Page 19 of Key West Homecoming

“I don't know any lawyers in Key West I could recommend,” Connie said. “The one I used to trust retired last year. But I've got a niece who's a Boston attorney. She's down here on a leave of absence. Smart as they come.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“I'll give her a call. Give me a few minutes.”

Connie tapped the table once with two fingers and walked back toward the swinging door at the end of the bar.

“She only offers her niece to people she likes,” Leah said. “Just so you know.”

Emma nodded. “Understood.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “Drink your tea. This might take a bit.”

Emma took a sip of the tea, then took the legal pad out of her bag, turned to a clean page, and did the thing she knew how to do.

She had built one hundred pitches this way. She wrote out the problem in three sentences, the evidence underneath it, and the one ask at the bottom. She’d done it for companies whose names were on buildings but had never once done it for herself.

At the top of the page she wrote the problem. Twenty-three Hibiscus Lane, sale closing in ten days, and a seller who doesn’t legally own it.

Underneath that, she listed what she knew in the order she could prove it. A will recorded Monroe County two years before her grandmother died naming her. as beneficiary. An earlier will filed in Miami-Dade naming her uncle as sole beneficiary. A tenant who had paid rent to Arthur every month for three years. A letter to that tenant from somebody neither the broker nor the buyer could account for, promising him a tenancy the buyer had no intention of keeping. A broker in Naples who had picked up the phone when nothing required her to do so.

Emma sat back and looked at her list.

Written in her own hand, it stopped being a family misunderstanding. Every line was a document. Documents could be pulled, and dates could be laid against each other. A man who had done this once had almost certainly left a trail of having done it before. Following trails was the thing she had spent years perfecting.

At the bottom, she wrote the ask. Find a Florida attorney today. Stop the closing. Find out what else he took.

The room went on around her. Tess pulled a draft and sent it down the bar without looking in Emma's direction. There was a man at the far end of the bar, working through a plate of something fried, reading a paperback at the same time.

She turned the pad face down and finished her tea.

Tess dropped into the chair across from her with a glass of something with ice in it.

“Four minutes,” she said. “That’s what I’ve got. Leah’s timing me.”

“I’m not timing you,” Leah said, going past with three plates up one arm.

“Don’t believe it. She’s timing me.”

Over in the corner, the man with the guitar had gotten as far as adjusting the stand for the third time and hadn't played a note.

“Is there music at lunch?” Emma asked.

“There is today.” Tess drank some of her drink. “That's Joey. He's been coming here for a while now, but he's never once played in this building. Today he is. I want more music in here, but Connie, well, enough about that.”

“I don't mind. Why not have music all the time? Your place could get a reputation for good music as well as good food and drink.”

“I asked Connie about music on Sunday afternoons back in March, and then again I asked her in April. I asked her yesterday too, but she said no again. She’s said no every single time.” Tess set the glass down. “I almost gave up but this morning I asked whether Joey could try one Tuesday lunch and she said fine. I called him and told him to get over here as fast as he could, just in case she changed her mind.”

“I’m not sure I understand why she said yes to today, but not for the other days. Isn’t this the same thing?”

“It's exactly the same thing. It's just not Sunday.”

Emma tried to follow Tess’s story but was certain there was a blip in the story somewhere. If it had been any other day, she might have stayed invested in it, but today her mind couldn’t handle too much complexity.

Leah came back past this time she stopped with the empty tray against her hip. “I beat the linen company.”

“You're lying.”