"No, I have not."

I sighed deeply and taking my time asked, "Then how do you explain two hundred receipts for motel and hotel rooms on your charge card statements over the last eighteen months?"

"Ms. Johnson suffers from terrible headaches. She commutes to our place of business from Orangeburg. Sometimes it's necessary for her to rest during the day. We would rent the room for her and deduct it from her salary. It's just too far to drive back to Orangeburg, and apparently a nap makes her feel much better."

I looked at him and at Albright and wondered if they thought anyone in their right mind would believe his utter horse manure. Nat and Albright simply smiled the smiles of the foolhardy.

"And did you ever visit her during these episodes of ill health?"

Nat glanced at his attorney and then answered. "On occasion, I would stop by to check on her."

"That seems like an extraordinary measure for an employer to take for an employee who earns slightly more than minimum wage."

"We value our employees. Ms. Johnson has been on the team for almost seven years."

"I see. Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Charlene Johnson?"

Nat stopped cold. It was time to play hardball. He looked at Albright for advice and Albright spoke.

"On counsel of attorney, my client would like to exercise his right under the Fifth Amendment."

"Have you ever smoked marijuana with Charlene Johnson?"

"I would like to exercise my right..."

Well, well. Wasn't Nat a quick study?

"Have you ever hit your wife, Rebecca Simms?"

"Never."

"Been violent with her in any way?"

"Never."

"What about last spring at a family cookout where you smashed her face with a hot hamburger right off the grill?"

"That was an accident."

"And more recently at Louis's Fish Camp, a restaurant in Pawleys Island, where you pushed her off her chair?"

"She must have been sitting crooked on her chair. I don't know why she threw herself on the floor. Ask her."

Once again, very smug. Not amusing.

"Have you ever taken a check that was given for a deposit on a car at your family's place of business and deposited it in your own account?"

The tone of Nat's skin went from rosy Caucasian to chalk-white albino, and he turned to Albright, who asked for a recess of five minutes. Normally, I would have objected to a recess, but I had accomplished my mission, which was to let them know we knew exactly what Nat had been doing.

When they returned, Nat exercised his Fifth Amendment right one more time, and then another and another. It was clear that Nat Simms was all done answering questions for the day. Any half-witted attorney would have immediately called and asked for mediation to try and reach a settlement. My phone was silent for the remainder of the day.

The only fun I had was meeting Charlene face-to-face. Once again, Rebecca came with me, dressed like someone from the Ladies Altar Society and Charlene showed up looking, well, very inappropriate. Rebecca had fought me about attending this meeting, but I argued her into submission.

"Look, Rebecca, I've been through this a hundred times, and I can tell you that it will give you the strength you need to fight Nat and win if you can look her in the eye and not flinch. She stole your husband, for God's sake! Don't you want to make her squirm?"

"Making people squirm isn't my thing."

It was true-that wasn't Rebecca's nature. That was a litigator's trait. Like me.

"Okay, then let me put this to you another way. She sees you. You're classy; she's cheap. At least she can go home and feel guilty!"

"I think people like her use any excuse they can dream up to justify the things they do. She might feel guilty about snapping at her manicurist for cutting her cuticles too close, but she'll never suffer a moment's remorse about tearing a hole right through my life and the lives of my children."

"Still, if you look her in the eye with daggers, it might unnerve her and she may possibly give us something to use."

"Oh, fine. I'll come."

During Charlene's deposition, Charlene claimed her Fifth Amendment rights about a thousand times, which essentially means, Yes, I did the thing, used the drug, made the phone call you are asking me about.

But she wasn't very clever about it. When I said, "Have you ever had sexual intercourse with Nat Simms?" She replied, "Yes." But when I asked her, "Have you ever had sex with Nat Simms in his marital bed at his home on Tradd Street?" she said, "I'd like to exercise my right to take the Fifth."

Rebecca's face turned so red I thought she might lunge across the table and choke Charlene. I put my hand on Rebecca's arm and finally got the reaction from her I sought. Rebecca began shooting Charlene hate rays.

It went on.

"Have you ever been drunk with Nat Simms?"

"No."

"Have you ever smoked marijuana with Nat Simms?"

"I'd like to exercise my right..." And she giggled while refusing to incriminate herself.

In fact, the hyena giggled and snickered so much that her attorney, also retained by and paid for by Nat, had to reprimand her. Nat was clearly lying about the termination of their affair. It was as hot and nasty as it had probably ever been. Okay, I didn't describe her ensemble and I can hear you saying, Hey! What was she...She was wearing one of those stretch tank tops at half-staff with a builtin bra, from which her synthetic orbs were well on display. Her jacket sleeves were too long and her skirt was too short, and I don't care where you're from, you don't wear rhinestone-trimmed three-inch heels during the day if you ever want to be invited to join the Charleston Yacht Club. And most especially not with fishnet stockings.

The night after Nat and Albright's mockery of the law, Huey, Rebecca and I had dinner at my house. Miss Olivia was feeling a little under the weather and stayed at home to rest. The weather was getting worse, and low pressure sometimes affected older people, making them sluggish.

Byron and Daphne had offered to cook for us, but the truth was that Byron had it in his mind to teach Daphne to cook and serve with a little panache. She was highly insulted that he thought he knew more than she did. All afternoon they had been in the kitchen fussing all around, bickering over garnishes and to doily or not to doily.

We went out on the porch with our drinks to eyeball Mother Nature and to try to predict the impact of her next rage.

The eastern sky looked angry. Low dark rolling clouds the color of coal crossed the horizon in warning of what was to come. The ocean was swollen, its rollers five times their normal size and banging the shore, fuming.

"This Hurricane Charlie has me worried," Rebecca said. "It seems like there are so many more storms this year than last year-one after another. What does this mean?"

"Nothing, Rebecca dear," Huey said. "It just means that we are finally having a normal hurricane season. We've just been getting off lightly these past years."

Daphne was passing a tray of broiled scallops wrapped in bacon. They were placed on the paper-doilyed bamboo tray in a semicircle with a small bowl of dipping sauce in the center.

"This looks delicious, Daphne," I said.

"I hope so! That crazy brother of mine made me arrange them five times!"

I took one, and she turned to Huey, who debated the plump juicy merits of each one before choosing.

"So how goes the battle?" Huey asked, popping a scallop in his mouth. "Anything new? I'll have another," he said to Daphne.

"Now that Rebecca has been deposed, pretrial is Friday," I said.

"How did that go?" Huey asked.

"Fine. It infuriated Albright because he couldn't get anything of value from Rebecca," I said.

"Oh, Lord! Do I have to go to pretrial?" Rebecca said in a weary voice.

"No, no. Just me and good old Harry. Should be a blast."

"And for the great unwashed like myself who've never experienced the joys of the courtroom, what happens in pretrial?"

"It's basically just a conference with the lawyers and the chief administrative judge to go over the details of the trial like how many witnesses do we intend to call, is discovery complete-that kind of thing. What they are really trying to do is figure out how much court time you need and to make sure the lawyers are prepared to go to trial."

"Ah! Well, that makes sense to me," Huey said. "Save the taxpayers' money and all that?"

"Exactly!" I said.

"Rebecca, dear?" Huey said. "How are you holding up?"

"Very well. I finally got to talk to my children in camp."

"Mother McCree! When were you going to tell us this?" Huey said, his eyes expanding like a flounder's.

"Gosh, it only happened an hour ago, and I'm still trying to remember everything they said."

"Well, first of all," I said, "how was the tone of it?"

"I called Sami first," Rebecca said. "She came on the line and I just said, Sami, what's happening between Daddy and I has nothing to do with how I feel about you. I love you and I just want to know that you're all right. Has camp been good?"

"What did she say?" I said.

"I could hear in her voice that she was becoming emotional. I think she thought it would be a big battle, but I decided that I would just tell her I loved her and see where it went from there."

"Boy, that was smart! And so?" Huey said. "She said?"

"She said camp was okay, that she was nervous about coming home and nervous about starting school. But that she was excited that her daddy was going to buy her a car."

"A car?" I said. "Well, that's the first I've heard about that!"

"Yep! Apparently, he's buying her a Mini Cooper and she's been watching the manufacturing progress online all summer. Hers has its own ID number and so on."

"Heavens! I've never heard of such a thing!" Huey was shocked.

"That's worse than Cabbage Patch dolls," I said.

"What's a Cabbage...?" Rebecca started to ask but I cut her off.

"Just forget it-an old craze that had mothers giving each other black eyes at Toys 'R' Us stores all over America about twenty Christmases ago."

"Oh. Well, anyway, she just talked about a play she was in and the Garden Party Dance and what she wore. The hostility in her voice began to melt a little. I mean, she wasn't saying anything like, Mom, I'm so sorry about what I did to you, or anything like that. I didn't bring up the messy things and neither did she. But she did tell me that she missed me and that she was sorry she hadn't written to me. I just said, Sami? I think it's more important that you just enjoy yourself at camp-the school year's hard enough."

"She must've been relieved," I said.

"She was. Before we hung up she asked me when she was going to see me, and I said, Well, we'll have to work that out with your daddy but I'd like to take you back-to-school shopping and all that, unless she preferred to go with him. Then she giggled saying something like, Can you see Daddy at Citadel Mall? It was a good conversation, I mean, as good as it could have been."

"When I called the camp, I had a wonderful chat with the director. I gave her the short version of what was going on, and she assured me that she would have Sami in the right state of mind when you called. I'll tell you some of these camps are amazing, aren't they? She must have had quite the heart-to-heart with Sami. Or not! I'm just glad it went well, Rebecca. What about Evan?"

"Same thing, more or less. He got on the phone and said thanks for the water guns and that he couldn't wait to come home. He said he missed me and told me he loved me when I told him that I loved him. Boys are a lot easier to communicate with, I think."

"Well, it's a good first step," I said. "When do they come home?"

"This Saturday. They start school next week. I'm sure Nat knows that and I'm sure he's got their schedule all organized."

"Oh, I can see Nat now!" Huey said. "He's got a dry erase board attached to the kitchen wall and all their schedules are neatly blocked out! Right! Their rooms are all neat and tidy and he's got car pool all arranged!"

"Oh, my God," I said. "Y'all! I've been so hyperfocused on winning this case I didn't even think about how Nat's gonna handle the children! Do you think he can do it, Rebecca?"

"He ain't got a snowball's chance in hell," she said with a droll little smile. "In fact, he's already called me asking if I would pick them up at the airport."

"What? What did you tell him?"

"Why, I told him I couldn't! That I had to work! He said so did he and I just said, Nat! The children have been gone for almost four weeks! Surely you've prepared a homecoming for them! And as to a ride from the airport, you told me there was nothing I did that you couldn't hire someone to do, so hire someone! There was a big silence on his end of the line. And then he said something like, Fine, Becca, be that way!"

"Be that way? Be what way?" Huey said, and we all began to laugh.

Daphne reappeared with another tray of hors d'oeuvres-this time baby radishes filled with a smoked salmon spread, topped with dill sprigs.

We descended on them like locusts, and Daphne said, "Humph! Somebody's hungry! Good thing dinner's almost ready."

Rebecca looked askance at me, and I just said, "She's Byron's sister. Remember?"

We shook our heads and smiled as Daphne slipped back through the door.

Dinner was outstanding. Daphne and Byron had prepared small cups of she-crab soup, fried whole flounders with a homemade tartar sauce and bundles of string beans on the side. Dessert was a citrus creme brulee. All through dinner we talked about Claudia and the upcoming trial and how excited Rebecca was knowing her children would be home safe and sound, even if they were going to be living with Satan for the moment.

And while I had prepared for Friday's pretrial hearing, there was no way I could have prepared for the weather. It was to be Friday the thirteenth in every sense of the word. That morning I woke up to howling wind and torrential rain. Driving to Charleston was not going to be a picnic.

It wasn't.

I literally crept down Highway 17, never going more than forty miles per hour. At one moment it seemed like I might blow right off the road into the trees, and in the next I struggled to see through the driving rain that pelted my windshield without mercy. In the rare moments the rain relented, I wished for one of those giant SUVs that normally frighten me. I was never so relieved to see Mount Pleasant come into view, and I wondered how I was going to drive over the Cooper River Bridge. But the hand of God was in the morning, because by the time I got to the foot of the bridge the rain had all but ceased and the wind still gusted but less so. Off to my right was one of those emergency signs run on a generator that flashed Speed Limit-25 MPH! Good idea, I thought as I took the old bridge's first span, driving like I had a trunk filled with eggs.