked closet and I immediately
186
HARD ROW
began to chant the exasperated verse our older cousin
always quoted whenever he discovered that Reid had
once again “borrowed” his umbrella:
