The High Tide Club

by Mary Kay Andrews

Josephine turned dark, unblinking eyes toward the younger woman. “Tell me the real reason you decided to work for me. I know a little bit about people. You’re broke, but you’re not desperate, not by a long shot.”

  “Maybe it’s the challenge. My colleague who’s worked on these kinds of cases says that fighting a state on condemnation issues is mostly a lost cause. I like the puzzle-solving part of being a lawyer, and lately, there hasn’t been a lot of that in my life.”

  Josephine’s thin lips stretched into a ghostly smile. “You think I’m a lost cause?”

  “You said it yourself.”

  “So you’re a fighter, after all.” Josephine coughed violently, holding a hand to her chest as though trying to soften the racking spasms.

  “I found the women you wanted me to look for,” Brooke said abruptly.

  “Tell me.”

  “Your friend Ruth has a granddaughter who lives out in California. Her name is Lizzie. She’s a freelance magazine writer.”

  “Lizzie. She must have been named after Ruth’s daughter, who died when she was a teenager. Did you speak to this Lizzie person? When can she come?”

  “I did speak to her, and she said she’ll only come if you pay her way.”

  “Hmmph.”

  Brooke let it drop, knowing that if she pushed the matter her skinflint client would probably push back and refuse to underwrite Lizzie’s travel expenses.

  “Also, Varina and her great-niece Felicia came to see me.”

  “They came to you? How extraordinary.”

  “Not really. Louette told them how ill you are and mentioned that you’d hired me to help with fending off the state.”

  The old woman scowled. “Louette had no business saying anything to that girl about my private business.”

  “Felicia brought her great-aunt to town to pick out a headstone for her great-uncle. Louette’s a cousin. Saved me the trouble of tracking her down. If it means anything, Varina wants to come see you.”

  “Because of the money. That Felicia is all about the money.”

  “You’re the one who wants to see her old friend. Who, by the way, is in her nineties and suffering from diabetes herself, but whose first concern is praying for your health.”

  “Preacher’s kid,” Josephine said dismissively.

  Brooke threw up both hands in mock surrender. “I give up. Do you like anybody? Trust anybody? You asked me to find these women. I found them, and now you’re looking for reasons to turn them away.”

  “Just being realistic,” Josephine said. “Did you talk to your mother? Tell her I’m dying?”

  “Yes. She’s actually at my house right now, helping with Henry.”

  “And what did she say? When you told her about my intentions?”

  “She doesn’t understand why you feel so strongly about leaving the island to her and the others.” Brooke paused. “You didn’t even go to my grandmother’s funeral. You didn’t so much as send a card.”

  Josephine looked away. “Things changed. I’ve changed. Did she say she’d come?”

  “She’ll come.”

  21

  Josephine dozed off on the way back to Shellhaven. Her face was pale again, and her breathing sounded a little labored, or maybe Brooke was just feeling particularly anxious about her client. After several fits and starts, now that she’d taken on this oddball case, she realized that she really wanted to see it through to its conclusion.

  Brooke touched the old woman’s shoulder lightly after she’d pulled the truck around to the front of the house. “Josephine?”

  No reaction. Brooke touched the side of her face and was relieved to feel that it was warm and her client was still breathing.

  “Josephine, we’re home.”

  The old woman’s eyes opened slowly. She sat up and looked around. “So we are.”

  “Do you feel okay?”

  “Tired,” Josephine said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s after three. I need to get home to my little boy. Shall I get Shug to carry you into the house?”

  “No!” she said sharply. “I can walk. Just give me your arm and I’ll be fine.”

  The front door opened, and Louette came out and opened the passenger-side door. She must have been watching and waiting for the truck’s return.

  Brooke took one arm and Louette took the other, and they easily lifted Josephine out of the seat and into the house. The two Chihuahuas met them at the door, eagerly barking and jumping at their mistress’s leg.

  “Silly girls,” Josephine said, but she reached into the pocket of her slacks and tossed each of them a biscuit.

  After they’d gotten the dogs calmed down and the old lady settled back in her recliner, Brooke sat down and rested her briefcase across her knees. “Do you feel like signing this letter to your Atlanta lawyers?”

  “I’m fine,” Josephine said. “Stop fussing over me.”

  Brooke produced the papers, which Josephine signed.

  “What else?”

  “We talked about your making phone calls and writing letters to the governor and any other politicians you think might help stop the condemnation effort.”

  “Not today,” Josephine said. “What day is it anyway?”

  “Monday.”

  “Come back Wednesday. We’ll do it then. Bring your lawyer colleague too. I’ve wasted enough time on this already. I want to get this done. And I want to see those women.”

  “Lizzie Quinlan won’t come unless you pay for her expenses,” Brooke reminded her. “And she lives all the way out in California. So this could take some time.”

  “Time is what I don’t have. So yes, I’ll pay her way.”

  “Shall I make the arrangements?”

  “I certainly can’t, so yes, you’ll have to do it.”

  “And how will I pay for it?”

  “Don’t you have a credit card?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “It’s in my pocketbook, which is somewhere around here,” Josephine said vaguely. She waved in the general direction of the room. “I’m not paying for first class,” she warned. “You tell her that. I never took a first-class plane ride in my life, and she won’t be taking one on my dime.”

  * * *

  C. D. rode up to the dock on a small black motorbike just as Shug was dropping Brooke off. He leaned the bike against a tree, then motioned Brooke to follow him to the boat. He jumped easily onto the boat and started the motor before extending a hand to help her aboard.

  “Thanks,” she said, sinking down onto the fiberglass seat.

  “You ready?” the boatman asked, and without waiting for her reply, he cast off the stern line and backed away from the Talisa dock.

  Brooke clasped her briefcase to her chest and tried to steel herself for another jaw-rattling ride across the river to the mainland.

  Instead, C. D. was content to putter across at a leisurely pace.

  Brooke tilted her head back to look at the sky. She was running through the list of chores she needed to complete before her return to the island.

  “How’s your client doing today, Miss Lawyer?” C. D. blurted. “I saw y’all riding around the island in the truck earlier. That’s good, right? I mean, last time I took her over to the mainland to see the docs down at Jacksonville, she looked like one good breeze might knock her down. She don’t hardly go out of the house at all since she got sick.”

  “What?” Brooke was startled by his sudden concern for his employer. “Um, yes, she did seem better today. I think the new medicine is helping.”

  He nodded, chewing the plastic filter of his unlit cigarillo.

  C. D. was an odd-looking creature, Brooke mused, with his sun-seared skin, bowlegs, and ever-present cigarillo, plus the braided gray ponytail that hung down almost to his waist.

  “Hear tell she’s fixing to give Oyster Bluff back to Shug and Louette and the rest of them Geechees living up there,” he said. His aviators shaded his eyes, so she couldn’t tell from his expression whether or n
ot he approved of Josephine’s largesse.

  “Where did you hear that?” Brooke asked, careful to neither confirm nor deny.

  “Around,” C. D. said. “Next thing you know, she’ll be giving us all raises and insurance.”

  “Maybe so,” Brooke said. She stared off into the distance.

  “Wait ’til she hears I run off another set of assholes from the state.” He chuckled. “She’ll for sure give me a raise for doin’ that.”

  “You saw some people from the state? On Talisa? When was that?”

  “Early this morning, right after sunup. Caught a couple of ’em tied up at the dock with a mess of what looked like surveying instruments. One of ’em tried to show me some piece of paper claiming they had a right to be there. Something about an appraisal they needed to do on account of the state making the old lady sell up. I told ’em unless they had the sheriff with ’em, they needed to stay the hell off this island.”

  “I certainly hope you didn’t threaten them,” Brooke said.

  He patted the holstered revolver on his bony hip and chuckled again. “Hell, I didn’t even draw down on ’em. They saw I was carrying, and that was the end of that conversation.”

  “You took a risk, running those surveyors off. It might not have been the wisest thing to do, but I’m sure Josephine would appreciate your loyalty.”

  He shrugged. “Her island, her rules. Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have an answer.”

  “What happens to all of us, when she dies? Can the state come in and run us all off?”

  “When she dies,” Brooke said carefully, “it’s my understanding that the state will still have to negotiate to buy Josephine’s land from her estate. They can’t take the land without fair compensation. That’s the law.”

  “And that’s where you come in,” C. D. said. “She wants you to make the state go away. So she can keep the island.”

  “Something like that.”

  “You say no matter what, the state has to buy the island from her estate. But who’s that? She ain’t got no family I ever heard of.”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Brooke said firmly.

  “Oh.”

  “Are you worried about losing your home on the island, C. D.?”

  “I got a little place,” he said. “Comes with the job.”

  “So did you grow up on Talisa?”

  “Here and there,” he said, suddenly cagey. “Mostly Savannah.”

  “I thought I detected a Savannah accent. I’m from Savannah too.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Born and raised. How about you? What high school did you go to?”

  “I bet I know what high school you went to,” he said. “Probably St. Vincent’s. Or maybe Country Day School. That’s where all the rich kids went when I was coming up.”

  She ignored the taunt about being rich. “Did you go to high school in Savannah?”

  “Never finished. Dropped out, bummed around, got drafted, went over to Vietnam, and managed to come back alive. School of hard knocks, as they say.”

  Brooke didn’t try to hide her surprise. “You’re a Vietnam vet? Mind if I ask how old you are?”

  He shrugged again. “Born in ’42.”

  “I can’t believe you’re that old. Wow.”

  “I take care of myself,” he said, preening a little, flexing a sinewy, tattooed bicep featuring an eagle atop a globe pierced with an anchor.

  “You were a marine?”

  “Semper fi, baby,” he said. “How’d you know?”

  “I used to know a marine,” she said.

  It was her turn to be cagey. Pete Haynes had gone to college on an ROTC scholarship, fulfilled his obligation with one tour in Iraq, gotten out of the service, and immediately enrolled in grad school on the GI bill. He’d been sheepish about his own tattoo, claiming he’d gotten it on an impulse, which he’d immediately regretted. Brooke had found it sexy, although she’d never told him so.

  The tattoo was only one of a long list of things she’d never talked about with Pete, she realized. And now it was probably too late.

  22

  Farrah waltzed into the office an hour late on Tuesday. She wore an oversized off-the-shoulder black T-shirt and skin-tight white jeans so shredded Brooke could see more skin than jeans.

  “You’re late,” Brooke said, looking up in annoyance.

  “And you’re not very nice,” Farrah said, sticking out her tongue at her boss. “Especially since I got out of school an hour early just to get to the courthouse to work on this.” With a flourish she produced a piece of lined loose-leaf notebook paper covered with her girlish handwriting.

  “What is it?”

  “Just that list of former landowners at Oyster Bluff on Talisa you assigned me.”

  “Good job.” Brooke did a seated half bow. She scanned the list, which covered both sides of the paper. “Geez. This looks like a lot more names than Josephine told me there would be.”

  “For reals,” Farrah said. “I counted twenty-three names. It wasn’t easy. People owned a house, then left it to four or five kids, and then the kids sold off pieces of the land to somebody else … it’s a mess. And so many people had the same last name. Like, there are Shaddixes and Hobarts and Langs and Franklins and Johnsons … it’s hard to know who owns what if you look at the county’s old deed books.”

  “Well, it’s an island, and Louette says a lot of people intermarried,” Brooke said.

  “I researched as many names as I could online, and at least six of these people have died,” Farrah said. She removed her backpack and dropped it on the receptionist’s desk. She unzipped a pocket on the bag and produced another sheet of notebook paper.

  “I managed to find six addresses that I think are current,” Farrah said, handing her the list.

  “Okay. Maybe Louette or Varina or her niece can help with some of the missing addresses,” Brooke said. “At least it’s a start.”

  The office phone rang, and Farrah grabbed for it. “Law offices of Brooke Trappnell and Associates,” she said. “This is Farrah. How may I help you?”

  Brooke picked up her own desk phone to start checking off items on her to-do list. She’d already called Gabe Wynant first thing that morning and arranged the meeting with Josephine.

  Next up was Lizzie Quinlan.

  “Hi, Lizzie. It’s Brooke Trappnell in Georgia.”

  “Who? Oh yeah. The lawyer, right? What’s the word?”

  Brooke took a deep breath. “Mrs. Warrick would very much like for you to fly out here this week. The sooner the better.”

  “Not happening,” Lizzie said. “I’ve got to finish a piece I’m working on, and then I’ve got a bunch of interviews to do for another piece. I could maybe get out there late next week.”

  “Couldn’t you do the phone interviews from here?”

  “Maybe, but what’s the big rush?”

  “Mrs. Warrick’s most recent scans show several new tumors,” Brooke said. “You might have all the time in the world, but I assure you, she does not.”

  “Okay, I’ll come. But she pays all my travel, right? Room and board, everything.”

  “That’s correct. I’ll book your flights today. Could you be here by Thursday?”

  “This is already Tuesday. Are you crazy? I’ll have to find a cat sitter, finish my magazine article…”

  “Friday, then,” Brooke relented. “I’m afraid there aren’t a ton of hotel options here in town. Just chains.”

  “I’ll leave it up to you. Just something clean and near a liquor store,” Lizzie said. “And I need to be home no later than Monday. Understood?”

  “Perfectly,” Brooke said. “I’ll text you the flight details. See you then.”

  * * *

  Felicia Shaddix wasn’t as easily persuaded.

  “Friday? I teach a class on Friday. And even if I didn’t, my aunt has a standing hair appointment on Friday. I promise you, she won�
��t go anywhere without that hair fixed just right. Not even if it was lunch with Barack Obama himself.”

  “Isn’t your class an online one? Could it be taped? I’ve got one of the other beneficiaries flying in from LA on Friday morning, and it’s going to be tricky to reschedule her.”

  “I don’t know,” Felicia grumbled. “The dean likes the classes to be live, with student interaction. She’s pretty strict about that.”

  “Look,” Brooke said, lowering her voice. “I don’t want to upset your aunt, but Josephine really doesn’t have a lot of time left. I was with her yesterday, and she said the latest scans showed that the cancer has metastasized. I’m sure you know the implications of that. I really need to get all of you together with her so we can move forward with the arrangements.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell the dean it’s an emergency, and I’ll tell my aunt’s hairdresser it’s an emergency too, see if she’ll fit her in on Thursday afternoon instead.”

  “Thanks so much,” Brooke said.

  * * *

  Her own mother was the last piece of the puzzle, and a surprisingly hard sell.

  “Friday? Oh no. That’s out of the question,” Marie said. “I have a committee meeting on Friday morning. I was going to tell you tonight. I’ll have to head home to Savannah on Thursday.”

  “Mom, I really, really need you to meet with Josephine and those other women Friday on the island. I’ve been through hell getting everybody’s schedules lined up. I didn’t expect it would be a problem with you.”

  “Sweetie, I’m sorry, but this is my Fresh Air Home board meeting. We’re going through the applications for the children for summer camp. I really can’t miss it.”

  “Mommmm.” Brooke knew she sounded like a petulant teenager, but she couldn’t help herself. “You’re the chairman of the committee, so can’t you just make an executive decision and reschedule? Those women don’t have jobs or day care to figure out.”

  “Are you saying my friends and I are just idle, rich ladies who lunch?” Marie asked.

  Damn it, Brooke thought. She’d bungled that one badly.

  “No, not at all. I know how much good work you and your friends do and how hard you work at it,” Brooke said hastily. “But couldn’t you let your cochair run the meeting? Please, Mom? For me?”