He made a note of it on a folded yellow legal pad. “Thanks. That’ll save me having to stake out a man here and stop every guy with a beard that goes in and out. I can’t believe how many I’ve seen since you told me about him.”
“So what did you want to ask me?” I said when he had folded the pad into thirds and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket.
“Somebody said you’re married to a sheriff’s deputy over there in Colleton County. Dwight Bryant?”
“Do you know him?”
“We’ve met a couple of times. Good man. He’s not with you this week?”
I explained about the seminar in Virginia. “Want me to tell him you said hey?”
“Yes, but…” He hesitated, as if unsure quite how to phrase it. “See, I was thinking it’d be handy to have somebody on the inside of this conference. Somebody who could pick up on who might’ve had it in for Judge Jeffreys.”
“And you thought Dwight could do that?”
“Well, y’all do talk about the job, don’t you? My ex and I used to.”
I had to smile, thinking of how Dwight and I had agreed to a separation of powers before we married. He wouldn’t talk about the charges against anybody who might appear in my court; I wouldn’t ask why his department had seen fit to bring those charges, and I would keep my nose out of his business. It’s worked out rather well so far. Most of his cases wind up in superior court, and he’s seldom involved in the misdemeanors and minor felonies that wind up in mine.
As if encouraged by my smile, Edwards said, “If you’re married to a homicide detective, you have to know that small, off-the-cuff remarks can sometimes break a case, right?”
I nodded.
“I don’t suppose I could get you to be my ears inside the conference, could I? Ask a few questions, listen to what people say?”
To be invited into a murder investigation when Dwight was always trying to keep me out of his? It was tempting.
Polishing that apple he was holding out to me, Edwards said, “Everyone I’ve talked to today either claims not to know Jeffreys except by sight or swears he’s never done anything to make himself a murder victim. That he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“These are your colleagues,” said the pragmatist, wistfully eyeing the ripe red fruit of temptation. “You gonna cast doubt on their truth and honor and dirty the bench’s reputation in the minds of an already cynical public?”
“A judge who uses the office for personal gain has no business sitting in judgment of others,” said the preacher. “Pass me that apple.”
“So what do you want to know?” I asked.
“For starters, what are you hearing about him that we’re not being told?”
“This is all hearsay,” I warned him. “I don’t have any names or dates, but I guess they all happened in his home district.” Without naming any of my sources, I then repeated Reid’s allegation that Jeffreys had given signed DWI dismissals to at least one attorney in the Triad, an area centered around Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem. I told him about the dirty campaign he’d run to oust Bill Hasselberger and his plans to run for the seat currently held by Tom Henshaw, someone else I didn’t know.
“I’ve also heard he could be bribed in custody disputes, and he was the judge that gave probation to the carjacker who raped and killed his victim and then drove around with her body in the trunk for three days. I don’t know if any of my colleagues were related to the victim, but I can ask.”
“About Judge Pierce,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Is she, um, involved with anybody right now?”
I laughed. “Sorry. That’s something you’ll have to ask her yourself.”
“I think I’ll take that as a probable no.” He gave me his card and told me to call any time of the day or night.
During our talk, people from the School of Government had been setting up the conference registration table, laying out our information packets and our name tags. I paused to speak to one of the interns and to read the schedule newly posted on the message easel. As I had told Reid, our president was hosting a reception tomorrow night on the other end of the beach in honor of Judge Fitzhume on his retirement. If I knew this crowd, the tributes would turn into a roast.
The hands of the lobby clock were now straight up on noon and there was an empty hole in my stomach where Bill Hasselberger’s frittata had been hours earlier.
Taking the path of least resistance, I strolled down to the hotel restaurant, pausing on the way to enjoy the beautiful, translucent jellyfish that floated dreamily through the floor-to-ceiling tank that lined the wall. Sea anemones swayed back and forth from their anchorage on a mini coral reef while small colorful fish darted in and out of the crannies. For one brief moment, I considered the possibility of an oversized fish tank at home. Not a whole wall like this, of course. Maybe more like a room divider. Then I remembered what a pain it had been to clean and care for the small tank I had briefly owned as a child, a hand-me-down from Adam and Zach, so on second thought, why didn’t I just enjoy these fish while I was here?
“One?” asked the hostess when I entered the restaurant.
Before I could nod, Beth Keever waved at me from across the room to indicate an extra chair at her table. As efficient as the chief judge from Cumberland County is, I was not particularly surprised to see the rest of the education committee there. Beth smiled as I joined them and pulled out a legal pad. “We were hoping you’d turn up. We decided that if we met here and now, we could have the rest of the afternoon off.”
“Fine with me,” I said. I’d been wanting a chance to get down to the Cotton Exchange. “But my notes are up in my room.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “If we miss something, you can tell me later.”
They had finished eating and were ready to get down to the business of setting the agenda for the fall conference up in the mountains and for the new judges’ school at the School of Government. Suggestions flew back and forth as to topics and speakers. I wanted a session on domestic violence and Fifth Amendment issues. Resa Harris wanted to address the growing backlog of cases, a backlog that was aggravated by too many motions to continue. When the subject of custody and visitation came up, I said, “Not to get too far off the subject, but have any of y’all heard that Pete Jeffreys took bribes in some of his custody cases?”
There was a moment of awkward silence before one and then another nodded.
“Me, too,” said Roberta Ouellette, a fiftyish colleague who serves in the same district as Jeffreys. “Last winter, a year ago. I’m told that’s how a man got primary custody of his four-year-old son even though his second wife didn’t want the child in her house full-time. Nobody’s saying something bad might not have happened if he’d stayed with the mother, but the stepmother’s a smoker and she left her lighter where the child could get it.”
Judge Ouellette’s green eyes darkened. “Last I heard, the child’s already had two plastic surgeries on his face and he’s lost the use of three fingers on his right hand. But at least he’s back with his own mother.”
Heavy sighs ran around the table. Of all the heartbreaking issues we deal with, those involving young children are the hardest. Most judges take this part of the job with utmost seriousness, so seriously that in districts that have a court solely devoted to family issues, few can stand the rotation for longer than a year or two before begging to be assigned elsewhere. We know that our decisions can affect a child’s psyche, his personality, the kind of adult he grows up to be, and it hurts to hear that some decisions can be bought and sold like sticks of butter or a sack of potatoes.
“I was hoping he’d be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy,” said Dale Stubbs of District 11, quoting a Louisiana governor.
That got him a wry smile. We all know that minor sexual misconduct will usually get you censured or removed from the bench quicker than major judicial malfeasance.
“What about the ca
rjacker that he let out on probation without noticing that the guy was already in violation of an earlier probation?” I asked. “Any of y’all know the girl that got killed?”
“No, but it was really sad,” Ouellette said. “She was on her way back to class after a fitting of her wedding gown when he grabbed her.”
Despite Beth’s attempt to get the meeting back on track, the others wanted to hear my account of last evening. None of them had been at Jonah’s, but they were sure Jeffreys’s death must have been a stranger killing because none of our fellow judges could possibly be a murderer.
Beth Keever and I exchanged glances that were a little more cynical.
“Okay,” she said briskly, pushing back her dark brown bangs. “Back to business. Are we all agreed the new judges need the session on dress and conduct?”
Another ten minutes finished our meeting. The others called for their checks and left to enjoy the pleasures of this beach resort before the meeting of chief district court judges began the next afternoon.
I still hadn’t ordered and a line had formed at the reception stand. I was about to move to a smaller table when Martha Fitzhume waved from the line and, in a voice meant as much for the six or eight people ahead of her as for me, called, “Oh Deborah! Good. You did get my message to hold us a table.”
She was trailed by Fitz, Chelsea Ann, Rosemary, and Rosemary’s husband, Dave Emerson. Except for dear, clueless Fitz, who kissed my cheek and murmured “Thanks, Deborah,” before taking a chair beside me, the others knew good and well that Martha hadn’t called and left me a message.
An attractive, college-age waitress with henna-red hair and flawless skin hurried over to hand us menus and bus the table. Like the rest of the waitstaff, she wore a coral jacket that matched the beach umbrellas beyond the outer plate-glass wall. Her smile brightened upon recognizing Martha. “Oh, hey there, ma’am! Nice to see you again.”
“It’s Jenna, right?” said Martha.
The waitress beamed. “Yes, ma’am, it sure is. Now what can I get y’all to drink?” she asked when she’d finished wiping down the table.
Martha ordered a glass of Chardonnay, the rest of us opted for iced tea or soft drinks.
“Be right back,” the waitress promised as she left with a huge tray of dirty dishes.
“What happened to you?” I asked Chelsea Ann. “I thought you were going to come swim.”
“I got sidetracked,” she said. “Phone calls and then I stopped to watch the news about Pete Jeffreys’s murder. My car made it on camera, but we didn’t.”
Dave Emerson looked up from the menu he was sharing with Rosemary. He really was a handsome man whose smile could almost fool you into thinking you were someone special when he turned it on you. Easy to understand Rosemary’s kitten-in-cream glow, a glow that probably accounted for Chelsea Ann’s sour expression. “Did they say if the police are close to making an arrest?” he asked.
“Nope. Just requesting anyone who saw anything to come forward.”
“That police detective—Edwards? He asked us when we last saw Jeffreys,” said Martha. “Any of y’all notice him much after nine-thirty?”
The others shook their heads, as did I.
“He wasn’t around when Fitz and I left so we gave Cynthia Blankenthorpe a lift back here. She couldn’t find him. Or said she couldn’t anyhow. I don’t know how hard she looked.”
My head came up on that. “They have a fight or something?”
“Who knows? Why?”
“Well, she rode over with him and he was introducing her all around, but she didn’t sound very upset about his death when I spoke to her in the party room last night.”
Martha shrugged. “I think she was annoyed that he was treating her like a babe in the woods or somebody who wasn’t smart enough to figure out the ropes herself. That’s probably the real reason she hitched a ride with us.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“A little after ten.”
“So nobody saw him after, say, nine-thirty?” I mused.
“He got to the restroom about the time I was leaving it,” said Fitz. “And now that I think about it, he did seem a little brusque.”
“Brusque?” Martha asked.
“Well, you know how when you meet somebody face-to-face and you’re trying to get out of each other’s way but you don’t? Most times, you just laugh and the other one’ll stand still so you can get around him? Jeffreys didn’t laugh. In fact, he almost knocked me down. ’Course now, he just might’ve been in a hurry to get to the nearest urinal.”
“Was anyone else in the bathroom?” I asked. “Or coming in as you were leaving?”
“Nobody I knew, but—ah, thank you my dear, but I believe I ordered ginger ale,” he said as our red-haired waitress set a glass of tea in front of him.
“Oops! Sorry,” she said, and gave the tea to me.
“No, mine’s the diet Coke,” I said.
She did remember that Martha had ordered white wine and the rest of us eventually got our right glasses.
“Y’all ready to order?” she chirped, readying her pad.
“Jenna’s studying law enforcement at the community college here,” said Martha, who had naturally gotten the young woman’s history at breakfast that morning. “She wants to join the SBI.”
“Like ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been, like, just dying to investigate murders and stuff,” the waitress agreed brightly.
“Then you need to talk to my husband,” said Rosemary, patting Dave’s hand with a proprietary air. “Judge Emerson’s had a lot of experience with the Bureau, haven’t you, darling?”
Dave shrugged. “Well, yeah. I was a DA before I ran for judge and I worked with several agents who are still there.”
“Wow! That’s so cool. I wouldn’t have to work undercover, would I? Like, I think I’d be too scared for that, but surveillance or profiling—that could be awesome! Is that what the guys you worked with did?”
Given the least bit of encouragement, I had the feeling that she was ready to sit at Dave’s feet and soak up stories of SBI and DA derring-do, but Chelsea Ann interrupted to place her order for fried oysters. I wanted steamed shrimp and the others opted for seafood of one variety or another as well.
Keeping six orders straight seemed to try young Jenna’s abilities. Either that or she was so interested in chatting with Dave about the SBI each time she arrived at our table that she couldn’t match a single plate with the person who’d ordered it. Even Martha, who has nothing but empathy for a restaurant’s waitstaff, sounded a little testy when she had to send her salad back because the wrong dressing had been poured on it, while Dave, who had initially been amused by her enthusiasm, was annoyed when his water arrived with a slice of lemon after he had specifically ordered it plain.
“Tell you what, Jenna,” Rosemary said, stepping in to deflect the table’s growing exasperation. “Instead of letting us take up your time here, why don’t you give us your email address. My husband can send you the names of some Bureau people stationed in this area, right, darling? I’m sure some of them would enjoy talking to her.”
I almost choked on my shrimp. I know several SBI agents myself, including more than one who would indeed be willing to “instruct” a pretty young waitress. I glanced at Chelsea Ann, who was giving her sister a glare that I interpreted as “Are you out of your fricking mind?”
“I guess I could,” Dave said.
“Oh, wow!” said Jenna. “That would be awesome!”
She immediately scribbled her name and contact info on her order pad and gave it to him, then hurried off to fetch the tartar sauce she had forgotten to bring.
CHAPTER
11
The gravity of a past offense never increases ex post facto.
—Paulus (early AD 3rd century)
Chelsea Ann and Rosemary invited me to join them on their hunt for the perfect vestibule table for Chelsea Ann’s new condo, but by the time I had changed my bathing su
it for more conventional lingerie and got down to the front of the hotel where they were waiting in the car, they were snarling at each other as only siblings can.
The van’s windows were down and their angry words reached me clearly.
“He’s changed,” said Rosemary. “If I’m going to be suspicious every time a little airhead like that wanders by—”
“Give me a break,” Chelsea Ann snapped. “When are you going to realize that men like Dave don’t give a damn about what’s between a woman’s ears? All they want is what’s between her legs. Can’t you see what’s happening? Getting you to show yourself out on the balcony this morning? This public reconciliation in front of his peers?”
“You think it’s all about legalities?” Rosemary was indignant. “Condonation? In case we can’t get past this? You don’t think it could be because he loves me?”
“Sorry to interrupt when y’all are having such a good time,” I said, opening a back door to check the floor and under the seats, “but you didn’t happen to find an earring, did you?”
“No, when did you lose it?”
“Who knows?” I ran my fingers around the seat cushions. “I didn’t notice it was missing till I got back to the hotel.”
Rosemary twisted around in her seat. “You were only wearing one when we were waiting for that detective to let us go. I thought maybe it was a new style. But then I’m only a naive little housewife, so what could I possibly know?”
Heavy sighs from Chelsea Ann.
Much as I love my job when I’m wearing a black robe and have a gavel in my hand, I was in no mood to spend an afternoon arbitrating between two sisters who probably had issues going back to childhood—which one was more indulged by their mother or better loved by their father, or who got spanked for something the other one did.
I closed the door and stepped back to speak through the window. “Sorry, guys, but I’m really not interested in looking at furniture. Dwight and Cal are probably going to come back from Virginia with a truckload of it, so y’all go on without me. I’ll just run over to Jonah’s and see if someone’s turned in my earring.”
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