firm would have almost as much stake in things as the Traylors if they had a history of being retained by that family. Losing them would hurt their own bottom line, and that was the last thing any smart lawyer would do.
All right, maybe not any lawyer, but I’d yet to meet one who was a decent person.
I pushed aside that thought before it could go any further.
I just needed to figure out how to find out who their lawyer was. If I’d still been on speaking terms with Bradyn, I might’ve asked him. I would’ve lied about why, but I could’ve gotten the information. That wasn’t possible now, which meant I’d need to get a little more creative.
Stretching my arms over my head, I stood up. My spine and other joints popped, and my muscles groaned. I’d been sitting in the same position for too long. I glanced at the clock and was surprised to see that it was after noon. I’d completely lost track of time.
My stomach growled, like it’d suddenly remembered that I’d barely had breakfast and had skipped lunch. Making myself something to eat would give my brain time to work while my body was busy. I’d solved more than one case while cleaning or cooking or exercising, that sort of thing.
I’d taken two bites of my grilled cheese sandwich when it hit me.
Probate.
I didn’t know how long wills had been around, but I figured it had to be ever since there were lawyers. Whenever it’d started didn’t matter. What mattered was that most people – especially most rich people – had lawyers draw up wills for their estates. I didn’t know all the lingo or the process, but what I did know was that probate records could tell me a lot.
I’d used it as a source before. Two years ago, I’d been hired to find the birth father of a co-worker’s girlfriend. I’d ended up using probate records to track him down. I hadn’t thought of it with this investigation, though. After all, I was going so far back in time that the Douglass family hadn’t had property. They’d been property.
The historian I’d contacted to help with my research had found that Camilla Lake, ancestor to Kathie Mae, had been listed as an employee of the Calvert family in an old newspaper article he’d sent me the picture of. I hadn’t looked past that because I’d already had the rest of the Mae family tree from the birth and marriage records I’d found in other ways.
I couldn’t believe I’d missed the most obvious path to the information I needed. If I could find probate documentation that listed the Adams family as property, passed from one generation to the next, it’d help Min’s case.
It might also get me the information I needed about the Traylors family’s knowledge of it. I had the names of Clancy Traylor’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, which meant I could get more names of people, of items…and the name of the law firm or lawyer who’d handled the estate.
I hurried back to my laptop and immediately started searching probate records in Savannah, Georgia, for Verne Traylor, Clancy’s father. I’d found his obituary from 2016, when I’d worked on the original family tree, and gotten other names and dates from that. Since only a few years had passed since then, the chances were that the same lawyer who’d handled Verne’s estate would still be the Traylors’s attorney for that sort of stuff.
It didn’t take long for me to find it, but when I did, it was as if all the air in the cabin had been sucked out, leaving me suffocating, vision blurring, darkening, until the world shifted.
The smells.
Tobacco smoke.
Lysol.
Irish Spring.
I gagged. Coughed. Choked. Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t breathe.
The world shifted.
“Please, don’t.” My voice was thin, weak. I wanted to shout at him, but he said I had to be quiet.
“We’ve talked about this, darlin’.” His hands were on me, bunching up my nightgown.
I tried to wear pajama bottoms two weeks ago, but he got mad and said little girls wore nightgowns. I hadn’t seen those PJs since. I think he threw them away, and Mom got mad when I asked for more. She said ladies wore nightgowns. When I asked what she wore, she told me to mind my own business.
“Give me your hand.”
I shook my head, stuffing my fists behind my back. I was gonna be thirteen in two months. A teenager. Almost a grown-up.