then you'll have to go back and amend

Finally, he said, "I think the Judge would want you to have some of it." "Oh you do?" "Yes. We'll need some of it now to finish fixing up the place, probably twenty-five thousand or so. What if you, me, and Forrest split the remainder? " "Twenty-five each?" "Yep. What do you think?" "You're not running it through the estate?" she asked. She knew the law better than Harry Rex. "Why bother? It's cash, nobody knows about it, and if we report it then half will go for taxes." "And how would you explain it?" she asked, as always, one step ahead. They used to say that Claudia would have the case decided before the lawyers began their opening statements. And the woman loved money. Clothes, perfume, always a late-model car, and all these things from a poorly paid court reporter. If she was drawing a state pension, it couldn't be much. "It cannot be explained," Ray said. "If it's from gambling, then you'll have to go back and amend his tax returns for the past years," she said, quickly on board. "What a mess." "A real mess." The mess was quietly put to rest. No one would ever know about her share of the money. "We had a case once," she said, gazing across the front lawn. "Over in Tippah County, thirty years ago. A man named Childers owned a scrap yard. He died with no will." A pause, a long drag on the cigarette. "Had a bunch of kids, and they found money hidden all over the place, in his office, in his attic, in a utility shed behind his house, in his fireplace. It was a regular Easter egg hunt. Once they'd scoured every inch of the place, they counted it up and it was about two hundred thousand dollars. This, from a man who wouldn't pay his phone bill and wore the same pair of overalls for ten years." Another pause, another long puff. She could tell these stories forever. "Half the kids wanted to split the money and run, the other half wanted to tell the lawyer and include the money in the probate. Word leaked out, the family got scared, and the money got added to the old man's estate. The kids fought bitterly. Five years later all the money was gone - half to the government, half to the lawyers."