Bone Valley (17 page)

As the cosmic
forces had obviously decreed that this was Field Trip Day, I thought, oh, what the heck, I might as well drive back to work via Delilah Groves in east Sarasota County and see if I could find out if it had already been sold, and to whom or what. I mean, it wasn’t like I had a trial starting tomorrow morning. What had Rayford the anti-suave said while he was trying to bilk me out of a deposit for a future crop that wouldn’t be grown? Take State Road 72 to Sugar Bowl Road and turn north?

That meant bumper-cars-at-eighty till I hit Sugar Bowl Road, which was pretty far east, but a sweet little road through honest-to-gosh countryside.

The first thing I saw when I drove through the gates of the orange grove was a covey of surveyors working among the trees. I knew I’d have to see what that was all about, but at the moment, I filed it in the “later” box and continued to the office. Where I was rewarded by a “Closed” sign on the door and no one around.

I parked my car, tried the front door, and the back door, both of which were locked. Then I eyed the windows, but decided breaking into the headquarters of the plaintiff who was suing two of my clients, especially while surveyors were within shouting distance away, would not constitute a move that The Florida Bar’s ethics division would in any possible way condone. Besides that, the lower windows had burglar bars on them, which immediately piqued my interest in what might be inside. I mean, who would want to steal a bunch of orange orders and shipping labels?

Curiosity thus raised, I found myself peeking in the windows, between the burglar bars, even jiggling things, testing for sturdiness. In fact, as fate would have it, I was doing my best to unfasten a loose screw on the attached bars when I heard a car drive up. Good thing I was in the back, and I inhaled myself back into lawyer, not burglar, mode and sallied around to the front to meet whoever was in the car.

A tubby blonde with Tammy-Faye-lite makeup jumped down from a tall SUV and said, “You looking for something?”

Mentally I added her to my list of prospects for my grooming school if I ever burned out on this lawyer thing, but said, “Oh, yes, thank you. I was looking for Rayford Clothier.”

“You looking for him out back of the office?”

“Oh, just admiring the groves. Doesn’t look like Rayford’s here.”

“Oh, he’s here all right. Had me lock the doors while I was at lunch so nobody would bother him. What’cha need to see him ’bout?”

Well, it was none of her business, I thought, but I smiled, and introduced myself by name and trade and said I needed to speak with Rayford on business.

“I’m Odell,” she said, and stuck out her hand, which I took as briefly as I could under the prevailing customs and conventions. Then she bent down, turned over a rock, got out a key, and clumped heavily on weirdly outdated platform shoes toward the door. “Rayford doesn’t trust me to take the key with me.”

My curiosity level hit a new high as Odell unlocked the door. What did Rayford have inside?

While I pondered Rayford’s burglar bars and mistrust of Odell, she plunked the key back under the same rock.

So much for security, I thought, and made a careful mental note as to exactly which rock hid the door key. That information could come in pretty handy if my meeting wasn’t quite as fruitful as I hoped.

“Rayford’s not much for lawyers,” Odell said as she went inside the orange-grove office. Assuming an implied invitation, I followed her.

Without saying anything further to me, Odell shouted out at a closed door, “Yo, Rayford.”

Good professional manners, I thought, and waited. In another minute, a tall, dark-haired man, sporting a cowboy shirt, came out the door and glared at me. Then his glare softened.

“Well, little darling, no flies on you.”

Okay, a western yahoo I needed to bend to do my bidding. How hard could that be? I smiled so big that my eyes squinted up, and fluffed up my half yard of perfect hair. “Hello, my name is Lilly Cleary, and I’m hoping to borrow you for just a few minutes.”

Rayford stared at my chest for a second, and then took a good look at my legs.

When his eyes landed on my face, I said, “If we could just step into your office for a minute—”

“We know each other? You seem…familiar.”

Uh-oh. Either a worn-out pickup line, which didn’t seem necessary since I’d already come on to him, or he might have remembered my voice from my two alt-personality phone calls.

“Oh, no,” I said, “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you until now.” Which was, of course, technically true, though possibly misleading in the context, a well-used trick of trial lawyers.

“You sure?”

“Oh, quite. I’d remember
you.
” Big movie-star smile.

“What do you want?” His tone sounded carefully neutral. But his grin was one inch off a salacious sneer.

“I’m an attorney and I was hoping to talk a little business.”

The glare came back on Rayford Clothier’s face. Okay, most people lose the grin when they find out I’m an attorney. I’m used to that.

“What do you want with me?”

“I’m the attorney representing Angus John and Miguel.”

“Who?”

“You know, the two men Delilah Groves is suing. The orange-defamation case.”

“Look, I already told my attorney to get that lawsuit dropped. You don’t need to waste my time any further. You can go now.” But for good measure, Rayford stole another look at my legs.

“You told your attorney to dismiss it?”

“Yeah. You should get the paperwork today, tomorrow.”

Well, that put a wholly new and interesting spin on things, didn’t it? “Obviously I haven’t yet received the notice of dismissal,” I said, buying a few seconds to recompose my set of questions. “But…why?”

“Why’s it matter to you, why? You afraid you won’t get paid?” His salacious grin turned to a belligerent glare.

Pausing a moment to assimilate Rayford’s mood change, and to figure out how to play the next round, I stared back at him. He was built solid, and almost handsome in that Marlboro man sort of way. I let him see I was looking at him. Tit for tat, so to speak.

“Well, good,” I said, nodding and then aiming a playful sort of grin at him. “Thank you. For dismissing the suit. But I’d sure like to discuss this further with you. May we step inside your office?”

“Look, I told my lawyer to get rid of the suit. I’m sick and tired of all you lawyers, so I told him to get me out of it.”

“That sounds like a fine plan,” I said, gaining wind and composure. “Especially since there was never any money in the suit, and then there’d be all the bad publicity.” I remembered what Angus had said, that the gyp waste would make the groves like a toxic-waste site, and I threw that in. “You surely didn’t want your customers thinking you’re growing oranges in a Superfund site.” I was fishing around, hoping that if I came close enough to the
real
reason he’d dropped the suit, he’d own up to it.

He paused, and stared at me. At my face this time, not my body. As if he could read something from my carefully neutral expression. It felt like a whole minute ticked by before he spoke. “You’re supposed to talk to my attorney, aren’t you? I mean, you aren’t allowed to talk directly to me, are you?”

Well, technically no. The Florida Bar ethics code prohibits an attorney on one side of the case from directly discussing a pending lawsuit with an opposing party like Rayford if he’s represented by counsel. But I figured, hey, if he’s already dropped the lawsuit, then he is not technically the opposing party anymore. Right? And that made talking directly to him a gray area in the law, and gray areas are to lawyers what coastal hurricanes are to rabid surfers.

Plus, I figured I could just say I came to place an early order on the honeybell tangelos if the ethics investigators were summoned and got huffy.

But what I said was, “Oh, I thought a direct conversation might benefit us both.”

“I don’t see how.”

Change of tactics seemed appropriate, so I wandered to the window and looked out. “Such a lovely, lovely, grove. I saw surveyors out front? Are you…expanding the groves?”

“No.” Rayford continued to stare at me. About this time I became keenly aware of the fact that Rayford had never invited me into his office and the overly eye-shadowed Odell was watching us as if we were the warm-up act for Toby Keith. “Perhaps we could discuss this whole situation in your office?”

“I’m fine where I am,” Rayford said.

Okay, be that way, I thought. “Perhaps Mrs. Moody has some plans for the groves—surveyors laying out a plan for an office for her, perhaps?”

“How’d you know about her interest in the groves?” Belligerence brewed over to hostile.

“Plantation, Inc., was your partner in Delilah Groves. And M. David Moody was the sole shareholder in Plantation. See, I know how to look up incorporation papers. I’m a lawyer and we know how to do stuff like that.” Actually, Olivia had looked up the Plantation, Inc., records, but Rayford didn’t need to know that level of detail. “And, being a lawyer, I know that Mrs. Moody would inherit Mr. Moody’s interest in the groves.” A whopper of an assumption on my part since I’d never seen M. David’s will, but Rayford’s prior admission that Mrs. Moody had an interest in the groves indicated I’d guessed right.

Rayford didn’t say anything. Odell wasn’t even pretending to work. I didn’t have the sense I was going to learn much more useful information from either. But it was too long a drive for me to just give up. So I smiled again, aiming for a sad, knowing smile, not a giddy one, and I said, “Poor woman. Maybe a new project at the groves would be just the thing to perk her up in her time of sorrow.”

“Sorrow, my ass, that woman was calculating the inheritance tax before her old man was good and stiff. She was out here going through the books the same day they pulled him from the gyp stack.”

Wow, okay, I’d finally hit a target Rayford wanted to chat about, and also I cattily remembered Mrs. Moody apparently being on a date with Galleon Theibuet two nights after her husband learned which circle in hell he was assigned to. So, let’s gossip, I thought. Having worked up to a specific distrust and dislike of Sherilyn since her attempted phone calls to me wrenched open a Pandora’s box of paranoia, I was more than willing to trash the woman. But before I said anything, Rayford Clothier walked back into his office and started to shut the door behind him.

“Wait,” I practically screamed after him. Then I composed myself and asked in a sweeter tone, “Please, explain to me why you dropped the suit. I guess Mrs. Moody agreed too. Was it her idea?”

Rayford stopped retreating. He turned and glared at me. “Why?”

“I just thought the more I know, the better chance I have of convincing my client to let the whole matter drop. You know, not file a retaliatory lawsuit against Delilah for wrongful suit, abuse of process, or harassment, or trashing his First Amendment rights. That sort of thing. Also, perhaps if I fully understand what is going on, I can convince him not to protest the groves’ fertilizer habits anymore.”

“Look, I don’t know you,” Rayford snapped. “And I don’t care if your lunatic client wants to sue the groves or march around it all day long. I’m tired of oranges and I’m tired of Florida. I’m selling out and going back west. I had a cattle ranch out there once and I’m going to get me another one. To hell with this state.”

With that Rayford turned and walked into his office and picked up a drink that was sitting on his desk. He turned back to face me and took a sip. I saw that most of the glass was empty.

So, okay, that amber liquid explained the tart, if not completely loose tongue. No doubt Rayford had been sitting in his locked office, drinking, while Odell had been out. Well, all the better for me, I thought, and scooted right in after him. Sure, Rayford hadn’t exactly invited me into his office, but I followed on the theory that it’s pretty hard to shut the door in the face of someone who’s already inside. I took a quick peek around, spotted a couple of intriguing filing cabinets, a door that was cracked just enough for me to see it was a bathroom, and wholly ordinary condo-art prints on the walls. Nothing of obvious, apparent value, like real art, to justify the burglar bars. I put my eyes right on Rayford.

“You seem like a very interesting man,” I said, noting to myself that you should never overlook the obvious ploys because they usually work on men. “I did wonder about Mrs. Moody and that Theibuet fellow. Galleon Theibuet.” Fishing, yeah, but the man had a drink, and apparently a grudge.

Rayford took another sip, and stared at me. Then he took a big swallow.

“Theibuet, Sherilyn?” I queried, prompting him.

“Yeah. I hear tell your grieving widow has been chasing Theibuet all over town for years. But then, she’s come sniffing around me too. Funny thing was, old Theibuet and M. David were tight. Till M. David screwed him over royally.”

And men complain that women gossip, I thought, but added, “Screwed, how?”

“You mean how old Sherilyn screwed Theibuet? I assume the traditional fashion. You need a drawing?”

“No, I mean what did you mean that M. David screwed over Theibuet?”

“Business. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Perhaps I might. I read the newspapers.” Yeah, okay, okay, but I’m doing better now.

“Cutting to the chase,” I added, “M. David was CEO at Boogie Bog. When it began having expensive problems disposing of the gypsum sludge, M. David, as its CEO, sold back his shares of company stock at an inflated value. The company had to borrow money to buy his stocks, and the additional debt killed it.”

Clink, clink. Rayford took another swallow of his drink. “Yeah. Good for you,” he said.

“So? What am I missing? You obviously know more of the story than the newspapers,” I said, trying to appeal to his vanity.

As I waited for an answer, I watched Rayford’s face. He took another sip, and swallowed loudly, and a furious little charade of emotions flickered across his cowboy features as I caught him, open-faced, apparently calculating how to play me. Maybe it was his version of a risk-benefit analysis. Or maybe it was just too much whiskey in the middle of the day. But finally he spoke.