going to take third behind the job. These days, though,
he’s a field supervisor working from a desk and K.C.’s
come in off the streets, too. She used to work under-
cover narcotics, one of the most successful agents the
State Bureau of Investigation ever had. She was abso-
lutely fearless and so blonde and beautiful that dealers
fell all over themselves to give her drugs. Somewhat to
my surprise, they had gotten together late last summer
and he had moved into her lake house.
“She keeps swearing it’s just for laughs,” I told
Dwight, “but this may be fourth time lucky for Terry.”
“That would be nice,” said Dwight, who likes Terry
as much as I do.
I smiled in the darkness. “Now that you’re an old mar-
ried man, you want everybody else to settle down?”
“Beats sleeping single in a double bed,” he said as his
arms tightened around me.
Next morning, after breakfast, our kitchen filled up
with short people. During the week, Cal goes home on
the schoolbus with Mary Pat, the young orphaned ward
of Dwight’s sister-in-law Kate, who keeps him for the
hour or so till Dwight or I get home. In return, we
usually take Mary Pat and Kate’s four-year-old son Jake
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for a few hours on Saturday so that Kate can have some
time alone with Rob and their new baby boy.
It was raining that morning, a cold chill rain that
threatened to turn to sleet, so I kept them indoors and
let them help me make cookies. I’m no gourmet chef,
my biscuits aren’t as tender and flaky as some, and my
piecrusts come out so soggy and tough that I long ago
gave up and now buy the frozen ones, but I’ll put my
chocolate chip cookies up against anybody’s. (The secret
is to add a little extra sweet butter and then take them
out of the oven before the center’s fully set. Black wal-
nuts don’t hurt either, but pecans will do in a pinch.)
We had a great assembly line going. I did the mixing
and got them in and out of the oven, Mary Pat and Cal
spooned little blobs of dough onto the foil-lined cookie
sheets, while Jake stood on a stool and used a spatula to
carefully transfer the baked cookies from the foil to the
wire cooling racks. Of course, they nibbled on the raw
dough as they worked and their sticky little fingers went
from mouth to bowl whenever they thought I wasn’t
looking.
I pretended not to notice. Didn’t bother me. If there
were any germs those three hadn’t already shared, the
heat of the oven would probably take care of them and
I knew the eggs were safe.
Once Daddy’s housekeeper Maidie heard about the
dangers of raw eggs, she kept threatening to stop baking
altogether until Daddy and her husband Cletus rebuilt
the old chicken house and started raising Rhode Island
Reds again. The flock was now big enough to keep the
whole family in eggs, and when the wind’s right, I can
hear their rooster crowing in the morning. Every once
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MARGARET MARON
in a while, another rooster answers and it’s a comfort-
ing signal that there are still some other farms in the
community that haven’t yet given way to a developer’s
checkbook.
Whenever I make cookies, I quadruple the recipe, so
it was almost noon before we finished filling two large
cake boxes to the brim. I planned to take one box to
Seth and Minnie’s the next day, I’d send some home
with Mary Pat and Jake, and I figured the rest should
last us at least a week if Dwight and Cal didn’t get into
them too heavily.
“Ummm. Something in here smells good enough to
eat,” said Dwight, who was back from helping Haywood
and Robert pull a mired tractor out of a soggy bottom.
“Why was Haywood even down there on a tractor
this time of year? It’s way too wet.”
“He wants to plant an acre of garden peas.” Dwight
had left his muddy boots and wet jacket in the garage
and was in his stocking feet, making hungry noises as
he lifted the lid on a pot of vegetable soup. I cut him
off a wedge of the hoop cheese I was using to make
grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup and it
disappeared in two bites.
“Garden peas? A whole acre? What’s he going to do
with that many peas?”
“Well you know how your brothers are trying to
come up with ideas for cash crops in case tobacco goes
downhill?”
I nodded.
“So Haywood’s thinking he might try his hand at a
little truck farming. He even said something about rais-
ing leeks for the upscale Cary and Clayton crowds.”
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“Leeks?” I had to laugh. “Haywood’s heard of
leeks?”
“He’s decided they’re just fancy onions and he’s al-
ready taken a dislike to Vidalias. Says they’re nothing
but onions for people who don’t really like onions.”
Privately, I agreed with my brother. What’s the point
of an onion with so little zest that you could peel a
dozen without shedding a tear? Give me an onion that
stands up for itself.
After so much cookie dough, the children weren’t
very hungry and asked to be excused to go play in Cal’s
room. When we were alone, Dwight told me that he’d
heard from Chapel Hill. The ME could not give them a
specific time. Depending on whether or not those legs
were outdoors and exposed to the freezing night tem-
peratures or inside, the hacking had been done as recent
as forty-eight hours or as long ago as a full week. The
dismemberment had been accomplished with a heavy
blade that was consistent with an axe or hatchet. And
yes, the legs did indeed come from a well-nourished
white male, probably between forty and sixty, a male
with blood type O.
“The most common type in the world,” he sighed,
reaching for the untouched half of Cal’s grilled cheese.
“Maybe someone will call in by Monday,” I said and
slid the rest of my own sandwich onto his plate.
After lunch, Dwight volunteered to take the children
to a new multiplex that recently opened about ten miles
from us. I grumble about all the changes that growth
has brought, but I have to admit that sometimes it’s
33
MARGARET MARON
nice not to have to drive thirty miles for a movie. With
the house quiet and empty, I finally got to do some
personal weekend pampering. I put Bandit in his crate
out in the utility room, gave him a new strip of rawhide
to chew on, then took a lazy bubblebath, followed by a
manicure. And as long as I had clippers and polish out,
I decided to paint my toenails as well.
The phone rang when I was about halfway through.
Portland Brewer. My best friend since forever and, most
recently, my matron of honor.
“Why are you putting me on speaker phone?” she im-
mediately asked. “Who else is with you?”
“No one,” I assured her. “But I’m giving myself a
pedicure and I need both hands. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I’m just sitting here nursing the
deduction while Avery works on our income tax. You
know how anal he is about getting it done early.”
The deduction, little Carolyn Deborah, is about
eighteen hours younger than my marriage. Back in
December, my brothers were making book on whether
or not Portland would deliver during the ceremony.
“How’d it go this week?” I asked.
After the baby’s birth, she’d taken off for two months
and this was her first week of easing back into the prac-
tice she and Avery shared. He did civil cases and a little
tax work; she did whatever else came along, although
she was particularly good in juried criminal cases.
“It’s okay. I hate leaving the baby, but she doesn’t
seem to mind one bottle feeding a day as long as I’m
here for the others. And let’s face it, after working fifty-
and sixty-hour weeks, thirty hours is a piece of cake.”
She told me about the new nanny (“a jewel”), how
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her diet was coming if she expected to get into a decent
bathing suit by the summer (“I’m an absolute cow and if
anybody gives me one more ‘got milk?’ joke, I’m gonna
stomp him”), and whether or not Reid Stephenson, my
cousin and former law partner, was having an affair with
that new courthouse clerk (“I saw them going into one
of the conference rooms at lunch yesterday”).
I told her about my newfound hockey enthusiasm
(“Did you know Bret Hedican’s married to Kristi
Yamaguchi?”), how Cal was settling in (“He still acts
like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,
but I think we really connected last night”), and what
my docket had looked like yesterday (“Doesn’t anybody
just talk anymore? Why does it always have to be knives
or fists or baseball bats?”).
“That reminds me,” said Portland. “I have a new cli-
ent. Karen Braswell. Was her ex one of your cases yes-
terday? A James Braswell? Assault?”
“Assault?”
“A Mexican took a broken beer bottle to his arm out
at that Latino club. El Toro Negro.”
“Oh, yes.” The details were coming back to me. “Your
client’s his ex-wife? That’s right. He violated a restrain-
ing order she took out against him? He’s supposed to
come up before Luther Parker the first of the week, but
I’ve got him cooling his heels in jail till then.”
“Good. She’s really scared of him, Deborah. That’s
why she’s retained me to speak for her when his case
comes up. I just hope Judge Parker will put the fear of
the law in him.”
Our talk moved on to other subjects till the baby
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MARGARET MARON
started fussing. “Lunch sometime this week?” Portland
asked before hanging up.
I agreed and put the finishing dab of polish on my
toenails. It was a fiery red with just a hint of orange.
Later that evening, I wiggled my bare toes at Dwight.
“It’s called Hot, Hot, Hot,” I told him. “What do you
think?”
He patted the couch beside him. “Come over here
and let me show you.”
Cool!
36
C H A P T E R
5
If farmers wish their sons to be attached to the farm home
and farm life they must make that farm home and farm life
sufficiently attractive to induce some of their boys to stay.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
% “What’s wrong with garden peas?” my brother
Haywood asked belligerently as he reached for an-
other of my chocolate chip cookies next day. “Everybody
I know likes ’em, they don’t have no pests and they’re
easy to grow.”
“Which is why they wholesale for less than a dollar
a pound in season,” Zach said patiently. “And picking
them is labor intensive. After we pay for help, what sort
of return would we get on our investment?”
“Messicans work cheap,” Haywood said, “and they
can pick a hell of a lot of peas in a hour.”
His wife Isabel rolled her eyes at the use of profanity
on a Sunday, but it was Daddy who frowned and mur-
mured, “Watch your mouth, boy.” Not because it was
Sunday but because there were “ladies” present and the
older he gets, the more he holds with old-fashioned be-
liefs about the delicacy of our ladylike ears. (For Daddy,
all respectable women, whatever our race or color, are
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MARGARET MARON
ladies. The only time he huffs and mutters “You women!”
is when we try his patience to total exasperation.)
Seth and Minnie had called this meeting for those
of us who still live out here on the farm. Even though
Dwight and I are not directly involved with crops,
what’s grown here is certainly of interest to us since
we’re surrounded by the family fields and woodlands.
Both of us grew up working in tobacco—hard, physical,
dirty work. From picking up dropped leaves at the barn
when we were toddlers, to driving the tractors that fer-
ried the leaves from field to barn as preteens, to actually
pulling the leaves (Dwight) or racking them (me), we
each did our part to help get the family’s money crop
to market. We never needed lectures at school to know
about the tar in tobacco. After working in it for a few
hours, we could roll up marble sized balls of black sticky
gum from our hands.
Now the old way of marketing has changed. The
farm subsidy program has ended and the money’s been
used to buy out the farmers who had always raised it.
Instead of the old colorful auctions where competitive
bids could net a grower top dollar for a particularly at-
tractive sheet of soft golden leaves, tobacco companies
now contract directly with the growers for what’s pretty
much a take-it-or-leave-it offer that can be galling to
independent farmers who are more conservative than
cats when it comes to change.
My eleven brothers and I had grown up in tobacco
without questioning it. Tobacco fed and clothed us, and
those who stayed to farm with Daddy—Seth, Haywood,
Andrew, Robert, and Zach—pooled their labor and
equipment to grow more poundage every year and buy
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more land until we now collectively own a few thousand
acres in fields, woods, and some soggy wetlands.
The morality of tobacco itself was something else
we didn’t question. Our parents smoked. Daddy and
some of the boys still do. But only one or two of their
children have picked up the habit. Those grandchildren
hoping to find an economically feasible alternative to
tobacco.
Each of my farming brothers has his own specialty
on the side. Haywood loves to grow watermelons, can-
taloupes, and pumpkins even though he makes so little
profit that by the time he pays his fertilizer bills, he’s
working for way less than minimum wage. Andrew and
Robert raise a few extra hogs every year and they get
top dollar for their corn-fed, free-range pork. Those
two and Daddy also raise rabbit dogs, and Zach’s bee-
keeping hobby now turns a modest profit because he
rents his hives to truck farmers and fruit growers. Seth
and I have leased some of our piney woods to landscap-
ers who rake the straw for mulch, and Seth’s daughter
Jessica boards a couple of horses to pay for the upkeep
on her own horse.
Today, we were all gathered at Seth and Minnie’s to
try to reach an agreement as to what the main money
crop would be. Outside, the weather was raw and wintry
with a forecast of freezing rain. Inside things were start-
ing to heat up. The boys planned to apply for a grant to
help make the changeover to a different use of the farm,
if they could agree on what that use should be.
It was a very big if and today was not the first time
Haywood and Zach had butted heads on this.
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MARGARET MARON
Zach is one of the “little twins,” so called because he
and Adam are younger than Haywood and Herman, the
“big twins,” and Haywood does not like being lectured
to by a younger brother even if Zach is an assistant prin-
cipal at West Colleton High, where he himself barely
scraped through years earlier. Andrew and Robert are
even older than Haywood, but they listen when Zach
and Seth speak.
Seth is probably the quietest of my eleven older broth-
ers and the most even-tempered. I would never admit
to anybody that I love one of them more than the oth-
ers but I have always felt a special connection to Seth.
He didn’t finish college like Adam, Zach, and I did, but
he reads and listens and, like Daddy, he thinks on things
before he acts. Even Haywood listens to Seth.
So far today, we had discussed the pros and cons of
pick-your-own strawberries, blueberries, blackberries,
or grapes. Someone halfheartedly raised the possibility
of timbering some of the stands of pines. That would
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