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left?”
    “Well, I’ll tell you what Spence left, son. He left that house on Grove Road all free and clear. And a thousandshares of bank stock you can’t sell and hasn’t paid a dividend in years. And a pretty good new Cadillac. You remember that was about the only thing he ever bought himself, a new car every year and run the living hell out of it. And about eleven thousand in cash. And the boat yard. Oh, and some little pieces of acreage. No-account land.”
    “Where did it all go anyhow?”
    He chuckled. “Good question, son. The tax folks would like to know too. By God, you never saw such digging. Like to tore up half the county looking for Spence’s money. Thought they were about to turn up an old coffee can with a million dollars in it. There’s some kind of tax action been dragging along in the courts.”
    “Do you think he hid the money, Judge?”
    “I know he had plenty that never showed up. The way I figure it, Spence wasn’t quite ready. He counted on some more time. But he got cut off too quick. Son, it was one hell of a funeral. About half of Tallahassee down here, and folks out of county government from all over hell and gone. Ole Spence had put the screws to most of them and the word was they come to make sure he was really dead. When they lowered the box, you could dang near hear the big sigh of relief. Me, I liked old Spence, mean as he was. You just had to understand him. His daddy fished commercial all his life and when they buried him they bought a used suit coat and a new necktie. And borrowed the white shirt. Spence and me were a pair of raggedy-ass kids in those days, and that didn’t bother me as much as it did him. It bothered him a lot. And so he spent his life correcting that state of affairs. And he was one hell of a lonely man the whole time. Seems like Jenna was the only thing really meant anything to him outside of the money. But she had that wildness in her. Got it from her grandma, Spence’s mother, I’d say. That woman kicked up her heels allover three counties afore work and kids ground her down. And the only kid lived to grow up was Spence.”
    “And then Jenna came back for the second time,” Alex said.
    “She surely did. Just about a year and a half ago, with her important husband in such bad shape they had to ambulance him from Tampa airport all the way down here. She’d been down ahead of him and rented the old Proctor cottage out on the beach and fixed it up some, and then went back and got him. It had been in the
Davis Journal
about her marrying him, but you couldn’t get folks around here to really believe it. But they believed it all right when she showed up, better than seven years after Spence passed away. Maybe she came back here to prove she’d done good. I don’t know. But she come back a lady, son. In dress and talk and manners. You never hear such gabbling and cackling as the women did. Said she looked hard in the face, but I couldn’t see it. She looked fine to me. Didn’t mix much, not with him so sick, but she saw a lot of Betty and Buddy and her ma. She was nursing that colonel back to health. And she kept it up about six months.”
    “I saw some of the newspaper stuff when she was killed, Judge. It sort of hinted she’d been living it up.”
    “Out of the clear blue she shows up one night over there in the Spanish Mackerel on Front Street, Harry Bann’s place. The Mack ain’t changed since you were here, son. It’s rough and tough most of the time, and gets worse when those people down to Bucket Bay come up to town to raise hell. So she had some drinks and she played the jook and the pinball and the bowling and didn’t leave until the bar closed and then she didn’t leave alone.”
    The judge winked ponderously and said, “There’s a lot of fellas around here in their thirties and early forties that first learned what makes the world go round from Jenna. And the pride in any man says that if he’s once beddeda woman he can do it again.