setting about the grim ceremonies of putting him in the ground.
“Go to Hell,” Harold thought, as Norm’s shiny gray limo squeezed past the disreputable Scout on Evergreen Cemetery’s narrow main track, at least it isn’t me they’re burying. He had his casket all picked out and paid for, same as his plot, but it wasn’t time to use it. Not yet.
Norm Higgins and Harold Lamm Patterson had known each other for sixty-some-odd years. In passing, they exchanged the kind of casual half wave/half-salute with which men of long acquaintance greet one another if they want to say hello but don’t want to make much of an issue of it. Both men waved and nodded and went on by.
Harold headed uptown, past the Lowell Traffic Circle and on up to Old Bisbee. Talking it over with Em really had helped prepare him for what he knew would be a knock-down, drag-out confrontation with Burton Kimball-his nephew as well as his attorney.
Some people around town discounted Burtie; thought of him as your basic pushover. But not Harold Patterson. The man who had raised Burton Kimball from a baby-the kind uncle who had taken an orphaned pup to raise and knew better than to dismiss either the younger man’s abilities or his tenacity.
Harold might use Burtie to further his own purposes, yes. But underestimate him? No. The coward’s way, of course, would have been for Harold to go ahead and do what he was planning to do without mentioning a word of it to Burtie. But Harold Lamm Patterson had never walked away from a fight in his whole life.
At eighty-four, he decided, it was too damn late to start.
As PREDICTED, Burton Kimball’s reaction was nothing short of astonished disbelief. “You’re going to do what?”
“You heard me. I’m gonna offer Holly whatever the hell she wants. But she’s gotta agree to see me.
Alone. No lawyers on either side. Including you.”
Kimball shook his head in disgust. “Uncle Harold, let me point out that you’ve already paid me a bundle of money on retainer to handle this case for you. Why would you suddenly want to go it alone at the very last minute? And why on earth would you suddenly agree to settle with that un mitigated bitch?
“Let’s go to court, Uncle Harold. Please. We’ll have the home-court advantage. People in this county know you. How many times have you served on the school board. Five. Six? You’ve lived here all your life, while Holly left town thirty years ago and only came back now to make trouble. Given a choice, who do you think the jury will believe?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Harold said. “I don’t want a jury.”
But Burton Kimball continued undeterred. “No one from around here is going to fall for this ‘Forgotten Memories’ bullshit. It’s all going to boil down to her word against yours, and she’s not going to win. People like Holly Patterson may be big news in People magazine and in New York and California, but Bisbee’s a part of the real world. I tell you, Uncle Harold, it isn’t going to wash here.
”If you settle, Holly gets whatever you give her, but if you win-if the jury finds in your favor you won’t have to pay that woman one thin dime.
Which one of those sounds like the better deal?”
“I still mean it,” Harold said. “You call her up and tell her I want to see her. You know where she is, don’t you?”
“I know,” Burton answered, “put as you know, I’m under a court order not to tell. Anyway, my advice still stands. Take your chances in court.”
“deaf? Burtie,” Harold put in mildly. “You’re not very old to be going stone-cold deaf. You’d better have those ears of yours checked. I told you once, and I’ll say it again. I’m not going to court tomorrow, and neither are you.
We’re going to settle this thing now. Today!”
Kimball prided himself on being a patient, reasonable man. In fact, Linda, his wife, insisted he was far too patient for his own good.
She blamed her husband’s overly forebearing nature for the fact that their two children, a boy of ten and a girl eleven, were spoiled rotten. Now, though, faced with his uncle’s unyielding bullheadedness, Kimball’s much-touted patience was beginning to fray.
Call her attorney. Tell him to have her meet me tonight,” Harold repeated. He paused and frowned. “Wait. Where should we go? I can’t have her coming to the house.”
“You could always do it here in my office, I suppose,” Burton allowed grudgingly, pulling out a pen and making a few quick notes on a yellow pad But Harold shook his head. “No. That won’t do.
It should be someplace else, someplace neutral.”
Burton Kimball sighed. “All right then, how about the hotel dining room over here at the Copper Hotel? That won’t be all that private, though.
But what makes you think she’ll agree to come, especially on my say-so?”
“I know Holly,” Harold said. “Once she realizes she is going to win, she won’t be able to resist.
Tell her to meet me there at six.”
Now it was Burton Kimball’s turn to shake his head, “Six is too late. If you’re serious about settling out of court, then do it early enough in the afternoon so Judge Moore can remove the case from tomorrow’s docket.”
“I am serious,” Harold Patterson returned resolutely. The two men’s eyes met and held across the younger man’s paper-strewn desk. Burton looked away first.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “So you’re serious. But you’d better give me some idea of what you have in mind. That way, when I call Holly’s attorney, he can decide whether or not it’s even worthwhile to get together.”
“I already told you. Everything she asked for. Tell the lawyer that.”
