“I know my husband, Mr. Page. He isn’t a killer.”

I begin to doodle on my note pad. Too bad she can’t be on his jury. I glance at my watch. I’ve got some time to kill before my ten o’clock appointment.

“What do the authorities think his motive was?” I ask, interested because of Tommy. God, he was a human backboard. The Arkansas Michael

Chang. I could never beat him. His father I barely knew. I never saw him outside his crowded little convenience store. Mr. Ting’s English was only fair, and he had a heavy accent.

Sent by my mother to pick up a bar of soap or a box of salt, sometimes I’d see the whole family.

Tommy would seem a little embarrassed, but maybe it was my imagination.

“Supposedly, he was hired,” Mrs. Bledsoe says solemnly, “by Paul Taylor to kill him so he could buy the plant cheap.”

“Paul Taylor?” I exclaim, my voice jumping high enough to shatter crystal.

“A white man whose family owned half the county?” It can’t be.

Paul was an asshole, but he was too rich to have to commit murder.

“The very same,” Mrs. Bledsoe confirms.

“My husband hardly even knew him.”

My stomach begins to knot up. I hated the Taylors. Oscar, Paul’s father, had cheated my mother after my father died, and then years later as an adult, Paul had picked up eighty acres of her land at a tax sale. Because of them. Mother died in a shabby three-room apartment on the outskirts of town. Come to think of it, I still hate the Taylors.

“Now, tell me again why would he hire your husband?” I ask. In junior

high, Paul and I had been best friends.