“No. He just lost his other leg. Diabetes.”

“Christ, that’s an epidemic down here. Surely he must be retired?”

“Quentin lost his legs, Caitlin, not his brain. But he is retired, as a matter of fact.”

“How old is he?”

“A little older than Dad, probably. Dad’s been his personal physician for most of his life. If Quentin Avery would come out of retirement to defend anybody, it would be Dad.”

“I’ve heard some mixed things about Quentin over the years.”

“You could say the same about me. Quentin is my first choice, hands down.”

A black Mississippian who left his native state in the early 1950s to go to law school, Quentin Avery fought on the front lines of the civil rights movement, wherever those lines happened to be. More than once, he tried landmark cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and won. In the latter part of his career, Quentin drew criticism for taking on lucrative plaintiffs’ cases, but even then he always did a certain amount of pro bono work for the cause.

Caitlin rises into a sitting position, then slides to the other end of tub, so that she’s facing me, her breasts half submerged in the water. Intuition tells me she’s about to probe me about Henry Sexton’s work. I need to distract her. As casually as possible, I say, “Didn’t you tell me the other day that you were late for your period?”

She waves her hand as if dismissing the most trivial of issues. “Oh, you know me. Too much exercise, probably. I’ll get it this week.”

My digression has thrown her off balance, but only for a few seconds. She jabs my chest with her toes and says, “I know you made Henry a promise, but you need to give me something to work on. There’s no way I can sleep after what’s happened. Give me some way to help Tom.”

“I wish I could. But I really need to go see him now.”

“What about Annie? I was planning to go back to the paper.”

“What for? It would really help me if you stayed with her. Just for an hour. I could take her with me, but Mom’s probably already in bed.”

Caitlin doesn’t even try to hide her frustration. “I’ll stay. But if you find out about the paternity thing, you’ve got to tell me the answer. You didn’t promise Henry anything about that.”

“I know. You’re right.” I touch her knee and squeeze gently. “But there’s something you need to know.”

Fear flickers in her eyes. “You don’t think Tom killed her?”

“No. But I honestly don’t know. Dad might well have had a euthanasia pact with Viola.”

Caitlin fans steam away from her face like a garden-club matron at a summer tea. “Come on, out with it.”

“He helped Sarah at the end.”