“Hard to get a lot from something you never paid into,” I said tartly. “He always worked for cash, didn’t he? Tried his best not to let himself show up on anybody’s books was what I always heard.”
Allen had to smile at that. “No, he was a catbird, all right.”
He lifted a yellowed envelope that had the logo of Duck Aldcroft’s funeral home as a return address. “Here’s his burial insurance. All paid up so nobody’d be burdened when his time came.”
“I think Merrilee’s handling arrangements,” I said. “Since you weren’t here.”
It didn’t seem to occur to him that he should take offense at Merrilee’s preempting his next-of-kin duties.
“Then she might ought to have this.”
As he pulled the policy from the envelope, another paper fell to the floor.
He picked it up and gave it a puzzled scan before handing it over to me. “Is this a deed?”
It appeared to be a photocopy of a one-page notarized document signed by both Mr. Jap and Dick Sutterly. Hedged in therefores and whereases and dated just last week, it said that in consideration for a cash sum of one thousand dollars, Jasper Stancil promised to sell Richard Sutterly all but ten acres of his farm within ninety days of acquiring clear title to it, at a price guaranteed to be five percent above the high bid of any other would-be purchaser.
“You didn’t know about this?”
“He never said a word. What’s it mean? Does it give this Sutterly guy a lien on the land?”
“Don’t worry about it. This paper would never hold up in court,” I said. “Even if Mr. Jap were still alive, almost any lawyer could get it set aside if he changed his mind and wanted to back out.”
He took it from me and ran his rough fingers over the photocopied notary seal. “Sure looks legal.”
To a shade-tree mechanic like Jap Stancil, it had probably felt pretty legal, too.
“Dwight ought to see this,” I said. “It could mean that the killer got this thousand, too.”
“If Sutterly paid him right then.” Allen turned this new development over in his mind. “Well, I can’t keep you from telling Dwight, but I believe I’ll hang on to this paper for right now.”
“I’m telling you, Allen, it’s not worth the ink it’s written in. Especially with Mr. Jap gone. Dick Sutterly couldn’t use it to force a sale.”
“But couldn’t I use it to make him buy? Five percent above the highest bid. Isn’t that what it says?”
“Lot of if’s standing between you and this place. Cherry Lou’s not come to trial yet and Merrilee could probably fight you for half if she wanted to.”
“Naw, she couldn’t. Uncle Jap won’t really her uncle.”
“But Dallas owned it last and she’s as much his cousin as you were.”
After spending most of the weekend educating my family and Merrilee about consanguinity, it amused me to play devil’s advocate and argue the opposing viewpoint. “Ellis Glover might see it your way—”
“Who?”
“Clerk of the Court. That’s who’d make the first disposition. But if Merrilee wanted to contest his decision, I bet any jury in the county would split it between you, given how much she’s done for Mr. Jap over the last few years.”
But Allen had stopped listening. He was standing with his back to me, his big, grease-stained hands on the slat-backed, cane-bottomed chair that Mr. Jap always sat in. When he turned, his eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“He was just a pigheaded, big-talking old man that never did no real harm to nobody. How could anybody hurt him, Deb’rah? He couldn’t have stopped a flea from taking that money. Why’d they have to kill him, too?”
“I don’t know,” I said helplessly. “I don’t know.”
We both sighed for the wasteful sadness of it and as we went outside, he switched off the light and snapped the hasp on the lock.
The night was cold and still. Even with a jacket, I was chilly. No moon, but stars blazed overhead and the air was so crystalline that the Milky Way was a gauzy cloud that twined through the autumn constellations. I could see every star of the normally fuzzy Pleiades.
“Makes a man feel mighty small, don’t it?” Allen said softly.
He put his arm around my shoulder in a friendly gesture and I found myself leaning into it for warmth as we gazed up into the glittering sky.
“You forget how big it is,” he said. “Over in Charlotte, there’s too many lights on the ground to let you see any but the biggest stars. But, my sweet Lord! Just look at them all up there.”
I settled myself more comfortably on his shoulder and looked up, up, up into the celestial depths, bedazzled as always, and mesmerized by the eternal, unending splendor of worlds without end. By the time it fully registered that his fingers had begun—almost imperceptibly—to caress my ear in gentle stroking exploration, I was dizzied by both the visual and sensual input and breathing more heavily than I realized.
He gently turned my face to his and his mustache brushed my cheek. Our lips met sweetly, sweetly, with a growing intensity. The stars swirled overhead and I was falling into them, drowning in milky nebulae and—oh my God!
I wrenched myself away. “You bastard! Here I was feeling sorry for you, and you—all you want—!”
I stumbled across the rutted drive toward the porch light and my car.
From the darkness behind me, Allen called, “You want it, too, darlin’.”
My internal preacher yammered at me all the way back to Dobbs, but as I lay wide awake in bed that night, the pragmatist said, “You were wondering what you ever saw in him? Well, now you remember, don’t you?”
22
« ^ » Many of the old residenters in the inland counties of this province... have, in general, little inclination to mingle with the new-comers, who now arrive in such crowds. . .“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
I went to sleep Monday night firmly resolved to mind my own business and stay out of things.
Tuesday morning I showered, dressed in a simple, long-sleeved black knit turtleneck dress with black tights and Cuban heels, and snagged a cup of coffee on my way through the kitchen.
“At least let me toast you a bagel,” said Aunt Zell.
(She was so pleased when Winn-Dixie added bagels to their in-house bakery. I myself still find it hard to believe that there are enough people in Dobbs who even know what a bagel is to make stocking them economically feasible for Winn-Dixie.)
“No time,” I said. “I have an early court date with Portland.”
Uncle Ash smeared a dab of cream cheese on half of his blueberry bagel and held it out to me. “If you don’t eat, your aunt worries. Portland can wait.”
I dropped a kiss on his white head, took a bite of his bagel, and left the rest for him.
“Just because she’s your niece doesn’t mean you can fritter away her time,” I said, and hurried on out to my car.
Driving over to the courthouse, I kept thinking about Daddy and Adam and the pawprints Blue and Ladybelle had left outside the garage door where Jap Stancil was struck down.
After the rain. Sometime between midnight and when I found them with Adam.
And thinking of Adam, did he burn his hand on a brush fire? Or was it an acetylene torch?
I convened court fifteen minutes earlier than usual.
A grim-faced Portland was seated at the defendant’s table. She wore an authoritative, don’t-mess-with-me coat-dress of power red. Beside her sat two very apprehensive people, Timothy Collins and Diana Henderson.
Ambrose Daughtridge, who had represented Clea Beecham and her small daughter, sat at the opposing table. Mid-fifties, silver-haired, soft-spoken and courtly, he looks as if he should be cataloging books in a library at some small elite college.