“You ready?” the boatman asked, and without waiting for her reply, he cast off the stern line and backed away from the Talisa dock.
Brooke clasped her briefcase to her chest and tried to steel herself for another jaw-rattling ride across the river to the mainland.
Instead, C. D. was content to putter across at a leisurely pace.
Brooke tilted her head back to look at the sky. She was running through the list of chores she needed to complete before her return to the island.
“How’s your client doing today, Miss Lawyer?” C. D. blurted. “I saw y’all riding around the island in the truck earlier. That’s good, right? I mean, last time I took her over to the mainland to see the docs down at Jacksonville, she looked like one good breeze might knock her down. She don’t hardly go out of the house at all since she got sick.”
“What?” Brooke was startled by his sudden concern for his employer. “Um, yes, she did seem better today. I think the new medicine is helping.”
He nodded, chewing the plastic filter of his unlit cigarillo.
C. D. was an odd-looking creature, Brooke mused, with his sun-seared skin, bowlegs, and ever-present cigarillo, plus the braided gray ponytail that hung down almost to his waist.
“Hear tell she’s fixing to give Oyster Bluff back to Shug and Louette and the rest of them Geechees living up there,” he said. His aviators shaded his eyes, so she couldn’t tell from his expression whether or not he approved of Josephine’s largesse.
“Where did you hear that?” Brooke asked, careful to neither confirm nor deny.
“Around,” C. D. said. “Next thing you know, she’ll be giving us all raises and insurance.”
“Maybe so,” Brooke said. She stared off into the distance.
“Wait ’til she hears I run off another set of assholes from the state.” He chuckled. “She’ll for sure give me a raise for doin’ that.”
“You saw some people from the state? On Talisa? When was that?”
“Early this morning, right after sunup. Caught a couple of ’em tied up at the dock with a mess of what looked like surveying instruments. One of ’em tried to show me some piece of paper claiming they had a right to be there. Something about an appraisal they needed to do on account of the state making the old lady sell up. I told ’em unless they had the sheriff with ’em, they needed to stay the hell off this island.”
“I certainly hope you didn’t threaten them,” Brooke said.
He patted the holstered revolver on his bony hip and chuckled again. “Hell, I didn’t even draw down on ’em. They saw I was carrying, and that was the end of that conversation.”
“You took a risk, running those surveyors off. It might not have been the wisest thing to do, but I’m sure Josephine would appreciate your loyalty.”
He shrugged. “Her island, her rules. Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have an answer.”
“What happens to all of us, when she dies? Can the state come in and run us all off?”
“When she dies,” Brooke said carefully, “it’s my understanding that the state will still have to negotiate to buy Josephine’s land from her estate. They can’t take the land without fair compensation. That’s the law.”
“And that’s where you come in,” C. D. said. “She wants you to make the state go away. So she can keep the island.”
“Something like that.”
“You say no matter what, the state has to buy the island from her estate. But who’s that? She ain’t got no family I ever heard of.”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Brooke said firmly.
“Oh.”
“Are you worried about losing your home on the island, C. D.?”
“I got a little place,” he said. “Comes with the job.”
“So did you grow up on Talisa?”
“Here and there,” he said, suddenly cagey. “Mostly Savannah.”
“I thought I detected a Savannah accent. I’m from Savannah too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Born and raised. How about you? What high school did you go to?”
“I bet I know what high school you went to,” he said. “Probably St. Vincent’s. Or maybe Country Day School. That’s where all the rich kids went when I was coming up.”
She ignored the taunt about being rich. “Did you go to high school in Savannah?”
“Never finished. Dropped out, bummed around, got drafted, went over to Vietnam, and managed to come back alive. School of hard knocks, as they say.”
Brooke didn’t try to hide her surprise. “You’re a Vietnam vet? Mind if I ask how old you are?”
He shrugged again. “Born in ’42.”
“I can’t believe you’re that old. Wow.”
“I take care of myself,” he said, preening a little, flexing a sinewy, tattooed bicep featuring an eagle atop a globe pierced with an anchor.
“You were a marine?”
“Semper fi, baby,” he said. “How’d you know?”
“I used to know a marine,” she said.
It was her turn to be cagey. Pete Haynes had gone to college on an ROTC scholarship, fulfilled his obligation with one tour in Iraq, gotten out of the service, and immediately enrolled in grad school on the GI bill. He’d been sheepish about his own tattoo, claiming he’d gotten it on an impulse, which he’d immediately regretted. Brooke had found it sexy, although she’d never told him so.
The tattoo was only one of a long list of things she’d never talked about with Pete, she realized. And now it was probably too late.
22
Farrah waltzed into the office an hour late on Tuesday. She wore an oversized off-the-shoulder black T-shirt and skin-tight white jeans so shredded Brooke could see more skin than jeans.
“You’re late,” Brooke said, looking up in annoyance.
“And you’re not very nice,” Farrah said, sticking out her tongue at her boss. “Especially since I got out of school an hour early just to get to the courthouse to work on this.” With a flourish she produced a piece of lined loose-leaf notebook paper covered with her girlish handwriting.
“What is it?”
“Just that list of former landowners at Oyster Bluff on Talisa you assigned me.”
“Good job.” Brooke did a seated half bow. She scanned the list, which covered both sides of the paper. “Geez. This looks like a lot more names than Josephine told me there would be.”
“For reals,” Farrah said. “I counted twenty-three names. It wasn’t easy. People owned a house, then left it to four or five kids, and then the kids sold off pieces of the land to somebody else … it’s a mess. And so many people had the same last name. Like, there are Shaddixes and Hobarts and Langs and Franklins and Johnsons … it’s hard to know who owns what if you look at the county’s old deed books.”
“Well, it’s an island, and Louette says a lot of people intermarried,” Brooke said.
“I researched as many names as I could online, and at least six of these people have died,” Farrah said. She removed her backpack and dropped it on the receptionist’s desk. She unzipped a pocket on the bag and produced another sheet of notebook paper.
“I managed to find six addresses that I think are current,” Farrah said, handing her the list.
“Okay. Maybe Louette or Varina or her niece can help with some of the missing addresses,” Brooke said. “At least it’s a start.”
The office phone rang, and Farrah grabbed for it. “Law offices of Brooke Trappnell and Associates,” she said. “This is Farrah. How may I help you?”
Brooke picked up her own desk phone to start checking off items on her to-do list. She’d already called Gabe Wynant first thing that morning and arranged the meeting with Josephine.
Next up was Lizzie Quinlan.
“Hi, Lizzie. It’s Brooke Trappnell in Georgia.”
“Who? Oh yeah. The lawyer, right? What’s the word?”
Brooke took a deep breath. “Mrs. Warrick would very much like for you to fly out here this week. The sooner the better.”
“Not happening,” Lizzie said. “I’ve got to finish a piece I’m working on, and then I’ve got a bunch of interviews to do for another piece. I could maybe get out there late next week.”
“Couldn’t you do the phone interviews from here?”