First Kill All the Lawyers

by Sarah Shankman

  “Don’t need to see to feel. ’Specially when you don’t have to chase very hard. Or very far.” Peaches’ voice trailed off down the hall.

  Sam fixed her gaze on her uncle, who was now savoring his first sip of the cold dark beer. She didn’t know anything about his romantic life, except that when he was young, he’d been married briefly to a beautiful woman with chestnut hair named Eloise. Her picture sat in a cloisonné frame on the baby grand piano. Eloise, his childhood sweetheart and the love of George’s life, had died giving birth to their first son, who was stillborn.

  “It took him ages,” Peaches had told Sam, “to even be able to say her name.”

  But that had been more than forty years ago, and the tall, dapper George Adams, whose beautiful Egyptian cotton shirts, dark suits, summer linens, and seersuckers all came from Savile Row, grew, as some men do, more handsome each year. His figure was no longer slim, but even his heft was becoming. His dark curls had turned pure white. Those clear blue eyes remained the same as in the old photos Samantha had looked at, only the laugh lines at the corners deepened. Had he not been her kin, she herself would have found him appealing. It didn’t surprise her to hear Horace and Peaches hinting that other women did.

  “George, why is it you never talk to me about your women friends?” she asked.

  “Well. . .” He paused and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “I guess I just think that those things are best left unsaid.”

  “But—”

  He raised a hand. “If I plan to run off with any showgirls, I’ll let you know.”

  They both laughed.

  “Now,” he said, “let’s talk about what I’ve been able to find out for you about Watkin County. You’re still set on going up there?”

  “Tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

  “This should give you something to think about.” He pulled out the notes he’d taken in his now-huge printed hand. He had taken to using children’s wide-ruled school pads as his eyesight dimmed. “I told you I was curious about land development up there. There’s lots of money, I mean big sums, changing hands.”

  Sam nodded and picked up Harpo, who had scooted into the room. He snuggled into her lap, turning so she could scratch his ears.

  “Well, it was just as I expected. In Watkin County, the sheriff and the tax commissioner are one and the same. So obviously the sheriff knows when land is being sold at auction for taxes. He runs a tiny notice in the paper in practically invisible two-point type, and when the day comes, nobody shows up at the auction except the sheriff and the real estate agent or lawyer with whom he’s in cahoots.”

  “And who’s that man?”

  “Jeb Saunders.”

  “You know him?”

  “I sure do. He has an association with Simmons and Lee.”

  “Which points the finger at whom? Forrest Ridley? Is that why he was killed? Land deals?”

  “No, not Forrest. What’s interesting is what my man—”

  “Who?” Sam demanded.

  “Let’s just say that some of the firm’s young associates are awfully eager and can find their way around courthouse records like they’re on roller skates, if given the motivation. Anyway, my young man found the name of Kay Kramer on many of the recent Watkin land deeds. Kay Kramer and Patricia Kay.”

  “Kay Kay?”

  “Kramer’s her maiden name.”

  “And Patricia?”

  “Totsie.”

  “The Kay women are tied up in this?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “No. I don’t think so. I think Edison just used their names as fronts.”

  “I never did like that man. Do you?”

  “Well, just because we were partners didn’t mean we got into bed together, if you know what I mean.”

  “But did you suspect him of this kind of thing?” Sam pressed.

  “Not suspect, exactly. But I’ll tell you, it’s no great surprise. The man’s greedy. You can see it in his eyes.”

  “So, when’s the next sale? Did your young man find that out?”

  There was silence from George’s end of the room.

  “Don’t con a conman,” Sam told him. “I learned everything I know from you. And I know when you’re holding out. Give.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Hot damn! What timing! I ask you.” Sam stood, despite Harpo’s grumblings, and strode around the room. “This is great. I’ll go and see it at first hand.”

  “You don’t know these people, Samantha. I keep telling you you don’t want to mess with them. They play hardball.”

  “That’s all I’ve heard since I started talking about this rural sheriff idea. And you’re the one who turned me on to it in the first place. Now, it just so happens that we’ve got a sheriff—certainly corrupt, and maybe implicated in Forrest Ridley’s death—and you’re telling me to lay off? Forget it, George. Daylight tomorrow, I’m gone.”

  George smiled at her back as she walked out the door, followed close behind by Harpo.

  She was the child he’d never had. And he was fearful for her. But in her place, he knew he’d have done exactly what she was doing. Nose right on the trail, hang the consequences.

  *

  Headed north and slightly east on Route 400, Sam crossed the perimeter highway a little after nine, Peaches having insisted despite her protestations that Sam could not set foot out the door without a proper breakfast.

  At the last minute she’d scooped up Harpo, who had been watching her every move before settling down with his resigned and grumpy look, his lower teeth slightly protruding.

  “You want to go, Scooter?”

  The little dog had danced in a circle. Go was his middle name. Now he was settled in her lap, happily snoozing as the miles rolled by.

  The suburbs seemed to stretch on forever. George was right: Atlanta was marching northward out of Fulton County and into Forsyth. Sign after sign by the side of the highway announced subdivisions with names like Arrowwood and Bowling Green—little enclaves of tract housing with all the authenticity of Disney World.

  Sam remembered then something that Beau told her his daughter Beth had said. Once when they were driving up this way, she’d asked, “Dad, what is this all for?”

  Sam, who’d always preferred living in the thick of things, wasn’t sure.

  Once off the expressway and onto two-lane Route 19, she left the suburbs behind. This was a land of piney woods and rolling hills that, another county northward, became the Appalachians’ toes. It was kudzu country, where that creeping vine imported from Japan to prevent erosion indiscriminately covered hills and trees, old cars, abandoned houses, and, some said, sleeping cows—its heart-shaped leaves prettily disguising its voraciousness.

  Huge chicken coops filled some roadside lots, the results of a new form of sharecropping as the big growers provided the farmers with chicks and feed in exchange for most of the full-grown birds that would later fill supermarket coolers.

  This was the sort of land into which Herman Blanding’s house would blend comfortably, Sam thought, where a front yard filled with old trucks, skeletons of station wagons, rusting lawn furniture, and a big television satellite dish was the rule rather than the exception. New double-wide mobile homes were erected right beside tumbledown shacks, the occupants sliding the latter’s contents right over into the former without missing a beat. It was a land where Christmas trees were farmed, as well as gourds and serious timber. It was all-white country, these “sundown” counties where blacks were not welcome after dark. It was provincial, parochial, and overwhelmingly Protestant. A sign on a Baptist church Sam passed read: Are you a runaway from God? Please call home. And it was poor country. Though the land was beautiful, it didn’t bring its inhabitants wealth—except recently, to a select few, when large parcels of it were sold.

  Sam approached the Monroeville city limits leaning into a roller-coaster curve called Long Pond Bend. She loved the way her car hugged the road. Harpo awakened and licked her hand. He was a gr
eat traveler.

  “Good boy,” she said. “You can get out in just a moment.”

  In that moment she was in the town’s center, and if she’d kept driving for another, she would have been through it. Monroeville was just about a fifteen-second town if you were doing twenty, which was what the speed limit allowed.

  There in the middle of the road was the old courthouse Beau had described, two-storied and crumbling a bit like a jilted bride’s wedding cake. Other than that, there was no real center to the town, not even a block-long parade of stores, but here and there were a fuel company, a tiny library, a poolroom, a florist, three new-looking gas stations, and a Qwik-Stop grocery store. Off on the one little street that intersected the highway was a window with gold-leaf letters announcing it to be the office of Jeb Saunders, the lawyer whom George had indicated was arm-in-arm with Sheriff Dodd.

  On the other side of the road, down in a gully, was the new white-brick courthouse, standing out like a bottle blonde. Sam walked down that way. Harpo raised his leg against the tire of a brown Ford, a Watkin County Sheriff’s patrol car. Behind the courthouse she could see the county jail, its windows barred. To one side of it was an exercise yard with a horseshoe pit. If that was the extent of the recreational activity, Sam thought, serving time in Watkin County must be terrifically boring. To one side of the door to the sheriff’s office was a Pepsi-Cola machine. A tall, chunky man in a brown uniform standing in front of it looked up and smiled.

  “How you?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  It had taken her a while to acclimate again to the friendly ways of Southerners. They waved, tipped their hats, made small polite conversation with any stranger who passed. It was quite a contrast to San Francisco, where people slid by one another avoiding eye contact.

  “Nice morning,” he continued, then peered at Harpo. “Pardon me, ma’am, but what kind of dog is that?”

  “A Shih Tzu.”

  “Well, I never saw nothing like it.”

  “He’s Chinese.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Chinese. The breed’s Chinese.”

  The man tipped his hat back and studied Harpo, who studied him back. Harpo gave great eye contact.

  “If he’s Chinese,” the man said after a while, “how come his eyes ain’t slanted?” And then he slapped his knee and broke up laughing at his own joke.

  “Pretty funny,” Sam agreed. “Tell me, where could I get a cup of coffee around here?”

  “Up at Millie’s.” He pointed north. “Just on the other side of the old courthouse. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you, sir. Come on, Harpo.” Harpo resisted her pull on the leash. He had an eyelock on the deputy, as if he were still trying to figure out what the man thought was so funny. Harpo had a well-defined sense of humor, but he didn’t get the man’s joke. Sam had to pick him up and carry him away.

  Sam was hoping that Millie’s would be a homey kind of place like the Silver Skillet or Melvin’s, but it wasn’t. It was new plastic from top to bottom, though the pie in the case and the clientele looked homemade enough.

  She took a seat at the counter, which was almost full, though the booths were all empty, then twirled around toward the plate glass window to check on Harpo, whom she’d locked in the car. He was staring indignantly at her from behind the steering wheel.

  “What can I get you?”

  Sam turned, but she couldn’t find the owner of the voice. Then she looked down. The waitress was a red-haired midget about four feet tall.

  Sam didn’t blink. “A cup of coffee, please.”

  At that, the other heads at the counter, all male, turned, stared politely, and nodded. She and the waitress seemed to be the only two women in Monroeville who didn’t drink their morning coffee at home.

  “You traveling?” asked the old man on her right, who was dressed in a khaki workshirt and matching pants. His cigarette never moved from his mouth, not even when he sipped his coffee.

  “I am,” she said with a smile. “Drove up from Atlanta. I understand there’s a lot of pretty land up here for sale. Thought I might be interested in a big parcel for a summer place.”

  “Humph,” said the old man, nudging his neighbor with his right elbow. “Reckon we don’t know about summer places. We work our land all four seasons.”

  Sam smiled weakly. What a dummy she was. “Well,” she repeated, “it is awfully pretty. You know of any for sale?”

  “Nope.” The man shook his head. “Don’t reckon I do. Do you, Willis?”

  His neighbor shook his head even as he buried his face in a plate of pancakes.

  “Well, when land does come up for sale, do you have any idea how much it would sell for per acre?” Sam persisted.

  “Nope.”

  Giving up on him, Sam tried a smile on the man to her left, a young man who had a creaky look as if life had sucked all of the juice out of him.

  Before she could even reframe the question he joined the chorus: “Nope.”

  “Well, if a person was ever to buy some land up here, is there anyplace that you could fly a small plane into? I mean, if you wanted to fly up from Atlanta instead of drive?”

  The three men exchanged glances across her. Even without looking, she could feel their lines of silent communication as clearly as if they were darts.

  She knew she shouldn’t have asked that. It was far too obviously a question about drugs. Stick to it, Sam, she lectured herself. Just like George told you, you go on an unfocused fishing expedition up here, you may come up with things more wiggly than worms.

  “Nope.” They shook their heads in three-part harmony. “Nope. Nope.”

  Well, this certainly has been an informative little cup of coffee, Sam thought. She could have learned just as much by sitting in the car drinking from her thermos and talking with Harpo. She motioned for her check and paid up.

  Halfway out to her car, she heard someone calling after her.

  “Miss, miss, you left your paper.”

  It was the waitress. She shifted from side to side above her short legs as she descended the diner’s steps.

  “Thanks. You needn’t have bothered.”

  “There’s an old landing strip from World War II about three miles east of town,” the woman said, and then turned on her heel.

  “Wait.”

  The woman paused.

  “Why did you tell me that?” Sam asked.

  “Slow as hell around here.” She grinned. “Looks to me like you’re here to stir things up.”

  Well, Sam told herself with a resigned sigh, there was no need pretending that she didn’t stand out like flashing neon here in Monroeville. George had said that the tax auction was at eleven. She might as well blunder on in.

  There didn’t seem to be any other place to ask, so she checked in at the courthouse.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the secretary in the first office she came to. “Can you tell me where the tax auction’s being held?”

  “Tax auction?” The plump young woman with bright pink skin stared at her through purple-rimmed glasses. “I don’t know nothing about no tax auction. Clotile?” she called.

  From the other side of a partition came a disembodied voice. “What?”

  “You know anything about a tax auction?”

  “Nope. I sure don’t.”

  “Do you know who might?” Sam asked the plump woman.

  “No, ma’am.” The purple-rimmed glasses winked at her. “I sure don’t.”

  “I think Sheriff Dodd will probably be there.”

  “Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so? Sheriff Dodd is back in his office. Out that door”—she pointed—“and back to the right.”

  “Then the tax auction’s in his office?”

  “Honey, I don’t know nothing about no tax auction. I just know where Sheriff Dodd is at.”

  Sam followed the woman’s directions and stepped into the sheriff’s office. “Is this where the tax auction’s being held?” she asked the
young deputy at the front desk. He was cursing softly at the green screen of a computer.

  “Damned thing was put here by the state to drive us crazy,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, what was it you said you wanted?”

  “The tax auction.”

  He pushed his hat farther back on his head. He looked like he was about eighteen years old. “Sorry, I don’t know about any tax auction.”

  “How about Sheriff Dodd?”

  He broke into a grin. Eager to be of help, he pointed. “He’s back there in his office, visiting with Mr. Saunders.”

  “They’re having a meeting?”

  “No ma’am, I don’t think so. I think they’re just visiting. Why don’t you go back and knock on the door?”

  Sam walked down the hall and paused outside the door marked Sheriff. She was about to knock when from inside she heard someone say, “Well, you just whistling Dixie, boy, is what I think.” The voice was a soft rumble that reminded her of melted caramel.

  “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” a higher voice responded.

  Behind her, Sam heard footsteps. She was about to get caught eavesdropping. She knocked quickly.

  “Come on in,” called the rumble, and she opened the door. “Why, hi there, ma’am,” said a big, dark, handsome man. He pulled his boots down off his desk and stood. “What can we do for you?”

  “We” included the other man in the room, who was of medium build, with slightly buck teeth, middle-parted hair, and horn-rimmed glasses. Jeb Saunders looked like he’d be more at home at Yale than in Monroeville.

  Sam held out her hand and introduced herself. “Susan Sloan. I’m looking for the tax auction.”

  “Well,” Buford Dodd said, grinning, “you come to the right place, but you got the wrong time. Just missed it. It was over about five minutes ago. Have a seat.” He pulled out a chair for her.

  “Right here?” she asked, sitting down.

  “Yep. Right here in this office.”

  “Where’s everybody else?”

  “Well, they’ve done gone.”

  Sam knew that Dodd was fooling with her. There had been nobody else in this room. Dodd, acting as tax commissioner, had just sold to himself, through the auspices of Jeb Saunders, some land that would eventually pass into the hands of Edison Kay or someone else who wasn’t shy about stealing from people who couldn’t pay their taxes.