Bitter Business

anything.”
    “Well, surprise, surprise. You’re always willing to be flexible and accommodating just as long as it doesn’t mean anything. As soon as it comes time to put it down on paper, you come up with a million objections. You forget we’ve seen you pull this shit before.”
    “Oh, have you?” his sister inquired sarcastically.
    “Stop it!” I half shouted. “I’ve just flown two thousand miles. Was there something you wanted me for or did you just need an audience?”
    “We’ve agreed that there is no way that we can continue to work together in the family business,” said Eugene. His face had the same bulldog set to it as his father’s.
    “Our goals for personal self-fulfillment are just too different,” Lydia piped in a “shrinky” voice.
    “Would you just let me finish?” Eugene snapped. “We all agree that we have no choice but to sell our shares. The question is, are we bound to give Dad first crack at buying them?”
    “Arthur says that we are under absolutely no obligation to Daddy,” Lydia declared.
    “The next time I need brokerage advice, I’ll call Arthur,” Philip announced pompously. “In the meantime I’ll just consult the company’s attorney on the legal issues. That is, if you have no objections.”
    “In the absence of a signed buyback agreement, no one is under any legal obligation to offer the shares to your father before putting them on the market. But as your attorney, I’ll tell you right now, it’s probably in your best interest to at least try to structure a deal with your father.”
    “We’d never have gotten into this predicament if you’d just signed the goddamned buyback in the first place,” Philip accused his sister.
    I couldn’t believe it. Two thousand miles away from my next change of clothes and they were starting in again on the damned buyback agreement. The Cavanaughs, as a family, seemed to have a tremendous amount of trouble moving on from old issues. I was about to tell them so when Darlene came to tell me that I had a phone call.
    I went into the kitchen and picked up the phone expecting to hear Cheryl’s voice, but was surprised instead to discover that it was Elliott on the line.
    “Your secretary told me where to find you,” he said by way of greeting. From his voice I could tell he was excited. “You’ll never guess where I am.”
    “Where?”
    “The Laurel Acres Convalescent Home.”
    “Is that where Nursey lives? I thought she had her own house.”
    “She does. I’m heading there now. I couldn’t see her this morning because she had to go into Lawson for her clinic appointments.”
    “So who are you visiting at Laurel Acres?” I demanded. The Cavanaugh children’s contentiousness must have been contagious. I was in a terrible mood.
    “I’ve been to see Zebediah Hooker.”
    “So who is he?”
    “He’s the redneck drunk who Eugene Cavanaugh beat to within an inch of his life when they were both sixteen years old.”
    “Whatever made him do that?”
    “Eugene caught him in a bar one night telling anyone who would listen that Jimmy Cavanaugh killed Grace Swinton because she was carrying his child.”
     
    In the end, I left the three remaining Cavanaugh children to duke it out while I went with Elliott to visit Nursey. In light of what he’d found out by visiting Zebediah Hooker, I figured it was going to be much more enlightening than listening to Philip, Lydia, and Eugene cover the same ground over and over again. As we drove Elliott told me how he’d found him.
    “I just went to the feed store and asked. The feed store’s the center of the universe in a place like this. All I had to do was mention the name and three guys in John Deere caps were falling all over each other to tell me the story. In a small town like this, you can’t go to the bathroom without people knowing what color it is. And Eugene Cavanaugh savagely beating a good old boy like Zebediah certainly caught everyone’s attention. I didn’t even really need to go out to Laurel Acres, but it was close and I had time to kill.”
    “So what did he have to say to you?”
    “Who? Zebediah? Not only did Eugene break just about every bone in Zebediah’s body, but he cracked his skull in so many places that he left him a vegetable. Zebediah doesn’t say anything. He hasn’t said anything since the night he shot his mouth off in front of Eugene in that bar.”
     
    Nursey was a shriveled-up crone with a tight perm of snow-white hair that