The Buzzard Table - By Margaret Maron Page 0,6

Cal asked, coming down the hall with his pajamas stuffed in his backpack.

“Of men important to a woman,” I said. “Like husbands and stepsons.”

“You can’t tag Dave Jowett for this,” Dwight’s brother Rob said firmly on the short drive to Cotton Grove. “We were in school together and I never saw him fly off the handle or lose his temper to the point of violence, not even when that Dobbs pitcher tried to beanball him. He just isn’t the type, Dwight.”

“Even if his wife was slipping around on him?”

“Do you know for a fact she was?” Rob asked, glancing back at Dwight in his rearview mirror.

“Don’t know much of anything yet,” Dwight admitted.

Sometimes it’s hard to realize that these two are brothers. Dwight looks like his father: tall and rangy, with brown eyes and brown hair. Rob is built like their mother: small-boned, wiry, with green eyes and russet hair. Dwight’s face is broad and open, while Rob’s is more pointed, with a foxy slyness that tends to make opposing lawyers decide to settle out of court.

Rob is maybe half an inch under six feet so he was never tall enough nor muscular enough to follow Dwight onto the West Colleton varsity basketball team, but he had been an excellent shortstop on the same baseball team as Dave Jowett. Not that either of them was on my radar screen back then. Portland and I’d had our sights trained on the captain and quarterback of her school’s football team, so I had nothing to add to the discussion. Except for that one clerk’s comment, there wasn’t even any good gossip going around the courthouse.

“You still tight with Jowett?” Dwight asked.

“Not really,” Rob said. “His office is down the block from mine in Cameron Village so we run into each other at lunchtime now and then, and I’ve met his wife. He thinks it’s funny that I’ve wound up with three kids when he was the one who wanted to coach some sons through Little League.”

I saw Kate lean toward him with a contented smile. All the children were related to each other through Kate, but only R.W. was his by blood. Late last summer, though, Rob had adopted Kate’s son Jake and together he and Kate had adopted Mary Pat, her orphaned cousin.

Cal had been fascinated and asked a million questions about how adoption worked and did this mean that Mary Pat and Jake were his real cousins now that Uncle Rob was their real dad?

Before Dwight and Rob could pick up again on Dave Jowett’s missing wife, I asked Kate what tonight’s dinner was in aid of.

“If I know Aunt Jane, it’s to take the spotlight off her health for one evening. Sigrid doesn’t hover and Anne tries not to, but it’s hard on all three of them. Anne wants to tell her sisters and Aunt Jane absolutely refuses. I can’t say I blame her. Mary and Elizabeth both are such take-charge types that they would hound her to go for chemo or radiation or else spend the next two months berating everybody in Cotton Grove for not telling them sooner, back when it might have helped.”

“But it wouldn’t have helped, would it?” I asked as we entered town and Rob slowed the car to a sedate 35 miles an hour. “Not once it’s in the liver and pancreas?”

“And so far, she’s not in too much pain. Or so she says. She’s told Anne that she doesn’t want the others to know until it’s time for hospice. I just hope they won’t take it out on Anne.” Kate turned to face me around the headrest of her front seat. “Be prepared for Aunt Jane to give you a bit of a hard time, though.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You were the one who told Sigrid, remember?”

Rob turned at one of Cotton Grove’s three traffic lights, and a moment later we glided through the open iron gates to follow the circular drive to the imposing front door.

“Nobody swore me to secrecy,” I said. “And besides, Sigrid had already figured out that something was wrong.”

With rain pounding on the car roof, Dwight reached for the umbrellas on the rear ledge and passed one up to Rob.

Chivalry is not yet dead in the South.

CHAPTER

3

These peaceful animals pose no risk.

—The Turkey Vulture Society

I was not surprised when Chloe Adams opened the door. A licensed practical nurse, she has an easy, reassuring manner that makes her a good companion for someone ill or dying. Early fifties