Rituals of the Season

CHAPTER 9

Avoid exclamations; they are in excessively bad taste and are apt to be vulgar words. A lady may express as much polite surprise or concern by a few simple, earnest words, as she can by exclaiming “good Gracious!” “Mercy!” or “Dear me!”

Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

Sunday’s thin sunlight had disappeared beneath dreary gray clouds and the temperature had begun to drop again by the time we gathered on Aunt Zell’s back porch to wave good-bye to Jane and Brix Junior. We were only a few days away from the winter solstice, so here at three o’clock, it was already beginning to feel like twilight.

“We should get moving, too,” I said, giving Aunt Zell a thank-you hug.

Dwight’s known Aunt Zell even longer than I have, and as he bent to kiss the cheek she offered, she reached up and patted his. “Have I told you how happy Ash and I are about you and Deborah?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Not exactly.”

“Well, we are. And I know Sue would be, too. She thought the world of you, Dwight, didn’t she Ash?”

“She did,” Uncle Ash said solemnly, laying his hand on Dwight’s shoulder. “Miss Zell and I were talking about it last night. You won’t remember this, son, but we were out at the farm one day and you young’uns—you boys anyhow—had a dodgeball game going and Deborah wanted to play. The others said she was too little, but Seth went ahead and picked her for y’all’s team and every time one of the others aimed the ball at her, you or Seth would snatch her out of the way. Sue said you had a kind heart.”

“Awww,” I said, slipping my hand into Dwight’s. “My hero!”

He, of course, had gone beet red as he always does when he’s complimented to his face.

Reid grinned. “Even then he knew.”

He, too, kissed Aunt Zell good-bye, then said to us, “If y’all want to follow me over to the office, I’ll see if I can find Dad’s files on that Hurst woman.”

“Well—” said Dwight.

“Okay,” I said.

The partnership of John Claude Lee and Reid Stephenson, Attorneys at Law, occupies a white clapboard house half a block from the courthouse. According to the historical plaque on the front, it was built in 1867 by my mother’s great-grandfather, who was also John Claude’s great-grandfather; and when the family built a larger house away from the center of town, it eventually passed to John Claude’s father, who started the partnership with Brix Junior’s father. Although the exterior is an authentic example of nineteenth-century vernacular architecture, right down to the original wavy glass, black wooden shutters, and gingerbread porch trim, most of the interior has been remodeled completely out of the period. Some of the moldings are original, as are the hardwood floors, but the walls and staircases have been moved several times over the last hundred years.

There’s a large, airy bedroom suite upstairs that can accommodate out-of-town witnesses and which Reid still uses as his personal cathouse whenever he can sneak the woman of the moment past John Claude’s suspicious eyes.

Downstairs, John Claude uses the double parlor on the front left and Reid has what was once the formal dining room. The old kitchen and pantries have been converted into a high-tech center for business machines and for the paralegals who assist Sherry Cobb, the office manager, whose own area was carved out of the formal entrance hall when the staircase was relocated to the back.

My former office on the front right now houses the firm’s law library and my desk has been replaced by a conference table. It’s been four years since I left the firm, but they still haven’t replaced me. I’m not sure if that’s because they can’t agree on a new associate or because John Claude’s holding my space in case I lose the next election.

While Reid hunted for the Hurst files in the storage room that had been fitted out with steel shelving, Dwight and I went straight on through to the sunroom at the back of the house. With the ease of old familiarity, I opened a set of louvered doors that hid a sink, refrigerator, and microwave. There was a bottle of good white wine in the refrigerator but Dwight passed when I offered it to him, so I made a pot of coffee instead. Julia Lee has always stocked the freezer with gourmet coffee from a grocery in Cameron Village, and we had our choice of several different packets. Soon the rich aroma of Jamaica Blue Mountain filled the sunroom.

“Smells good,” said Reid as he deposited two heavy archival file boxes on the long deal table. “Just a little milk for me, okay?”

Normally I would have told him to get it himself. When I worked here, the only people I ever fixed coffee for were my own clients, but since this was technically his coffee, not mine, I found some of those little plastic cups of non-dairy creamers in the refrigerator and handed him a couple, along with a full mug.

I pulled the lids off the boxes and both were full of manila folders wedged in so tightly that it was difficult to pull one out. No matter what his private thoughts on his client’s guilt or innocence, if the sheer amount of paper was any indication, Brix Junior had certainly gone through all the motions on her behalf.

I wanted to start reading immediately, but Dwight put the lids back on the boxes I’d opened. “Do I need to sign something for this?” he asked.

“We might as well do it up right,” Reid said. “Technically, it’s a privilege issue, but this close to her execution date, I really doubt if Martha Hurst would object.”

He printed off a receipt form and took it back to lay on the shelf after Dwight signed and dated it.

“You sure Tracy Johnson didn’t say anything to explain why she wanted to see these records?” Dwight asked when Reid returned.

My cousin rinsed the dust of the storeroom from his hands and dried them on some paper towels. “Sorry, not a clue.”

“I still don’t understand why she came to you on this,” I said. “You weren’t even out of law school when the trial took place. Why didn’t she ask John Claude?”

Again he shrugged, but this time there was something else in his eye. Something sheepish?

“Oh for God’s sake,” I said, slamming my hand so hard on the table that our coffee mugs rattled on the tabletop. “Have you slept with every available woman in this whole damn county?”

“You were hooked up with Tracy?” Dwight asked, instantly alert.

Reid held his hands up defensively. “No!”

I glared at him.

“Not recently anyhow. Not since last spring. April maybe. Or May. And don’t look at me like that. It was never serious. For either of us. It was just—well, hell, Deborah, don’t tell me you’ve never been there. She didn’t have anyone and I didn’t either. We played by her rules. She wanted to keep it strictly physical—no emotional entanglement—and that was fine with me.”

I bit back the sarcastic remark on the tip of my tongue and washed it down with a swallow of coffee instead.

“Not since spring?” Dwight asked. “Who was she with now?”

“Nobody, far as I know.”

“Oh please,” I said. “She hadn’t slept with you since May and you didn’t ask why? What? You thought you needed to buy fresh deodorant? Get a different mouthwash? Change the sheets?”

Dwight laughed and Reid bristled. “Believe it or not, dear cousin, Tracy wasn’t the only woman in Dobbs who—”

I held up my hand. “Spare me the list. Just tell us who Tracy was seeing now.”

“I don’t know,” he answered sulkily. “She wouldn’t say. Pissed me a little, though. Telling me she didn’t want any serious entanglements till the baby was older and then giving him an exclusive?”

“Was he local? Another attorney? Someone from the DA’s office?”

“Jesus, Deborah! How many ways are there to say ‘I don’t know’? We had sex. Damn good sex, but it came to a crashing halt more than six months ago. She didn’t say then, and for all I know, she’s had six more guys since then, okay?”

“You don’t know either?” Dwight asked me.

I shook my head. “But Portland and I are pretty sure she was seeing someone seriously.” I described Tracy’s kitten-in-cream look from last spring and repeated her comment about finding someone right under her nose.

“You think that’s who shot her?” asked Reid.

“Too soon to say, but I’m gonna need a DNA sample from you. I’ll send somebody over tomorrow.”

Reid and I both stared at him in bewilderment.

“DNA sample?” asked Reid. “But I told you. We hadn’t been together in months.”

I thought of bedsheets and maybe someone’s toothbrush or shaver in Tracy’s bathroom. Whoever she’d been sleeping with, if she’d had him there in her own place, he would surely have left fingerprints, hair, and God knows what else. “It’s just to eliminate you,” I told Reid. “Right, Dwight?”

“Right,” he said, but he didn’t quite meet my eyes.