Dad shook his head, so Bert got pictures out of his desk, displayed them for us. They all looked like beauty queens. Bert must have had something that appealed to the ladies, besides his lumpy tummy, bald head, and squeaky voice, that was not immediately evident.

“Anyway,” Bert said, gathering up the photos of his exes and tucking them away, “it’s good to see you. Exciting times all around, huh? You see the paper today? Looks like they’re going to let the gay boys into the parade. Council couldn’t find a way to say no. Either let ’em in, or cancel the parade altogether, and if you ask me, it would have been better to take a stand and cancel the parade.”

“What’s the story here?” I asked, recalling Timmy’s remarks about this, and the manager of the grocery store with the petition he wanted me to sign.

“Oh, sorry,” said Bert Trench. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“The city,” I said. Dad and Trench shared a glance, as though this would help explain a lot of things that might come up later in the conversation.

“There’s always a fall fair parade,” Dad said. “Beecham’s Hardware, the high school band, the local cattlemen’s association, the racing lawnmowers, 4-Hers, Henry’s Grocery, Braynor Co-op, that kind of thing, they’re all in it. There’s these homo activists want to put a float in the parade, or march, or do synchronized wrist flicking, I don’t know. The town council said no, so the gay boys were going to make a civil rights case out of it, so the town backed down, decided to let ’em in.”

“They were going to go to court to be allowed into a parade like that?” I asked. “You’d think you’d do everything in your power to get out of a parade like that.”

Bert Trench cocked his head, offended. “Pardon?” He eyed me curiously. “The fall fair parade is a tradition around here.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Dad said to Bert. “He makes fun of everything. The whole world’s a joke to him.”

“Listen,” I said, turning to Dad, not Bert Trench. “I have a very good friend, a private detective, who just happens to be-”

“So, Bert,” said Dad. “I wonder if you could help me with a little problem I got.”

“What would that be, Arlen?” He wasn’t even looking at me now. I’d mocked the fall fair parade. Even now, he was probably pressing a silent alarm button under the desk, summoning Orville.

“Uh, it’s about my neighbors, Bert. My tenants, actually.”

Bert squinted. “Refresh my memory.”

“You wouldn’t probably even know. It’s just been in the past couple of years, I’ve been renting out the farmhouse, fixed up the best of the cabins for myself. Rented it to some folks named Wickens. They moved down from Red Lake way.”

“Wickens,” Bert Trench said quietly. “Wickens. That’d be Timmy Wickens, and his boys.”

“Stepsons. There’s his wife, and he’s got a grown daughter, and her boy. It was the daughter, her boyfriend that got killed.”

“I see,” Bert Trench said, picking up a pen and making circles on a yellow legal pad.

“Bert, they scare the shit out of me. They’re shooting guns up there, they’ve got No Trespassing signs all over the place, and these pit bulls, they’re eating my guests’ fish right off the stringers, and they’re running the place down, it’s going to cost me a fortune to get it back in shape when they leave.”

“They’re leaving, are they? Packing up?’ Trench swallowed. “That’d be a load off, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to see you about. I want them out. And I wanted your advice on how to go about that. How would I go about evicting them? How much notice do I have to give? And can I tell them, I don’t know, that it’s because I want to fix the house up and move into it, so they don’t think it’s personal? Because, I don’t want them getting angry with me. I don’t have a good feeling about them.”

Bert Trench was studying his doodles. “Well, I don’t know, Arlen, I don’t exactly know…”

“Can you write them a letter, sort of a friendly eviction notice?” I tried not to roll my eyes. Dad went on. “Something kind of official? I’ve got the right to do this, right? I mean, it’s my place and all.”

“Sure, sure, you’ve got rights, Arlen. But, what have they actually done?”

“Done?”

“I mean, have they threatened you? Caused any significant property damage?”

Dad paused. “Not exactly. But it’s a lot of little things, they add up, you know?”

Trench doodled a bit more, and then, in what looked like a staged gesture, glanced at his watch. “Oh my, goodness, I wonder if you could excuse me for a moment.”

He got up, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Dad and I sat in the office, alone, nearly a minute, before Dad said to me, “The hell’s wrong with him?”

“He started looking a bit pasty from the moment you mentioned the name Wickens,” I said.

“He did seem a bit funny, didn’t he?” Dad said. “I wonder what-”

The door opened again, and Bert Trench strode in, but he didn’t head for his spot behind the desk. He had his hands in his pockets, and tried to look at us, but mostly was looking at the floor.

“Listen, Arlen, and Mr. Walker, Zachary, is it?”

I said nothing.

“I feel terrible about this, but I should have told you when you booked your appointment that I’m just not in a position to take any new business on at this time. I’m really pretty swamped with things, I’ve got a very large client base, and what you’re asking for, what you’d want me to take on for you, that could run into a lot of hours, and I just don’t think I could give you the kind of service that you deserve.”

“I’m just talking about a letter,” Dad said. “You haven’t got time to write them a friggin’ letter?”

“Like I said, I’m just not able to take on new clients at the moment,” he said, trying to smile.

“I’m not a new client,” Dad said. “I’ve already done business with you.”

Bert Trench pretended not to hear. “There are some other law offices in Braynor, or you might want to try in Smithfield, or Jersey Falls, maybe someone there would be able to help you, I’m sure.” He’d moved to the door and was holding it open for us.

We stood. Dad got his crutches under his arms and as we were going out the door he stopped and looked Bert Trench square in the eye. “Where are your balls, Bert?”

I noticed beads of sweat on Trench’s forehead.

“I’m sorry, Arlen,” he said. “I can’t do this for you.”

“Why not?”

Trench swallowed, bowed his head. “Couple years ago, there was a lawyer in Red Lake, he had this client, a plumber, did a lot of work at this house where the Wickenses used to live, before they moved this way and rented your place.”

We watched him.

“So he’d done at least a thousand dollars’ worth of work, gave the Wickenses their bill, they never paid, so this plumber, he goes and sees this lawyer, asks him to take care of it for him. And the lawyer, he sends them a letter.”

“The Wickenses,” I said.

“Yeah. So he sends them this letter. And the next night, his house burns down.”

Dad and I said nothing.

“Nearly lost his family. Got them out just in time. Nearly lost his daughter, she’s paralyzed, fell off a horse when she was fifteen, can’t move on her own, and he carried her out just in time.”

“It could have just been a coincidence,” I said.

“The plumber, he gets a phone call the next day. Caller asks him, does he want his place to be next?”

Dad, shuffling on his crutches, and I moved for the door.

“I’m real sorry,” said Bert Trench. “I just don’t need that kind of thing. But, Arlen, any time you’ve got a basic real estate deal, you call me and I’ll look after you.”

“Sure, Bert,” said Dad. “You’ll be the first.”