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will never be any crosses burned or windows shot out while Ruby’s the editor.
    “Any word around the courthouse as to how Candace Bradshaw feels about stump dumps?” Minnie asked me.
    “However Danny Creedmore’s told her to feel,” I said cynically. “You know well as I do who pulls her strings.”
    Daniel Creedmore is the owner of Creedmore Concrete Corporation. He began twenty-five years ago with a single cement truck and made concrete blocks for cheap houses and migrant camps. Now he owns a fleet of trucks and Triple C probably pours at least a third of the foundations for new construction in the county.
    Oh, and did I mention that he runs the Republican party in Colleton County?
    As for Candace Bradshaw, who now chairs the board of commissioners, maybe if I’d been born poor and raggedy with a slut for a mother, I might have a warped view of powerful men and money, too. At fifteen she quit school, moved in with her grandmother here in Dobbs, and went to work for Bradshaw Management and Janitorial. She cleaned apartments and scrubbed toilets for a couple of years and eventually took night classes at Colleton Community College till she earned her GED. Two months later, she married her boss and seven months after that, they were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. A real Horatio Alger story, right? With everybody living happily ever after?
    Unfortunately, she couldn’t help bragging to her best friend about how clever she’d been to notice that Cameron Bradshaw kept books of poetry in his office. She batted her green eyes at him, tucked a strand of her sexy long hair behind her ear, and asked his advice about a paper she had to write. One thing soon led to another, as it usually does with cute young women and naive older men. Even before the baby was born, her best friend had confided in
her
best friend and it was soon all over Dobbs that Candace deliberately got pregnant so that Cameron Bradshaw, a well-regarded businessman more than twenty years her senior, would do the honorable thing and marry her.
    Bradshaw Management provides janitorial services for half the businesses in Dobbs, including my old law firm. It also manages a couple of apartment complexes and two rest homes. It took Candace a few years to learn all the ropes, but once she felt competent enough, she pushed her husband aside and took over the business after their separation. Gossip says her goal in life is to be rich and powerful and that she compensates for her lack of smarts by working hard. Gossip also says that she landed some of her biggest contracts by working hard between the sheets.
    She ran for the county board of commissioners the first time I ran for judge, which is when I finally became aware of her and heard all the gossip. She won her primary. I lost mine.
    Of course, her party bosses had quietly agreed on a single slate of local candidates before the primary so that she could run unopposed, while my primary was the usual free-for-all with four of us slugging it out for the same slot.
    It would be hypocritical for me to sling mud at
how
she got her seat. It’s what she does with it that tightens my jaws. Yes, Daddy blackmailed a crook to get me appointed, but neither he nor any of my friends or family have ever gotten a cent out of it, unlike the men who put Candace Bradshaw on the board, where she happily does their bidding with girlish giggles and much tossing of her long brown hair.
    Our food came and, as we ate, talk turned to the familiar—the children, neighbors, our gardens, and whether or not Dwight and I were ever going to take a real honeymoon. I married him a few days before Christmas and his eight-year-old son had stayed on to spend the holidays with us before returning to his mother in Virginia. Three weeks later, she was murdered and Cal’s been with us since January.
    “Maybe when school’s out,” I murmured, spearing one of Daddy’s shrimp.
    “You’re going to take Cal with you on your honeymoon?” Minnie