The only things Willette said to me when I visited her after detox was that she damn well wasn’t going to live with me, and she wanted her own house rebuilt, by God, and plenty of Cokes. Oh, and don’t any of us be coming around too much.
I agreed I wouldn’t be coming around too much.
Because, just as I’d figured, Willette remained unrelenting.
She wanted no more to do with me than I wanted to do with her. Whatever sin, real or imagined, I had committed in my childhood—even if it was only that Delvon had preferred to play with me rather than his mother—was unforgivable in Willette’s troubled mind. Having never expected anything better, I was not disappointed. That Eleanor wanted me to make peace with my mother was, after all, achieved, though not in the way that Eleanor had probably envisioned. Our peace, that is for Willette and me, was that we would simply go our own ways.
Willette had saved her own life once, and I had saved it a second time, and whatever she made with the rest of it would be without me playing any role in it.
There was, in all of that, a kind of a truce.
So, I wouldn’t be coming back to Bugfest to see Willette. But I’d be coming around enough to visit Shalonda and my own family. And to fix up my grandmom’s old farmhouse, down by little Sleepy Lake, a house that Armando wants to move into as soon as he graduates from high school, thus escaping the odious task of making friends with his soon-to-be stepfather. Armando and I, on the drive back to Sarasota, decided that it would be in everyone’s best interest, especially our own, not to tell Bonita he had been kidnapped and imprisoned in a tomb and narrowly escaped bodily harm in a car wreck while in my care. And there is nothing like a shared secret to bond two people together. So, Bonita still lets him ride shotgun with me when I drive up to Bugfest.
Armando has painted my old bedroom at Grandmom’s house a shade of gray only a teenage boy could like, and figures it for his room when he graduates. Living in my grandmom’s house would put him closer to his first love, the ever-charming Becky. I don’t know that this will come to pass, but it’s a lovely-sounding plan for the time being.
Back on my own home front, my own beloved, Philip, tangled his Cary Grant–cool client’s jury up in befuddled knots to the point where they couldn’t reach a verdict, and the judge had to declare a mistrial. Not too long after that, I got a notice that Idiot Client had dropped his lawsuit against Henry and his insurance company. My theory that he was an across-the-board fraud was right on the money. Incredibly enough, the man had never actually graduated from chiropractic school, not to mention his little problem with the Medicare fraud division breathing down his neck after a well-placed phone tip from a reliable source, followed up with an anonymous e-mail with an attachment proving his years of cheating.
Idiot Client, now a man with state and fed officials after him, grinding his miserable life to shreds, did not have any chance of winning that lawsuit against Henry and his company. That I had brought about a just result by somewhat suspect means troubled me for a while, but then I put it out of my head. I’d been a trial lawyer too long to ruminate on stuff like that.
Alas, my faithful Honda was declared totaled by my insurance company. But I bought it back from the junkyard, and Hank has a crew of high school shop boys doing their senior project trying to rebuild her. We’ll see. In the meantime, somewhat to the chagrin of my uptown law partners, I am driving Jubal’s pickup. After all, he wrecked my car, only fair he should give me his. And, being a hybrid, it gets almost as good mileage as my Honda did.
Oh, and about that gun Willette had used—after much fussing over it, I finally found out that her loyal, protective friend and neighbor Eleanor gave it to Willette years back, right after everybody but Willette moved out of the house. The occasion for learning this was my trip back to Bugfest, to bring my new best friend and future tenant, Armando, to visit Becky, and to attend the wedding of Eleanor and the survivor of the Great War. Her first marriage, his third.
When I asked Eleanor why she had given my mother a gun, she said, “A little woman like that, all by herself, I was afraid for her. The Lord works in mysterious ways. But it does not hurt any to be well armed.”
acknowledgments
My cousin, Paige Johnson Hodo, and her husband, Dr. David Hodo, were a tremendous help to me in writing this book, and I wish to thank them. Paige and David read an early draft, and then we sat together and brainstormed until we had collectively improved the heck out of the story line. David Hodo, a brilliant and compassionate psychiatrist, also generously shared his expertise with regard to psychogenic drugs as used in the Willette subplot. With regard to his help on the pharmaceuticals and the tox screens, let me say this: if I rounded off a sharp edge, or otherwise made a mistake, that was me—Dr. Hodo knows his stuff. He also loaned me his name for one of the characters.
As with my previous books, this one is a team effort with all the fine and talented folks at William Morrow. My editor, Carolyn Marino; her assistant, Wendy Lee; and the copy editor all made this a far, far better book, and did so with grace and patience and a good deal of creative energy. My agent, Elaine Koster, was the calm voice and the steady hand and the interpreter of the fine print. And my publicist, Samantha Hagerbaumer, remains unfailingly energetic, supportive, creative, and unnaturally well organized. Thank you all to the William Morrow/HarperCollins family.
And, speaking of family, two things: first, lest there be any doubt or questions about this, let me remind the readers, this book is fiction. None of Lilly’s fictional family is based upon my own, though my two grandmothers were wise and all-loving and welcoming and strong, like Lilly’s fictional grandmother.
The second thing about family is this: As I said, this book—any book, really—is a team effort, and my family is a supportive and essential part of that team. Bill, my husband, retains his uncoveted spot as The First Reader (of all ten to twelve drafts, all four hundred pages of every one of them). On book tours, he is the steady hand and the support that makes it not just possible, but fun. My brother, William D. Hamner, remains the police and forensic expert, a key sounding board and brainstormer, who often writes my male dialogue. My parents and my cousins are the support team, fact-checkers, dialect coaches, and unpaid publicists. My friend Mike Lehner, family by choice if not blood, is my Spanish translator, another of the unenvied early readers, an unpaid publicist and editor of great skill.
Thank you all.
For anyone interested in reading further about the smuggling of endangered and exotic animals, reptiles, birds, and plants in violation of national and international laws, I highly recommend Stan Zimmerman’s fascinating book A History of Smuggling in Florida (The History Press, 2006). Chapter 6 has a great overview of the subject, including the probable extinction facing sturgeons due to the continuing illegal market for its roe, otherwise known as caviar.
And, finally and especially, thank you to my wonderful nephew, William Robert “Billy” Hamner, for writing the lyrics to Lonnie’s hit song, “Sweetheart Deal.”
About the Author
A former appellate attorney and former member of the Writing faculty at Florida State University College of Law and the University of Oregon School of Law, CLAIRE HAMNER MATTURRO lives in Georgia.
www.clairematturro.com
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ALSO BY CLAIRE MATTURRO
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SWEETHEART DEAL. Copyright © 2007 by Claire Hamner Matturro. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and
read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2007 ISBN: 9780061844225
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Claire Matturro
Copyright
About the Publisher
Sweetheart Deal Page 34
