Speaking in Tongues by Jeffery Deaver Page B

from the farm. The slim, soft-spoken visitor showed a great interest in Tate’s ant farm. The visitor was Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, taking a break from penning an opinion in a decision—maybe a landmark case—to come to Judge Collier’s farm for roast beef, yams, collard greens and, of course, fresh corn.
    “And,” Grams would continue, scanning the table for the sin of empty serving bowls, “it’s also bad luck to slaughter hogs in the dark of the moon.”
    “Sure is for the hogs,” Tate had offered.
    The dinner would continue until four or five in the afternoon, Tate sitting and listening to legal war stories and planning and zoning battles and local gossip thick as Grams’s mashed potatoes.
    Now, because his ex-wife stood beside him, Tate was keenly aware that those Norman Rockwell times, which he’d hoped to duplicate in his own life, had never materialized.
    The vestige of a familial South for Tate hadn’t survived long into his adulthood. He, Bett and Megan were no longer a family. Among the multitude of pretty and smart and well-rounded women he’d dated Tate Collier hadn’t found a single chance for family.
    And so, as concerned as he now was about Megan, the return of these two into his life was fraught with pain.
    It brought practical problems too. He was preparing for the biggest case he’d had in years. A corporation was petitioning Prince William County for permission to construct a historical theme park near the Bull Run Battlefield. Liberty Park was going to take on King’s Dominion and Six Flags. Tate was representing a group of residents who didn’t want the entertainment complex in their backyard even though the county had granted tentative approval. Last week Tate had won a temporary injunction halting the development for ninety days, which the developer immediately challenged. Next week, on Thursday, the Supreme Court in Richmond would hear the argument and rule whether or not to let the injunction stand. If it did, the delay alone might be enough to put the kibosh on the whole deal.
    Overnight Tate Collier had become the most popular—and unpopular—person in Prince William County, depending on whether you opposed or supported the project. The developer of the park and the lenders funding it wanted him to curl up and blow away, of course. But there were hundreds of local businessmen, craftsmen, suppliers and residents who also stood to gain by the park’s approval and the ensuing migration of tourists. One editorial, lauding the project, called Tate “the devil’s advocate.” A phrase that certainly resonated in this fervent outpost of the Christian South.
    Liberty Park’s developer, Jack Sharpe, was one ofthe richest men in northern Virginia. He came from old money and could trace his Prince William ancestry back to pre–Civil War days. When Tate had brought the action for the injunction, Sharpe had hired a well-known local firm to defend. Tate had chopped Sharpe’s lawyers into little pieces—hardly even sporting—and the developer had fired them. For the argument in Richmond he’d gone straight to Washington, D.C., to hire a law firm that included two former attorneys general, one former vice president, and, possibly, a future president.
    Tate and Ruth, his secretary-assistant-paralegal, had been working nonstop on the argument and motion papers for a week, and would continue to do so until, probably, midnight of the day before the argument.
    So Bett’s reappearance in his life—and Megan’s disappearance from it—might have some serious professional repercussions.
    Queasy, he thought again of that day when he and Bett had fought so bitterly—ten or eleven years ago. He’d never known the girl had overheard his outburst.
    Your inconvenient child . . .
    Why had fate brought them back into his life? Why now?
    But however he wished otherwise, they were back. And there was nothing he could do about it.
    Finally Tate asked his ex-wife, “Think we should