I sighed and settled happily into a roomy wicker chair and when someone came out to take our order, I said, “Regular coffee, please. No cream or sugar.”
“Really?” asked Reid.
“Really.”
“Well, in that case…” He smiled up at the waitress. “I don’t suppose you have desserts?”
“Just pie. Pecan and key lime.”
“Deborah?”
“Not for me.”
“Okay. Espresso and a piece of pecan pie.”
After the waitress left us, Reid said, “Thanks for not telling that detective about Bill’s godson.”
“No need to thank me. I would have had to if it wasn’t pretty clear that our waiter was the one who killed Jeffreys.”
“Yeah, well, I knew Bill couldn’t kill anybody and once they find that guy—”
“Didn’t you hear?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“He crashed off I-40 up near Castle Hayne in the rain last night and killed himself.”
“No kidding!”
I told him as much as I knew from Detective Edwards’s brief account. “But they still don’t know why he killed Pete Jeffreys, not that I think that’s going to keep them awake at night. There doesn’t seem to be any link between them. Jeffreys was from the Triad and evidently Armstrong was never further east in the state than Kinston. Any chance your friend Bill knows?”
“I doubt it.”
The pie and coffees came. The pie had been warmed and topped with a scoop of vanilla maple ice cream. The smell of that nutty custard mingled with vanilla made my mouth water. Reid offered me a bite—“It’s as good as Aunt Zell’s”—but I’d eaten hushpuppies and fried crabs that night and I managed to resist.
As I sipped my coffee and the pianist inside segued from “Once Upon a Summertime” to a bluesy “Moon River,” Reid talked about his long friendship with Hasselberger, Hasselberger’s decency, his sense of humor.
“Is he good with his hands?” I asked casually.
“How do you mean?”
“You know. Can he build shelves? Rewire a lamp? Tune his car?”
Reid laughed. “I think he may know how to top off the windshield washer fluid, but I wouldn’t count on it. He’s like me. His favorite tools are a phone and the yellow pages.”
I smiled. Reid’s ineptitude with anything mechanical is legendary in our family. My brothers, who amongst them will tackle anything from a toaster to a hay baler, just shake their heads.
So there went the nebulous theory that Hasselberger might have hot-wired Armstrong’s Geo and gone gunning for Fitz. Even if the police were satisfied that Armstrong had acted alone, the final nail in that particular coffin came when Reid mentioned some mutual friends he and Hasselberger had gone out to supper with down in Sunset Beach last night before driving back to Wilmington together long after 6:30.
As we walked back down the Riverwalk, we saw the cruise boat drifting up toward us and stopped to watch.
“Dotty and I did that once,” he sighed, the moonlight making him nostalgic. “Dinner and dancing on the river.”
He hadn’t had anything to drink, so I didn’t have to worry about him getting maudlin. Dotty was remarried now, but Reid would always mourn the end of their marriage even though it was his endless catting around that finally drove her to leave him.
We reached the parking lot and he pulled out his keys and jingled them in his hand. “So when’s your conference end?”
“Thursday noon,” I said.
“See you on Friday then?”
“Probably.”
Reid’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a younger brother, so I gave him a hug and told him to drive carefully.
The cruise ship passed and nosed into a dock further up the Riverwalk. I briefly considered circling around back to catch Edwards and Chelsea Ann as they came down the gangplank, but why interrupt their evening with something that probably had no significance?
I drove back to the SandCastle, parked the car, and went inside. Too restless to go straight to my room, yet not really in the mood for the shop talk that was bound to be going on up in 628, I went into the nearly deserted bar, ordered a nightcap, and took it outside to the terrace. Except for a couple on the far end, I had the place to myself. The moon was so huge and bright that I could have read a newspaper. Instead I took a sip of my icy drink and called Dwight. He had been back in his room almost an hour, he said, and had almost fallen asleep watching a baseball game.
“How’s your judge friend?” he asked. “Did they catch the driver that hit him?”
Once again, I found myself describing how Armstrong had died.
“Wraps it up nice and tidy, doesn’t it?” he said drowsily.
“Except that no one knows why he killed Judge Jeffreys.”
“Can’t have everything.”
I heard him yawn and said, “Go to sleep, darling.”
“Yeah, I’m a little beat. There’s one more session tomorrow morning. A breakfast meeting, then I’ll pick up Cal and head home. I’ll have to give this phone back to Sandy, so it’ll be tomorrow evening before I can call you.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I just wish I was going to be there when you get home. I’ve missed you.”
“Not half as much as I’ve missed you, shug. I’ve been thinking. If Mama can keep Cal, how about I hitch a ride down to Wilmington on Thursday?”
“Really?” My heart was suddenly turning somersaults.
“Well, I haven’t seen you in that new red bathing suit yet,” he drawled, and from there the conversation took a decidedly different turn.
After we finally said good night, I continued to sit there in the moonlight, nursing my drink because I was too lazy to go in and order another.
For once, indolence and sloth were rewarded. I heard low voices and glanced over to see Chelsea Ann and Gary Edwards walking toward me with their own nightcaps.
“I thought that was you,” she said. She held Edwards’s drink while he pulled two more rocking chairs closer to mine to form a rough semicircle.
“How was the cruise?” I asked.
“Awful,” Edwards said.
Chelsea Ann gave his arm a light poke. “No, it wasn’t. But we almost didn’t go.”
“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 Armst
rong 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.
CHAPTER
27
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…
Sand Sharks dk-15 Page 20
