Bitter Legacy by H. Terrell Griffin

Author:H. Terrell Griffin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2011-04-27T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The man straddling the stool next to me was in his sixties, wore three days of beard stubble, a T-shirt stained by something dark, faded jeans. His gray hair was falling over his ears in the haphazard way of a man in need of a haircut.

“You’re new in town,” he said.

“Just passing through.”

“Ain’t no hotels around here.”

“I know. I’m staying over near Naples.”

He blew out some air, a sigh maybe. “Lord. What brings a traveling man into this dump of a town?”

“I came for a funeral.”

“The only funeral around here is for Jason Blakemoore.”

“Yeah.”

“You know Jason?”

“I had some dealings with him.”

“Trouble?”

“No. I’m a lawyer. We were working on a case together.”

“Where you from?”

“Longboat Key, up near Sarasota.”

The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Billy Joe Cuthbert. Folks call me B.J.”

I shook his hand, felt the calluses of a man who was used to hard work. “Matt Royal.”

“You just get in?”

“Yeah. Drove down from Longboat. I wanted to get my bearings, make sure I didn’t miss finding the church tomorrow. Saw the bar and needed a beer.”

“You know Jason well?”

“No. Just talked to him on the phone.”

“I thought you said you were working on a case together.”

“We were. Sort of. A friend of mine tried to hire Jason to help him out on a matter, and Jason asked me to lend a hand.”

“You work together long?”

“No. Just the past few days.”

“That’s a long way to come to a funeral for a guy you really didn’t know.”

“I remember when he used to play football up at Gainesville.”

“Ah.”

“He was pretty good.”

“Yeah. That was probably the best time of his life. What kind of case did y’all have together?”

“Something to do with some Seminole claims. We didn’t get too far into it before he was killed.”

“It wasn’t about that black guy who claimed to be a Seminole, was it?”

“That’s it.”

“Funny. Jason was in here Thursday night talking about that one. Said the black guy was from the Bahamas, but claimed to be a Seminole. I been here all my life, knowed a lot of Indians. Ain’t never seen one who was black. I figured it was some sort of scam and old Jason wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.”

The conversation had become inquisitorial and that raised my suspicion at first. As we talked, I began to think it was just the nature of smalltown gossip, a local plumbing the mind of the visitor, adding to his stock of stories for other nights whiled away in the Swamp Rat Bar.

I finished my beer and signaled the bartender for another. “Did Jason say anything about the claim?”

B.J. shook his head. “Just said the guy had a paper that backed up the claim. Oh, and he did say something about getting a lawyer up the coast to help him out. That musta been you.”

The man sitting next to B.J. had been listening to us, watching closely. We weren’t talking loudly and I suspected he was having a hard time separating our conversation from the din surrounding us.

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