Up Jumps the Devil

15

« ^ » Whether others shall follow my example or whether matters shall strike them in the same light, is what I know not, nor am I much solicitous about...“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

I drove back to Dobbs with a zillion questions tumbling through my mind.

Like (1): was G. Hooks that good a poker face or did he have alternative options?

Like (2): was Adam really tired or was he just not anxious for more questions about his two-point-nine acres of road frontage?

Like (3): were (1) and (2) linked?

And then there were (4), (5), (6), and (7): what was Daddy up to? Where was Allen? What did Dwight want? And who did kill Jap Stancil? And why?

“That’s eight,” the pragmatist said pedantically.

“Mind your own business,” I told him.

The cold orange rays of the setting sun were nearly horizontal to the earth as I approached the edge of town. When I was a child, the town was more compact and tobacco farms began two blocks after the last stoplight. Now, with cars and the need for spaces to park them, every major road was strip-malled for two miles out with gas stations, convenience stores, video rental shops, fast food drive-throughs and grocery stores. Many of the stores were already boarded up and derelict. It reminds me of the slash-and-burn practices we so deplore in the Amazon rain forests: build a big ugly chain store, suck out all the quick money you can, then abandon that store and go build another where the action’s hotter.

“Queens Boulevard with longleaf pines,” laments a Yankee friend who says she moved down here to get away from that sort of car-centered urban blight.

She should have gone to Oregon where they have sensible growth plans, not North Carolina where we try to throw up a six-lane bypass around any town with a population of more than eighty-three people.

I parked at the back of the drive and carried Hambone, Daddy’s “gin” and the pecans in through the side door of the big white brick house.

The warmth inside Aunt Zell’s kitchen lifted my chilled spirits a little. Every counter was covered with bowls of chopped and floured fruits, loaf pans lined with waxed paper, and canisters of flour and sugar. She was only waiting for the shelled nuts to start mixing in earnest. The Gilbey’s gin bottle got stashed in the pantry. It wouldn’t be needed till she was ready to wrap the cooled cakes in cheesecloth.

“Soon as I take them out of the oven, Ash and I are going over to the fish house for some shrimp. Don’t you want to come, honey?”

‘Thanks, but maybe I’ll just fix a sandwich later.”

She hadn’t heard about Mr. Jap, so I gave her the condensed version, then went upstairs to call Dwight, who said, “If you don’t have anything on for tonight, why don’t you come over to the office and let’s talk some and then maybe go back to my place and watch a video.”

“Which one?”

“Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney,” he said, knowing my fondness for old movies. “Two for the Road.”

“I’ll bring my two-for-one pizza coupon,” I told him.

There’s absolutely nothing romantic between Dwight and me, but that didn’t stop me from peeling off my jeans and sweatshirt and heading for the shower to wash away the smell of wood smoke and dogs from my hair and body.

For the last few weeks, I’d been cutting back in anticipation of Thanksgiving and Aunt Zell’s fruitcake and I was pleased to discover that I no longer had to suck in my breath to button my black twill slacks. Emboldened, I slipped on my favorite fall jacket. The lines were vaguely oriental—black silk appliquéd with strips of brown and gold velvet that can do nice things for my sandy brown hair if the stars are in the right alignment. For once, it didn’t make me look like an overstuffed teddy bear.

Gold earrings, low black heels, a dash of lipstick and I was ready to go when I finally remembered another phone call I wanted to make.

In addition to being my former law partner, John Claude Lee is also my second cousin, once removed; so when I can’t prevail upon him as a colleague, I can always fall back upon the claims of kinship.

I caught him just as he and Julia were getting ready to leave for a panel discussion on ethics that he’d been asked to moderate over at Campbell University, so he didn’t have too much time to debate the proprieties with me.

He’d already heard from Cherry Lou’s attorney and from Dwight Bryant, too, which saved having to rehash Mr. Jap’s death. “Just tell me one thing, John Claude, and then I’ll let you go. Yesterday, Jap Stancil told me that Cherry Lou was going to sign her half of the farm back over to him.”

“That was injudicious of him,” my cousin said disapprovingly.

“But—?”

“Injudicious and premature. As you may know, Avery Brewer is her court-appointed attorney. We finished drawing up the papers yesterday afternoon and she was to sign them on Monday.”

“What happens to those papers now?”

“Obviously their usefulness has been negated.”

“She wouldn’t go ahead and sign it over to Allen Stancil instead?”

I could almost hear his raised eyebrows over the phone line.

“Really, Deborah,” he said frostily, clearly remembering with distaste his previous encounter with Allen. I wasn’t about to tell him that he’d gotten me an annulment for a bigamous marriage. “I should think that you of all people would see the unsuitability of that when there’s a strong possibility that he’s involved in his uncle’s death.”

“But what if he isn’t?”

“Then it will all come to him in due time without Mrs. Stancil’s gesture.”

So either way, Allen gained nothing he didn’t already have in his pocket. Even so, “I’m surprised you let a client die without a will.” I was thinking out loud, not really expecting an answer, but John Claude chose to think I was questioning his professional standards.

“I had drafted one that he was to sign on Monday as well. A simple instrument. It divided his estate equally between Stancil and Merrilee Grimes, with Stancil getting the house, garage, equipment and all the cars and Mrs. Grimes to receive an equal value in land.”

And an unsigned will is worth less than the paper it’s written on. But assuming either had been a motive, which piece of paper had Mr. Jap been killed to prevent? The will or the deed?

And what if Cherry Lou or her children weren’t really all that eager to throw in the cards?

“Is there any chance that Cherry Lou Stancil could be acquitted?” I asked.

“With a jury, there’s always a chance,” he replied dryly. “But if I were Avery Brewer, I shouldn’t aspire to be a Johnnie Cochran.”

“Which is why they picked you to moderate an ethics discussion,” I told him. “Break a leg, hear?”