Something keeps me from giving him my unqualified trust. “What about Judge Elder? Are you still worried he’s leaning to Shad’s side in this thing?”

This question Quentin actually considers. “I don’t want to get into legal details, but I’ve tried to get some special considerations for Tom at the jail, considering the severity of his health problems—not to mention my worries about Billy Byrd—and Joe hasn’t been any help.”

“You should have filed that damned change-of-venue motion.”

Quentin looks upriver, where a string of barges is making its way down from Vicksburg. “You got any boiled peanuts? I could really use some.”

“No boiled peanuts, Q.”

“Damn. How ’bout you send that pretty writer out for some? Or one of them bodyguards you got?”

I stand in exasperation and walk to the rail. “Do you want to go over the jury pool or not?”

He waves his hand. “Nah. I just want you to go over it, so you can give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down during the voir dire. I choose by instinct, you know that. But you might know some info on locals that somehow escapes my Sherlockian skills.” The old lawyer gives me a self-mocking grin. “I’m not perfect. Not quite, anyway.”

“That’s for damn sure,” says Doris Avery, stepping onto the gallery with Serenity in tow.

Doris is thirty years her husband’s junior, which puts her close to my age. She’s also a lawyer, and a beautiful woman. In the afternoon light, I can’t help noticing the difference in skin tone between her and Serenity. Though lighter than Quentin, Doris is darker than Serenity, and thus solidly on the wrong end of the paper-bag-test spectrum.

“What have you ladies been talking about inside?” Quentin asks. “The handsome menfolk out here, I trust?”

“Delusional,” says Doris. “That’s what you are. And you’d better watch your mouth around this girl, Q. She won’t put up with your sass for five seconds.”

Quentin grins, then winks at Serenity. “I’ll look forward to being reprimanded.”

Doris snorts. “What have you two been talking about? The voir dire, I hope.”

“Boiled peanuts,” Quentin says. “I got a serious jones for some right now.”

“Well,” Doris says with infinite patience, “let me get cleaned up a little, and then we’ll take a ride and see if we can find some in this town. These two have more important things to do than listen to your bullshit.”

Serenity and I leave them smiling on the gallery, slapping it back and forth like a couple married for fifty years.

“She’s worried about Quentin,” Serenity says as we get into the Audi. “She said he’s been going down fast since he lost his second leg.”