If anyone had suffered trauma, it was probably the sitter. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t a party to the suit. Testifying for the insurance company, she described how terrified she had been when she saw that tree come crashing down, but that the boys were delighted by the whole incident. Too young to realize how close they had come to serious harm, they thought it great fun to clamber up onto the tree trunk and walk along its length. They had even begged to keep it and cried when it was removed from their yard.
I left the attorneys to it and joined Portland Brewer and Jamie Jacobson for lunch at a Tex-Mex place three blocks from the courthouse. The food is cheap and good and there are booths along the back wall where we could talk without being interrupted. Even though I was early, they already had frozen margaritas in front of them. I knew that Portland was still nursing the baby, so hers would be a virgin and I told the waitress to bring me one about half the strength of whatever Jamie was drinking.
Jamie laughed. “And just what makes you think mine’s not a virgin, too?”
“I’m psychic.”
We caught up on each other’s doings over the weekend, but soon shifted to Jamie’s curiosity about Sassy Solutions and Danny Creedmore’s brother-in-law.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, and explained how Will had come into possession of Linsey Thomas’s files and how some of them were clearly meant to be the basis for future
“So? We both submitted proposals,” Jamie said, sipping from the salt-rimmed glass before her. “Wonder why he thought that would make a story?”
“You tell me. There was an arrow from your agency to Grayson Village, but the arrows to Sassy came from Danny and Candace.”
“I still don’t see why Linsey would care that we were competing for the same client. Happens all the time. They’ve got some sharp people working for them and we’ve come up with almost the same identical ideas at times, darn ’em! That’s how I missed landing Grayson Village. I thought I had a unique angle on a marketing approach and darned if they didn’t have the same angle, but with a slightly different spin.”
“Why’d he have a file on you and Mr. Kezzie?” Portland asked.
“Oh, you know how people always think it’s funny that a reformed bootlegger has a judge for a daughter. He probably thought it might make an amusing sidebar to another story.”
“So who else did he have files on?” asked Jamie as she delicately licked a grain of salt from her fingertip.
I lifted my own margarita for a first taste of its sour sweetness to give myself time to think about the affair Barbara Laughlin was supposedly having with Harvey Underwood, about Greg Turner’s flirtation with embezzlement, and a couple of implied acts of malfeasance on the part of the commissioners. Although it’s always fun to dish, I could wait until Terry’s people decided if there was anything that could be prosecuted. Portland and Jamie would be discreet if I asked them, but if I couldn’t hold my own tongue when it was part of Dwight’s investigation, how could I expect them to hold theirs?
So I shrugged and said, “I didn’t see anything except largely unsubstantiated allegations and Dwight’s turned it all over to the SBI.”
“Not to Doug Woodall’s office?”
“Doug’s too busy running for governor,” I said and talk turned to county politics until the waitress brought our food. I keep thinking I’m going to order fajitas or the quesadilla of the day because I like them when Dwight lets me put my fork in his, but somehow I always wind up ordering the taco salad. I’m hooked on guacamole and sour cream.
“We got the word that the Republican party’s voted to have Barry Dupree replace Candace,” Jamie said.
“Who’s Barry Dupree?” Portland asked.
“A go-along, get-along farmer from down near Makely, who’ll no doubt vote with the majority.”
“So now you’re our only woman commissioner.”
Jamie nodded. “It really bugged Candace when I came on the board. She was a Susie Sharpe clone.”
Susie Sharpe was our first female supreme court judge. She broke many of the gender barriers during her long career, but she was no feminist—in fact, she actively opposed ERA and swayed our then-senators to oppose it, too—and she certainly wasn’t interested in welcoming other members of her sex to the state’s highest bench. She was one of those pull-the-ladder-up-behind-me types. She liked being unique and thought she did it all on her own merits. Like Candace.
“We also got the word that the question of slowing growth is going to go to the voters this fall,” said Jamie. “For all the good that’ll do. The other commissioners didn’t like the recommendations of the planning board, so they’re going to put it to the public as to whether we get a transfer tax or a higher property tax.”
“No choice about an impact tax that the developers would have to pay?”
“Bite your tongue,” Jamie told Portland. “Not that it matters. Candace was already saying that it didn’t matter what the electorate said, they weren’t going to implement it.”
“Unless the electorate voted against the taxes, right?” I asked.
“You got it, kid. Then and only then will they say they’re bowing to the wishes of the people.”
Our food arrived and the guacamole came the way I like it with little lumps of avocado. As I began to mix up the salad inside its taco shell, a woman passed our table and Portland nudged us both with a significant cut of her eyes.
“What?” we asked when she joined three women at a far table.
“Don’t stare!” Portland said under her breath.
So we glanced aimlessly around the room as if looking for our waitress and let our eyes slide over that table without pausing.
