I may need my smelling salts,” Mrs. Bailey White announced. “Do y’all realize what this is?” None of us being lawyers, we weren’t sure what we were looking at, but Mrs. Bailey White recognized the name on the deed, just as I had. “This could be our saving grace, gals,” she said, fanning herself with her hand. “One is definitely a land deed, but I don’t know about the rest.” The only legal papers I’d ever set eyes on were Mama’s handwritten will and my divorce papers. Jackie was at a loss, too. But Plain Jane had more worldly experience. She had worked for a land surveyor during the war, and later, for an insurance company. This was long before her current career as a magazine writer, but she remembered the earlier jobs well. “I can’t say for certain, but I think this second piece of paper is a trust document,” Plain Jane said. “And this third piece of paper—it looks like a birth certificate, filled out by a midwife for a home birth. For a newborn by the name of Bunny Ann Mc Intyre.” “Who in the world is that?” Jackie said. “Well, whoever it is, she comes from royalty,” Plain Jane said. “Not Queen Elizabeth kind of royalty. More like Collier County royalty. That is, if she’s a direct descendant—and maybe the heir—of the old general. Now, this last document doesn’t look as authentic. It just seems like a crude family tree that somebody has drawn up. But again, if you look carefully,” she added, studying the paper, “you’ll see the name Bunny Ann Mc Intyre on there.” I cleared my throat. “I know who she is. Dolores Simpson told me that’s her real name. She says she’s Bunny Ann Mc Intyre.” “Are you kidding me?” Jackie shrieked, almost dropping a lit cigarette. “Ha, ha, ha, ain’t that something?” Mrs. Bailey White said, clapping her hands together. “Do you think Robbie-Lee knows?” Plain Jane asked. “I don’t think he knows any of this,” I said. “I don’t think she ever wanted him to know. At least, as long as she was alive.” “Well, how do we know any of it’s true?” Jackie said, bringing us back to earth. “This may be a bunch of donkey excrement.” “What?” Plain Jane said, frowning. “What kind of saying is that?” “Oh, something I used to hear up north,” Jackie said. “It’s just a polite way to say—” “Never mind,” I interrupted. “How are we going to find out if it’s true? What if we can use this to stop Darryl?” We were lost in our own thoughts. “Who would name their daughter Bunny Ann?” Jackie said suddenly, with a snort. “Well, you named your daughters Bronwyn and Halcyon,” Plain Jane said. “No wonder they’re mad at you all the time.” “But those are family names,” Jackie said defensively. “Maybe Bunny Ann is a family name.” Plain Jane had a point. “Ladies! Ladies! Please,” cried Mrs. Bailey White. “We have more important fish to fry.” “Agreed,” I said hastily. “What we need is a lawyer. Jackie, what about those lawyers you talked to on the tel ephone in New York and Boston? The ones who gave you advice about Darryl using your name—” “No, no, no,” Mrs. Bailey White interrupted. “We don’t need some highfalutin Yankee lawyer! What we need is a local boy.” Naples was a small town and between us we quickly came up with a list of every lawyer in town. They all had ties, however, to the most powerful folks in town. Finally, we agreed that several of us should make a day trip up to Fort Myers in search of a lawyer. Whether one could be found—indeed, whether one existed—who would meet with all of our approval, and who was willing to look into our situation, would remain to be seen. But as Mama used to say, “You’ve got to get out there and try. Sitting at home and doing nothing but frettin’ will never get you anywhere.” • • • I DID NOT HAVE A dime to contribute and felt badly for it, but between Jackie, Mrs. Bailey White, and Plain Jane, there was enough to pay for a
lawyer. They returned from Fort Myers feeling triumphant, having managed to find “a nice young man who is not connected,” as Jackie explained. This made me a little uneasy. “Young” could be good; passion and energy might trump experience. “Unconnected” to Jackie and the others meant “uncontaminated,” but I wondered if it might translate as powerless. The lawyer’s name was John Ed Yonce. He was very interested in the case but said he’d have to meet Dolores first. This, of course, was a problem. How would we get Dolores to go to Fort Myers? Even if Jackie offered to drive her up there, we didn’t think she would go. Somehow, Jackie had persuaded poor Mr. Yonce to come to Collier County and meet Dolores at her home. I say poor Mr. Yonce because that fella was in over his head. I don’t think there was anything he learned in law school that could have pr epared him for Dolores. Or Jackie, for that matter. Jackie offered to transport Mr. Yonce from Fort Myers to Naples if necessary but announced that she would not drive him to Dolores’s fishing shack. “It’s horrible for my car,” she declared. “I really don’t want to drive back there again.” And who could blame her? Neither Mrs. Bailey White nor Plain Jane were in a position to help. That left me to figure out what to do. I could escort him by foot or canoe. Mr. Yonce chose the latter. The next morning, I waited at the public boat launch as agreed. The day started badly. When I tried to pay the fee to rent the canoe with a Kennedy fifty-cent piece, the man in charge refused to acc ept the coin on account of the fact that he was a Kennedy hater. Now, I found this disgusting for a variety of reasons. Number one, Kennedy was dead—assassinated!—and the way I was raised, “of the dead say nothing evil.” Secondly, he had been our president and therefore deserved our respect whether you agreed with him or not. Last but not least, the coin was issued by our government and was therefore as legitimate as a twenty-dollar bill or anything else. Well, I won that battle based on the last point. He took my fifty-cent piece, but I was left with a sick feeling in my stomach and an angry headache. I was relieved when Jackie finally pulled up. A man I presumed to be Mr. Yonce sat beside her in the front seat. Was it some kind of mistake? He didn’t look much older than Judd. As he climbed out of the car, my heart sank even further when I saw that he was wearing a suit and wing-tip shoes. Jackie took off with a wave of the hand, leaving us to our own introductions. “My, isn’t she something?!” he said. “Mrs. Hart, I mean. She told me all about her radio show, how she gave that up, and now she’s writing a newspaper column.” “Oh, she’s something else all right,” I said with a smile. Men of all ages were always impressed with Jackie. What I didn’t say was, Oh boy, if you think Jackie is something else, just wait until you meet Miss Bunny Ann Mc Intyre, aka Dolores Simpson. “Thank you for taking me today,” he said. “Mr. Yonce, um, why are you wearing . . . those clothes?” I asked. “Because I’m meeting a client!” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He put on a lifesaving vest—few of us locals wore them, even though they were made available at the dock—and climbed daintily in the canoe. I could see I had a long day ahead of me. “Aren’t you going to help me paddle?” I asked. “I don’t know how,” he said. “I’ll show you how,” I r eplied. “Get in the front.” Despite my instructions, Mr. Yonce was not much help, especially after a ten-foot gator splashed into the water from a riverbank not ten feet from us. Mr. Yonce proceeded to do exactly the wrong thing: He panicked and stood up. “Sit down, Mr. Yonce! You’ll flip us over!” I yelled. He did as he was told, but after that he didn’t try to paddle at all. After a few minutes he asked my permission to turn around and face me. I don’t think he even wanted to look at the water the rest of the trip. “Where the heck did you grow up?” I asked. “Atlanta,” he said. “Downtown. Near Peachtree Street.” Well, that explained a few things. “Whatcha doing in Florida?” “Wanted to start somewhere new,” he said. “But I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” he added hastily. I started to feel sorry for him. This was always my downfall. I could not stay mad at someone I
felt sorry for. “See those trees there?” I asked, trying to distract him. “Those are called mangroves. They are incredibly adaptive—” “What is that over there?” he asked nervously. “That thing near the mangroves.” I saw the back of a manatee bobbing in the water. “Oh, that’s just a sea cow,” I said reassuringly. “Don’t worry, they don’t eat people. They only eat vegetation. They are the gentlest creatures on earth.” “Oh,” he said with a weak smile. “Glad to hear it.” With me paddling alone it took a good forty-five minutes to arrive at Dolores’s dock, and, as luck would have it, she wasn’t there. I tossed a rope around one of the posts and secured the canoe, not that it was going anywhere. The tide and the current were gently pushing us against the dock for now. At least something was going in our favor. “Do we have to get out?” my passenger asked somberly. “What? Out of the canoe? Why, yes, of course we do.” “I’d rather not,” he said, looking around. “Who’s there?” Dolores bellowed from the vicinity of the outhouse. “What do y’all want?” “Dolores,” I called out, “it’s me, Dora Witherspoon, and I’ve brought a . . . friend. He wants to meet you.” “Well, I don’t want to meet him,” she shouted. But she was walking toward us, craning her neck to get a look at him. Another moment and she was on the dock, looming over us. Then she burst out laughing. “What’s he wearing? A suit and tie? Have you lost your mind, Mr.—?” “—Yonce,” he said automatically. “Pleased to meet you.” He was still sitting in the canoe, gripping the sides. “Mr. Yonce is an attorney,” I said. “A lawyer. He’s here to help us.” “I know what an attorney is,” Dolores said. “You must think I’m dumb as this post here,” she said, shoving a calloused hand against one of the wood pilings, which shook slightly. The whole structure, shack and all, could come crashing down into the water for all I knew. And yet it had survived many storms, even Hurricane Donna, so perhaps the underpinnings were sturdier than they appeared. “I do not think you’re dumb and you know it,” I said, a little surprised at myself for sounding so fresh. “Mr. Yonce came quite a distance to talk to you. So please hear what he has to say.” “Are y’all going to get out of this here canoe?” Dolores asked, putting her hands on her hips. “I’m quite comfortable here,” Mr. Yonce said, “but thank you so much.” Dolores stifled a chuckle. “You mean you don’t want to come inside and maybe sit in my, er, parlor?” She laughed heartily at her own joke, which startled Peggy Sue, the night heron, who made an unhappy squawk. “Uh-oh,” I said, “now we’ve upset Peggy Sue.” “Peggy Sue is a bird,” Dolores said to Mr. Yonce by way of explanation. “Over yon, up in a tree. She be sitting on her eggs like a good mama.” Mr. Yonce looked from Dolores to me and back again. “Yes, um, okay,” he said, clearing his throat. He began talking very fast, explaining that if Dolores agreed, he could file papers that would stop Darryl from proceeding with construction until a judge could review the rightful ownership of the land. “I have done some preliminary work,” he said, “and did some research on the documents that, I understand, belong to you.” Dolores, still standing on the dock, nodded. I wondered how many lawyers had met with a client like this, sitting in a canoe and wearing a life vest. “What I learned is that your main document is a deed put in trust, with a large amount of cash, many years ago,” he said. “It’s called a perpetual trust, and it was set up by General John Stuart Williams—your ancestor. The taxes have been paid automatically through the trust. Very clever idea— maybe the old general was concerned about carpetbaggers trying to grab property when the owners were late paying their taxes. Now, in your case, this was set up at a bank in Pensacola. There weren’t many banks in Florida in those days, and fortunately, the one the general chose was bought up by other banks over the years and is still in existence.” “So the bank in Pensacola has been taking money from the trust to pay the taxes all these
years?” I asked. “Yes,” the young lawyer said. He paused for a moment to wipe his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I believe the deed in Mr. Darryl Norwood’s custody must be a fake,” he added. “I’m not sure where he got it, and I’m not sure it matters to us. If it’s fabricated and he knows it, he could face criminal charges, but that’s beyond what I think we should be focused on here.” “Well, then, what are we focused on here?” Dolores asked suspiciously. “Producing your deed in court and stopping Darryl Norwood’s development in its tracks.” Dolores grinned. “Ain’t you some young whippersnapper?” she asked, causing him to blush flamingo pink from the base of his neck to his forehead. “Well,” she added, “that’s what I want. It’s only right. The way I was raised, land is the greatest wealth a person can have, other than family. There’s just one problem.” “What’s that?” Mr. Yonce asked nervously. “I can’t pay you for all this work you’re doing,” she said. “I’m land rich but cash poor. Unless I can get my hands on some of that money in the trust. But something tells me that money’s tied up in a neat little knot. Or else it wouldn’t be there no more.” “You are correct,” Mr. Yonce said. “We can look into it but I rather doubt you have access to it. The money is there to pay the taxes year after year, just to be sure it stays in the family.” “Dolores,” I interrupted, “your friends are going to pay Mr. Yonce.” “What friends?” “Dolores, I thought I told you before. If we needed to hire a lawyer, Mrs. Bailey White, Plain Jane, and Jackie Hart are going to pay for it. If I had any money, I would chip in, too.” “What about your son?” Mr. Yonce asked Dolores. He shuffled through his notes. “Robbie-Lee Simpson, lives in New York City. Works as an usher at a theater.” “What about him?” Dolores said icily. “Can he help you? I mean financially? Have you spoken to him?” Dolores sighed. “I get letters from him. He’s been gone over a year now, but I don’t want him to think I need him.” “But Dolores,” I said gently, “the fact is you do need him.” “He needs to be brought into the picture if for no other reason than he is your heir,” Mr. Yonce said. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Dolores said so softly I barely heard her. “Go ahead,” she added. “Just do what you got to do.” Mr. Yonce asked a few other questions. Had she ever had a driver’s license? A Social Security card? Was there a birth certificate, other than the one filled out by a midwife? She said no to the remainder of his questions, but I had a feeling that her mind was now far away.