Sycamore Row - John Grisham

31
The effort to validate the handwritten will of Seth Hubbard continued to unravel late
Sunday morning, though Jake and its proponents had no way of knowing it. Randall
Clapp was sniffing around the town of Dillwyn, in extreme south Georgia, some six
miles from the Florida line, when he finally found a black woman he’d been tracking for
a week. Her name was Julina Kidd, age thirty-nine, a divorced mother of two.
Five years earlier, Julina worked in a large furniture factory near Thomasville,
Georgia. She was a clerk in payroll, earned $15,000 a year, and was surprised to hear
one day that the company had been bought by a faceless corporation with an Alabama
domicile. Not long afterward, the new owner, a Mr. Hubbard, showed up and said hello.
One month later, Julina was fired. One week after that she filed a sexual harassment
complaint with Equal Employment. The complaint was dismissed three weeks after it
was filed. Her lawyer in Valdosta would not discuss the case with Clapp, said he’d lost
contact with Julina, and had no idea where she was.
When Clapp found her she was living in subsidized housing with her two teenagers
and a younger sister, and she was working part-time for an oil jobber. Initially, she had
little interest in talking to an unknown white man. Clapp, though, did this for a living
and was adept at extracting information. He offered her $200 in cash, plus lunch, for
one hour of her time and direct answers to his questions. They met at a truck stop and
ordered the special, baked chicken. Clapp, a simmering racist who would never be
tempted to chase a black woman, struggled to control his thoughts. This one was a
knockout—beautiful dark skin with a touch of cream, hazel eyes that penetrated to the
core, high African cheekbones, perfect teeth that revealed an easy, seductive smile. She
was reserved and her eyebrows were perpetually arched, as if she suspected every word
he uttered.
He didn’t tell her much, not at first anyway. He said he was involved in some highpowered
litigation with Seth Hubbard on the other side, and he knew they had a history.
Yes, he was digging for dirt.
She had it. Seth had come on to her like an eighteen-year-old sailor on shore leave. At
the time, she was thirty-four and in the late stages of a bad divorce. She was fragile and
frightened about her future. She had no interest in a sixty-six-year-old white man who
smelled like an ashtray, regardless of how many companies he owned. But he was
persistent and spent a lot of his time at the Thomasville factory. He gave her a
substantial raise and moved her to a desk near his office. He fired the old secretary and
appointed Julina as his “executive assistant.” She could not type.