After three days of leaving frantic midday messages, Ellen was desperate to talk to her lawyer in person.
His secretary was not about to let that happen.
“Mr. Marmer is not available at the moment,” she said. “If you’d like to leave a message…”
“I’ve already left half a dozen messages,” Ellen snapped. “I need to speak to him and I need to speak to him now.”
“Mrs. Jameson, I’m sure he will get back to you at his earliest convenience,” she said.
Obviously convenience was the operative word.
“I have a very, very urgent situation that I need to discuss with him,” Ellen told her. “I’ve got to talk to him right away.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him,” the secretary told her coolly. “And while I have you here on the phone, I’d like to remind you that there is a significant unpaid balance on your account.”
“I am well aware of that,” Ellen told her. “I am working now and I will be sending you a check at the first of the month, as soon as I get paid.”
“So you’ll be taking care of the remainder of the bill?”
“Well, no,” Ellen hedged. “I won’t be able to pay in full, but I do intend to pay something on it.”
“How much will you be paying?”
“I…ah…I might be able to pay a hundred dollars.”
The secretary actually laughed.
“Do you realize how much you owe on this account?”
“Of course I do,” Ellen answered. “And I’m sure you realize, as does David Marmer, that I’ve just gone through bankruptcy. He got a lot more than most of my other creditors. And he knows me. He knows that I will pay what I owe, but it will be a while.”
Ellen’s money problems never ceased to humiliate her. But she’d already learned that people didn’t actually die from embarrassment, they just wished they could.
“David was one of my late husband’s oldest and dearest friends,” she continued. “No matter what I owe him, I’m sure he would want to help me.”
“And I’m sure he’ll return your call when he has sufficient free time to do so,” the secretary replied. Her opinion about the value of an old, dear friend was obvious, but her emphasis on the phrase free time was deliberate and even more telling.
With a click, the line went dead.
Ellen sat for a moment, the receiver still in her hand, staring into space. She didn’t know what to do or to whom she could turn.
“Come on, God,” she complained to the empty room. “If you were trying to teach me not to take a comfortable life for granted, I swear I’ve learned. This is enough already. I don’t have my husband, our home, our business. If Wilma loses her place we’ll be out on the street. You can’t want that. I’m sure you can’t.”
She said the words, but without the certainty that they meant to evoke. When Paul’s cancer had been diagnosed she’d been anxious and worried, but she’d felt a calm assurance that somehow everything would be all right. That’s the way life was. God was good and life, for those who played by the rules—people who were honest, hardworking, trustworthy—life worked out fine. It was a belief that she’d held on to. It was her own personal brand of religious faith.
Do right by other people and trust that God will do right by you.
It was a simple understanding, not fraught with obscure textuary or intricate ecclesiastical dogma. But it had worked for Ellen for most of her life. Until Paul’s illness came along. Cancer was terrible. But it could be beaten. People beat it every day. Ellen had been determined that Paul would beat it. And when the best therapeutic hopes were not covered on Paul’s insurance, Ellen cashed in their savings to pay for them. She got a second mortgage on the house. She borrowed against the business. She had never even considered not doing those things. Paul was her husband. He was Amber’s father. They loved him. Taking care of his health was expensive, but no amount of money was worth more than his life. The money was well-spent, an investment in Paul’s future.
They had to fight it. She could not let anything happen to Paul.
The thing about optimism is that once it is shattered, there is nothing left to hang on to. People who always expected the worst were never disappointed. For Ellen, disappointment had come as a complete surprise. And one that she had, as yet, been unable to rationalize.
“Please, God, get us out of this mess,” she pleaded.
Mentally reciting the admonition that God helps those who help themselves, she reached for Paul’s ancient Rolodex on the edge of her desk. She flipped through the yellowing cards, hoping for an answer. Or at least another lawyer. There were none to be found, nothing but tax attorneys.
Paul and David Marmer had been more than neighbors, they were friends. They had played chess together, gone on fly fishing trips and sat up late on summer nights speculating on life, money and business. Paul had kept his books and done his taxes. David handled whatever legal matters had come up. He’d written up their wills. Later he’d filed the bankruptcy and helped her sell the business.
David knew her situation. She didn’t want to have to start all over with someone else.
Deliberately, Ellen steeled herself and swallowed her pride. She punched the numbers for his home phone. It rang twice.
“Hello.”
“Peggy?” she said. “Hi, this is Ellen…Ellen Jameson.”
There was a momentary pause that could have meant anything. “My God, Ellen,” she answered. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she lied. “I’m doing all right.”
“How long has it been? I can’t even remember when I saw you last,” Peggy said.
“It…ah…I think it was at the funeral,” Ellen said.
“Oh, yes, right.” She sounded embarrassed. “And I meant to call, truly I did.”
“I know,” Ellen said. “I understand. We’ve all been so busy.”
“That’s so true,” she said. “I’ve been taking ceramics at the Southwest School of Art. I’m actually getting quite good. I’m hoping to have a little showing at a gallery in the Blue Star. You’ll just have to come.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Ellen said.
“And what have you been doing?” she asked.
Ellen had been dealing with grief, going through bankruptcy, losing her house, closing her business. None of those things seemed worth mentioning in comparison to the making of clay pots.
“I’ve got a new job,” she said.
“Really? What sort?”
“Same old thing,” Ellen answered. “You can take the girl out of accounting, but you can’t take accounting out of the girl.”
“Oh?” Peggy sounded puzzled. “David said that you’d given up the firm.”
She had known. She’d known what her former close friend had been going through and she had been avoiding her. It hurt, but Ellen tried not to feel it.
“I’m working for somebody else,” Ellen told her. “Another accounting service. Max Roper. Do you know him?”
“No…no, I don’t think so.”
Ellen was certain that she didn’t.
“Anyway,” Ellen plunged on, “I’ve got a really urgent legal matter that I need to discuss with David and I can’t get past his harridan secretary.”
“Oh, well…David has been very busy. I’m sure when he has time…”
“I don’t have time,” Ellen interrupted. “I need to talk to somebody about this now.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. Guilt is a powerful force. As strong as love or hate, and with fewer defenses against it.
Finally Peggy spoke, “Okay, I’ll have him call you.”
It was barely ten minutes later when the phone rang.
“The girls and I are living with my mother,” Ellen began after the pleasantries and excuses.
“That sounds like a good idea,” David said. “Peggy says you have a job. It won’t be long before you’re back on your feet.”
His tone was slightly condescending, but Ellen didn’t have the luxury of being able to be insulted by it.
“My mother got a letter from Pressman, Yaffe and Escudero. Apparently her stepchildren want the house we’re living in and these lawyers say that it is rightfully theirs. They’ve ordered us to get out immediately.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
“That doesn’t sound good,” David admitted. “What brought this on?”
“Nothing that I know about,” Ellen answered. “I’ve met them a few times. My mother was only married to Wilbur about eighteen months. He was not in the best of health. I saw his children at their father’s funeral. They apparently hadn’t kept in close enough contact to even know that he and Wilma were married. They clearly weren’t happy about it, but with their father already dead, there certainly wasn’t much they could do about it.”
“And that’s all the contact she’d had with them?” David asked.
“I think there’s been an ongoing battle,” Ellen admitted. “His daughters wanted to get things out of the house. ‘Their mother’s things,’ was how they described it. And the son came by a few times to suggest that he would give my mother some money if she would just go away. She didn’t. So now they’ve got a lawyer.”
“Pressman, Yaffe and Escudero aren’t exactly shysters,” David pointed out. “They must feel like they have some kind of case.”
Ellen sighed heavily. “Well, my mother wasn’t married to him for very long,” she said. “And his will predated the death of his first wife. He left everything to her, because she was his wife at the time. It seems to me that since Wilma was his wife when he died, everything should go to her. Right?”
“I’m not sure,” David admitted. “This isn’t my area of expertise.”
“Surely you have some idea,” Ellen said.
David hesitated only a moment. “If the will was executed less than three years before he died and he left everything to his first wife by name,” David told her, “then he intended that everything go to her. If she preceded him in death, which she did, then it’s reasonable to assume that he would have intended that her heirs receive what was meant for her.”
“That can’t be right,” Ellen said.
“Well, right or wrong,” David replied. “It will be what Pressman, Yaffe and Escudero are arguing.”
“Why would they want to do this?” Ellen asked. “The place isn’t worth all that much.”
David could only speculate. “Mahncke Park has gotten pretty run-down over the last couple of decades,” he said. “But with all this talk of the Broadway Revitalization, and the concept of making the whole area from downtown to Alamo Heights a big pedestrian mall, that old house begins to take on some new value.”
“But that plan is years off and it may never happen,” Ellen pointed out.
“And if it doesn’t, then they haven’t lost anything,” David pointed out. “Right now the house is an asset, free and clear. They can borrow against it, rent it for income, or write it off as a loss. As long as it belongs to them. And they seem pretty sure it does.”
“Can’t we make some kind of deal with them?” Ellen asked. “We can come up with some kind of compromise. Surely there is something we can do?”
“My advice,” David said. “Start looking for a place to live.”
Ellen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I can’t do that,” she said, firmly. “We just moved in. I can’t uproot us all over again.”
“I don’t think you have any other option,” he said.
“Then you’ll have to find another one,” Ellen insisted.
There was a long pause before he replied.
“Ellen, you’re going to have to find another lawyer,” David said.
“David, you know I can’t afford another lawyer,” Ellen said.
He chuckled lightly. “You can’t even afford me,” he said. “You’ll have to go to legal aid.”
“I can’t take something like this to the legal aid clinic,” Ellen pointed out. “The kids there will be too intimidated by this law firm’s letterhead to even try to help.”
It was the truth, but it didn’t make any difference.
“I’m a tax attorney,” David said. “I’m not going to be able to win this one. I don’t know anything about this kind of thing and I’m not taking on a prestigious firm like Pressman, Yaffe and Escudero. I’m sorry, Ellen, I simply won’t do it.”
“We’re in one hell of a pickle,” Wilma declared. “And for dang sure, you’re mama is never going to be able to get us out of it.”
Amber was seated with her out on the front porch. They were sharing a morning cigarette as Jet played with her doll on the steps. Jet was completely groomed and dressed, including shoes, socks and matching barrettes in her hair. By contrast the two women had yet to wash their faces or comb their hair and were lounging in dingy, threadbare bathrobes.
Amber was watching her daughter. She didn’t look up as she answered.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what I should do.”
“Well, somebody has got to start making some plans,” Wilma said. “I’ve been thrown out before and believe me, once that kind of ball get’s rolling, you might as well just pack your bags.”
“You’ve been thrown out before?”
“Well, never like this,” Wilma said. “I’ve never even imagined a situation like this. But I’ve been forced out plenty of times.”
“When Mom lost the house, I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of disaster,” Amber said.
“For a woman like your mom,” Wilma told her, “it probably is. I’m not a woman like your mom. I’ve had to pack up in the middle of the night a half-dozen times. Sometimes, I couldn’t get along with the man or I couldn’t keep up the mortgage. I swear when Bud and Ellen were little, seems like we had to move every time the rent came due.”
“Really?” Amber was surprised. “I knew Mom had a couple of stepfathers, but I didn’t think it was like that.”
Wilma chuckled. “It was exactly like that,” she said. “I was always skirting the rim of disaster. I floated checks on money I hoped to get, got my car towed for missed payments, had my furniture repossessed more than once. And I was on a first-name basis with the folks at the pawnshop.”
Amber was frowning. “That must have been awful.”
Wilma chuckled. “Actually, it was pretty exciting,” she replied. “A housewife with a couple of little kids can be pretty boring. My life was many things, but it was never boring.”
Amber laughed, fascinated. “Is that why you did it? To keep from being bored?”
Wilma shook her head. “No, I kept trying to make things turn out differently. But, somehow you get into a flow and it just keeps on going.”
Amber nodded. “Except for Mom, who is always swimming against the tide.”
Wilma eyed Amber critically. “You’ve got to give that gal some credit,” she said. “She didn’t have much to start with and she really made the best of it.”
Amber shrugged. She was less than eager to give her mother any benefit of doubt.
“Anyway,” Amber pointed out. “It’s all gone now.”
“Oh, the outside wrapping is all gone,” Wilma said. “But inside Ellen’s the same woman she always was. She believes just as strong. She fights just as hard. She just needs to find her a man, that’s all.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I be kidding?” Wilma answered. “A husband, specifically one that’s got his own house, would solve all our problems. She’d just marry and we’d move in. Let Wilbur’s dad-gummed brats have this shack. I never liked it that much anyway.”
Amber laughed and shook her head. “Wilma, you are so totally non-p.c.,” she said. “Women don’t marry to get a house. That’s not even fifteen minutes ago, it’s a lifetime ago.”
“My lifetime,” Wilma said.
“Well…yeah,” Amber answered.
“I may be old,” Wilma said. “But unfortunately the world hasn’t changed that much. The best chance for a woman to have a comfortable life and raise her kids with plenty to eat, warm clothes to wear and good schools to attend is for her to marry a good provider.” Wilma eyed the young woman critically. “It might be something you should give some consideration to.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Like any guys I’d meet would be likely to provide anything more than cheap drinks, bags of dope and sperm samples.”
Wilma didn’t appear shocked as much as entertained. She gestured toward Jet. “Some of those sperm samples don’t turn out too badly,” she said. “Makes you wonder what kind of man he turned out to be.”
“Oh, just the regular kind,” Amber said. “One who says, ‘I’ll call you’ and never did.”
“Most women wouldn’t let a phone call stand between them and a man they really wanted,” Wilma pointed out.
“I didn’t know him enough to know if he was a man I really wanted,” Amber said. “And I think there was more standing between us.”
“Like what?” Wilma asked her.
“Race, culture, our hopes, dreams, even our personalities,” she said. It sounded lame even to her own ears.
“And then there was the matter of the wife and kids he already had,” Amber added. She’d never admitted that part of it before.
She saw Wilma wince, but she didn’t say a word. That’s one thing she could count on. No matter how bad she screwed up, Wilma always listened, she never judged.
“Anyway,” Amber continued. “Men today just don’t get married if they can help it. And they can help it. With every kinky, pervy thing in the world available on any suburban street for free, guys just don’t have to get married anymore.”
“If you think marriage is about getting people in bed,” Wilma told her, “then I’d say that you’re the one who’s non-p.c. and fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, well, yeah, people still get married for love, I guess.” Amber’s emphasis on the word was disparaging.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Love is one reason, but there’s a whole boatload of others. And getting a roof over your head certainly qualifies in my book.”
“Who would marry Mom?” Amber asked, almost incredulously.
“A lot of men would,” Wilma answered. “Your daddy did and he thought he’d made a damn good bargain.”
“Well, yeah Daddy,” Amber agreed. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Your mama is still a very attractive woman,” Wilma pointed out. “She’s good natured, even tempered and smart. There are a lot of men in the world who would find that combination irresistible.”
Amber nodded, conceding the point. “But she doesn’t go out. She never meets anyone. Unless you’re going to get Sun Myung Moon to fix her up, who would she marry?”
“Well, I was thinking about that boss of hers,” Wilma answered.
“Really? What do you know about the guy?”
Wilma shrugged. “Not that much,” she admitted. “He owns his own business,” she added hopefully.
“I thought Mom said he was old,” Amber said.
“Age doesn’t make that much difference,” Wilma said. “No, I’m pretty sure your mother could just snap up that man. But she won’t.”
“Because she’s still not over Daddy,” Amber stated.
“It’s not something you get over,” Wilma said. “It’s something that you live over.”
“Yeah, but Mom’s dragging it out too long,” Amber said. “She’s still stuck in place and it’s going on five years now. It didn’t take you that long to get over Wilbur.”
“Wilbur?” the older woman looked at Amber and shook her head. “I was over Wilbur the day I met him. The man was tightfisted and selfish, just like his kids. He needed a cook, housekeeper and a nurse-maid. It was cheaper to marry me than to hire help. He’d already worked one wife to death. And he figured he’d get a lot less attached to me than he was to her.”
“So that’s why he married you,” Amber said. “Why did you marry him?”
“I didn’t figure the old coot was long for this world,” Wilma said. “I thought a few years taking care of him was a reasonable price to pay for a little bit of security.”
“You didn’t care for him at all?”
“Oh, he was all right,” Wilma said. “He had an interesting mind and occasional flashes of dry humor. But as I said, he was hardboiled and stingy. He had very few friends, even his children couldn’t stand him. He wanted beans and potatoes for dinner every night—with everything. If I was fixing spaghetti, he wanted beans and potatoes with it.”
Her remembered exasperation made Amber laugh.
“And he spent every waking minute working on crossword puzzles like they were the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx. The man nearly drove me to drink. But I did right by him. And I’m not sorry that I married him. I’m not sorry for anything I’ve done in my life. Sometimes I’ve been foolish, occasionally downright stupid. But it’s all led me here, to what I’m doing today. I wouldn’t have missed this.”
With a nod she indicated the child on the front steps. Jet was playing grocery store. Lately it was her favorite game. Her Cabbage Patch doll, a red-haired African-American named Sheila Thompson, was getting thorough instructions on the purchase of lettuce.
Amber shook her head. She would never have thought that Wilma would be all that good at child care. She seemed more the kind of woman that other adults could appreciate. Jet had grown attached to her. Almost as attached as she was to Ellen.
“I don’t think it will do any good,” Amber said. “But if you’re interested in Mom’s boss, I think the best way to find out about him is to talk to that receptionist. She sounds like a meddling busybody to me. I bet she’d be absolutely prime for coming clean with everything she knows as well as everything she thinks she knows.”
Wilma gave her a long look. “Amber Jameson,” she said. “That sneaky, low-down conniving part of your personality, I want you to know, you get that from me.”
Amber laughed. “Wilma,” she said. “I know.”
A Chevy Tahoe pulled up to the curb in front of the house. Both women tried to make out the identity of the driver, but the sunlight reflected against the windshield. It wasn’t until he stood up beside the vehicle that Amber’s puzzled expression turned to a frown.
“Look who’s here, Amber,” Wilma said, obviously delighted. “It’s Brent.”
Brent Velasco had been the boy next door when Amber was growing up in Elm Creek. They had been best friends, buds, since childhood. At one time they had shared every thought, every dream, every aspiration. As they got older, of course, things had begun to change. They had remained close friends until Amber had opted out of her Clark High School clique.
He came walking up the sidewalk, thinner, more muscular than Amber remembered. He seemed to have exchanged his chunky fat boy persona for a more confident frat boy role.
He stopped beside Jet and squatted down next to her, smiling.
“Hey there, Little Bit. Do you remember me?”
Jet shook her head.
“I’m Brent, a friend of your mommy’s,” he said.
He offered a handshake. Surprisingly, Jet ignored it and instead literally threw herself in the young man’s arms.
He laughed and anchored the little girl against his hip as he rose to his feet.
“I think I’ve made a friend,” he said.
“It looks like it,” Wilma agreed.
“Jet’s always been partial to strays.”
Amber’s comment was rather snottily made and Wilma gave her a questioning glance.
Brent chuckled.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome?” Wilma asked as she rose to her feet to give him a hug. “I heard that you were up in Austin.”
“I’m home for the summer,” he told her. “I’ve got a job clerking in the Justice Center.”
Wilma raised an approving eyebrow.
“I’m impressed,” she said.
“Don’t be,” Brent told her. “Judge Flores is my dad’s best golfing buddy. I don’t think he necessarily hired me for my qualifications.”
Wilma shook her head. “I’m sure he hired you based on the qualifications that you’re going to have. Are you still planning on law school?”
Brent nodded. “This time next year I’ll either be on my way or rethinking my life.”
The comment was made so calmly, so casually, Amber had to resist the infantile urge to kick him in the shins.
“I’m sure it will be more of the former than the latter,” Wilma told him. “Do you still like coffee?”
“I don’t like anybody’s as much as yours,” he lied.
“Sit here and catch up with Amber while I make a pot,” she told him. He did as she bid him and made himself comfortable in the yellowing and frayed lawn chair. Jet seated herself on her mother’s lap, still clutching Sheila Thompson. The little girl kept all her attention focused on the man in the chair beside them. As if he were some curious unknown creature from a fairy tale.
“You’re looking good,” he said to Amber.
She was already annoyed with him, her response was defensive and skeptical.
“Yeah, I guess most women look good to you wearing underwear and a bathrobe.”
Brent nodded solemnly. “The bathrobe is the clincher for me,” he admitted. “You can see all these near-naked hotties in the lingerie ads, but they never have on old terry-cloth bathrobes and fuzzy house shoes. It’s a shame, really. You get no sense of what they are really like. I wish Sports Illustrated would put out an annual bathrobe issue.”
Amber managed, with some difficulty, not to smile.
“I see that college hasn’t improved upon your sense of humor,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows à la Groucho Marx and faked a cigar. “You can’t improve upon perfection.”
Jet giggled and he repeated the elaborate gestures just for her.
“So what are you doing hanging around here in the slums?”
“Suburbia isn’t necessarily my natural element,” he answered. “So what have you been up to.”
“I work,” Amber answered. “You know work?”
He nodded. “I read about it in school,” he answered. “It’s what drives the economy, creates the tax base, makes America a strong democracy.”
“Gives people something to get up for in the morning,” she added.
“Or in your case, the afternoon.”
Amber wanted to stick her tongue out at him, but managed to restrain herself.
“Everybody asks about you,” Brent told her. “Lissa said she saw you in some pajama store in the mall. She said that you barely spoke to her.”
“It’s not a pajama store, it’s a lingerie boutique,” Amber answered. “And I was way too busy to chat about old times with Lissa. If she was offended then screw her. But then, you do, don’t you.”
Brent laughed. “Lissa and I haven’t been an item since high school,” he pointed out. “When I got into UT and she picked SMU we just shook hands and went our own way.”
Amber shrugged. “Hey, you don’t have to bare your heart to me,” she said. “I couldn’t care one way or another.”
“Well, you should care,” Brent said. “Lissa was your friend since third grade. She stuck with you long after you drifted away from the rest of us. She went racing to the hospital when Jet was born. She got us all together for that big baby shower. Now you can’t even be bothered to talk to her.”
“I guess she and I have gone our separate ways as well,” Amber told him.
“Okay, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still be interested,” he said.
“All right, all right. I can be interested,” Amber said. “So how’s she doing these days?”
Brent grinned as if he’d just won a big coup. “She’s great. She’s going to summer school this year, hoping to finish by December.”
“Oh?”
“She’s engaged to a really swell guy,” he said. “They’ve set the date for March.”
The bitterness that swept Amber was surprising, even to herself. Lissa was sweet and generous and fun. She’d never, by word or deed, ever been anything but good to Amber. Still, the prospect of her happiness evoked only jealousy and resentment.
“I wish her all the best,” Amber insisted. “I just hope that when the whole world doesn’t just fall down and worship her, she’ll be able to cope.”
Brent’s brow furrowed. “Oh, I think she’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m just wondering if you will.”
Before Amber could respond, Wilma was at the door and Brent jumped up to help her. She carried a tray with four cups of coffee, three were mismatched stoneware mugs, the forth a plastic rabbit with ears that folded into a handle.
“You brought coffee for Jet?”
“It’s mostly milk,” Wilma assured her. “I used to make it for you when you were little, remember?”
Amber nodded. “Mom didn’t approve.”
“I’m sure it’s not something recommended in the baby books,” Wilma admitted. “When I was growing up they said that if you drink coffee it will make you black. So people are probably going to accuse Jet of it anyway.”
Brent laughed.
Amber did, too.
“I wish Mom could have heard you say that,” she said. “That kind of talk drives Ellen crazy.”
The explanation was directed toward Brent.
“Really?” he seemed surprised. “I always thought she had such a great attitude about life.”
“Well, that was then,” Amber said without clarification.
To Amber’s taste, the coffee was nothing but ordinary. Brent talked as if it were the best he’d ever tasted. He ummmed and ooooed until Wilma was laughing.
“Reminds me of my mother’s cooking,” he told her.
“Your mother is the worst cook in this town,” Amber pointed out.
“I know,” he said. “And, Wilma, you are definitely a close second.”
“I’m glad you came by, Brent,” Wilma said. “I’ve got a legal problem that I may need your help with.”
Brent shook his head and chuckled.
“I’m not a lawyer, Wilma,” he told her. “I’m not even a law student. I just get the right sets of papers together. I don’t begin to understand all that they mean.”
Wilma gave him a little half smile.
“I’m not asking you to play Perry Mason,” she assured him. “In fact, what I really need is Sam Spade. My stepchildren are trying to take my house away from me. You just nose around downtown and see what you can find out.”