Niceville

place.”
    “True, but Lanman says the Cherokee called the place Talulu, which sort of nails the location down. Mind you, this is all hypothetical stuff. Hearsay. Nothing I’d care to repeat in a court of law. Look, sweetheart, we’ve gotten a little off the track. Do you still have my records there. In the basement?”
    “Yes.”
    “The families had a jubilee, at Johnny Mullryne’s plantation in Savannah. In 1910. There’s a picture of it, of all the families together. There’s some writing on the back of the picture. I think that’s when this all started.”
    “What’s written on the back?”
    “All the names of the people in the picture. One name is underlined. And next to the name that’s underlined is a single word. The word is
shame
.”
    “What’s the name?”
    “I mentioned him earlier. Abel. Abel Teague.”
    “As in Rainey Teague?”
    “Yes. Although, as we know, Rainey was adopted. Miles Teague was Abel Teague’s grandson. Abel Teague’s father was Jubal Teague, and
his
father was a man named London Teague. Back in the 1840s, London Teague had a plantation in southern Louisiana called Hy Brasail. There was some talk that London Teague arranged for the murder of his third wife, Anora Mercer—the lady they named the golf club after? It’s a matter of record that John Gwinnett Mercer, Anora’s godfather, fought a duel with London Teague over Anora’s death. So the Teagues have a checkered past, don’t they? Do you still have Rainey’s papers?”
    “How could I not? You ask about them a lot.”
    “Where are they?”
    “In Rainey’s file, at my office.”
    “You went back over them, didn’t you? Just to be safe, to make sure he was the only inheritor?”
    “Yes. Due diligence.”
    “Of course. His birth parents, the Gwinnetts, the record is they died in a fire, right?”
    “Yes. When he was two. They had a farm outside Sallytown. They raised Clydesdale horses. A hay fire started in the horse barn. They were both killed trying to get their animals out. They had no relatives, so Rainey went into foster care.”
    “In Sallytown?”
    “Yes.”
    “You were able to confirm all this?”
    “Not really. But the papers were in order, as far as I could determine.”
    “And did you manage to talk to the foster parents when you were taking on Rainey’s file?”
    “No. I was told they left the state a year after Rainey was adopted. I tried to trace them—just so one day I could tell Rainey about his past, if he ever asked—but I never found them.”
    “Do you recall their names?”
    “Yes. Palgrave. Zorah and Martin.”
    “No trace of them? Either of them?”
    “Not that I could find. I didn’t look all that hard. They were sort of peripheral to the issue.”
    He was quiet again.
    Kate waited patiently.
    “Who initiated the adoption process, Kate?”
    “Miles did, according to the papers. Sylvia had just gone through a long series of in vitro attempts. I remember Miles thought she was suicidal. We were all pretty worried about her.”
    “So, the story is, Miles went out and, somehow, found a boy who might actually be a distant relation to the family, an unknown boy in a foster home two hundred miles away in Sallytown?”
    “Yes. I guess so. Why? Is there anything strange about that?”
    “This lawyer named Leah Searle, did you ever speak to her?”
    “No. She died, a year later.”
    “How?”
    “Drowned, according to her daughter-in-law.”
    “Where?”
    “Not in Crater Sink, Dad. Come on, you’re starting to scare me. Are you saying there’s something odd in Rainey’s adoption?”
    Another long silence. Her father was quiet for so long she began to think she’d lost her connection. Eventually he spoke.
    “Kate, would you mind if I came down?”
    “Dad, we’d
love
it. When?”
    “I can be there in four hours.”

Bock Meets Chu and Chu Meets Bock
    Bock and Chu had agreed to meet at a place called the Bar Belle, on the Pavilion overlooking the Tulip River, a nice sunny patio with round metal tables and umbrellas flapping overhead that advertised Dubonnet and Heineken and Stella Artois, the same place where, as it happened, Nick and Beau had been wrapping up their lunch break.
    Bock had made it a point to get to the Bar Belle before Chu—a good hour early. This was a tradecraft trick he had learned while watching
The Bourne Identity
. He sat alone at a table next to the railing, where he could get his back up against the wall, just like Matt Damon would do. On