A pair of miniature Chihuahuas sprang into defense mode; the fur on their necks bristling, teeth bared.
“Hush, Teeny. Hush, Tiny.” The old woman stroked their backs, patted their heads. “Don’t mind the girls,” she told Brooke. “They won’t bite. Unless I tell them to. Sit down over here,” she said, pointing to a faded chintz wing chair. “And you needn’t call me Mrs. Warrick. Josephine will do just fine, and I’ll call you Brooke, if I may. The doctors keep saying I’m going deaf, but I’m not really. It’s just that people these days mumble and fail to enunciate properly.” She gave Brooke a sharp look. “You’re not one of those types, are you? I can’t abide a mumbler.”
Brooke sat down in the chair and balanced her briefcase across her lap. “No, ma’am,” she said loudly. “I’ve got a lot of faults, but that’s not one of them.”
“You didn’t tell anybody why you were coming over here today, did you?”
“No, because you never actually explained why you wanted to see me.”
The old lady chuckled. “But you were curious about me and this island, so you decided to come anyway. Is that correct?”
“Something like that.”
“Then we’d better get to it, hadn’t we? As you can tell by my wretched appearance, I don’t have a lot of time these days for social niceties.”
“Your housekeeper mentioned you’d been ill. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Louette likes to fuss. I smoked too much and for too long, and I’ve had COPD for several years, but it’s lung cancer now, and that’s a different matter. I did the radiation, but I draw the line at chemo. So that’s that. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know anything about this island, Brooke?”
“I did some reading after your call, and I was here briefly as a child, on a campout.”
“On the other end of the island, which my wretched cousins’ heirs sold to the State of Georgia in 1978 for pennies on the dollar,” Josephine said. She shook her head. “If they’d offered me the same deal, I would have bought it myself.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Bad blood. We’d had boundary disputes over the years, silly feuds over water rights, that type of thing.” She shrugged. “Also, from what I heard, they needed the money. As you may know, my father, Samuel Bettendorf, along with two cousins, bought Talisa in 1912.”
She nodded toward the bookshelves. “Somewhere I have a copy of the original bill of sale. They each chipped in $10,000, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money now, but back then, it was the equivalent of $2.4 million apiece. My mother hated the cold Boston winters, so Father bought the island and eventually built this house. His cousins’ wives had no interest in spending time in a place as wild and remote as this, so they eventually partitioned the land, with my father retaining this end of the island. His cousins had more acreage, which was all they were interested in, but Father bought most of their holdings and kept what really mattered—this tract, which has ocean frontage, high ground, and the only freshwater source on the island.”
“Clever man,” Brooke said.
“He was brilliant, really,” Josephine said. “He made his money in the family shipping business, but Father was interested in everything—natural science, the law, literature, the arts. He was the one who insisted I go to college, which was not the norm for girls at that time.”
She sighed. “He loved it here. He loved the climate, the wildlife, the peacefulness. That’s why I have to preserve his legacy here.” She gestured around the room. “Saving Talisa, studying it, understanding its beauty was his life’s work. And then after I married Preiss, it was our work.”
Josephine’s voice grew raspy. “Which is why I’ve fought so hard all these years to keep the state from taking my land.”
Brooke opened her briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad and pen. “I didn’t have time to do much research, but I do know from what I’ve read that your Atlanta lawyers have been fending off the state’s offers.”
“The state built the campsite you stayed at, they paved roads, and then they cut down some of the oldest trees on the island to build another campground, cabins, and a ten-thousand–square-foot ‘conference center.’ Can you tell me why Talisa needs a conference center?”
“Maybe as meeting space?” Brooke guessed.
“That ferry of theirs runs four times a day,” Josephine rasped. “Hundreds of people tromping around, leaving their fast-food wrappers and beer cans and dirty diapers. It’s deplorable. They’re deplorable!”
“How do things stand with the state currently?” Brooke asked.
“Their last offer, made five years ago, was for the same amount they paid my cousins nearly forty years ago,” Josephine said bitterly. “It’s an insult. When I refused, the state filed notice that they’ll take my land by condemnation. For the public good.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “The public hasn’t got any right to traipse across this land. I won’t let them.”
“What is it you think I can do to prevent that?” Brooke asked. “You already have the best law firm in Atlanta representing you.”
“I want you,” Josephine said.
“But why? You don’t even know me.”
“I’ve been following your career in the newspapers. You’ve got spunk. And I need somebody with spunk. Besides, you sued the National Park Service, didn’t you?”
“And lost,” Brooke said calmly.
“But you fought them tooth and nail for three years. You wore the bastards down.”
“Not really. You of all people know what that’s like. The Park Service decided that Loblolly, my family’s house on Cumberland Island, was ‘nonconforming,’ so they knocked it down. And we’re not allowed to build anything to replace it.”
“Which is precisely why I need you to fight my last battle,” Josephine said. “I won’t be around that much longer. I’ve seen their secret preliminary master plan. The first thing the state will do is to tear this house down. And I can’t have that. I can’t die knowing they’ll ruin everything. All our years of work.”
“Tear down Shellhaven? Why would the state do that?”
“You’ve seen the condition it’s in. It would take millions to preserve it. Much cheaper for them to knock it down and build more cabins and conference centers. They’d build a big marina where my dock is—we’ve got the only deepwater boat access on this end of the island.”
Brooke looked down at the few lines of notes she’d taken. “Josephine, I just don’t think I can help you. It’s true I’m a lawyer, but this is not my area of expertise at all.”
“Word is out that I’m sick,” Josephine said, ignoring her. “They’ve already come over here, sniffing around. C. D. ran off a boatload of ’em a couple of weeks ago. Survey crew, they said they were. They’d tied up at our dock, just as C. D. was coming back from the mainland with a load of groceries. He fired a couple of warning shots across the bow of their boat, and they took off like a pack of scalded dogs, but they’ll be back.”
Brooke shook her head in alarm. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“They were trespassing. As long as I’m alive, this is still private property. They’ve got no business sniffing around over here. I want this thing settled before I get too sick to fight anymore.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Brooke asked.
“I want my land and this house protected, put in a trust or something, so that nobody, and I mean nobody, can develop this end of the island or tear down this house.”
“Who’d be the beneficiary of such a trust?” Brooke asked. “Do you have family?”
The old lady put her head back and closed her eyes. “Not really. My brother, Gardiner, was killed in World War Two. Preiss and I never had children.” She smiled, briefly. “Never wanted any, either. I didn’t marry until I was in my thirties. He was six years younger than me. Bet you didn’t know that. No, there’s somebody else. My friends. My oldest, dearest friends. The High Tide Club girls.”
4
Josephine