As he approached the end, the Judge had been diligent in organizing his affairs. The important records were in his study and easily found.
They went through his mahogany desk first. One drawer
had ten years' worth of bank statements, all arranged nearly in chronological order. His tax returns were in another. There were thick ledger books filled with entries of the donations he'd made to everybody who'd asked. The largest drawer was filled with letter-size manila files, dozens of them. Files on property taxes. medical records, old deeds and titles, bills to pay, judicial conferences, letters from his doctors, his retirement fund. Ray flipped through the row of files without opening them, except for the bills to pay. There was one - $13.80 to Wayne's Lawnmower Repair -  dated a week earlier.
"It's always weird going through the papers of someone who just died," Harry Rex said. "I feel dirty, like a peeping Tom."
"More like a detective looking for clues," Ray said. He was on one side of the desk, Harry Rex the other, their ties off and sleeves rolled up, with piles of evidence between them. Forrest was his usual helpful self. He'd drained half a six-pack for dessert after lunch, and was now snoring it off in the swing on the front porch. But he was there, instead of lost in one of his patented binges. He had disappeared so many times over the years. If he'd blown off his father's funeral, no one in Clanton would’ve been surprised. Just another black mark against that crazy Atlee boy, another story to tell.
In the last drawer they found personal odds and ends - pens, pipes, pictures of the Judge with his cronies at bar conventions, a few photos of Ray and Forrest from years ago, his marriage license, and their mother's death certificate. In an old, unopened envelope there was her obituary clipped from the Clanton Chronicle, dated October 12, 1969, complete with a photograph. Ray read it and handed it to Harry Rex.
"Do you remember her?" Ray asked.
"Yes, I went to her funeral," he said, looking at it. "She was a pretty lady who didn't have many friends."
"Why not?"
"She was from the Delta, and most of those folks have a good dose of blue blood. That's what the Judge wanted in a wife, but it didn't work too well around here. She thought she was marrying money. Judges didn't make squat back then, so she had to work hard at being better than everybody else."
"You didn't like her."
"Not particularly. She thought I was unpolished."
"Imagine that."
"I loved your father, Ray, but there weren't too many tears at her funeral."
"Let's get through one funeral at a time."
"Sorry"
"What was in the will you prepared for him? The last one."
Harry Rex laid the obituary on the desk and sat back in his chair. He glanced at the window behind Ray, then spoke softly. "The Judge wanted to set up a trust so that when this place was sold the money would go there. I'd be the trustee and as such I'd have the pleasure of doling out the money to you and him." He nodded toward the porch. "But his first hundred thousand would be paid back to the estate. That's how much the Judge figured Forrest owed him."
"What a disaster."
"I tried to talk him out of it."
"Thank God he burned it."
"Yes indeed. He knew it was a bad idea, but he was trying to protect Forrest from himself."
"We've been trying for twenty years."
"He thought of everything. He was going to leave it all to you, cut him out completely, but he knew that would only cause friction. Then he got mad because neither of you would ever live here, so he asked me to do a will that gave the house to the church. He never signed it, then Palmer pissed him off over the death penalty and he ditched that idea, said he would have it sold after his death and give the money to charity." He stretched his arms upward until his spine popped. Harry Rex had had two back surgeries and was seldom comfortable. He continued. "I'm guessing the reason he called you and Forrest home was so the three of you could decide what to do with the estate."
"Then why did he do a last-minute will?"
"We'll never know, will we? Maybe he got tired of the pain. I suspect he'd grown fond of the morphine, like most folks at the end. Maybe he knew he was about to die."
Ray looked into the eyes of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who'd been gazing sternly on the Judge's study from the same perch for almost a century. Ray had no doubt that his father had chosen to die on the sofa so that the general could help him through it. The general knew. He knew how and when the Judge died. He knew where the cash came from. He knew who had broken in last night and trashed the office.
"Did he ever include Claudia in anything?" Ray asked.
"Never. He could hold a grudge, you know that."
"She stopped by this morning."
"What'd she want?"
"I think she was looking for money. She said the Judge had always promised to take care of her, and she wanted to know what was in the will."
"Did you tell her?"
"With pleasure."
"She'll be all right, never worry about that woman. You remember old Walter Sturgis, out from Karraway a dirt contractor for years, tight as a tick?" Harry Rex knew everybody in the county, all thirty thousand souls - blacks, whites, and now the Mexicans.
"I don't think so."
"He's rumored to have a half a million bucks in cash, and she's after it. Got the ole boy wearing golf shirts and eating at the country club. He told his buddies he takes Viagra every day."
'Attaboy"
"She'll break him."
Forrest shifted somehow in the porch swing and the chains creaked. They waited a moment, until all was quiet out there. Harry Rex opened a file and said, "Here's the appraisal. We had it done late last year by a guy from Tupelo, probably the best appraiser in north Mississippi."
"How much?"
"Four hundred thousand."
"Sold."
"I thought he was high. Of course, the Judge thought the place was worth a million."
"Of course."
"I figure three hundred is more likely."
"We won't get half that much. What's the appraisal based on?"
"It's right here. Square footage, acreage, charm, comps, the usual."
"Give me a comp."
Harry Rex flipped through the appraisal. "Here's one. A house about the same age, same size, thirty acres, on the edge of Holly Springs, sold two years ago for eight hundred grand."
"This is not Holly Springs."
"No, it's not."
"That's an antebellum town, with lots of old houses."
"You want me to sue the appraiser?"
"Yeah, let's go after him. What would you give for this place?"
"Nothing. You want a beer?"
"No."
Harry Rex lumbered into the kitchen, and returned with a tall can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. "I don't know why he buys this stuff," he mumbled, then gulped a fourth of it.
"Always been his brand."
Harry Rex peeked through the blinds and saw nothing but Forrest's feet hanging off the swing. "I don't think he's too worried about his father's estate."
"He's like Claudia, just wants a check."
"Money would kill him."
It was reassuring to hear Harry Rex share this belief. Ray waited until he returned to the desk because he wanted to watch his eves carefully. "The Judge earned less than nine thousand dollars last year," Ray said, looking at a tax return.
"He was sick," Harry Rex said, stretching and twisting his substantial back, then sitting down. "But he was hearing cases until this
"What kind of cases?"
"All sorts of stuff. We had this Nazi right-wing governor a few years back - "
"I remember him."
"Liked to pray all the time when he campaigned, family values, anti-everything but guns. Turned out he liked the ladies, his wife caught him, big stink, really juicy stuff. The local judges down in Jackson wanted no part of the case for obvious reasons, so they asked the Judge to ride in and referee things."
"Did it go to trial?"
"Oh hell yeah, big ugly trial. The wife had the goods on the governor, who thought he could intimidate the Judge. She got the governor's house and most of ............