Inez Opened The Estate Box And Asked Who Had Touched It

Inez arrived carrying a ruler, a yellow pad, and her own coffee.

She was sixty-one, a Black woman with close gray curls and a face that gave away very little. She left her car door open until she saw me come onto the porch.

"Tell me the dates again," she said.

"Will in May. Seal bought in September."

"Bought isn't made. Made isn't used. Let's see it."

We sat at my kitchen table. I set the estate-sale box between us and showed her the invoice where I had found it.

"Don't take anything else out yet."

She photographed the box, the paper cards, and the invoice. Then she wrote down my name, the time, and how the box had come into my hands.

"You think I put it there?"

"I think somebody will ask."

The bill came from Gulf Letter and Seal, a small stamp shop in Hattiesburg. Vera had paid $64.80 for a replacement seal and shipping. A proof of the design was stapled behind it.

Inez laid my photo of the will beside the proof.

Both had a small star at the bottom of the outer ring.

"There," I said.

"There what?"

"Same stamp."

"Maybe the same design. Slow down, Mas."

She had once caught a missing year in a land record that three lawyers had read. She did not celebrate a match until she had tried to break it.

We found Vera's office ledger underneath a pack of envelopes. Its last pages listed supplies, rent, and postage. September 12 had an entry in her square hand: Old seal hinge broken. Order new.

"That's better," Inez said. "Still needs someone outside this box."

The sale receipt was in my check register. Vera's daughter, Ruth, had signed it. I called her and put the phone on speaker.

"Paper box, twenty-eight dollars," Ruth said. "Yes. You hauled those file shelves for us."

"Did you look inside?" Inez asked.

"Just enough to see paper. I didn't sell client files. Those went to the lawyer handling Mother's records."

Inez asked for his name. She wrote it down before thanking Ruth.

Then she asked about the hatchery agreement.

I brought the bank envelope from the office cabinet. Inside were signed originals, repair invoices, and a canceled check for $118,000.

After the last hurricane, Emi had wanted to sell. The tanks were cracked. Our intake pump lay in marsh grass two roads away.

I had sold the little rental house I owned inland.

"She wanted to call it a loan," I told Inez. "I couldn't ask her to carry that debt. We changed the ownership instead."

The agreement gave me fifty-one percent of Marsh Lantern Hatchery LLC. Emi kept forty-nine percent. I became its manager. Selling the main equipment or winding down the business required both owners' written consent.

If one owner died, the survivor could buy that share at a price set by an outside appraiser. Emi had insisted on that line. She said neither of us should have to run a nursery with somebody who hated wet floors.

I had forgotten her saying that until I saw where she had pressed her pen too hard beside the clause.

Inez read each page, including the blank backs.

"Where are the copies?"

"Bank. Accountant. Lawyer who wrote it."

"Those people still living?"

"As far as I know."

"Good. Dead people make slow witnesses."

I laughed once. It hurt less than I expected.

She checked the date beside Emi's signature against the canceled check.

"Your nephew can inherit what she owned," she said. "He can't turn forty-nine into a hundred by talking fast."

"Can this stop Tuesday?"

"A lawyer can tell you what can stop Tuesday. I can tell you which papers to bring."

We reached attorney Celia Voss through the accountant. She agreed to see us that afternoon for a $350 consultation.

Before leaving, I opened my tide-card tin and took out the card from May 6.

There was a brown wash almost to the top. Beside it I had written: Pump screen jammed. Emi here, six to eleven. Red boots.

"She could have signed a will after eleven," Inez said.

"I know."

"Then don't claim more than it says."

I put it in a separate envelope.

At the hatchery, a delivery driver was waiting outside the gate. He held a clipboard and two orange spray cans.

"Need to mark the disconnects," he said. "Pike's order."

I told him no work was approved and asked for his dispatch sheet.

He let me photograph it before calling his boss.

The sheet listed removal of tanks, pumps, and electrical panels. The work date was Tuesday, as Nolan had said.

But a second line read: Monday, 6 a.m. Advance crew. Drain nursery.