I nodded, reluctantly, to show him I was waiting.
“That fire was set. The fire marshal came and told Calla this morning, and she called all of us in the family. Not Lacey, naturally, but all the others. Someone tried to kill Joe C, but you stopped them.”
I didn’t listen to the renewed pat-on-the-back part of Bobo’s speech. I was thinking about his opening sentence. I wasn’t surprised by the news. In fact, I’d been taking it for granted that the person I’d seen in the yard of Joe C’s house had actually started the fire. Trespasser + sudden fire = arson.
“How was it set?”
“A package of cigarettes. Not just one cigarette was lit, but a whole pack. They were left on the couch to smolder. But the flames ran away from the couch, didn’t consume it, and the traces were still there.”
“How is Joe C?” I asked.
He looked surprised for a minute, as though he’d been expecting me to exclaim and ask a different question.
“Nothing can kill Joe C,” Bobo said, almost regretfully, pushing his hair back off his forehead. “He’s like a human cockroach. Hey, I saw that twitch again!”
I looked away.
“Lily, this isn’t the end of the world.”
I saw I was hurting him, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to have done
And I was determined to stick to an impersonal topic.
“If Joe C had died, who would have inherited?” I asked.
Bobo turned red. “I’m not supposed to know the answer to that, but I do,” he confessed. “ ‘Cause I saw a copy of the will at Joe C’s house. He had it stuck in the old rolltop desk. I’ve always loved that desk. Gee, I guess it’s all burned up now. But I played with it since I was a little boy, you know, looking in the secret compartment that he’d shown me.”
“The will was there?” I prodded when memories seemed to wrap him up.
“Yes. The last time I went to see Joe C… last week, I guess it was… I was sitting with Toni in the living room while Aunt Calla was helping Joe C get his shoes on after his nap. He’d asked all of the greats to come over- grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Deedra, me, Amber and Howell Three, Becca. The other three live in North Carolina… So, I was showing Toni the little place you push to open the compartment. And there it was. I didn’t mean anything by reading it, I promise.”
After a brief period of being his sex bunny, I was now back to being Bobo’s wise woman who had to approve of his actions. I sighed.
“What did it say?”
“There was lots of lawyer language.” Bobo shrugged. “But what I could tell, I guess, is that Great Uncle Joe C left one thing, one furniture item, to each of us Winthrop kids. So Amber and Howell Three and I could each pick something. I was hoping I’d get the desk. I was thinking I’d try to pick first. Now everything’s burned or water damaged, I guess.” Bobo smiled his beautiful smile, amused at the confounding of his greed. “Of course the main thing is the house. Joe C left proceeds from the sale of the house to his great-grandchildren. Walker’s three kids, and Alice Whitley’s two, and Lacey’s… oh, but…”
His voice trailed away. “But Deedra’s dead,” Bobo resumed slowly.
I digested this slowly. I thought that whom Joe C’d included was just as interesting as who he’d left out. “Nothing for Calla,” I pointed out. “She’s a granddaughter.”
Bobo actually looked horrified. “But she’s taken care of him all these years,” he said.
I remembered Bobo’s grandfather. He’d only been a brother-in-law to Joe C, but they were from the same mold. I wondered what Shakespearean mothers had fed men-children in those days to make them so mean.
“Did anyone know this besides you?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, I guess I don’t know,” he muttered. He still seemed stunned at his great-uncle’s mean- spiritedness. His thoughts must have followed the same trail mine had, because suddenly he said, “What kind of people do I
“You come from your parents, and they’re both nice people.” I had reservations about his mother, but this was no time to think about that. “Your father is a nice man,” I said, and meant it. “Your grandmother is a true lady.” That encompassed some less-than-desirable attributes as well as some great ones, but there again, I was always more clever at not saying things than saying them. Sometimes that was the better characteristic.
Bobo was looking a little less miserable.
“You’re a good man.”
“You mean that?”
“You know I do.”
“That’s the best thing you could’ve said to me.” He looked down at me soberly for a long minute before his smile cracked through the serious facade. “Other than calling me your incredible stud and permanent sex slave.”
All of a sudden, I felt better. I could see that the brief sexual connection we’d had had faded out of existence and that our old friendship might replace it; that we might actually forget this past twenty minutes, or at least make a good enough pretense of it.
But Jack was still coming the next day, and any reprieve from self-loathing I’d felt was washed away in the flood of anguish the idea of seeing him caused me.
Bobo raised a hand to touch my hair, or caress my neck, but something in my face stopped him.
“Good-bye, Lily.”
“Good-bye,” I said steadily.
He opened the front door and buttoned his suit coat to cover, at least partially, the stain on the front of his pants. He half-turned when he was almost over the threshold.
“Do you think Calla could do that?” he asked, as though he were asking a student of the dark parts of the heart. “You think she could do that to Joe C? Set the fire? The door was unlocked. She has keys.”
“I think she could want him to die if she knew about the will,” I told him honestly.
He was startled, but he took my word for it.
Shaking his head, he headed off down the street to find his Jeep and go home to his girlfriend and parents.
Then I was left alone with my own damn conscience.
Chapter Nine
I’d just put away my groceries when I heard a quiet knock on my front door.
Becca Whitley was there, still in brilliant makeup, though she’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt.
“You busy?” she asked.
“Come in,” I said, actually relieved to have someone else break into my thoughts.
Becca had been in my house only once before, so she didn’t exactly relax once she was inside. “Your boyfriend here this weekend?” she asked, standing in the middle of my tiny living room.
“Not until tomorrow. Would you like a drink?”
“Fruit juice or water,” she said. “Whatever.”
I poured her a glass of pink grapefruit juice, and we sat in the living room.
“Have the police been by again?” I asked, since I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Not for a couple of days. They ask you for a list of men she’d had up there?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“That the men were gone before I got there in the morning.”
“Naughty, naughty.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“I gave them a list.”
