Sand Sharks (26 page)

“Why not?”

“It seems that cruising the river in the moonlight isn’t enough. They have special entertainment every night.” She giggled.
“Guess what tonight’s was?”

I shook my head.

“A murder mystery,” Edwards groaned.

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. I thought there would be dancing. Instead it was bad actors waving guns or running around with bloody knives,
while everyone roared with laughter. Like murder’s a funny joke.”

“We found a place out on a deck that was away from all the mayhem,” Chelsea Ann said. “It was beautiful. Very relaxing. I’m
glad we went.”

I noticed that his hand had found hers.

“Well, not to spoil the mood here, but something occurred to me this evening,” I told Edwards. “The money in Pete Jeffreys’s
wallet. Didn’t you say it was over two hundred dollars?”

“Yeah. About two-sixty, I think. Why?”

“Well, Judge Blankenthorpe said they stopped at an ATM on their way to Jonah’s and he got three hundred dollars. That’s why
she was so annoyed that he stuck her with his dinner check. She knew he had cash. Unless they stopped somewhere else along
the way, what happened to that forty dollars?”

Edwards frowned. “Wouldn’t have been robbery. A thief wouldn’t have left that much cash and the credit cards.”

“Here’s what I was thinking could have happened. Say he started the evening with only ten or fifteen dollars in his wallet,
which is why he stopped at an ATM. With a couple of drinks, his dinner would have run around fifty dollars. What if he ran
into Kyle Armstrong in the restroom and that’s when they got into it? Then, instead of going back to the table, he pulls out
his wallet and hands Armstrong enough cash to cover his bill and storms out the door to the parking lot. Armstrong kills him,
pockets the money and goes back in and acts like nothing’s happened.”

Edwards thought about it a minute, then nodded. “I like it. Especially if—hey! Was Jeffreys gay by any chance?”

I shrugged and Chelsea Ann was equally unsure. “I haven’t heard that he was, but I didn’t know him, why?”

“Because one of the other waiters at Jonah’s is. He says he tried to hit on Armstrong last month and almost got punched in
the nose. What if Jeffreys came on so strong to him in the men’s room that he freaked out?”

“Yes!” I said as the last piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “Armstrong did strike me as somebody so caught up in his
own image that he didn’t have a real firm grasp on reality.”

“And if that image was one of total masculinity?” said Chelsea Ann, who’s seen as many impulsive and self-delusional people
in her court as I have.

Edwards leaned back in his rocker and smiled at us. “Finally! A reasonable motive for why he killed a man we couldn’t prove
he’d met before. Thanks, Your Honor.”

“Call me Deborah,” I said with a meaningful glance at their entwined fingers. “For some reason, I have this weird premonition
that our paths are going to keep crossing.”

“By the way,” Chelsea Ann said sweetly. “What time’s our first session tomorrow?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said as I finished the last drops of my drink and stood up. “Sorry to have to say good night, but I really
need my beauty sleep.”

Hey, I can take a hint as quick as anybody. Especially when it’s a hit over the head with a sledgehammer.

Commodus made terms… for he hated all exertion and was eager for the comforts of the city.

—
Dio Cassius
(ca. AD 230)

I
awoke to sunshine Wednesday morning and with the same sort of happy anticipation I used to get as a child on the day before
my birthday, when I knew that there would soon be presents to unwrap.

The idea made me smile and I wondered if Dwight would mind being compared to a birthday present.

“
He’d like the unwrapping part
,” snickered the pragmatist.

“
Don’t you have to be downstairs in twenty minutes
?” asked the preacher.

“Yikes!” I said and jumped out of bed.

Fortunately I’d showered last night, so I had time to snag a peach Danish and a cup of coffee before sliding into a seat between
Shelly Holt and Becky Blackmore about half a minute before Beth Keever began her presentation on “Child Support: Deviation
Review and Enforcement.”

Four concurrent sessions ran from 8:30 to ten, then repeated from 10:30 to noon, with the afternoon free. We were supposed
to attend two of the eight sessions.

At the ten o’clock break, the lobby buzzed with news that Jeffreys’s killer had died in a car crash.

“Poetic justice that he tried to kill Fitz with his car and wound up killing himself with it,” said some.

“Remember when Jeffreys said his opponent was gay?” Chuck Teach said. “I’m starting to wonder if guys who make a big deal
out of that aren’t launching a preemptive strike.”

“The best defense is usually an offense,” one of his listeners agreed.

Another nodded. “Like my mama always said: you point your finger at somebody, you got three fingers pointing back at
you
.”

Unspoken was the relief that the killer had been someone else. Not one of us.

At 10:30, as I started into the room for “Criminal Sentencing Resources,” I saw Will Blackstone and his bruised face headed
that way, too. As soon as our eyes met, he abruptly changed course and detoured into the session on gangs and gang crimes.

I decided not to take it personally.

Upon adjournment, I immediately drove over to the hospital. I had told Martha that I would be by to take her to lunch and
when I arrived she was positively radiant.

“Come see Fitz!” she said and practically dragged me into the unit.

He was awake and he smiled when he saw me. “Hey, Deborah.”

His voice was weak and he was still groggy from so many drugs, but it was definitely Fitz. When I leaned over to kiss him,
he said, “Martha says y’all’re going out to lunch?”

I nodded.

“Watch out for cars,” he said drily.

If he hadn’t been so encumbered with tubes and wires, I would have hugged him. “Want us to bring you a nice crisp softie?”
I teased.

“I’d better take a rain check.” His eyelids drooped. “Sorry. I can’t seem to keep awake.”

“You rest, sweetheart,” Martha said, patting the hand that didn’t have an IV attached to it. “Chad’s right outside and we’ll
be back in an hour.”

“Take your time,” he murmured as his eyes closed again.

“They’re going to move him into a room this afternoon,” Martha said. “And if he continues to improve, we can transfer him
to a hospital nearer home in a few days.”

She told me that Gary Edwards had been by that morning to bring them up to date on Kyle Armstrong’s death and his probable
motive for killing Judge Jeffreys.

“All because the judge made a pass at him? I should think he would have been flattered. As I recall, Pete Jeffreys was rather
handsome and Kyle was decidedly
not
.”

Unfortunately, Fitz had no real memory of going to the restroom or of seeing Jeffreys or the waiter. He rather thought that
he had, but he couldn’t be certain and Martha quit pushing him.

“What difference does it make now?” she asked.

*   *   *

After last night’s fried food, we were both in the mood for a fresh green salad and some crusty bread. Martha knew of just
the place over on Oleander Drive.

“Best of all, it’s near a good used-book store,” she said. “I want something to read besides last year’s
Newsweek
and
Golf Digest
.”

The restaurant was in a small shopping center and had a salad bar to die for. We piled on locally grown baby spinach, arugula,
oak leaf lettuce, and mustard greens, topped them with cherry tomatoes that actually tasted vine-ripened, then took our plates
out to a wisteria-shaded patio. It was a typical June day, warm but not too muggy. Yesterday’s rain had washed the air so
clean that it almost squeaked.

“I hope you appreciate how upscale North Carolina’s getting to be,” I said. “Did you notice that there wasn’t a single shred
of iceberg lettuce on that counter?”

“Fine with me,” said Martha, who looked more rested today. “I ate enough for the whole South when I was growing up. So how’s
the conference going? Am I missing any good gossip?”

“Doesn’t seem to be much,” I told her.

“Really?” She looked at me skeptically over her sunglasses. “Joy Hamilton told me that one of the judges was walking around
with a very suspicious black eye.”

“Oh?”

“Will Blackstone. From 19-B, I think she said. I don’t know him. Do you?”

“We’ve met,” I admitted. “And he really does have a shiner. I heard he slipped and fell in the bathroom.”

“Not what I heard,” she sniffed. “Jane Harper said John Smith saw him come off the beach the other night with a bloody nose.”

“Maybe he ran into a piling. Or a pelican.” I dribbled some dressing over my salad and pushed back from the table. “I think
I want some grated cheese. Bring you anything?”

“Well, as long as you’re going, a few bacon bits would be nice.”

By the time I got back to the table, she had forgotten all about Will Blackstone and his black eye.

After lunch, we drove a few short blocks to McAllister and Solomon, a used- and rare-book store on Wrightsville Avenue near
44th Street. If you’re a book lover, this is probably the place for you. Certainly it was the place for Judge Audrey Hamilton,
whom we met leaving the store with a half-dozen vintage mystery novels in her arms. I myself would rather see the movie than
read the book, but Dwight’s mother always has two or three books going at the same time and whenever we drive into Raleigh
for lunch or shopping, she wants to stop by Reader’s Corner or Quail Ridge Books and Music and look at every title on the
shelves. I usually kill time stocking up on CDs and greeting cards.

While Martha cruised biography and history, I went looking for the children’s section. My brother Zach had been mildly dyslexic,
so Mother made him read aloud every night. I remember being transfixed by
Old Yeller
. Cal’s a reader like his grandmother, and I thought he might enjoy it even though we could probably rent the video.

I didn’t really expect to find a copy, but there it sat on a lower shelf. Unfortunately, it was a first edition and carried
a seventy-dollar price tag. I sat down on a nearby stool and opened the pages to refresh my memory of Travis and his irritating
younger brother, Arliss. Naturally I had identified with Arliss back then. My brothers thought I was a tagalong pain in the
ass and didn’t hide their opinion much better than Travis did. I flipped to the heartbreaking ending and found myself choking
up as if I were four again and about to sob, “No, no,
NO!
He
can’t
shoot Yeller!”

I had been aware that there were two people on the other side of the shelves from me, but the male voice was halfway through
a quietly emotional reading of a poem before I came up from Yeller’s death scene and registered his words:

… And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core…

His voice broke then and after a moment the woman said,
“ ‘I will arise now and go to Innisfree.’
Yes, I can see why she loved it.”

A moment or two later they came around the corner. He was in jeans and a faded Obama T-shirt; she wore hip-hugging white shorts
that showed off the jeweled ring in her navel and a bright pink bandeau that matched her hair. Their eyes were suspiciously
moist as if the poem he’d read had moved them both to the brink of tears. They seemed startled to see me sitting there and
I was equally startled to recognize them.

“Oh, hey,” the young man said. “Did you ever find your earring?”

“Hank, right?” I slid the book back into its slot and stood up.

“Yes, ma’am.” To the girl with him, he explained, “The judge here lost an earring the other night but no one turned it in.”

“Deborah Knott,” I said, extending my hand.

“Mel Garrett,” she replied. “I work at Jonah’s, too.”

“I know. You waited on the Stone Hamilton table.”

“Wow! Wicked good memory.”

“Well, it
was
Stone Hamilton,” I said. Not that her fuchsia-streaked hair wasn’t also memorable. “I guess y’all heard about Kyle Armstrong?”

Both faces turned sober and Mel Garrett said, “I feel like the woman who worked alongside that serial killer—what was his
name? The guy that killed all those sorority students?”

“Ted Bundy?”

“Yeah. Not that Kyle killed thirty women, but still. Two judges?”

From behind me, Martha said drily, “Only one judge. My husband’s banged up, but he’s going to live. Hello, Hank. How nice
to see you again.”

“It was your husband Kyle ran down?” asked the Garrett girl. Martha nodded and the girl tsk’d in commiseration. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too, sugar.”

“I knew he had a mean streak in him, but I didn’t know it was that fu—frickin’ wide. I’m really glad your husband’s going
to be okay.”

We chatted a moment or two longer, then Martha paid for the two books she’d found, a biography of John Adams and the collected
letters of E. B. White.

Hank and Mel came up behind us and she said, “You know, Judge, sometimes the cleaning people leave things they find in a box
in back instead of bringing them to the desk. What did your earring look like?”

I described the red-and-white hoops and she said she’d check on it. “We’re both on duty this evening if you’re over that way
and want to stop by.”