Hardcastle looked up from the list he was studying, having heard the familiar rumble of the truck even before it cleared the last turn into the drive. He watched McCormick climb out, slam the door, and amble in the direction of the main house.

He put the piece of paper down before he heard the front door open and Mark holler, “You in here, Judge?”

“’Course I am, where else would I be?” Hardcastle grumbled. “You get him off to the airport all right?”

“To the airport and onto the plane. One-way ticket to Las Vegas.” Mark shook his head slightly. “I hope that’s far enough.”

“Is that any way to talk about your father?”

“Yes,” Mark replied flatly, and then he amended that with a grimace and said, “Just so you know, I was right. He confessed: he tripped onto that guy who was going to shoot you.”

“I dunno. It all happened pretty fast. I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“Okay,” Mark said, slouching into a chair, “innocent until proven klutzy.” He glanced at the judge’s desktop and then stood up again to get a better look. “What are you doing? Oh, don’t tell me—is that still next semester’s book list? I knew I shouldn’t have shown it to you.”

“Why not?” Hardcastle huffed. “I’m in the footnotes of some of these books, ya know. I’ve got autographed copies of a couple of them. First editions.”

“Yeah, I know, but most of them are in the law school library, and there’s five of us that are thinking of starting a study group—you know, share the pain—and we were figuring we’d do some sort of book co-op, too. That reading list is a mile long.”

“So you’re gonna need a bunch of books; that goes with the territory.” Hardcastle gestured toward his own law school diploma, hanging on the wall beside his desk. Then his eyes narrowed suddenly. “You aren’t worrying about how much this is costing me, or something dumb like that?”

“Me?” Mark pointed at himself. “Worrying about you coming up with the scratch? Uh-uh, Kemosabe.”

“’Cause that wager was my idea and you won it fair and square” Hardcastle looked down at the list again, erased a couple more check marks and said, “I think I’m just going to buy them all new.”

“Ju-udge, some of those are over a hundred bucks each.” Mark was on his feet and had snatched the list back. “Listen, I’m the guy holding your marker, right?”

Hardcastle frowned momentarily and then gave that a nod.

“Then maybe I should be the guy deciding how it gets paid off, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.”

“Good,” Mark glanced at the list in his hand, then folded it and shoved it hastily in his pocket, “Sheesh,” he turned and strolled up the steps to the hallway, shaking his head, “offer to turn over a new leaf and he wants to buy a whole damn Carnegie li—”

Hardcastle heard it end abruptly in mid-mutter as the front door slammed closed. He had a notion that it wasn’t so much about the books—did they really put a hundred dollar price tag on some of them these days? He shook his head. No, not the books, but the “ways and means.”

He thought maybe it was time to pay off that marker in full.