Page 66 of Camino Ghosts

“Because the island belongs to me and my people and it always has. No one else had ever tried to claim it, not until last summer when your client showed up. I filed my petition because somebody, namely your client, was trying to take my property.”

“Who suggested to you that you file your petition?”

“Some friends.”

“And who are these friends?”

“Is that really any of your business?”

Steven stood and said, “Your Honor, please, any out-of-court statements made by the witness and her friends and solicited by Mr. Martin will clearly be hearsay.”

Burch shook his head and said, “I hear your objection but let’s see where it goes. Ms. Jackson, I caution you not to repeat statements made by others.”

Steven sat down, but only for a moment.

Monty Martin asked, “Ms. Jackson, when did you first meet with Mr. Steven Mahon?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t write it down.”

“Had you ever met him before last summer?”

Steven stood again and said, “Objection, Your Honor, the relationship between me and my client is highly privileged. Not sure where Mr. Martin is going with this, but he’s out of bounds.”

Steven knew exactly where Monty was going, as did Judge Burch and the other lawyers. Tidal Breeze was itching to prove that Steven and his band of environmental zealots had recruited Lovely to file her petition, as the quickest way to stop Panther Cay. But its lawyers had been unable to get around the privileged relationship between lawyer and client. Nor would they be able to now, but Monty wanted to at least raise the suspicion.

Judge Burch was all over it and said, “Objection sustained. Move along, Mr. Martin.”

Monty flipped through Lovely’s memoir as if looking for something. “You use a lot of names and dates in this book, Ms. Jackson. Are all of these accurate?”

“As far as I can remember.”

“Did you use notes or old family records, things like that?”

“I had some notebooks, long time ago.”

“Where are those notebooks now?”

“I don’t know. I lost them and can’t find them.” It was a fib but she didn’t care. Protecting her land was far more important than being completely honest with a bunch of rich white men.

“On page one-twenty, you write that your great-grandmother, Charity, died in 1910. But in your deposition, given right here in this very courtroom last November, you testified that she died in 1912. What’s the truth?”

Lovely shook her head as if chatting with an idiot. “The truth is that she’s dead, been dead a long time now. The truth is that many of my stories rely on ones handed down by my people, so I suppose it’s possible that some dates got mixed up.”

“So, are all of your dates mixed up?”

“I didn’t say that. You just did. You see, sir, my people didn’t have a lot of education. We didn’t have a schoolhouse or teachers or books out there on the island. The state of Florida didn’t care about us. We didn’t exist as far as it was concerned. Now it claims to be the owner. How nice. Where was the state of Florida a hundred years ago when it was building schools and roads and hospitals and bridges everywhere else? Not one penny was ever spent on Dark Isle.”

Monty suddenly wanted to sit down. He was getting nowhere with the witness. In fact, he was probably losing ground. His staff had pored over her book and her deposition and made a list of eleven discrepancies regarding dates and names. Now that list suddenly seemed worthless.

Diane’s list had thirteen mistakes, all of which had been discussed with Lovely, who was poised to explain them away.

Monty whispered to one of his associates and killed a few seconds. He smiled at Lovely, who was not smiling at all, and said, “Now, Ms. Jackson, I’m intrigued by these lost notebooks. When did you start writing in them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t write things down like you do, sir. On the island we didn’t always have pencils and pens and papers and notebooks, things like that to write with. I went to school in a little square building that we called a chapel because it was our only church. We were lucky to have two or three textbooks to pass around. I don’t know where they came from. Half the kids didn’t even go to school. My parents could barely read and write. I learned most of what I know after I left the island and went to school here, in the old black school down in The Docks. Even that school didn’t have a lot of extra stuff, not like the white schools.”

Monty felt like apologizing. He had planned to make hay out of the missing notebooks and portray them as important documents that should have been handed over during discovery. Now, the notebooks also seemed useless.

Again, he changed the subject. “Now, Ms. Jackson, on page seventy-eight of your book there is a rather graphic story in which Nalla, you ancestor, cuts the throat of a man who raped her. She then dripped his blood along the beach. Was this some type of a curse?”

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