Sycamore Row Read Free Page B

it’s safe to assume something bad happened to Seth Hubbard because you put him in the past tense.”
    “I did what?” Prather asked. The deputy had an annoying habit of dropping a loud, loaded question over breakfast and following it up with silence. He knew the details and the dirt, and he was always fishing to see if anyone else had something to add.
    “The past tense. You asked ‘Did I know him?’ not ‘Do I know him?’—which would of course indicate he’s still alive. Right?”
    “I suppose.”
    “So what happened?”
    Andy Furr, a mechanic at the Chevrolet place, said loudly, “Killed himself yesterday. Found him hangin’ from a tree.”
    “Left a note and everything,” added Dell as she swooped by with a coffeepot. The café had been open for an hour, so there was little doubt Dell knew as much about Seth Hubbard’s passing as anyone.
    “Okay, what did the note say?” Jake asked calmly.
    “Can’t tell you, sweetie,” she chirped. “That’s between me and Seth.”
    “You didn’t know Seth,” Prather said.
    Dell was an old tart with the quickest tongue in town. She said, “I loved Seth once, or maybe it was twice. Can’t always remember.”
    “There have been so many,” Prather said.
    “Yeah, but you’ll never get close old boy,” she said.
    “You really don’t remember, do you?” Prather shot back and got a few laughs.
    “Where was the note?” Jake asked, trying to reverse the conversation.
    Prather stuffed a load of pancakes in his mouth, chewed for a while, then replied, “On the kitchen table. Ozzie’s got it now, still investigatin’ but not much to it. Looks like Hubbard went to church, seemed fine, then drove back onto his property, took a stepladder and a rope and did the deed. One of his workers found him around two yesterday afternoon, swingin’ in the rain. All dressed up in his Sunday best.”
    Interesting, bizarre, tragic, but Jake found it difficult to have any concern for a man he’d never met. Andy Furr asked, “Did he have anything?”
    “Don’t know,” Prather said. “I think Ozzie knew him but he’s not sayin’ much.”
    Dell refilled their cups and stopped to talk. With a hand on one hip she said, “No, I never knew him. But my cousin knows his first wife, he had at least two, and accordin’ to the first one Seth had some land and money. She said he laid low, kept secrets, and didn’t trust anybody. Also said he was a nasty sonofabitch, but then they always say that after the divorce.”
    “You oughtta know,” Prather added.
    “I do know, old boy. I know so much more than you.”
    “Is there a last will and testament?” Jake asked. Probate work was not his favorite, but a sizable estate usually meant a decent fee for someone in town. It was all paper shuffling with a couple of court appearances, nothing difficult and not too tedious. Jake knew that by 9:00 a.m. the lawyers in town would be slinking around trying to find out who wrote Seth Hubbard’s last will.
    “Don’t know yet,” Prather said.
    “Wills ain’t public record, are they Jake?” asked Bill West, an electrician at the shoe factory north of town.
    “Not until you die. You can change your will at the last minute, so it would be useless to record it. Plus, you might not want the world to know what’s in your will until you’re dead. Once that happens, and once the will is probated, then it’s filed in court and becomes public.” Jake looked around as he spoke and counted at least three men he had prepared wills for. He made them short, quick, and cheap, and this was well known in town. It kept the traffic moving.
    “When does probate start?” Bill West asked.
    “There’s no time limit. Usually the surviving spouse or children of the deceased will find the will, take it to a lawyer, and a month or so after the funeral they’ll go to court and start the process.”
    “What if there’s no will?”
    “That’s a lawyer’s dream,” Jake said with a laugh. “It’s a