Sycamore Row

marriages cracked over the weekends and spouses already at war ramped up their attacks. Jake entered the building through a rear door to avoid (1) the notoriously prickly secretaries and (2) the smoke-laden waiting room filled with stressed-out clients. Harry Rex’s office door was closed. Jake listened for a moment, heard no voices, then shoved it open.
    “What do you want?” Harry Rex growled as he chomped on amouthful. The hoagie was spread before him on wax paper, with a small mountain of barbecue potato chips piled around it. He was washing it all down with a bottle of Bud Light.
    “Well, good afternoon, Harry Rex. Sorry to barge in on your lunch.”
    He wiped his mouth with the back of a beefy hand and said, “You’re not bothering my lunch. What’s up?”
    “Drinking already?” Jake said as he backed into a massive leather chair.
    “If you had my clients you’d start at breakfast.”
    “I thought you did.”
    “Never on Mondays. How’s Miss Carla?”
    “Fine, thanks, and how’s Miss, uh, what’s her name?”
    “Jane, smart-ass. Jane Ellen Vonner, and she’s not only surviving life with me but seems to be having a ball and thankful to be so lucky. Finally found a woman who understands me.” He scooped up a pile of bright red chips and crammed them in his mouth.
    “Congratulations. When do I meet her?”
    “We’ve been married for two years.”
    “I know, but I prefer to wait five. No sense rushing in when these gals have such a short shelf life.”
    “You come here to insult me?”
    “Of course not.” And Jake was being honest. Swapping insults with Harry Rex was a fool’s game. He weighed over three hundred pounds and lumbered around town like an old bear, but his tongue was stunningly quick and vicious.
    Jake said, “Tell me about Seth Hubbard.”
    Harry Rex laughed and sent debris flying over his desk. “Couldn’t have happened to a bigger asshole. Why do you ask me?”
    “Ozzie said you handled one of his divorces.”
    “I did, his second, maybe ten years ago, about the time you showed up here in town and started calling yourself a lawyer. Why should Seth concern you?”
    “Well, before he killed himself, he wrote me a letter, and he also wrote a two-page will. Both arrived in the mail this morning.”
    Harry Rex took a sip of beer, narrowed his eyes, and thought about this. “You ever meet him?”
    “Never.”
    “Lucky. You didn’t miss a damned thing.”
    “Don’t talk about my client like that.”
    “What’d the will say?”
    “Can’t tell you, and I can’t probate until after the funeral.”
    “Who gets everything?”
    “I can’t say. I’ll tell you on Wednesday.”
    “A two-page handwritten will prepared the day before the suicide. Sounds like a five-year lawsuit bonanza to me.”
    “I sure hope so.”
    “That’ll keep you busy for a while.”
    “I need the work. What’s the ol’ boy got?”
    Harry Rex shook his head while reaching for the hoagie. “Don’t know,” he said, then took a bite. The clear majority of Jake’s friends and acquaintances preferred not to speak with a mouthful of food, but such social graces had never slowed down Harry Rex. “As I recall, and again it’s been ten years, he owned a house up there on Simpson Road, with some acreage around it. The biggest asset was a sawmill and a lumber yard on Highway 21, near Palmyra. My client was, uh, Sybil, Sybil Hubbard, wife number two, and I think it was her second or third marriage.”
    After twenty years and countless cases, Harry Rex could still floor people with his recall. The juicier the details, the longer he remembered them.
    A quick chug of beer, then he continued: “She was nice enough, not a bad-looking gal, and smart as hell. She worked in the lumber yard, ran the damned thing, really, and it was making good money when Seth decided to expand. He wanted to buy a lumber yard in Alabama and he started spending time over there. Turns out there was a secretary in the front office who had his attention. Everything blew up. Seth got caught with his pants down and Sybil hired me to scorch his ass. Scorch I did. I convinced the court to order the sale of the sawmill and lumber yard near Palmyra. The other one never made money. Got $200,000 for the sale, all of which went to my client. They also had a nice little condo on the Gulf near Destin. Sybil got that too. That’s the skinny version of what happened, but the file is a foot thick. You can go through it if you