“No problem, sir,” said the pit boss. “I’ll get you checked in.”
For the next hour he broke even. The cocktail waitress stopped by every five minutes, pushing beverages, trying to loosen him up, but Ray nursed the first beer. During a shuffle, he counted thirty-nine black chips.
At midnight he began yawning, and he remembered how little he’d slept the night before. The room key was in his pocket. The table had a thousand-dollar limit per hand; otherwise he would’ve played it all at one time and gone down in a blaze of glory. He placed ten black chips in the circle and with an audience hit blackjack. Another ten chips, and the dealer blew it with twenty-two. He gathered his chips, left four for the dealer, and went to the cashier. He’d been in the casino for three hours.
From his fifth-floor room he could see the parking lot, and because his sports car was within view he felt compelled to watch it. As tired as he was, he could not fall asleep. He pulled a chair to the window and tried to doze, but couldn’t stop thinking.
Had the Judge discovered the casinos? Could gambling be the source of his fortune, a lucrative little vice that he’d kept to himself?
The more Ray told himself that the idea was too far-fetched, the more convinced he became that he’d found the source of the money. To his knowledge, the Judge had never played the stock market, and if he
had, if he’d been another Warren Buffett, why would he take his profits in cash and hide it under the bookshelves? Plus, the paperwork would be thick.
If he’d lived the double life of a judge on the take, there wasn’t three million dollars to steal on the court dockets in rural Mississippi. And taking bribes would involve too many other people.
It had to be gambling. It was a cash business. Ray had just won six thousand dollars in one night. Sure it was blind luck, but wasn’t all gaming? Perhaps the old man had a knack for cards or dice. Maybe he hit one of the big jackpots in the slot machines. He lived alone and answered to no one.
He could’ve pulled it off.
But three million dollars over seven years?
Didn’t the casinos require paperwork for substantial winnings? Tax forms and such?
And why hide it? Why not give it away like the rest of his money?
Shortly after three, Ray gave it up and left his complimentary room. He slept in his car until sunrise.
CHAPTER 11
The front door was slightly cracked, and at eight o’clock in the morning with no one living there it was indeed an ominous sign. Ray stared at it for a long minute, not certain if he wanted to step inside but knowing he had no choice. He shoved it wider, clenched his fists as if the thief just might still be in there, and took a very deep breath. It swung open, creaking every inch of the way, and when the light fell upon the stacks of boxes in the foyer Ray saw muddy footprints on the floor. The assailant had entered from the rear lawn where there was mud and for some reason had chosen to leave through the front door.
Ray slowly removed the pistol from his pocket.
The twenty-seven green Blake & Son boxes were scattered around the Judge’s study. The sofa was overturned. The doors to the cabinet below the bookshelves were open. The rolltop appeared to be unmolested
but the papers from the desk were scattered on the floor.
The intruder had removed the boxes, opened them, and finding them empty, had evidently stomped them and thrown them in a fit of rage. As still as things were, Ray felt the violence and it made him weak.
The money could get him killed.
When he was able to move he fixed the sofa and picked up the papers. He was gathering boxes when he heard something on the front porch. He peeked through the window and saw an old woman tapping on the front door.
Claudia Gates had known the Judge like no one else. She had been his court reporter, secretary, driver, and many other things, according to gossip that had been around since Ray was a small boy. For almost thirty years, she and the Judge had traveled the six counties of the 25th District together, often leaving Clanton at seven in the morning and returning long after dark. When they were not in court, they shared the Judge’s office in the courthouse, where she typed the transcripts while he did his paperwork.
A lawyer named Turley had once caught them in a compromising position during lunch at the office, and he made the awful mistake of telling others about it. He lost every case in Chancery Court for a year and couldn’t buy a client. It took four years for Judge Atlee to get him disbarred.
“Hello, Ray,” she said through the screen. “May I come in?”
“Sure,” he said, and opened the door wider.
Ray and Claudia had never liked each other. He had always felt that she was getting the attention and affection that he and Forrest were not, and she viewed him as a threat as well. When it came to Judge Atlee, she viewed everyone as a threat.
She had few friends and even fewer admirers. She was rude and callous because she spent her life listening to trials. And she was arrogant because she whispered to the great man.
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
“So am I.”
As they walked by the study, Ray pulled the door closed and said, “Don’t go in there.” Claudia did not notice the intruder’s footprints.
“Be nice to me, Ray,” she said.
“Why?”
They went to the kitchen, where he put up some coffee and they sat across from each other. “Can I smoke?” she asked.
“I don’t care,” he said. Smoke till you choke, old gal. His father’s black suits had always carried the acrid smell of her cigarettes. He’d allowed her to smoke in the car, in chambers, in his office, probably in bed. Everywhere but the courtroom.
The raspy breath, the gravelly voice, the countless wrinkles clustered around the eyes, ah, the joys of tobacco.
She’d been crying, which was not an insignificant event in her life. When he was clerking for his father one summer, Ray had had the misfortune of sitting
through a gut-wrenching child abuse case. The testimony had been so sad and pitiful that everyone, including the Judge and all the lawyers, were moved to tears. The only dry eyes in the courtroom belonged to old stone-faced Claudia.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” she said, then blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling.
“He’s been dying for five years, Claudia. This is no surprise.”
“It’s still sad.”
“It’s very sad, but he was suffering at the end. Death was a blessing.”
“He wouldn’t let me come see him.”
“We’re not rehashing history, okay?”
The history, depending on which version you believed, had kept Clanton buzzing for almost two decades. A few years after Ray’s mother died, Claudia divorced her husband for reasons that were never clear. One side of town believed the Judge had promised to marry her after her divorce. The other side of town believed the Judge, forever an Atlee, never intended to marry such a commoner as Claudia, and that she got a divorce because her husband caught her fooling around with yet another man. Years passed with the two enjoying the benefits of married life, except for the paperwork and actual cohabitation. She continued to press the Judge to get married, he continued to postpone things. Evidently, he was getting what he wanted.
Finally she put forth an ultimatum, which proved to
be a bad strategy. Ultimatums did not impress Reuben Atlee. The year before he got booted from office, Claudia married a man nine years younger. The Judge promptly fired her, and the coffee shops and knitting clubs talked of nothing else. After a few rocky years, her younger man died. She was lonely, so was the Judge. But she had betrayed him by remarrying, and he never forgave her.
“Where’s Forrest?” she asked.
“He should be here soon.”
“How is he?”
“He’s Forrest.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
“It’s up to you.”
“I’d rather talk to you, Ray. I need to talk to someone.”
“Don’t you have friends?”
“No. Reuben was my only friend.”
He cringed when she called him Reuben. She stuck the cigarette between her gluey red lips, a pale red for mourning, not the bright red she was once known for. She was at least seventy, but wearing it well. Still straight and slim, and wearing a tight dress that no other seventy-year-old woman in Ford County would attempt. She had diamonds in her ears and one on her finger, though he couldn’t tell if they were real. She was also wearing a pretty gold pendant and two gold bracelets.
She was an aging tart, but still an active volcano. He would ask Harry Rex whom she was seeing these days.
He poured more coffee and said, “What would you like to talk about?”
“Reuben.”
“My father is dead. I don’t like history.”
“Can’t we be friends?”
“No. We’ve always despised each other. We’re not going to kiss and hug now, over the casket. Why would we do that?”
“I’m an old woman, Ray.”
“And I live in Virginia. We’ll get through the funeral today, then we’ll never see each other again. How’s that?”
She lit another one and cried some more. Ray was thinking about the mess in the study, and what he would say to Forrest if he barged in now and saw the footprints and scattered boxes. And if Forrest saw Claudia sitting at the table, he might go for her neck.
Though they had no proof, Ray and Forrest had long suspected that the Judge had paid her more than the going rate for court reporters. Something extra, in exchange for the extras she was providing. It was not difficult holding a grudge.
“I want something to remember, that’s all,” she said.
“You want to remember me?”
“You are your father, Ray. I’m clinging here.”
“Are you looking for money?”
“No.”
“Are you broke?”
“I’m not set for life, no.”
“There’s nothing here for you.”
“Do you have his will?”
“Yes, and your name is not mentioned.”
She cried again, and Ray began a slow burn. She got the money twenty years ago when he was waiting tables and living on peanut butter and trying to survive another month of law school without getting evicted from his cheap apartment. She always had a new Cadillac when he and Forrest were driving wrecks. They were expected to live like impoverished gentry while she had the wardrobe and the jewelry.
“He always promised to take care of me,” she said.
“He broke it off years ago, Claudia. Give it up.”
“I can’t. I loved him too much.”
“It was sex and money, not love. I’d rather not talk about it.”
“What’s in the estate?”
“Nothing. He gave it all away.”
“He what?”
“You heard me. You know how he loved to write checks. It got worse after you left the picture.”
“What about his retirement?” She wasn’t crying now, this was business. Her green eyes were dry and glowing.
“He cashed in the year after he left office. It was a terrible financial blunder, but he did it without my knowledge. He was mad and half-crazy. He took the money, lived on some of it, and gave the rest to the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Lions Club, Sons of the Confederacy, Committee to Preserve Historic Battlefields, you name it.”
If his father had been a crooked judge, something
Ray was not willing to believe, then Claudia would know about the money. It was obvious she did not. Ray never suspected she knew, because if she had then the money would not have remained hidden in the study. Let her have a rip at three million bucks and everybody in the county would know about it. If she had a dollar, you were going to see it. As pitiful as she looked across the table, Ray suspected she had very few dollars.
“I thought your second husband had some money,” he said, with a little too much cruelty.
“So did I,” she said and managed a smile. Ray chuckled a bit. Then they both laughed, and the ice thawed dramatically. She had always been known for her bluntness.
“Never found it, huh?”
“Not a dime. He was this nice-looking guy, nine years younger, you know—”
“I remember it well. A regular scandal.”
“He was fifty-one years old, a smooth talker, had a line about making money in oil. We drilled like crazy for four years and I came up with nothing.”
Ray laughed louder. He could not, at that moment, ever remember having a talk about sex and money with a seventy-year-old woman. He got the impression she had plenty of stories. Claudia’s greatest hits.
“You’re looking good, Claudia, you have time for another one.”
“I’m tired, Ray. Old and tired. I’d have to train him and all. It’s not worth it.”
“What happened to number two?”
“He croaked with a heart attack and I didn’t even find a thousand dollars,” she said.
“The Judge left six.”
“Is that all?” she asked in disbelief.
“No stocks, no bonds, nothing but an old house and six thousand dollars in the bank.”
She lowered her eyes, shook her head, and believed everything Ray was saying. She had no clue about the cash.
“What will you do with the house?”
“Forrest wants to burn it and collect the insurance.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“We’ll sell it.”
There was noise on the porch, then a knock. Reverend Palmer was there to discuss the funeral service, which would begin in two hours. Claudia hugged Ray as they walked to her car. She hugged him again and said good-bye. “I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer to you,” she whispered as he opened her car door.
“Good-bye, Claudia. I’ll see you at the church.”
“He never forgave me, Ray.”
“I forgive you.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes. You’re forgiven. We’re friends now.”
“Thank you so much.” She hugged him a third time and started crying. He helped her into the car, always a Cadillac. Just before she turned the ignition, she said, “Did he ever forgive you, Ray?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“But it’s not important now. Let’s get him buried.”
“He could be a mean old sumbitch, couldn’t he?” she said, smiling through the tears.
Ray had to laugh. His dead father’s seventy-year-old former lover had just called the great man a son of a bitch.
“Yes,” he agreed. “He certainly could be.”