Dill said he didn’t.
“Back in seventy-two,” she said.
“Why’d she leave it to you?”
“I helped her straighten out the royalties on some oil leases that old Ace Dawson gave her back in the early thirties. She was Ace’s fancy lady. He gave her what she called a slop jar full of leases that played out in the fifties, but when the oil crisis came along — not the one in seventy-three, but the one in seventy-nine — well, it became profitable to start stripping those old wells. So after the oil-company man came around, Miss Ellie sent for me because she said she never met a land man in her life who wasn’t crooked as cat shit and she claimed she ought to know. I got her the best deal I could, which wasn’t bad, and then she went to another lawyer and changed her will and left me her condo and everything in it.”
“And she was Ace Dawson’s girl friend?”
“One of them. She told me he had a half-dozen or so scattered all over the state.”
“I know the guy who bought his house.”
“Jake Spivey,” she said.
“You know Jake?”
“Everybody talks about him, but not too many seem to know him.”
“Like to meet him?”
“You’re serious.”
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Sunday. They’re going to barbecue some ribs and jump in his pool.”
“Sunday,” she said.
Dill nodded.
“What time?”
“We’d start out there about noon.”
“All day then?”
“Probably.”
“Well, I’m no star-fucker, but I’d kill to see the inside of that house.”
Dill grinned. “You think Jake’s a star?”
She shrugged. “In this town he passes for one.” She glanced around the room and frowned. “What’re you standing up for anyway? Sit down.” She indicated an easy chair that was covered in an unworn but faded floral fabric. The flora seemed to be intertwined red and yellow roses with sharp thorns and very pale green stems. Dill sat down. Anna Maude Singe smiled. “Like I said, faded splendor.” She turned and moved toward the hall entrance. “I’ll be back.”
While she was gone, Dill examined the sizable living room and its ten-foot ceiling. The walls were of thick combed cream plaster. The furnishings all smacked of the thirties and forties. There was even a Capehart record player, the automatic kind that picked up the 78-rpm records after they were played and dropped them gently down a padded slot. Dill remembered seeing one in operation at a friend’s house in Alexandria, Virginia. The friend had called it an antique.
The rest of the furniture had sharp angular lines, and it all seemed to be either seldom used or recently upholstered. The colors, except for the faded floral easy chair, were muted shades of brown and tan and cream and off-white, although there were a lot of bright red, yellow, and orange pillows scattered about. Dill thought the pillows went nicely with the large Maxfield Parrish print of Daybreak. He got up to inspect it more closely, trying to figure out whether the teenage figures in it were boys or girls. He was still undecided when Anna Maude Singe returned wearing a cream silk dress whose hem ended just below her knees. Dill thought the dress looked both elegant and expensive. He smiled and said, “You look awfully nice.”
She glanced down at the dress, which had a scooped neck and very short sleeves. “This old thing. I can honestly say that because it’s either forty-eight or forty-nine years old and it’s real Chinese watered silk. Miss Ellie and I were just about the same size — at least, way back then she was. Later, she got a little fat.”
On the way down in the elevator, Anna Maude Singe laid out in succinct fashion what steps Dill should take to collect on his dead sister’s two hundred and fifty thousand-dollar insurance policy. On the way to his parked car, she outlined the obstacles he might encounter if he tried to sell the yellow brick duplex. Dill found her review both concise and objective. As they got into the Ford, he said, “I think I might need a lawyer.”
She shrugged. “You might.”
He put the key in the ignition and started the engine. “You can be my lawyer.”
She said nothing. Dill pulled away from the curb. After driving a block, he said, “Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About whether I want to be your lawyer.”
“Christ, I’m not asking you to marry me.”
“It’s not you,” she said. “You’d make a nice dull client. It’s Felicity.”
“Felicity’s dead.”
“I still represent her estate.”
“So?”
“There might be a conflict of interest.”
“My one year of law school, though dimly remembered, tells me that’s just so much bullshit.”
She turned to look at him, resting her back against the door and tucking her feet up beneath her on the seat. “Felicity used to talk to me — confide in me, actually, as both her friend and attorney. Sometimes it’s hard to decide where legal confidentiality begins and ends.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“That’s because I don’t think I should say anything else.”
Dill glared at her and returned his attention to the road ahead. “I’m her goddamned brother,” he said, “not the fucking IRS. My sister’s been killed. She was leading a pretty strange life before they blew her away. She bought a duplex she hardly lived in with money she didn’t have. She took out a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy, paid cash for it, and died three weeks later — right on schedule. Doesn’t anyone wonder — you, for instance — where the hell the money was coming from? Doesn’t anyone, for God’s sake, think the money and the killer might be connected? But all you do is sit there and talk about confidentiality. Jesus, lady, if you know something, go tell the cops. Felicity’s dead. She won’t mind if you reveal her confidences. She won’t mind about anything at all.”
“That’s a red light,” Singe said.
“I know it’s a red light,” Dill said, jamming on the brakes and locking the Ford’s wheels.
They sat at the red light silently until she said, “Okay. I’ll be your lawyer.”
Dill shook his head dubiously. “I don’t know if you’re even smart enough to be my lawyer. After all, I’ve got some awfully complicated affairs that need untangling. I’ve got to sell a house and collect on an insurance policy. That might require some pretty fancy legal footwork. It might even involve writing one letter and making two, maybe even three phone calls.”
“The light’s green,” she said.
“I know it’s green,” Dill said, and sent the car speeding across the intersection.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?”
“You want me to be your lawyer?”
Dill sighed. “Aw, hell. Why not. What d’you want to eat?”
“Sweetbreads.”
He looked at her and grinned. “Really?”
“I crave sweetbreads,” she said.
“That means Packingtown. Chief Joe’s?”
“Where else.”
“Jesus,” Dill said happily. “Sweetbreads.”
Everything south of the Yellowfork was called Packingtown even though Armour had long gone, as had Swift, and now only Wilson remained to butcher the hogs and the steers and the occasional lamb — occasional because eating lamb was generally held to be kind of a sissy thing to do. The Yellowfork, of course, was the river that everyone described as being a mile wide and an inch deep — not a very original description, but the city had never placed much of a premium on originality.
Sometimes there was water in the Yellowfork, quite a lot of water, but at other times, like now, it was only a wide meandering river of bright yellow dry sand lined with willows and cottonwoods.