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game. Why don’t you take me with you sometime?”
    “Uh-huh. So, the detective just randomly chose you from a phone book to interview about why M. David ended up facedown in a gyp stack?” As he said this, Jackson took giant Jackson steps toward the back door, punched in the code on the lock with his big, long finger, and opened the door, standing back so I could ease in by him.
    “He had my firm bio and had told his secretary to make an appointment with me, so naturally, the detective wanted to find out what that was about.” So saying, I walked past Jackson to the inside of our law firm, where the overly air-conditioned frigid atmosphere engulfed me.
    “What was that about?”
    “Beats me.” I shivered from the cold and cursed our office-manager jackal for locking up the air-conditioning controls so that only she could adjust them.
    “You sure?” Jackson’s voice reverberated down the hallway and bounced back to me.
    “I’m sure I don’t have any idea why he wanted to see me.” And I was equally sure the real Stonewall Jackson would never have worn green pants, I thought, but was wise enough not to say so.
    “You get questioned any more, doll, you let me know, you hear?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I wouldn’t hold it against you if you had killed that son of a bitch. Crossed my mind a time or two to kill him myself.” With that, Jackson stormed away and left me to my own counsel.
    So people were thinking I was a suspect in M. David’s murder, eh? I wondered if a reputation for having killed someone would balance out the parrot-and-bikini and orange-defamation cases in terms of restoring my image as a tough litigator among the community’s lawyers.
    Once inside my own office, I reread the Florida Food Disparagement Act, hoping, I guess, that I’d failed to find the tiny print yesterday that said, “April Fools’, just kidding.” So, okay, where were the free-speech lobbyists when that bill was passed?
    I sighed, made more coffee, and then studied the two separate orange-defamation complaints against Angus and Miguel. Both lawsuits pled the same allegations against the two men, both were brought by the same plaintiff—Delilah Groves, Inc.—and both were signed by the same lawyer. Both complaints claimed that Miguel and Angus had economically damaged the groves by claiming the oranges grown by Delilah were fertilized with a radioactive waste by-product of phosphate processing—phosphogypsum, or gyp, in phosphate-speak—and that as a result, the oranges were toxic. The lawsuit sought a monetary judgment because of past, lost profits, as well as an injunction that would forbid Angus and Miguel from speaking out in the future about the groves’ agricultural practices.
    I got out my phone book and looked up Delilah Groves. On a whim, I called the number in the book and asked to speak to the owner. A moment later, a gruff voice came over the line and said, “Yeah.”
    Oh, management from the suave school of MBAs, I thought, and said, “Yes, I’m interested in buying some oranges to ship and—”
    “Season’s over, lady.”
    “Oh. Could you tell me your name, please?”
    “Why?”
    “So I can be sure to ask for you next winter when I order some oranges. I’m talking a big buy. I’d like to talk discounts for volume. We can start talking now if you’d like.”
    “Big volume?”
    “Yes, very big. I represent a new food cooperative that’s franchising in New England and—”
    “I’d need payment in advance. A down payment now to guarantee the availability.”
    Yeah, right, I thought. “Please, sir, tell me your name?”
    “Rayford Clothier. And who are you?”
    “Sunny McDemis. Now, sir, do you own Delilah Groves?”
    “Yeah. You want to come by the groves today, leave me a deposit, and we can do the paperwork on next winter’s crop. Take the State Road 72 exit off I-75 and turn north on Sugar Bowl Road, can’t miss it.”
    “Oh lovely. Now my buyers are fussy. They don’t require