Chapter 3 - The Desk by the Square
David Vance’s office was located above an insurance agency on the east side of the courthouse square in Oakhaven. The stairs were wide, dark yellow pine that had dipped in the center from seventy years of farmers coming up to dispute property lines, write wills, and surrender forty-acre parcels to the bank.
The room smelled of old legal parchment, floor oil, and the dry, paper-wasp scent of books that hadn't been opened since the Eisenhower administration.
David didn't look like a man who worked the law; he looked like an old surveyor who had been forced inside by bad hips. He was seventy-one, with hair the color of sheep’s wool and large, square fingernails that were always grey at the corners from gardening. He had been Grandma June’s executor, her second cousin by marriage, and the man who had held the check for her funeral until the estate cleared probate.
He sat behind an oak partner’s desk with the video playing on his monitor. He had watched it three times. The volume was turned up, and each time Evan’s palm struck my face, the tinny speaker on the desktop vibrated against the wood.
"He didn't hesitate," David said. He didn't look up from the screen. "That’s not a reflex. That’s a man who’s been thinking about hitting someone for six months and finally found an angle that looked like an accident."
"It didn't look like an accident to twenty-three people," I said. I was sitting in the high-backed horsehair chair across from him, holding a plastic bag of melting ice against my cheek. The water had begun to seep through the paper towel, dampening the collar of my shirt.
"Twenty-three people who are currently eating his meat," David corrected dryly. "Or rather, your meat. He’s telling Wayne right now that you had an episode. That the strain of your dispatch work has made you erratic. That you threatened Lauren."
"Tessa called you?"
"Wayne called me," David said, finally looking up over his half-moon spectacles. "He wanted to know if June’s will had an incompetence clause that allowed for family conservatorship over the property."
My hand came away from the ice pack. "He asked that?"
"He didn't use those words because Wayne doesn't know six syllables from a post-hole digger. But Evan gave him the language. Evan told him that if you were having nervous collapses in front of guests, the family had a moral duty to secure the acreage before you sold it off to some developer from Raleigh."
David leaned back. The springs in his chair let out a long, rusty squeal that sounded like a gull over the river.
"I told Wayne that if he called this office again regarding June Barrows’s property without a retained attorney, I’d file an emergency injunction against his pasture fence for encroaching four feet into the state drainage easement on the south ditch."
"David—"
"Be quiet, Claire. You’ve been quiet for three years while those two treated that ridge like their private kingdom. You let them paint the shutters that awful mustard color. You let them pour a concrete pad over June’s herb bed so Evan could park his jet ski. You let them tell the tax assessor that they were the primary occupants so they could claim the homestead discount, which I had to go down and fix personally so you didn't get audited for fraud."
He reached into a green metal filing cabinet behind his chair and pulled out a manila folder four inches thick. It was tied with red cotton tape that had faded to pink at the edges.
"When June died," David said, snapping the tape with a single jerk of his thumb, "she knew exactly what Lauren was. Lauren’s her mother’s daughter—all sugar on the porch and lard in the pantry. June knew that if she left that house to both of you, Lauren would have had an equity loan taken out within ninety days to buy Evan a three-quarter-ton truck with chrome wheels."
He laid three sheets of legal-sized bond paper on the blotter between us.
"The month-to-month agreement," he said, tapping the bottom sheet with his pen. "I drafted it. You signed it. They signed it in this very chair on the twelfth of July, three years ago. Paragraph nine: The occupants agree to maintain the peace of the property, to commit no waste, and to engage in no unlawful conduct upon the premises. Any violation of state or municipal law, verified by official citation or complaint, shall terminate the right of occupancy immediately and without further notice, the statutory thirty-day cure period being explicitly waived under Section 42-14 of the revised code."
"They don't have thirty days?" I asked.
"If he hadn't struck you on the land, they’d have thirty days to find a place," David said. "Because he struck the legal owner on the deeded soil of the parcel, they are in criminal breach. He didn't just commit simple assault, Claire. He committed assault on premises under an active occupancy contract."
"The deputies won't know the difference between this and a civil lockout, David. You know how Sheriff Miller operates. He’ll tell us to go to small claims."
David smiled, but his eyes were like two pieces of chipped flint.
"Sheriff Miller isn't on duty today. It’s third Sunday. The county is being run by Lieutenant Vance."
"Your nephew?"
"My brother's boy. The one who spent four years in the Marine Corps MP detachment at Lejeune. He doesn't take his tea with Evan Mercer, and he doesn't care about the zoning board." David picked up his desk phone. "He’s sitting in his cruiser behind the church on Route 9 right now with three warrants for back child support he’s serving on the sawmill shift. I’m going to tell him to meet us at the turn-around at five-thirty."
May you like
"The party will be over by five-thirty," I said.
"No," David said, dialing three digits from memory. "The party is going to end at five-thirty-five."
