"He had a UTI," Claudine said. "In an eighty-one-year-old man, a UTI with dehydration causes delirium. That's textbook. It resolves when you treat it. It resolved. He's been as clear as you or me since the second week of September. Ask anybody at Springhill. Ask the speech therapist who did his cognitive screening. He scored twenty-eight out of thirty."
"You read his chart?" Lawson said. "Is that legal, Claudine? You looked at my father's medical records?"
"He showed them to me himself. They're his."
"Okay," Shuford said, holding up a hand. "Okay." He opened her manila envelope next and took out the two pages. She watched him read the revocation. She watched him get to the bottom of it, to the notary block, and stop.
"Tuan Vo," he read. "Notary Public, State of Alabama." He looked up. "That's you."
"Yes, sir."
Lawson turned and looked at Tuan for the first time. Really looked at him, Claudine thought, maybe for the first time in the three years Tuan had been pumping his gas and hosing down his dock box. It was not a long look. It did not need to be.
"You notarized this," Lawson said.
"Yes, sir. Thursday night."
"You notarized a document my father signed eight hours after walking out of a skilled nursing facility against medical advice, in a hospital gown, for a woman who has been trying to get her hands on this marina for three years."
"Ms. Pettaway doesn't want the marina," Tuan said. "She wants slot 1. She already has it."
"Son," Lawson said, very quietly, "you have no idea what you've done. Your notary commission is going to be the least of it." He turned back to Shuford. "Wiley, that revocation is worthless. A man who lacks capacity can't revoke a power of attorney. That's the law. That's the whole point. Two doctors."