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Tonight the dream has driven me from my bed to the front porch of the house I inherited from my grandmother, Miss Ena, as the whole town called her. Pulling a bottle of bourbon from the kitchen cabinet as I stumbled by, I snagged a sterling mint julep cup from the drawer with the knives. Miss Ena will rise from the dead one of these days and give me ladylike hell for keeping liquor in her house and her sterling with the stainless.

If she does rise to haunt me, I will explain that I have vaguely managed to keep the Jefferson family values somewhat intact. Never let it be said that the family scion swigged her liquor from a bottle. Such shenanigans are reserved for the good old boys on fall turkey shoots, not such as I. Talbot Jefferson sips her bourbon from a silver cup while she rocks on her front porch.

Sweat cooled at the roots of my hair as I propped my legs on the railing, kicking back in the chair and sliding the bourbon into its antique receptacle. I raised a toast to the dead Miss Ena and hoped she forgave me when some dead friend arrived at the pearly gates and told her what I'd done to her very large, very old, very decrepit, house. At least it keeps me busy, and when I'm busy, I try not to drink to excess.

I may as well add my garb to the list of sins for which she'll haunt me. My old T-shirt is hardly proper night wear, and I'll be damned if I'll wear a robe in this heat. But at five in the morning, who the hell cares? No one was awake to ogle my small breasts soaked with sweat and stuck to my shirt. Woolfolk Avenue was lucky I wasn't sleeping in the nude tonight. I usually did.

Trickling more nectar of Kentucky's finest into my silver cup, I drank in a private salute to my dead grandmother. Her, I can see. Hair a shimmering silver, black silk dresses with high collars even in the summer heat, her nails beautifully manicured. I remembered the way her fingers tapped her annoyance at me for some childhood infraction.

She'd raised me to be the family lawyer so I could handle all the family investments. Poor Miss Ena. It went against the grain to educate a woman in a "man's" profession, as she saw it. But she needed someone to untangle the gnarly skein of hundreds of years of legal neglect in a family that had once owned a fair bit of Talmadge County.

I concentrated on memories of Miss Ena. I didn't want those violet eyes I saw in my dream to stay with me when I was awake. If I thought about them, I'd know where I'd seen them before, and I didn't want to do that. Too much pain harbored in their lovely hue. I had enough of my own to handle tonight.

The car startled me. Household lights in Wynnton don't stay lit much past ten at night. Decent folk are in their homes before that, and the Baptists adjourned Wednesday night supper no later than nine. I stashed the bottle behind the chair and crossed my legs. I wasn't expecting visitors, but with my experience in life, the unexpected was the norm.

Frank Bonnet slowed down the squad car in front of my house. Fear hit my gut like a ballpeen hammer. Frank opened the door slowly, as if trying to keep the noise down. Squeaking as if it needed a caseload of WD-40, the door refused to do its duty quietly.

"Damn," Frank muttered loudly enough for me to hear.

"Morning, Frank." I'd known him since third grade. His family had moved to Wynnton that year. "What brings you out so early?"

I managed to keep my voice calm, only slightly interested. But Frank's appearance on my doorstep, complete with sheriff's uniform, holster, and gun, could only mean trouble. He reached for his hat in the car, changed his mind, left it where it was.

The gesture reassured me. If Frank had been planning on an official visit, he'd have worn every vestige of his official uniform. Still, I had the feeling the alligator was aiming for my ankles, teeth snapping, antediluvian eyes fixated on my flesh.

"How're you doin', Tal?" Glancing up one side of the street, then the other, he seemed more concerned than I with keeping his visit quiet.

Two years, I told myself. I'd lost the last appeal to save Parnell Moses two years ago. A man had died at the hands of the state because I hadn't been adequately prepared when he went to trial. There was no way Frank could know I'd killed a man, even if the state had shot him full of heart-stopping drugs. I'd been back in Wynnton that long. Frank wasn't at my front porch at five in the morning for no reason, though.

I forced a chuckle. "Frank, you out looking for Wynnton insomniacs? Newest town offense?"

I could have sworn he shushed me, his broad face in the shadows a secret from me.

"Tal, Judge Jordan asked me to bring you over to his house. Got a, well, a situation, you might say."

I thought Frank was slurring his words, as if he'd been hitting the bottle long before I rescued the bourbon from its unnatural kitchen prison.

I kept my bottom in the swing. I couldn't have stood up if Frank had poked me with a cattle prod or promised me salvation for every sin I'd ever committed. Judge Jordan wasn't my biggest fan in Wynnton. In fact, the man had threatened to have me disbarred several times, and I'd never even filed a motion in his court to have him removed. I'd worked hard to offend some big city judges who hadn't been too keen on my attacks on their impartiality, but in those days, I'd thought I could keep judges on their toes and a little bit afraid of me. Hah.

Frank's boots scraped on the front steps of the porch. False dawn painted gray hues on his face, he looked older than I, and we were the same age. Frank was growing wider the closer he got to forty, I noted. I hoped age was adding dimension to my spare frame, not the hardened lard packing Frank's gut. I sucked it in, just to be sure.

Frank leaned against a porch column, thumbs hooked in his belt in the time-honored tradition of small town Southern sheriffs. I half-expected the added weight to send the termite-infested wood cracking.

"So tell me what's up, Frank." I repeated myself often with Frank, probably because I figured he was too dumb to understand me.

"Judge Jordan told me to haul your sorry ass over right now." Frank was playing this for all he was worth.

"Well, Frank, the way I see it, I'm sitting on my own front porch, minding my own business, enjoying the cool of the morning. Better give me a damned good reason for making me put my britches on."

"Trey Kinsale's turned up dead."

The next sip of bourbon burned my throat.

"Sorry to hear that," I croaked. For the life of me, I couldn't come up with anything more original to say about Trey Kinsale.

"Crystal Walker done it." The edge in Frank's voice set my teeth aching. Frank knew what he was doing to me.

Then I remembered where I'd seen those violet eyes that had haunted my dreams tonight. They belonged to Crystal Walker.

Like Frank, Crystal Walker showed up in the third grade. I stood in line behind her on that first day of school, waiting outside on the walkway for the bell to ring before we could file into our new classroom and face the demon who would torture us for the next nine months. Miss Duncan was to be my lot that year - a large woman with glasses, a limp, and no makeup. For the first time in my short existence, I was made to feel inadequate in my academic life.

The girl in line before me wore a scarf swathed about her head. I thought Crystal was just plain weird. I'd never seen a girl cover her hair before, not so completely that the scarf was folded low on her forehead and wrapped around her throat before being knotted securely at the nape of her neck.

She must have felt my eyes burning a question into the back of her head because she twisted suddenly and stared at me. Rimmed with long, dark lashes, she had the brightest violet eyes I'd ever seen, and they poked holes in my eight-year-old self.

"So whadda ya want?" Crystal snapped at me angrily.

I poked out my hand, as my grandmother had taught me to do when being introduced, and mumbled, "Tal Jefferson."

She unwrapped her arms from around her waist and slid one small hand into mine.

"Crystal Walker." Her eyes dared me to say something about the scarf. I wisely kept my mouth shut.

I didn't know what to do after that, so I mentally stumbled among the platitudes of politeness that had been drilled into me since I could remember. If I never made anything else of my life, I'd be a social success, my grandmother had determined. I finally came up with something to say as Crystal continued to stare at me.

"Pleased to meet you."

Those violet eyes finally blinked and left mine to focus on our hands. I still held her palm in mine. Embarrassed, I dropped hers.

Her nails, I'd noticed at the last second, were bitten to the quick and caked with blood. Hangnails had been ripped half-way to her knuckles. She shoved her fists behind her and dared me, with one defiant look, to say anything. I didn't have any words for her. I'd never seen a girl with such angry, abused hands.

The bell rang, ending my discomfort, and we paraded into our prison for the third grade. Crystal wore that scarf wrapped around her head every day she was in school.

Shaking myself free of the memory, I told Frank I'd drive myself over to Judge Jordan's house. I considered refusing the summons, but I knew I'd lose. Linwood Jordan had been a protégé of Miss Ena's and knew all her tricks. To him, I was the family disappointment, and whenever he greeted me at Becky's Cafe', he'd shake his head and mutter something to whomever he was with after I'd replied with my falsely cheery, "Afternoon, Judge." Didn't take too much imagination to figure out he was repeating my grandmother's litany of my sins.

Judge Jordan lived in what was once the country. But the county had paved the road a long while ago, and slowly, bits and pieces of land around his hundreds of acres were sold off to developers. Driving to the judge's house as the sun started cracking the horizon, I found myself wondering if he thought of these small, boxy houses as his sharecroppers' abodes. Probably. Like Miss Ena, Judge Jordan held to a standard of society that had started crumbling at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. He, at least, had progressed beyond slavery, but not much.

Every light in the large, Georgian brick house blazed. I drove between the classic phalanx of hundred-year-old magnolias, sweet with blossoms, to park in front of the porticoed front door. I'd avoided thinking about what Judge Jordan could want with me at this hour.

I hadn't seen Crystal Walker in seventeen years, and Trey Kinsale and I had never been friends. While I was sorry to see anyone greet his maker before his appointed time, I wasn't going to grieve over him.

I thought of tucking my knit shirt into my jeans, but decided what the hell. Ringing the doorbell, I figured everyone in the house was already wide awake. Still, I was surprised when the judge himself opened the front door. A tall, silver-haired man, he had a firm figure and a tan that said he played a lot of tennis or golf. I'd bet tennis from the size of his forearms.

"Morning, Judge," I started.

"We'll talk out here," he snapped at me, glancing over his shoulder into the house. "Marcy Kinsale's here, my wife's trying to keep her from turning into an hysterical disaster."

I guess the judge didn't believe in impartiality from the bench, but I kept my mouth shut. I did wonder, however, why Marcy Kinsale would come running to the Jordan house. She had people of her own, and they would surely have tolerated her tears with more good grace than Judge Jordan. I'd never realized that he couldn't abide a weeping women, but I should have guessed. My grandmother didn't hold with displays of emotionalism, either.

I shifted my car keys to my back pocket. I hadn't been invited to sit on one of the wicker porch chairs.

"Yes, sir?" I watched the judge pacing up and down the long veranda. He wore his bedroom slippers with dark trousers and a white shirt, long sleeves neatly buttoned, a tie loose at the collar. I wondered if this outfit was what he wore to bed.

"Frank told you what happened." He was giving me a statement, not a question.

"Sort of. All he said was that Trey Kinsale had been killed, and Crystal Walker did it." I was reserving judgment on the whole thing until the judge confirmed the story. I ran my hand through my short hair, remembering I'd forgotten to comb it. Miss Ena was surely spinning in her grave right now.

"That's the long and short of it. Took a knife to just about every part of him, if you get my meaning. She, Crystal that is, called 9-1-1 about two hours ago. Frank says Trey was in her shed, behind her trailer, with at least twenty stab wounds. Bled everywhere. Frank's got the knife, and Crystal's confessing so fast, he can't shut her up. I want you to get over to the jail, I'm appointing you to represent her."

"Whoa up there, Judge. I'm not practicing law these days, in case you hadn't noticed." My hands felt clammy. I wanted no part of this little scenario.

"You kept your license active. I checked when you took up residence." His eyes glittered in the porch light. I could tell the information had given him no pleasure. "Even if you're wasting your time doing research for the firm, that one that writes briefs for lawyers too stupid to write their own, you're still a lawyer."

"Not for a long time now. It'd be ineffective assistance of counsel and an automatic appeal, and you know it." My mouth was drying out fast.

Linwood Jordan quit pacing and faced me, his back to the front door. I stood with one foot on the top step, one on the next one down, ready to flee. He had no right to ask this of me. My hands were cold.

"You were a hell of a criminal lawyer once, Tal. No one's going to accuse you of flubbing her case. Besides, she's owed a lawyer now, before she sits in that jail a minute longer."

My mind searched for reasons I'd been the lucky lawyer dubbed for this honor. Nothing was this clear and simple, not when it came to the power politics of Judge Linwood Jordan.

"Call up any of the courthouse regulars. They'll get over there faster than I can." I wasn't about to slide into the morass of criminal law ever again without some kicking and screaming. I'd done my stint in the trenches, and like the veterans of World War I, I hid my scars from most folks. The legal community of Wynnton considered me a disgrace. I'd sold out, quit my practice in the big city, and walked away. A lawyer only did that if she was caught doing the naughty, or had become an alcoholic druggie about to lose her license for either offense.

I never told anyone in Wynnton about Parnell Moses.

"She asked for you." The judge glowered at me.

I sat on the top step, invitation or no. "No way. I haven't heard anything about Crystal in years."

"Nonetheless, she says the only lawyer she'll talk to is you. So get your sorry ass over there, Tal, and do what has to be done."

I could have sworn I was hearing Miss Ena all over again, with curse words added, of course. I'd spent half my life telling her 'no.' I could do the same to Judge Jordan.

"Told you, I'm out of that game these days. I'll call some friends from the city, see if they're interested." One so-called friend in particular owed me big time. I'd call in my chit if I had to.

"Take too long. Preliminary hearing's as soon as Henry finishes the autopsy, which should be by Thursday morning. I'm not about to slow the wheels of justice just because you think you don't owe society anything."

I'd heard that ploy, too. "I don't. None of your business, Judge, but I paid my dues."

"Like hell, Talbot. The way I see it, Crystal Walker's already at the short end of a long rope. No sense in dragging this mess out any longer than necessary, she'll say the same, if you get your tail feathers over there and ask her."

Suspicion cut into my foggy brain. The judge wanted this case swept into the closed case files quickly. Who better to stand beside the condemned, say the necessary pleas, then keep her mouth shut about it, than the one lawyer in town who didn't want to practice law? Everyone knew I kept to myself, painting and scraping at Miss Ena's house when the spirit moved me. Working hard clearly wasn't on my agenda. No one, Judge Jordan included, thought I'd dig into Crystal's case with the zeal of someone who wanted her found innocent. My reputation for laziness had preceded me.

Anger clawed away the suspicion, but not all of it, and I stood. The rosy dawn hid the flush on my neck. Judge Jordan's taut chin lifted slightly as I opened my mouth, as if defying me to disobey his order. Something clicked. Those violet eyes again.

"I'll talk to her. No promises." Saying no more, I climbed back into my '66 Mustang and pushed it into gear. I wanted to ask a boatload of questions, find out exactly what Crystal had already told Frank, but I wouldn't get my answers here.

Driving back to town, I wondered why Marcy Kinsale was at the judge's house getting her back patted and her tears dried. I wondered what Crystal Walker looked like after all this time, and why Trey Kinsale had been at her trailer in the first place. I examined my motives in taking on her case, at least for the preliminary stages until I could get her an out-of-town lawyer, and found them to be less than admirable. I wasn't convinced Crystal was innocent. I had no burning desire to see that justice was done. Only one reason stood out as clearly as the arrogance in Judge Jordan's eyes.

I was pissed, pissed as hell that Linwood Jordan saw me as an incompetent boob who would observe the formalities while Crystal Walker was sentenced to die by the state-mandated procedure of lethal injection. I'd been willing to do my little research projects because it kept food on the table and bourbon in the pantry, but I hadn't completely lost my pride when I walked away from the big firm where I'd made partner. My penance for Parnell Moses was my business, and no one else's.

I thought about that scarf Crystal Walker wore in the sixth grade, when she dropped out of school and none of us saw much of her anymore. She'd been sick, Miss Ena explained to me once when I asked if Crystal would come back to school. No, she wouldn't attend school, Miss Ena thought, and I should put her out of my mind. I remembered watching the straight line of Miss Ena's eyebrows, still dark despite her silver crown of glory, getting a little straighter as she admonished me to forget about Crystal Walker. Miss Ena used her tone of voice that brooked no arguments.

Despite my incipient adolescence, I was still fearful of incurring her considerable wrath. I let the subject of Crystal Walker drop. Crystal Walker faded from my memories so rapidly, I was ashamed to remember it.

As furious as I was with Judge Jordan's assumption of my character, I was more angry with myself. If he'd run a con on me, he'd succeeded in hitting me where I hurt the most. Like all Jeffersons before me, I was possessed of a surfeit of pride. I had dragged only a modicum of it home with me when I'd returned to the big Victorian on Woolfolk Avenue, but what was left was hard and implacable.

I saw, as I drove the blacktop back to town, Miss Duncan ridiculing Crystal because she hadn't brought any homework to school again. Miss Duncan had never bothered to ask why. I knew why. Crystal had no paper or pencils to use when she hauled her books home. I'd kept her supplied in school, but never thought to ask if she needed extra to take home. I'd been furious when I'd realized my own shortcomings and, strangely, angry with Crystal for not asking me for more sheets for homework.

If Crystal had asked Frank Bonnet to fetch me to help her, I couldn't say no. Much as I wanted to stay sequestered in my old house, and I knew that I was stepping into tar pits over my eyebrows, I would do all I could to help her. My pride, my anger, my guilt would have to take a back seat to the Jefferson inability to walk away from a wounded animal.

I felt more a Jefferson than I had in all the time since I'd returned to Wynnton to take up residence in Miss Ena's house once again.

How, I wondered, had Crystal Walker known I was back in town?

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