have tripled so you’ll still be playing catch-up.”
He leaned back in his chair and took a swallow from his half-empty glass. “Does this mean the stump dump passed?”
“Actually, it didn’t,” I said although I immediately began to rant about how we were nothing but a bunch of rooftops these days. “God, listen to me! I’m turning into one of those cranky old ladies who yearn for how things used to be when the world was young.”
“C’mere, old lady,” he said.
I took a sip of his beer and sat down on his lap. His arms went around me but our lips had barely touched when the phone rang.
Dwight sighed and let me up. “That’ll be Will. I told him you’d probably be back by now.”
He was right. Will’s name and number were on the phone screen.
“Hey, Will,” I said. “What’s up?”
“How come you don’t ever leave your cell phone on?” my brother complained. “What’s the point of having one if you don’t use it?”
“I use it,” I said. “But I use it at my own convenience, not everyone else’s. Did you want something or did you only call to bitch at me about my cell phone?”
Will’s the oldest of my mother’s four children, and like my other ten brothers, he thinks he can still boss me around.
“I was wondering if you’ve got some free time tomorrow?”
“My lunch hour. Why?”
“Remember Linsey Thomas?”
“Of course I remember him.”
“Remember how his cousin came up last summer and took everything out of the house he wanted and sold the rest of the contents to me?”
“So?”
“So I put most of the furnishings in my big fall auction back in September, but now I’m getting around to his books and papers and I found a bunch of files in a hassock and one of them has your name on it. Mostly clippings and stuff. You want to come over to the warehouse tomorrow and pick it up?”
“Sure,” I said, waiting for the real reason for his call.
“And there are some court records and stuff that maybe you could look through and tell me if I should toss them or turn them over to the historical center? Shouldn’t take you more than an hour. I’ll pick up some sandwiches or something.”
As I hesitated, he said, “There’s a file on Daddy, too. Linsey started a story about you and him three or four years ago.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, but here’s what’s crazy. It’s like he thought you and Daddy had some sort of connection to G. Hooks Talbert before he started buying up the land for Grayson Village. Isn’t that weird?”
“Very,” I said.
Only three people knew about the devil’s bargain Daddy had made with Talbert: me, Talbert himself, and Daddy. How the hell could Linsey Thomas have heard about it? Or was it merely his instinct for taking a closer look at things that might not be what they seemed? I remember his asking me why our governor had appointed me instead of a conservative male Democrat closer to his own political leanings. I had shrugged and made a flip answer about the governor recognizing that the best man for the job was a liberal woman.
After agreeing to meet him at his warehouse at noon, I hung up and Dwight raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What was that about?”
“Will’s been going through Linsey Thomas’s papers and thought I might want a file he found about me— clippings and things of public record, but maybe I’ll start a scrapbook or something. Now where were we?”
He grinned and patted his knee. “You were here.”
“Right,” I said.
(
CHAPTER 4
Oyez, oyez, oyez!” intoned the bailiff in my courtroom next morning. “This honorable court for the County of Colleton is now open and sitting for the dispatch of its business. God save the state and this honorable court, the Honorable Judge Deborah Knott pleasant and presiding. Be seated.”
