Such figures made him dizzy. For a small-town lawyer living in a rented house and driving a car with almost 200,000 miles on the odometer, the scene was surreal: he, Jake, poking through cardboard boxes in a dusty, semi-lit storage room in a prefabricated office building at a backwoods sawmill in rural Mississippi, and casually looking at sums of money that greatly exceeded the combined lifetime earnings of every lawyer now working in Ford County. He started laughing.

The money was really there! He shook his head in amazement and suddenly had a profound admiration for Mr. Seth Hubbard.

Someone rapped on the door and Jake almost jumped out of his skin. He closed the box, opened the door, and stepped outside. Arlene said, “Mr. Brigance, this is Dewayne Squire. His official title is vice president, but in reality he just does what I tell him.” Arlene managed a laugh, the first one. Jake and Dewayne exchanged a nervous handshake while shapely Kamila watched close by. The three employees stared at him, obviously wishing to discuss something important. Dewayne was a wiry, hyper sort, who, as it turned out, chain-smoked Kools with little regard for where his fumes drifted.

“Can we talk to you?” asked Arlene, the unquestioned leader. Dewayne fired up a Kool, his hands palsy-like as he arranged the cigarette. Talk, as in a serious conversation, not just a chat about the weather.

“Sure,” Jake said. “What’s on your mind?”

Arlene thrust forward a business card and asked, “Do you know this man?” Jake looked at it. Reed Maxey, Attorney-at-Law, Jackson, Mississippi. “No,” Jake said. “Never heard of him. Why?”

“Well, he dropped by last Tuesday, said he was working on Mr. Hubbard’s estate, and that the court was concerned about the handwritten will that you’ve filed or whatever it’s called; said the will is probably invalid because Seth was obviously doped up and out of his mind when he was planning to kill himself and at the same time writing that will; said that the three of us would be crucial witnesses because we saw Seth the Friday before the suicide and it would be up to us to testify as to how doped up he was; and, to boot, the real will, the one prepared by real lawyers and such, leaves some money to us as friends and employees; so, he said, it would be in our best interests to tell the truth, tell how Seth lacked—what was the term—”

“Testamentary capacity,” Dewayne said from deep within the menthol fog.

“That’s it—testamentary capacity. He made it sound like Seth was crazy.”

Stunned, Jake managed to maintain a grim face and give away nothing. His first reaction was anger—how dare another lawyer step into his case, tell lies, and tamper with witnesses. There were so many ethical violations Jake couldn’t think of them all. His second reaction, though, was more restrained—this lawyer was a fraud, a fake. No one would do this.

He kept his cool and said, “Well, I’ll have a talk with this lawyer and tell him to butt out.”

“What’s in the other will, the real one?” Dewayne asked.

“I haven’t seen it. It was prepared by some lawyers in Tupelo, and they have not yet been required to show it.”

“Do you think we’re in it?” Kamila asked without the slightest effort at subtlety.

“Don’t know.”

“Can we find out?” she asked.

“I doubt it.” Jake wanted to ask if such knowledge might affect their testimony, but he decided to say as little as possible.

Arlene said, “He asked a lot of questions about Seth and how he was acting that Friday. He wanted to know how he was feeling and all about his medications.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Not much. To be honest, he was not the kind of person I wanted to talk to. He was shifty-eyed and—”

“A real fast talker,” Dewayne added. “Too fast. At times I couldn’t understand him and I kept thinking, This guy’s a lawyer? Hate to see him in court, in front of a jury.”

Kamila said, “He got pretty aggressive, too, almost demanding that we tell our stories a certain way. He really wanted us to say that Seth was unbalanced because of all the drugs.”

Dewayne, smoke pouring from his nostrils, said, “At one point he placed his briefcase on Arlene’s desk, upright, in an odd position, and made no effort to open it. He’s trying to tape this, I said to myself. He’s got a recorder in there.”

“No, he wasn’t too smooth,” Arlene said. “We believed him at first, you know. Guy comes in wearing a nice dark suit, says he’s a lawyer, hands over his card, and seems to know a lot about Seth Hubbard and his business. He insisted on talking to the three of us at the same time, and we didn’t know how to say no. So we talked, or, rather, he talked. We did most of the listening.”

“How would you describe this guy?” Jake asked. “Age, height, weight, so on.”

The three looked at each other with great reluctance, certain that there would be little agreement. “How old?” Arlene asked the others. “I’d say forty.”

Dewayne nodded and Kamila said, “Yes, maybe forty-five. Six feet, thick, I’d say two hundred pounds.”

“At least two hundred,” Dewayne said. “Dark hair, real dark, thick, kinda shaggy—”

“Needed a haircut,” Arlene said. “Thick mustache and sideburns. No glasses.”

“He smoked Camels,” Dewayne said. “Filters.”

“I’ll track him down and find out what he’s up to,” Jake said, though by then he was fairly certain there was no lawyer named Reed Maxey. Even the dumbest of lawyers would know that such a visit would lead to sure trouble and an ethics investigation. Nothing added up.

“Should we talk to a lawyer?” Kamila asked. “I mean, this is something new for me, for us. It’s kinda scary.”

“Not yet,” Jake said. He planned to get them one-on-one and hear their stories. A group talk might sway the narrative. “Perhaps later, but not now.”

“What’ll happen to this place?” Dewayne asked, then noisily filled his lungs.

Jake walked across the open space and roughly yanked open a window so he could breathe. “Why can’t you smoke outside?” Kamila hissed at the vice president. It was obvious the smoking issue had been roiling for some time. Their boss had been dying of lung cancer and his office suite smelled like burned charcoal. Of course smoking was permitted.

Jake walked back, stood before them, and said, “Mr. Hubbard, in his will, directed his executor to sell all of his assets for fair value and reduce everything to cash. This business will continue operating until someone buys it.”

“When will that happen?” Arlene asked.

“Whenever the right offer comes along. Now, or two years from now. Even if the estate gets bogged down in a will contest, Mr. Hubbard’s assets will be protected by the court. I’m sure word is out in these parts that this business will go on the block. We might get an offer in the near future. Until then, nothing changes. Assuming, of course, that the employees here can continue to run things.”

“Dewayne’s been running it for five years,” Arlene said graciously.

“We’ll carry on,” he said.

“Good. Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to get back into the records.” The three thanked him and left.