Sand Sharks (20 page)

It took several loud knocks to get a response.

“Yeah?” said the beefy thirty-something man who opened the door in boxer shorts and a faded blue
BORN TO RUMBLE
T-shirt. They had evidently awakened him from a very deep sleep and he stared at them with bleary eyes. “Whas’up?”

“Smith?”

“Loring. Who’re y’all?”

Andy Wall flashed his badge. “We’re looking for Kyle Armstrong.”

“He ain’t here, man. He’s gone.”

“When do you expect him back?” asked Edwards.

“I told you. He’s cleared out. Split. And don’t ask me where ’cause he was gone when I got back.”

Loring told them he was a long-haul trucker. He had gotten in from Arizona around two a.m. to find all of Kyle’s things gone
from his side of the room. “Clothes, CD player, clock radio, toothbrush, razor, his stupid bicycle, everything.”

“When?” they asked.

“How the hell do I know when he left? I told you. I just got in.”

“What about your other roommate?”

“George?” He shrugged. “His shit’s still here, so I guess he’s at work. He’s a carpenter on that TV show.”

“
Dead in the Water
?”

“Naw, the other one.”

“
Port City Blues
?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

They put out a BOLO for one Sidney Kyle Armstrong, driving a red Geo Metro, and drove out to the sprawling Screen Gems complex
on North 23rd Street. At the gate, they were directed to the
Port City Blues
sound stage. Inside the building, they passed a set that looked like the interior of a nightclub and another that duplicated
a courtroom. The place seemed almost deserted.

“They’re shooting on location today,” a passing technician told them. “Taking advantage of the rainy day.”

“We’re looking for a George Smith.”

He pointed them to a door that led outside to a picnic table and benches under a metal roof. Three young men sheltered there
out of the rain to smoke their cigarettes. As always, Gary Edwards found himself half envying them. He had been quit for eight
months, three days, and sixteen hours and he still missed the way that first drag hit his lungs with its jolt of fresh nicotine.

He correctly assumed the smoker with the leather tool belt was George Smith. As soon as Andy Wall flashed his badge, the other
two men ditched their cigarettes and went back inside.

“Kyle’s split?” Smith asked. “You sure about that?”

“That’s what your other roommate says.”

“Ronnie’s back?”

For a moment Edwards wondered if there was something besides tobacco in that cigarette. “Don’t you guys talk to each other?”

Smith shrugged. “It’s not like we’re best friends. I’m usually in bed by the time Kyle gets home and I’m gone in the morning
before he wakes up. My name’s the one on the lease and I need two roommates to split the rent. Ronnie’s gone so much it doesn’t
bother him to share the second bedroom and Kyle’s saving his money to get a nose job. He thinks that’s why he can’t land a
role. Like a new nose is gonna put his name in lights.”

“He say anything to you about the judge that was murdered Saturday night?”

“Nope.” Smith took a final drag on his cigarette and ground it out in a can of sand that sat on the table. “I think the last
time we even saw each other might’ve been last week sometime. He didn’t say anything about moving out. You sure he’s gone?”

“That’s what your friend Ronnie said. Took all his clothes and his bicycle.”

“Well, hell. Now I’ve gotta find another guy to move in.”

They left him lighting up another cigarette.

The deified Hadrian stated… “You have to determine what in your best judgment you are to believe or what you think has not
been proved to your satisfaction.”

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

A
t our mid-morning break, I decided it’d be quicker to run up to my room than wait in line to use the ladies’ room. Out in
the main lobby, the SandCastle’s child-friendly policy was getting a full test as rain continued to fall. There was an arts-and-crafts
playroom downstairs on the ground level next to the exercise room, but judging from the grumbling I heard in the elevator,
both were filled to capacity.

When I came back downstairs, a staff member had been stationed next to the touching tank to keep bored preteens from getting
too rough with the sand dollars and starfish, while another tried to keep toddlers from banging their action figures on the
glass aquarium that lined the hall to the restaurant. At the concierge’s desk, discount vouchers were being offered to beleaguered
parents to tempt them to try some off-premise attractions.

I saw Bernie Rawlings’s pudgy daughter being hauled out through the revolving door by Bernie’s equally pudgy wife. Both were
red-faced and angry and I heard the child shriek, “But I don’t wanna go on a stupid trolley ride! I wanna watch
SpongeBob
!”

There was one oasis of quiet in the lobby, though. Rosemary Emerson sat on a couch with four or five small children clustered
around. They leaned against her or perched on the arms and back of the couch to hear her read
Horton Hatches the Egg
, while their mothers relaxed nearby with coffee or soft drinks.

She glanced up from the book to smile at me as I passed and she looked rested and ready to cope with anything.

No way could I be that cool if Dwight dumped me.

The buffet table had been cleared away from the lobby outside our meeting room and the food replaced with tubs of iced drinks
and urns for coffee or hot tea. The area was crowded elbow to elbow and I was working my way down for a final cup of coffee
when someone from the next district stopped me. She’d heard about my marriage for the first time that morning and wanted to
give good wishes. “And he comes with a little boy?”

I smiled and nodded. “He turned nine last month.”

“Good luck,” she said. “My husband brought a twelve-year-old daughter to our marriage.”

“You have my sympathy,” I said, remembering the unremitting antagonism shown by my game warden’s resentful teenage daughter.

“Fortunately, she’s sixteen now and has started to think I’m pretty cool because I’m not on her case about her boyfriend and
her clothes the way my husband and his ex seem to be.”

We agreed that boys were probably easier than girls.

“And cats are easier still,” said Aubrey Hamilton, a judge from up near Virginia. She wore a black pantsuit that sported a
generous scattering of cat hairs.

I laughed. “At least kids don’t shed on you,” I said.

“There
is
that,” she conceded.

I started to edge past her to get to the coffee when over her shoulder I saw Will Blackstone approaching the urns from the
opposite direction. His handsome face sported a black eye of epic proportions and he seemed to be getting jovial remarks from
those around him.

I decided a bottle of water from the tub of ice at my elbow would do just fine and hastily returned to my seat next to Chelsea
Ann, who was laughing with Beth Keever seated on the other side of her.

“We were talking about Judge Blackstone,” she said. “You know him?”

“We’ve met,” I said cautiously.

“Have you seen that black eye he’s wearing?”

Judge Keever leaned in with an amused smile. “He
says
he fell in the shower last night and hit his eye on the sink. He’s even making noises about a lawsuit against the hotel because
of the slippery tub, but John Smith saw him come in off the beach last night with a bloody nose so I don’t think that dog’ll
hunt.”

To change the subject, I said, “I saw Rosemary out in the lobby. She seems pretty relaxed.”

Chelsea Ann nodded. “It amazes me, too, how well she’s taking it. I guess she was more ready to move on than she realized.
I do wish it’d stop raining, though, so she could get out on the beach while we’re tied up in here. Want to let’s go out somewhere
for lunch?”

“Sure,” I said and we turned our attention to the podium as a professor from the School of Government put up the first slide
for our update on criminal law.

When we broke for lunch, Detective Gary Edwards was loitering outside. He wanted to talk and I wanted to hear what news, if
any, there was in his investigation, but hunger battled with curiosity.

“I’m really sorry,” I told him, “but I skipped supper last night and only had a slice of melon for breakfast, so I’m too hungry
to skip another meal.”

“Well, if it’s breakfast you want instead of lunch, let me take you to the best breakfast place out this way. I could use
some myself.”

His invitation included Chelsea Ann, who looked interested. “You’re talking about the Causeway, right?”

He nodded.

“Why don’t y’all go on ahead? I have to find my sister. See what she wants to do. Maybe we’ll catch up with you later.”

It was still raining heavily, but Edwards had parked under the portico so I didn’t need an umbrella. Twelve minutes later
we were seated on mismatched chairs in just about the scruffiest restaurant I’ve ever walked into.

Its main attempt at a unified decor were the aqua oilcloths imprinted with shellfish that encased the tabletops. The grungy
walls and wooden booths cried out for paint, as did the low ceiling. We had passed through clouds of smoke from the cigarette
addicts who filled the porch tables. Inside, the air was redolent of hot grease, bacon, and fried fish. On a chalkboard, the
day’s leading offering was eggs and grouper.

I was afraid to ask what the sanitary rating might be, but as crowded as it was on this rainy Monday, I knew the food had
to be special.

“Only the breakfast menu,” Edwards said. “Everything else is ordinary.”

I quickly settled on scrambled eggs and country sausage—air-dried links with a flavor like nothing else.

“Grits or hash browns?” asked our waitress, a seen-everything brunette on the wrong side of forty. She did not have a cigarette
dangling from her lips, but judging by the cloud of nicotine that enveloped her, a lit one waited for her somewhere.

“Grits, please.”

“Biscuits or toast?”

“Biscuits.”

Edwards wanted the salt-cured ham and redeye gravy with his eggs and we both ordered coffee.

I was amazed by the prices listed on the menu. Even with a generous tip, I’d get serious change back from a ten-dollar bill.

“And it’ll be a ten-dollar bill,” Edwards told me. “They don’t take plastic.”

On the drive over, he had told me that Martha was encouraged by the thought that Fitz had squeezed her hand. He also told
me that the car that had hit him was registered to Kyle Armstrong, the waiter from Jonah’s, and that he appeared to have fled
the town with all his belongings.

As we waited for our food to come, he asked if I’d noticed Kyle paying much attention to Jeffreys.

I shook my head. “Martha’s the one who pays attention to waiters, not me, I’m afraid. Although he did desert us when Stone
Hamilton came in, but it wasn’t his table and we got him back. Speaking of Hamilton, what about the dog leash?”

“He showed us his and it wasn’t a brand-new one, either. We’re thinking now that the leash that strangled Jeffreys was a piece
of litter. Somebody’s dog probably chewed the lead off and they just threw it away. It was frayed and sun-bleached and caked
with dirt, like it’d been outdoors for a while. One of the waitresses said she saw a faded blue length lying in the bushes
out front when she came to work. The killer must have just grabbed up the handiest thing possible to choke him with.”

“You’re saying that if someone hadn’t littered, Jeffreys might still be alive?”

“Not necessarily. If it hadn’t been the leash, he could’ve had his head smashed in with a rock or something. It might not
have been premeditated, but we’re pretty sure it was done by someone who did mean to kill him.”

Our breakfast plates arrived and everything was wonderful. It’s always risky to order soft-scrambled eggs because they often
come out as dry and tasteless as if they’d been sitting on a steam table for an hour. These were moist and creamy with streaks
of yolk still visible amid the white. The biscuits were hot and flaky, the grits were perfectly seasoned, and the sausage
tasted homemade.

“Mmmm!” I said blissfully.

Edwards grinned as he poured redeye gravy over his grits and dug into his own ham and eggs. “Told you they know how to do
breakfast.”

The waitress came back to refill our mugs. “Y’all need anything else, just holler,” she said.

After a couple of mouthfuls to ease my hunger pangs, I said, “The thing that sounds odd about all this is that Jeffreys wasn’t
all that tall, but he was well built and looked like he worked out.”

Edwards lifted an eyebrow at that.

“I saw him on the beach that afternoon,” I explained. “In a bathing suit.”

“Your point is?”

“Well, Kyle Armstrong didn’t strike me as somebody who spent any time in a gym. He’s almost skinny, in fact. Would he have
been strong enough to strangle Pete Jeffreys and then throw him in the river?”

“Maybe. He seems to be a cyclist.” Edwards told me about the waiter’s specialized license plate and that he owned a bicycle.
“Cyclists can be stronger than they look.”

“Like Cynthia Blankenthorpe,” I mused. “She’s a cyclist, too. Brought her bike down with her and rode from the hotel to the
Cotton Exchange in all that heat Sunday.”

A sudden thought struck me. “Did you see her hands?”

“What about them?”

“One of them had four deep scratches on the back. She said it was from a run-in with a yucca plant, but…”

“But you’re wondering if it could have been Jeffreys when he was struggling to get free?”

“Did anybody check his fingernails?”

“You’ve been watching too much
CSI
,” he said with a wry grin. “But yes. We did bag the hands. They were in water for at least an hour though, and our ME didn’t
get anything useful from the fingernail scrapings. Besides, Judge Blankenthorpe was in somebody’s view from the time Jeffreys
left their table till she rode back to the hotel with the Fitzhumes. And that reminds me.”