Noah’s truck smelled like coffee, cheese-flavored chips, candy bars, and pastrami sandwiches by Wednesday morning. Quinn McKay hadn’t made so much as a step outside the door of his house. His wife even brought out the trash and took in the paper. Maybe the insurance company had been wrong to think that Quinn was trying to defraud them.
He was on his third bag of chips when Quinn came out of the house on crutches. According to the files that Daniel had sent over, the man had been hit by a car while crossing a street, suffering a fracture to his leg and some kind of pinched nerve in his neck. Noah could see the neck brace from here. Two years ago, Quinn had been stepping off a curb and someone had run over his foot. A year before that, he’d been rear-ended by another vehicle and had suffered severe neck problems. Either he was the unluckiest man alive, or else he’d cried wolf too many times and this last accident was unfortunately legit. Given his history, his problem now was that no one believed him.
For some reason, Noah had thought that the man would be a big fellow, and it turned out he was right. This guy probably made the bathroom scales groan, and he was every bit as tall as Noah, which would put him over six feet. Noah took pictures of him using the crutches to get into his truck. When he drove away, Noah followed him to a convenience store, where he got out without the crutches and filled the gas tank. Then he drove west toward Texarkana.
“Where are you going, Quinn?” Noah asked himself out loud.
He tailed him all the way to the east edge of Texarkana, where the man got out of his truck with no neck brace, slung a bag of golf clubs over his shoulder, and swaggered off to the links. Noah shot pictures of him through the whole process. Then he got out of his own truck and followed the guy onto the course. Quinn met up with a couple of other guys for some good old boy backslaps, and then Quinn McKay, the man who’d been terribly injured by a car, teed off.
Noah sent dozens of photos to Daniel and then called him. He answered on the second ring and said, “You have made an insurance company very happy, and this is enough to give them cause to go after whatever doctor this guy is working with. Job well done.”
“Thanks. You know . . . this might be my last case,” Noah said. “I’ve had a lot of time to really think about what makes me happy. This isn’t it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but what’s this next step gonna be?” Daniel asked.
“I’m thinking about hanging out my shingle in Birthright,” Noah said out loud for the first time.
“You want to practice law in a town of forty people? Are you crazy?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe so, but I can take the cases no one else wants. Word of mouth will get around the area, and I’ll stay as busy as I want to be. With my inheritance, I don’t need the money, so I could do pro bono work for folks,” Noah answered. “I can have my practice in Birthright, and I bet clients will come to me from all the neighboring towns, including Sulphur Springs.”
“How many lawyers are already in Sulphur Springs?” Daniel asked.
“Nineteen last time I counted,” Noah chuckled. “But hey, none of them will work for pennies like I will.”
“You’re crazy,” Daniel said.
“You could be right, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about things these past two days,” Noah said.
“Well, good luck, and when you’re starving, holler at me. We’ve always got a place for you in our firm,” Daniel told him.
“That’s good to know, and thanks. Keep in touch. Bye now.” Noah ended the call.
Fulton, Arkansas, wasn’t much bigger than Birthright. There sure wasn’t a hotel in the place, and Noah had needed to be on twenty-four-hour surveillance. He had taken short catnaps and eaten in his car, and only took fast bathroom breaks to the nearest convenience store, located down the block from where Quinn McKay lived.
Noah got into his truck, made a couple of turns, and was soon back on Highway 30 headed west. His mind kept running in circles and coming back to that word defraud. Since they’d arrived at Miss Janie’s house, Teresa and