It didn’t take Ana Mae’s neighbors, friends, and fellow church members long to figure out that something pretty extraordinary was going on with the Futrells. And the next thing everyone knew, a story in the Drapersville Times & Review told about the big-city visitors who’d returned to their hometown and had to stick around for a while because of something Ana Mae did from the grave. Then an “anonymous source”—which everyone who was anyone knew was Rosalee Jenkins—was quoted in the paper saying Ana Mae had left a significant monetary inheritance to the heir who deciphered the clues left in a quilt. Odds at Junior Cantrell’s and the barbershop ran three to one that the snooty Marguerite would get the money. “She’s the one don’t need none,” one sage said. “But that boy got a good head on his shoulders, even if he is that way. I think he’s gonna get it,” another handicapper declared, laying down twenty bucks on the ten-to-one odds of Clayton claiming the money.
