The High Tide Club Read online

  “It was, but as I said, the Shaddixes and the others chose to sell their land. In fact, they came right to this house and begged me to buy, because they needed the money. Nobody made them sell it, and I paid a very fair price.”

  I’ll just bet, Brooke thought. “How much land are we talking about?”

  “A little over twenty acres. When Papa was alive, it was a nice little community, with a schoolhouse, a commissary, and a church, but then, over the years, all the young folks moved off, and the families that stayed are either too shiftless or sorry to keep up with their property.”

  “Don’t Shug and Louette live at Oyster Bluff?” Brooke asked. “Do they rent from you?”

  “I wasn’t referring to them,” Josephine said. “What I mean is the others.”

  “How did Varina take it, when you refused to deed the property to the residents of Oyster Bluff? Did you quarrel?”

  “What could she say? She was embarrassed. I tell you, that pushy niece put her up to it. Varina never would have been bold enough to ask such a thing, in the light of our friendship over the years, which is what I told Felicia, right to her face, when she tried to pick a fight with me that day.”

  “Did you fight?”

  Josephine drew herself up as best she could in the sagging recliner. “We had words. She called me some very unpleasant names and accused me of taking advantage of Varina and their family. Can you imagine? Finally, I’d had enough. I told her to leave. And I haven’t seen or heard from Varina since that day. It makes me very sad, but what could I do?”

  “It seems to me you could have done as Varina asked, if you cared as much about her as you say. It’s only twenty acres—and you have what? Twelve thousand? It’s not like you need that land. Or what little income you derive from the rent,” Brooke said earnestly. “Think of it, Josephine. Varina’s people were slaves. Abducted from their homes in Africa, then shipped here where they were bought and sold and worked and treated with less regard than mules or chickens. The government meant for them and their heirs to have that land as restitution. Why not give it back to them?”

  “My family never owned slaves,” Josephine shot back. “Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing that I object to. Felicia has no right to make demands of me. That girl has no sense of gratitude, no idea of propriety. I’m afraid she’s poisoned Varina against me.” The old lady’s hands shook in her lap.

  “You told me earlier you want to keep the state from taking your land and to make amends with your friends, including Varina, isn’t that right? So why not go ahead and deed Oyster Bluff over to the heirs of the original Geechee families, including the Shaddixes? Wouldn’t that go a long way toward repairing your relationship with your old friend?”

  Josephine brooded over the suggestion, shaking her head. “I resent being backed into a corner like this. It makes me furious.”

  “Don’t think of it like that, then,” Brooke suggested. “For one thing, if you deed the land over to those families, you’ll reduce your own tax burden. Right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And you’d be doing a really good thing. You’re fond of Louette and Shug, aren’t you? Think of what it would mean to them—to own their own home again.”

  Brooke paused, then reached out again and touched Josephine’s hand. This time the old woman sighed loudly but did not shake her off.

  “Look, Josephine. You called me over here because you said you want to make things right, because you’re not sleeping. You said yourself, you don’t have much time left. If that’s true, why not start by returning Oyster Bluff to those families who still live there?”

  “It’ll be a big mess,” Josephine grumbled. “Lots of paperwork.”

  “That’s why you have me,” Brooke said. “I can get started on it right away, if you’ll get me a list of your tenants. My assistant can look everything up in the county tax office.”

  “Fine,” Josephine said, throwing up her hands in surrender.

  “Do you have contact information for Varina’s niece in Jacksonville?” Brooke asked.

  Josephine motioned to the corner of the room, in the general direction of a huge antique mahogany Chinese Chippendale secretary. “There’s an address book in the top drawer of the desk. It has a blue leather cover. I might still have the last birthday card Varina sent me tucked in there somewhere.”

  “What about a phone number for Felicia?”

  “I don’t know. Just look in the address book.”

  “While we’re on the subject, if I’m going to try to track down your friend Ruth’s family, I’m going to need whatever information you have. Old correspondence, anything like that with her last known address.”

  Josephine’s eyelids drooped, first one, then the other, and she leaned her head against the back of the recliner. “Dear Ruth. She always had the cleverest Christmas cards. She was a wonderful writer, Ruth was. That was one of the things I missed, after our quarrel. Those damn Christmas cards.”

  “Josephine?”

  Brooke leaned forward. Her client was perfectly motionless. She gingerly touched her bony wrist. Her skin was cool, the skin dry as paper and brown-splotched. Brooke wrapped her fingers around the old lady’s wrist, watching her face for any reaction. There was a surprisingly strong pulse.

  Josephine snored softly. Not dead. Just napping.

  Brooke stood and walked over to the secretary. She might as well start trying to find contact information for Ruth’s heirs and for Varina. She yawned involuntarily. What she wouldn’t give for a few stolen hours of sleep. Her son had climbed into bed with her sometime after midnight, nestling against her back, his sweet, warm breath close against her neck. And sometime after that, he’d wet the bed, and they’d both ended up sleeping on the lumpy sofa in the living room.

  She heard a hesitant knock at the door, and Louette entered, carrying a silver tray with a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of potato chips, and a silver pitcher beaded with condensation. She cleared some magazines from a tabletop and set the tray down, glancing over at her employer.

  “I was hoping she’d eat something,” Louette said, shaking her head. “The doctor says she needs to gain weight, but I can’t hardly get her to eat anything. I made her favorite—egg salad on toast, and there’s a pitcher of iced coffee too. Does that sound okay? I could fix something else if you want.”

  “Actually, that sounds perfect. My son was a little fussy this morning, so I didn’t have time to grab breakfast and I’m starving.”

  “You need anything else before I run down to the dock to meet Shug? He’s bringing our groceries, and I don’t want my milk to sour in this heat.”

  “No, thanks. I’m going to eat this lunch, then go through Josephine’s address book for some folks she wants me to contact.”

  Louette nodded and started to leave the room, but then she turned and came back. “I’m not trying to pry into Miss Josephine’s business,” she said, her voice low. “But I do know she’s not sleeping well or eating, and she’s all upset about those state folks coming around, trying to make her sell the island to them. Is that why she wanted to see you?”

  Brooke hesitated. “I’m sorry. My business with Josephine is confidential. She specifically asked me not to tell anybody about our discussion.”

  “Okay,” Louette said. “I figured you couldn’t say anything. It’s just, Shug and me and the rest of us, we’re worried about what will happen. You know … after.” Her dark eyes rested on Josephine, asleep in her chair. She smoothed her hands over her hips. “If the state takes the rest of Talisa, what’ll happen to Oyster Bluff? Where’ll we go? Shug wasn’t crazy about moving over here, at first, but now, he’s turned into a real Geechee. He hates the idea of going back to the city. And so do I.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Brooke said. “This island. There’s something special about it that I can’t describe. It’s like the last wild place.”

  “It is that,” Louette said. “You know, when I was coming up, I couldn’t wait to g
et off this island. The day I got done with high school, I told my mama I was getting me a job in town and finding me a man from away, and then I wasn’t ever coming back here again.”

  “I felt the same way about Savannah, where I grew up,” Brooke agreed. “I didn’t even want to go to college in Georgia. And then I ended up moving right back home after law school. So what did your mother say when you told her you never planned on coming back here?”

  “She just laughed and told me to go on and get all that running around out of my system,” Louette said. “But she always said she knew someday I’d end up right back here on Talisa. And she was right. My mama was nobody’s fool.”

  8

  The secretary was enormous, with seeded glass doors behind elaborate fretwork, and a drop-front desk with a dozen small cubbies and drawers. Each slot was crammed with yellowing stationery, envelopes, pencil stubs, and notebooks. Behind the glass doors, leather-bound books with stamped gold lettering were shoved up against Chinese export blue-and-white porcelain vases and bowls. The top shelf of the bookcase held a turtle shell, an old mayonnaise jar full of beach glass, and a stuffed squirrel with lifeless brown glass eyes and a tail that seemed to have lost most of its fur.

  Brooke tried to open the top drawer. Stuck.

  Finally, after prolonged jiggling, one side of the drawer loosened, and as she inched it open, she could see stacks of papers and notebooks inside. She worked on the other side, and after five minutes of tugging and cussing, the whole drawer pulled free of the cabinet, landing on the rug with a dull thud.

  “Damn,” she whispered.

  The drawer was about eighteen inches deep and was as crammed with papers as the bookcase above it. There were stacks of rubber band–bound canceled checks and bills, spiral-bound notebooks and black-and-white composition books, and bundles of letters and cards tied together with faded blue ribbons.

  Brooke dug around in the drawer until her fingers closed on something that felt like leather. As she lifted the address book from the drawer, shards of the palest pink rose petals showered down on the faded rug, releasing their faint, musky scent.

  * * *

  She sat cross-legged on the floor and lifted out a rubber band–wrapped bundle of likely looking correspondence, each with the same handwriting on the envelope. Opening one, she saw that it was an anniversary card.

  “To My One True Love” was written in thick gold script on the outside of the card, beneath an image of red roses. The inside right side of the card had a treacly Hallmark verse, beneath which the sender had written in a strong, slanting script: “My darling Jo, with love from Preiss.” On the opposite side, the sender had copied a poem called “Always Marry an April Girl.”

  Praise the spells and bless the charms,

  I found April in my arms.

  April golden, April cloudy,

  Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

  April soft in flowered languor,

  April cold with sudden anger.

  Ever changing, ever true—

  I love April, I love you.

  —OGDEN NASH

  “Ohhh.” Brooke let out a long, involuntary sigh and looked again at her would-be employer, her crepe-like eyelids closed, nearly bald head slumped sideways, a tiny bead of saliva trickling from narrow, colorless lips. Of course, Josephine Warrick had been young once, with slender limbs and a laughing smile. She had won the love of a much-younger man, this Preiss Warrick, who called her his April Girl.

  9

  An hour later, she’d finished her sandwich and chips and made what she thought was a decent start on completing the old woman’s assignment.

  “Well?” Josephine was awake again. Her dark eyes glared accusingly. “What did you find?”

  Brooke looked down at the notes she’d scrawled on her yellow legal pad. She’d drawn circles around the names Varina Shaddix and Ruth Quinlan.

  “Josephine, if I find Ruth’s relatives and Varina, what do you want me to tell them?”

  “When you find them, I want them to come to Talisa,” Josephine said. “I want to see them. Your mother too, of course. She was Millie’s only child, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Brooke said cautiously. “And what will you tell them—if they agree to come here to see you?”

  “I want to leave this island to them—in a trust,” Josephine said promptly. “And I want you to set up the trust and administer it.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Brooke said quickly. “If my mother is to be included in the trust, that would present a clear conflict of interest.” She shook her head sadly. “I wish you’d told me that from the beginning. I can’t represent you, Josephine. It’s a matter of ethics.”

  “Ridiculous,” the old lady snapped. “I can hire whomever I want to help me dispose of my property.”

  “You can, but that person cannot legally benefit in any way from such a relationship,” Brooke said. She was already thinking of the $25,000 check. She was going to have to give it back.

  So, goodbye to paying down her Amex bill. Goodbye to replacing the bald tires on the Volvo, and goodbye to making a dent in Henry’s hospital bills.

  “If you really don’t trust your Atlanta lawyers, I can help you find an attorney to set up the trust, and contact the others in the High Tide Club,” Brooke offered. “It would probably be better anyway, since I have absolutely no experience with estate law.”

  “You’re not listening,” Josephine said. “I want you. Only you. Millie’s granddaughter.”

  “That’s a lovely sentiment, but I can’t ethically do the job,” Brooke said. “It’s not just a whim of mine. It’s the law.”

  “There must be a way around that kind of thing. A work-around, Preiss would have called it. There’s always a work-around.”

  “Not this time,” Brooke said. “I’m sorry, Josephine. I really am. I’m willing to track down Ruth’s relatives and Varina, and I’ll let my mother know you’d like to meet with her, but that’s the extent of the services I’m legally able to offer you. Of course, I’ll be returning your retainer.”

  “I don’t want my money back,” Josephine fumed. “And I don’t need any more damn lawyers complicating what’s left of my life.” She shoved the sandwich plate aside. “Go on, then. Take your so-called ethics and get out.”

  * * *

  Brooke had been standing under the shade of the porte cochere for at least ten minutes, staring down at her cell phone, which still had no service. So she was thrilled and relieved when Shug pulled up in the pickup truck.

  Louette leaned out the passenger-side window, a look of alarm on her face. “What’s wrong? Where’s Josephine?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Brooke said quickly. “She just woke up, and she’s in a foul mood.”

  “Sounds about right,” Shug said.

  “You’re leaving already?” Louette asked, climbing down and grabbing two canvas totes of supplies.

  “I’ve got to get back to my son,” Brooke said. “Anyway, I’ve told Josephine I can’t represent her in the matter she raised. So there’s not much more I can do here.” She looked over at Shug. “I hate to ask, but can you or C. D. take me back across to the mainland?”

  “No bother,” Shug said. “It’ll have to be me, ’cause C. D.’s off this afternoon. No telling where he’s got to.”

  * * *

  She sat in the bow of the boat as they crossed the river. It was hot and sunny, and the water was dead calm. A pair of dolphins skimmed along in the boat’s wake, and Brooke felt grateful for the slight breeze.

  “So … you won’t be coming back over to the island after this?” Shug asked, his face impassive behind his sunglasses.

  “Probably not,” Brooke said.

  “Too bad. Louette said Miss Josephine was all excited about whatever it was she wanted you to do for her. She’s been kinda low since the last time she went to the doctor. Seems like she perked right up since she got the idea to call you. Even started eating a little bit again.”

&nb
sp; “I’ll help her as much as I can,” Brooke said, already feeling guilty. “But there are … technicalities that prevent me from providing the services she needs.”

  “I got ya,” Shug said.

  He steered the boat toward the first available slip in the marina, and once they were tied up, he jumped onto the dock and helped her off. “You need a ride?” he asked, looking around the crowded complex of boat slips, launch ramps, and bait shop. “We keep a truck over here. It ain’t got no air-conditioning, but it runs all right, and I can take you wherever you need to go.”

  “I’m parked right over there under that oak tree,” she said, extending a hand to shake his. “And thanks again.”

  He smiled and gripped her hand with both of his. “My pleasure. You take care now.”

  “You too,” she said.

  He turned to go back to the boat, and she felt a sudden stab of guilt.

  “Wait a minute, Shug,” she called.

  He stopped and walked back to her.

  Brooke dug in her purse and handed him her business card. She’d ordered a box of a thousand after setting up practice three years earlier and had barely made a dent in her supply.

  “Take this,” she said impulsively. “It’s illegal as hell for me to discuss this with you, but, well, Louette mentioned that y’all are worried about what will happen at Oyster Bluff once Josephine is gone. Maybe there’s something I can do to help.”

  He looked down at the card and then up at her and frowned. “We got no expectations. And Louette, she shouldn’t have said anything to you about that. We can take care of ourselves. Always have.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Brooke said quickly. Had she insulted his pride?

  10

  Brooke eyed the stack of bills on her desk. She’d gone over her budget one more time looking for something else to cut, and turning the pages of her legal pad, she found the notes she’d jotted during her visit with Josephine Warrick.