Sand Sharks (21 page)

He pulled out a list of names and handed it to me. “You know those four that aren’t marked through?”

I put a dab of blackberry jam on my biscuit and took a bite as I looked at the list. “I know Bill Hasselberger and Judge Feinstein.
Not the Beechers. He’s brand-new to the bench, appointed last month, I think.”

“Mrs. Fitzhume says these are the ones at Jonah’s Saturday night that she wouldn’t recognize and doesn’t think her husband
would either. What’s your opinion?”

“She’s probably right about the Beechers,” I said slowly, stalling for time by cutting up my sausage and eating a piece with
a forkful of egg. “I’m pretty sure that Fitz and Feinstein were on a committee together last year.”

“What about Hasselberger? He’s on your list of people at the restaurant next door. Along with your cousin.”

I gave a reluctant nod. “But Fitz would probably recognize him. He was on the bench for four years till Jeffreys ran against
him and took his seat.”

“Really? Not much love lost there then, right?”

“No, but as you just said, he was at the restaurant next door. What would he be doing near the restroom inside Jonah’s?”

At Jonah’s, the men’s restroom was diagonally to the right of the front door. What if that door opened about the time Fitz
and Jeffreys were passing each other? Even if Bill Hasselberger had been walking past out on the sidewalk at that exact moment,
would Fitz have noticed him enough to remark on it?

“Besides,” I argued, “how could he be driving Kyle’s car when it hit Fitz? And why would Kyle have cleared out if he’s not
the killer? I should think you’d be trying to find the connection between him and Jeffreys.”

“Jeffreys was from the Triad and the car is registered to Armstrong’s home address in Myrtle Beach.” He pulled another crumpled
sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. It looked like a computer printout. “Here’s what we’ve learned so far: graduated high
school in Myrtle Beach, then enrolled in the drama program at Cape Fear Community College downtown. Dropped out in the third
semester. Lived with an aunt when he first came here—”

“Right!” I interjected. “That’s what he said when Martha was telling us about his wanting to act. He said his aunt lived here
and that she knew someone on the
Matlock
show. She got him into a courtroom scene as an extra when he was a child. Have you questioned her yet?”

“My partner’s on his way out to Castle Hayne right now,” he said, referring to the next town up from Wilmington, off I-40.
“But there’s nothing on this paper to indicate he was ever further into North Carolina than right here. Nowhere near the Triad.
So unless Jeffreys came down here and royally pissed him off…”

He broke off in frustration and finished his ham and eggs.

“If it really was Kyle, wouldn’t one of the other waiters notice if he wasn’t on the floor?”

“They say not. He might not have been gone that long. Less than five minutes, ten at the most, to follow Jeffreys out to the
parking lot, slip the leash around his neck as he was unlocking his car, then roll him over the edge of the bank and into
the river.”

“What about the other people in Jonah’s that night?” I asked. “We weren’t the only ones there.”

“I know and I’ve got officers checking out the names we got off the credit card receipts to see if any of them noticed Jeffreys
and Armstrong together. It’s probably a waste of time. Once we get Armstrong and his car, we’ve got him on the hit-and-run
and that should be enough to pry the rest of it out of him.”

All the time we’d been there, he had kept glancing past me to the door.

“Guess she decided to go somewhere else to eat,” he said as he called for our checks.

I glanced at my watch. Still thirty-five minutes till the next session was due to start.

“Sorry,” I said.

He gave a fatalistic shrug. “I’m just spinning my wheels with her, aren’t I?”

It was my turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Honestly. She likes you. She just doesn’t see much future if she’s going back to Raleigh
on Thursday.”

“Raleigh’s not so far.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“Yeah?” He brightened. “Thanks.”

We took our checks over to the cash register. When I opened my wallet to pay, I saw that I had nothing left but three fives
and a few ones. Time to find an ATM.

It was a short drive back to the hotel, with the rain still coming down heavily enough to make potholes and low spots a real
hazard. We saw two fender benders on the way.

I was still trying to work out the sequence of events. “Okay. Let’s say Kyle recognizes Pete Jeffreys and he’s there in the
vestibule when Jeffreys comes out of the restroom and leaves through the front door. Kyle follows him out to the parking lot,
kills him, and then comes back inside before he’s missed.”

Edwards nodded as he swerved to miss a deep puddle and turned the windshield wipers up a notch.

“He may have noticed Fitz, but he didn’t know his name till you and I were talking about it at Jonah’s when I was there to
look for my earring. Oh, God!” I said, suddenly stricken. “That’s how he knew. It’s my fault Fitz was run down. If I’d kept
my mouth shut, he never would have known.”

“Not necessarily,” Edwards said kindly. “He worked your table. The Fitzhumes paid with a credit card, so he had to have seen
it.”

I could not excuse myself so easily. “Maybe so, but my telling you that Fitz was the last of our group to see Jeffreys put
a big red bull’s-eye on his back.”

As he pulled up under the SandCastle’s portico, Edwards said, “What I keep wondering is how someone other than you judges
would have known that Judge Fitzhume would be walking across the parking lot when he was.”

I had been wondering that myself and I thought I had the answer.

“Come on inside and I’ll show you.”

I was aware of the difficult nature of the case.

Pliny (AD 62–113)

P
eople had begun to filter back from lunch as Edwards followed Deborah Knott through the SandCastle’s lobby to the registration
table set up at the archway that led to the meeting rooms. At the near end stood an easel with a whiteboard where judges could
leave each other messages. The schedules for each day’s events were clipped to the top of the easel, and yesterday’s schedule
was still there. She pointed to the bottom of the sheet where large letters proclaimed that a reception honoring Judge Fitzhume
would take place at 6:30 at a clubhouse on the other side of the island.

“That’s been posted here all weekend,” she said. “I don’t suppose you have a picture of him?”

“Actually, I do,” said Edwards. When Andy Wall had joined him at Jonah’s, he had brought along an extra copy of the photo
South Carolina’s DMV had sent them.

He listened as the judge showed it to the women working the table and asked if they had seen him hanging around the whiteboard
on Sunday or Monday.

Blank looks.

She described Kyle Armstrong’s slender build and tentative manner in more detail and added, “He may be the one who ran Judge
Fitzhume down,” which made them look at the picture even more closely.

“Poor Judge Fitz!” said the woman who seemed to be in charge of handing out the conference packets and information sheets.
“I wish we could help, but with so many people in and out, unless he came over and asked a specific question, he’d’ve had
to be wearing a hot pink tutu for us to notice him. Do hope they catch him though.”

Judge Knott handed him back the picture with a rueful smile. “I was so sure this was how he knew.”

“It’s still a logical premise,” Edwards assured her.

“Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”

“Well, it’d be helpful if you could refresh my memory and point out the Beechers and Judge Feinstein.”

“I think that’s Judge Beecher at the end of the hall,” she said and guided him through the judges who were gathering for the
afternoon session.

As he trailed along behind her, he found himself thinking that Dwight Byrant was probably a lucky guy with this sexy, down-to-earth
woman for a wife. Well liked by her peers, too, if one could judge by the warmth of the smiles that greeted her as they passed.

She paused a step away from a threesome who seemed to be one-upping each other on how to get delinquent dads to pay their
child support.

“—and I told him I didn’t care how he paid his arrears, but he was going to be doing community service eight hours a day for
no pay till they were. Two days of picking up trash along the highway and he found the money.”

“Yeah, I tell ’em, ‘Hey, I don’t have a problem.
You’re
the one with a problem,’ ” said a satanically handsome judge with a neatly trimmed Vandyke. “Five times out of eight they’ll
come up with the money before you adjourn. Oh, hey there, Deborah! You want to talk to me?”

She smiled. “I always want to talk to you, Chuck, except that right now I want to meet Judge Beecher.”

Now that she had identified him, Edwards remembered that he was the one who couldn’t put many names on the diagram of Jonah’s
porch tables. A middle-aged white man with a shock of graying black hair and polished rimless glasses, Beecher took the hand
she offered him with a ready-to-be-amused look on his face.

“I’m Deborah Knott, District Eleven-C,” she said. “Welcome to the bench. How’re you liking the view?”

He smiled. “A little scary. Sure is different, isn’t it?”

“If you hold that thought, you’ll do fine. You remember Detective Edwards, don’t you?”

He nodded and Chuck Teach turned with a hopeful look. “Any news for us, Detective?”

“Soon, we hope,” he said, deliberately vague. “Wonder if I could speak to you a minute, Judge Beecher.”

As they moved off to one side, Judge Knott said she would try to find Feinstein for him.

“Have you and Judge Fitzhume met yet?” he asked.

Puzzled, Beecher shook his head. “No. I heard about his accident, of course. You know if he’s gonna be all right?”

“Too soon to say.”

“Damn shame.”

“He was at Jonah’s Saturday night.”

“That’s what they tell me, but he must have been a few tables away.”

“You didn’t see him in the restroom or outside it around nine-thirty that night?”

“No, once we got to the restaurant, I didn’t leave the table till we were all ready to leave.”

“What about your wife?”

“She went to the ladies’ room around eight.” He looked at Edwards sharply through those shiny glasses. “You gonna tell me
what this is about?”

“Just tying up some loose ends, sir. He seems to have been the last one to definitely see Judge Jeffreys as he was leaving
the men’s room and we were hoping that you could add to that.”

“What time was that?”

“Around nine-thirty.”

“Then I can’t help you there, Detective. My wife wasn’t feeling well and we left shortly before nine.”

“What about your waiter?”

“What about her?”

“Your waiter was a woman?”

Beecher nodded.

So much for that line of inquiry, Edwards thought as Beecher rejoined the others. He realized that he was going to have to
go back to the restaurant and pinpoint precisely which tables Kyle Armstrong had served if he was going to have any luck linking
the guy to Jeffreys.

Behind him, a voice said, “Detective Edwards? James Feinstein. Judge Knott said you wanted to speak to me?”

Again it was someone he had spoken to on Sunday and asked for his help on the seating diagrams. A wiry black man, mid-forties,
with a long thin face and keen brown eyes set deep in their sockets. He wore a blue golf shirt tucked into khaki pants with
creases so sharp he could have peeled an apple with them. Edwards remembered his first assessment of the man: someone who
did not like to waste time and who did not easily suffer fools, a judge who knew the law inside out and probably would not
have much sympathy for slackers who showed up in his courtroom.

“You wanted to ask if I know Judge Fitzhume?”

“Actually, sir, it was does he know you?”

“He does. Not in a social way. Our districts are widely separated, but we’ve served on a couple of committees together and
have worked together for six or seven years.”

“Did you speak to him Saturday night?”

“Briefly. He passed by me on the way to the restroom. At least I assume that’s where he was headed. I stood up, we shook hands,
said it was good to see each other. The usual. Then he went on and I sat back down. I didn’t notice when he returned.”

“What about Judge Jeffreys?”

Feinstein shook his head. “As I told you Sunday, I barely knew the man and I didn’t pay any attention to him. Now if you’ll
excuse me?”

While they talked, the crowd had thinned and the judges ambled through the double doors and back into the meeting room.

Edwards looked around for Judge Knott and saw her at the front of the room in animated conversation with Judge Chelsea Ann
Pierce. It was still a few minutes before two—not enough time to say anything meaningful to Judge Pierce even if he could
think of anything meaningful to say.

Several stragglers hurried into the room and the last one in closed the door behind him, effectively putting an end to that
problem for the moment.

As he rounded the corner into the main lobby, he called to check in with Andy Wall, who answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” Edwards asked. “Get anything from Armstrong’s aunt?”

“I’m just leaving Castle Hayne,” Wall replied. “And yeah, I got every clever thing our boy’s said since he started talking.
I’ve looked at scrapbooks of the school plays he was in. I’ve had to listen how Andy Griffith told her what a fine nephew
she had and how he all but said that Ron Howard wouldn’t have had a chance to play Opie if little Kyle had been old enough
to try out for the role. I’ve heard how sensitive he is and how upset he was when he didn’t get a part on—
Jesus H, lady!”