Free Designated Daughters by Margaret Maron

house, and we need to figure out how to get it back. Tell her, Frances.”
    Clearly embarrassed, Miss Jones said, “Oh, Sally, what’s the use? I signed the papers, it’s all legal, and even if it wasn’t, Judge Knott has already said she can’t advise us.”
    “Shit in a henhouse, Frances! Would you just tell her?” Sally exclaimed, stamping one of her boots.
    The sound echoed through the empty courtroom and old Mrs. Ashton’s head popped up. She blinked twice as if to clear her head, then gave me a polite smile.
    “Hello,” she said, holding out a thin bird claw of a hand. “So nice of you to come. You’re Chuckie’s teacher, aren’t you?”
    “Please tell her yes,” said the middle-aged Charles Ashton, gently rocking the wheelchair as if it were a cradle. He swayed back and forth and his squeaky sandals kept time with the rocking chair.
    “Chuckie’s teacher? Yes,” I said, taking her hand. “Yes, I am.”
    “I hope he’s not giving you any trouble?”
    “Not a bit, Mrs. Ashton. He’s doing real good in school.”
    “He’s a good boy…” Her eyelids slid to half-mast and her hand went limp in mine as the motion of the chair lulled her. “…good boy…”
    With that she was asleep again.
    “Thank you,” said her son, and mirrored in his sad smile was the good little boy he must have been.
    “Okay, Frances,” Sally said. “No more false modesty here. Deb’rah’s heard it all, right, Deb’rah?”
    “Probably,” I said.
    Frances Jones straightened the collar of her flowery shirtwaist and spoke in a tremulous voice. “What you have to understand, Your Honor, is that my father and mother used to have money. Papa had the Ford dealership here and he made a handsome living, then sold it for a handsome amount when Mama got sick. Before that, though, they traveled all over Europe and they brought home many nice things. Mama belonged to the Daughters of the Confederacy and she had a sterling silver Georgian tea service that she used whenever it was her turn to host the meeting.”
    Tears flooded her eyes. “She was so proud of it. I can’t believe I let him talk me into putting that in the sale. I should have kept it for Amy.”
    JoAnn squeezed her aunt’s hand in consolation and I gathered that Amy was her daughter in college.
    The story that eventually emerged differed only in details from so many I’d heard over the years. The cash money Miss Jones’s parents had accrued dwindled through the years. Bad investments, taxes, and huge medical bills—the sheer cost of living drove her father to take out a reverse mortgage.
    “He could have sold Mama’s diamond engagement ring, her pearl-and-emerald pendant, and her diamond earrings, but he couldn’t bear to part with them. They were Tiffany and he had them insured for two hundred thousand up until there wasn’t enough money to pay the insurance. But he said I could sell them after he was gone and pay off the mortgage if I needed to.”
    At that point, he had hidden them somewhere in the old two-story house situated in what used to be the richest side of Dobbs but which had now gone downhill.
    “Somewhere on the first floor, though, because he couldn’t climb the stairs the last few years of his life,” JoAnn said. “When Amy was a little girl, he used to keep them in a secret compartment in the fireplace surround and bring them out and let her try on the necklace, but after he died, the compartment was empty.”
    “I’d almost forgotten about them,” her aunt said.
    (“ She forgot about a set of Tiffany jewels? ” asked my disbelieving internal pragmatist.)
    (“ Not everyone’s as materialistic as you ,” said the preacher who never misses the moral of any story.)
    The old man had died eighteen months ago and they had searched the house from top to bottom. No Tiffany jewelry. That’s when Frances decided to sell her parents’ best antiques, under the impression that they would bring enough for her to keep the house and keep