Sycamore Row - John Grisham

valued at $100,000; (5) a cabin and 5 acres outside Boone, North Carolina, valued at
$280,000; and (6) a fifth-floor condo on the beach at Destin, Florida, valued at
$230,000.
The total appraised value of Seth’s real estate was $2,160,000. There were no
mortgages.
A consulting firm from Atlanta valued the Berring Lumber Company at $400,000. Its
report was attached to the inventory, along with the property appraisals.
Included also were statements listing the cash in the bank in Birmingham. Ticking
along at 6 percent interest, the total was now $21,360,000 and change.
The small numbers were the most tedious. Quince Lundy listed as much of Seth’s
personal property as he thought the court could stand, beginning with his late-model
vehicles ($35,000), and going all the way down to his wardrobe ($1,000).
The big number, though, was still astonishing. The First Inventory valued Seth’s entire
estate at $24,020,000. The cash, of course, was a hard number. Everything else would be
subject to the market, and it would take months or even years to sell it all.
The inventory was an inch thick. Jake did not want anyone else in the office to see it,
so he ran two copies himself. He left early for lunch, drove to the school, and had a
plate of cafeteria spaghetti with his wife and daughter. He tried to visit once a week,
especially on Wednesdays when Hanna preferred to buy rather than bring her lunch.
She loved the spaghetti, but even more, she loved having her father there.
After she’d left for the playground, the Brigances walked back to Carla’s classroom.
The bell rang and class was set to resume.
“Off to see Judge Atlee,” Jake said with a grin. “The first payday.”
“Good luck,” she said with a quick kiss. “Love you.”
“Love you.” Jake hustled away, wanting to clear the hall before the throng of little
people came swarming in.
Judge Atlee was at his desk, finishing a bowl of potato soup, when Jake was escorted
in by the secretary. Contrary to his doctor’s orders, the judge was still smoking his pipe
—he could not quit—and he loaded one up with Sir Walter Raleigh and struck a match.
After thirty years of heavy pipe smoking, the entire office was tinged with a brownish
residue. A permanent fog clung to the ceiling. A slightly cracked window offered some
relief. The aroma, though, was rich and pleasant. Jake had always loved the place, with
its rows of thick treatises and faded portraits of dead judges and Confederate generals.
Nothing had changed in the twenty years Reuben Atlee had occupied this part of the
courthouse, and Jake had the sense that little had changed in the past fifty years. The
judge loved history and kept his favorite books in perfect order on custom-made shelves
in one corner. The desk was covered with clutter, and Jake could swear that the same
battered file had been sitting on the right front corner of it for the past decade.
They had first met at the Presbyterian church ten years earlier, when Jake and Carla
arrived in Clanton. The judge ran the church in the same way he ran all the other
aspects of his life, and he soon embraced the young lawyer. They became friends,
though always at a professional level. Reuben Atlee was from the old school. He was a
judge; Jake was just a lawyer. Boundaries must always be respected. He had sternly