The whole way he gave turn signals so far in advance that I almost made the wrong left once. In addition he would wave and point into his rearview mirror, waiting to see me nod every time in acknowledgment. Since I’d lived in Lawrenceton my whole life, this was unnecessary and intensely irritating. Only my curiosity about what he was going to tell me kept me from ramming his rear, and then apologizing picturesquely with tears and a handkerchief.

“Wasn’t too hard to find, was it!” he said encouragingly when I got out of my car in the parking lot of the Jasper Building, one of the oldest office buildings in our town and a familiar landmark to me from childhood.

“No,” I said briefly, not trusting myself to speak further.

“I’m up on the third floor,” Lawyer Sewell announced, I guess in case I got lost between the parking lot and the front door. I bit the inside of my lip and boarded the elevator in silence, while Sewell kept up a patter of small talk about the attendance at the funeral, how Jane’s loss would affect many, many people, the weather, and why he liked having an office in the Jasper Building (atmosphere…much better than one of those prefabricated buildings).

By the time he opened his office door, I was wondering how sharp-tongued Jane could have endured Bubba Sewell. When I saw that he had three employees in his smallish office, I realized he must be more intelligent than he seemed, and there were other unmistakable signs of prosperity-knick-knacks from the Sharper Image catalog, superior prints on the walls and leather upholstery on the chairs, and so on. I looked around Sewell’s office while he gave some rapid instructions to the well-dressed red-haired secretary who was his first line of defense. She didn’t seem like a fool, and she treated him with a kind of friendly respect.

“Well, well, now, let’s see about you, Miss Teagarden,” the lawyer said jovially when we were alone. “Where’s that file? Gosh-a-Moses, it’s somewhere in this mess here!”