I stopped at a drugstore on the way into town and bought several fat scented candles in preparation for Dwight’s arrival tomorrow night. Candles add so much to a Jacuzzi, don’t you think? And with all the angled mirrors around the tub, a few flames would look like dozens.
I made sure that my phone was switched on before I put it in my pocket. Unless it’s an emergency, Dwight is the world’s slowest driver. Nevertheless, if he’d left his conference according to plan, he could be getting home any time now and I didn’t want to miss his call.
When I got to Jonah’s, it was almost eight-thirty and the dinner rush had wound down. Even in June, vacationers aren’t standing in line to eat that late on a Tuesday night and Hank had time to chat for a few minutes while we waited for Mel Garrett to finish taking credit cards at her table.
“Sorry, Judge,” she said when she came up to me. “The only earrings are a rhinestone stud and some cheap clipons. A hell of a lot of lipsticks, though, if you’re missing one of those.” Her own lipstick was a deep dark purple that gave her a vaguely goth look and complemented the streaks in her hair.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said, looking out over the stepped-down dining areas. The sun had just set and bands of orange and gold burnished the river. “Not too crowded tonight.”
“Yeah, weekdays, this town pretty much rolls up its sidewalks after nine.”
“I guess y’all heard the motive the police have come up with for why Kyle killed Judge Jeffreys?”
“Not me,” said Mel, leaning closer as I lowered my voice. “Hank?”
He looked up from running the credit cards she’d handed him and shook his head.
“They think the judge hit on him in the bathroom and that Kyle got insulted, freaked out and killed him in a blind rage.”
“No shit!” said Mel, who seemed incapable of removing all the salt from her speech. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she fit my words with the guy she had met only a few weeks earlier when she and Hank first came to work at Jonah’s. She liked it, though. She liked it a lot because her dark eyes gleamed when she said to Hank, “He would have gone off like a pistol, wouldn’t he, Hank? Remember how he almost punched Biff in the nose for trying to flirt with him?”
“It did make him crazy when people took it for granted that he was gay,” Hank said slowly, looking at me with those shrewd, intelligent eyes. “You’re not buying it, though, are you?”
I shrugged. “Nobody at the conference knew Kyle, but several of my colleagues have known Judge Jeffreys for several years and no one believes he was wired that way.”
“But they still think it was Kyle, right?” asked Mel, who seemed reluctant to let go of her coworker’s guilt. “I mean it was his car that knocked down the other judge, right?”
“Right. But if he left his car on the street and rode his bicycle back and forth to work, someone could have hot-wired it and had it back where it belonged before Kyle missed it.”
“Oh, come on, Judge!” She pushed a fall of fuchsia hair back from her face with an impatient hand. “You saying it’s a coincidence that Kyle decided to leave town this weekend?”
“Not at all. His death is too convenient for it to be a coincidence. Whoever killed Jeffreys probably killed Kyle, too, and then sent his car off that ramp.”
“Two murders?” Her face mirrored her skepticism.
“Three if you count the attempt on Judge Fitzhume’s life. Not that the police care. Far as they’re concerned, this is an easy clearance. Case closed.”
“I’m with the police,” the girl said, her cheeks flushed with emotion. “Who cares why he did it?”
“Judge Knott cares,” Hank said quietly as he handed Mel the black vinyl check holders for her table.
“Why? Kyle’s no loss to the world and that judge isn’t either. If it wasn’t Kyle, then it has to be one of you guys.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” I said. “There’s someone here in Wilmington with a huge grudge against Judge Jeffreys. He was at the restaurant next door and he could have been waiting for Jeffreys to leave. I’m betting that my friend—the one that got run down—saw them together. His memory’s still shaky, but I’m going to walk him through every minute of Saturday night. The police may not be interested now, but if he remembers someone besides Kyle, they’ll have to take another look and Kyle will be cleared.”
“I don’t give a flying flip about clearing Kyle,” Mel said. “He was a total jerk.”
As she got back to work, Hank said, “Don’t mind her. She and Kyle never got along from day one. So did you want a table? Or are you joining some friends?”
I surveyed the room again and shook my head. “I don’t see a soul I know.”
“I can give you a table by the Riverwalk, and we’ve got an oyster po’boy special tonight,” he said in a voice that would have tempted Eve to eat the apple.
I laughed. “Sold!”
He seated me at the far edge of the porch and sent a different waitress over. As dusk settled over the Riverwalk, candles flickered in cut-glass holders on every table. I relaxed and ordered a glass of wine to go with my po’boy, then called my home number. My own voice answered after five rings. “Dwight? It’s me,” I said. “I thought you guys would be back by now. Call me when you get in, I don’t care how late it is.”
The oysters arrived, crisp and sizzling on a toasted buttery roll and soft Bibb lettuce. As I ate, I noticed that there was another unaccompanied woman seated several tables away. Amid the chattering groups, she read a newspaper as she ate, the single woman’s shield when eating out alone. I’m usually too interested in observing my fellow diners to keep my eyes on a printed page, but tonight I couldn’t quit thinking about why Pete Jeffreys had been killed.
If I was right, if it was because of a tragedy his judicial ruling had caused, then maybe he did deserve to die. As someone sworn to uphold the law, I can’t condone it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand the primal desire for revenge—that old reptilian brain stem reflex: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you.
But poor self-centered, unfulfilled Kyle? Maybe he wasn’t much of a loss to the world, but he didn’t deserve to die as a by-product of someone else’s revenge.
Nor did Fitz deserve to be tossed like a matador to land on the pavement with broken bones and injuries that would probably give him pain for the rest of his life, pain that would impact on the retirement he and Martha had earned.
How it would all play out, I couldn’t tell. Dwight would not be happy with me if he learned that I’d put myself in the middle of a murder investigation, but if all went as planned, the killer would be booked and behind bars before Dwight got down here tomorrow and he would never have to know.
Look, it’s not in the marriage vows that husbands and wives have to tell each other every little thing, is it?
I picked the oysters off the roll, drank the last of my wine and signaled to the waitress that I was ready for my check. When she brought me the check holder, I tucked a couple of bills inside and told her to keep the change.
“The conference adjourns at noon tomorrow so I guess I won’t see you again,” I said to Mel, who had come up to me now that I was leaving. She seemed to have gotten over her huff. “Where’s Hank? I’d like to say goodbye.”
“He got a phone call and said he had to leave early so I’m stuck with closing out the register for him. I’ll tell him you said ’bye.”
“Have y’all been together long?” I asked as we crossed the room to the vestibule and the reception stand.
“Oh, we’re not together,” she said. “Not like you mean. We’re both majoring in hotel management at UNCG and we’re wicked good friends, but he’s not my boyfriend.”
At the reception stand, I stopped short, struck by a sudden thought, and looked at her as she rang up a charge on the cash register. “You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Knew who?”
“Judge Jeffreys. You said he wasn
’t a loss to the world. How would you know?”
For a fleeting moment Mel Garrett looked like an apprehensive schoolgirl and not the hard-edged, foul-mouthed sophisticate, and it confirmed my guess.
“You go to school in Greensboro where he held court, so you did know who he was. What did he do to you?”
“You’re crazy!” she snarled, all her defenses back in place. “Go play detective somewhere else, okay?”
She whirled and stalked off past the bar to the kitchen beyond, and I knew it would be useless to go after her.
“Give it a rest,” said the pragmatist, who was starting to have second thoughts about the conclusions I had reached earlier.
“Yeah,” said the suddenly timorous preacher. “Let Detective Edwards question her.”
The parking lot closest to Jonah’s where Jeffreys was killed had been full when I got there and I had parked in the overflow lot further down, beyond the last restaurant and well past where the Riverwalk stopped. The lot was nothing more than a dirt-and-gravel cleared space that dead-ended in overgrown rhododendrons, live oaks, and yaupon at the river’s edge. Despite the moon, it was even more poorly lit than the front lot, full of deep shadows and menacing shapes. The branches of the unkempt bushes that lined the sides swayed in the light breeze that blew off the river, making the shadows seem alive with unseen, lurking forces.
While I hesitated, the taillights came on from a car near mine. It backed out of its slot and turned my way, nearly blinding me with its high beams. I had to press against the fence to let it pass. Behind me, a man and two laughing, chattering women emerged from the neighboring restaurant and got into a nearby car parked nose out. I breathed a little easier, but they drove away before I’d gotten halfway to my car and I was alone in the deserted lot with dark cars that probably belonged to restaurant workers who would not be coming out for another hour. It was suddenly very quiet, almost as if the rhododendrons were holding their breath. I heard a boat horn out on the river, the swoosh of traffic over the bridge, and from somewhere off to my left a car horn blew and a dog barked. My footsteps crunched against the gravel.
I passed a white car and something in the bushes loomed out at me with a crackling noise. I jumped back and almost lost my balance on the loose gravel. To my chagrin, it was only a dark plastic bag that a stray breeze had filled with air. I gave myself a mental shake for an imagination that seemed to be working overtime, seeing danger where none existed.
All the same, when I felt in my pocket for my keys and touched the button that unlocked my car door, I was comforted by its chirp and the blink of its taillights. Another minute and I would be safely inside with the doors locked.
I rounded the car next to mine and was reaching for the handle when a crouching figure leaped up and grabbed me.
I screamed and my fingers desperately pushed the little buttons on my key. The taillights flashed and the trunk popped up before I finally hit the one that set off the car alarm. The horn split the night air in several rhythmical blasts, then the keys were wrestled from my hand and with a muttered curse my attacker immediately found the right one to stop the horn. All this time my arm was twisted behind me in a grip that threatened to dislocate my shoulder.
Almost before I knew what was happening, I was thrown into the trunk and the lid was slammed down on me. I ducked automatically, but it still gave me a bruising knock on the head. My arm burned with pain from the wrenching and I scraped my bare shoulder on a corner of the small metal toolbox I keep in the trunk, yet once I heard the car engine start and felt the car begin to back up, adrenaline stopped pumping. I quit being afraid and took several long, steadying breaths. Instead of being killed there and then, I was going to be taken to some isolated spot where I could be dealt with more easily.
Amateur! I thought scornfully, unconsciously mimicking Allen. This was something Dwight had made Cal and me practice till it came automatically even though I protested that neither of us was ever likely to get locked in the trunk of my car.
Cal thought it was fun.
I had broken two fingernails and banged my knee.
As the car finished reversing, but before it was put in forward drive, I yanked the release over the lock. The lid flew up and I rolled to the ground and away from the wheels.
With a squeal of the brakes, the car was immediately thrown back into reverse, but I was well out of the way of those crushing tires.
My assailant jerked open the car door and ran toward me. By then, I had pulled my .38 from the ankle holster I had strapped on before leaving the hotel parking lot, a gun Daddy had given me back when I was in private practice and driving around the state by myself late at night.
Moonlight silvered the barrel as I took aim. “Stop right there or I swear to God I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
A prowl car suddenly drew across the entrance to the parking lot. Flashlights hit Hank Barlow’s face from two directions. One of the lights belonged to the police officer who had been reading her newspaper while she ate a solitary dinner and kept her eye on me. The other belonged to Detective Gary Edwards.
The first question he asked me was, “You okay?”
The second was, “Do you have a license for that thing?” which was exactly what Dwight had asked the first time he saw it.
Why does a woman with a gun freak men out?
CHAPTER
30
Manslaughter on a sudden provocation differs from excusable homicide se defendendo in this: that in one case there is an apparent necessity, for self-preservation, to kill the aggressor; in the other no necessity at all, being only a sudden act of revenge.
—Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780)
By the time they got around to taking my statement, Hank Barlow had waived his rights to an attorney and made a full confession. It was as if he was glad to be done with all the violence and had a huge need to unburden his soul, holding nothing back. Afterwards, Edwards let me sit in on his interview with a tearful Mel Garrett, who confirmed the events and conjectures I had pieced together.
Much as we would like to be infallible, no judge gets it right every time and the consequences of compassion and of sloppiness are often indistinguishable.
When I sat court for Bernie Rawlings’s brother up in Cedar Gap last fall, I saw a family snapshot of Kenneth Rawlings with his wife and young son. His clerk told me that Mrs. Rawlings and their little boy were killed instantly when they were broadsided by a drunk driver, a driver Ken had sentenced to several days of community service when he appeared in court on his first DWI.
Pete Jeffreys had violated his oath of office in more ways than one, but the thing that got him killed was carelessly giving probation to a felon without noticing that he was currently in violation of an earlier probation—a stone-cold killer who went out and carjacked, raped, and murdered a young college student.
“Annie was my cousin,” Mel Garrett said, fighting to hold back her tears. “She and Hank were supposed to get married last November. At Thanksgiving. I was going to be her maid of honor.”
At our committee meeting on Sunday, Roberta Ouellette had said, “She was on her way back to class after a fitting of her wedding gown when he grabbed her.”
Too bad none of us thought to ask the name of the groom-to-be.
“He told me that he and his girlfriend usually took summer jobs in the mountains,” said Edwards, “but that you convinced him the beach would be a good change. I thought you were the girlfriend he was referring to.”
Mel shook her head, her eyes as pink as the streaks in her jet-black hair. “Not me. Annie. She loved the mountains. After graduation, they were going to work at one of the inns till they could afford to buy an inn of their own. They had so many plans. When she got killed, Hank was so out of his mind with grief that we were all afraid that he might hurt himself. If he could have gotten his hands on the asshole that killed her, he would have ripped his bloody heart out.
“Then when the newspapers wrote about how he should h
ave been behind bars and not out on the street, that the judge had screwed up, that really started to eat at Hank. I thought getting him to come here this summer instead of going to the mountains would help him, but it was like that appointment in Samarra, wasn’t it? He comes here to get over Annie’s death and the man who caused it turns up here, too.”
She pushed back the hair that had fallen over one eye and looked Edwards straight in the face. “Honest to God, I didn’t know that the judge was here that night. All we knew was his name, not what he looked like. That’s why I believed Hank when he swore he had nothing to do with the murder. I was afraid that if I told about Annie, you’d say he did it.”
I remembered looking across the crowded dining porch when Hank seated Allen and the children, how Pete Jeffreys had come up to the table and Hank had stood by patiently while Allen introduced the children to Judge Jeffreys. “I’ll bet that’s how he knew who Jeffreys was,” I said, and Edwards told me that Hank had confirmed it when he confessed.
The rest was as I’d conjectured. He had followed Jeffreys into the restroom and accused him of causing his fiancée’s death. When Jeffreys tossed him enough money to pay his bill and stormed out of the restaurant, Hank had followed.
“I wanted him dead,” Hank told them. “Dead like Annie. I was in such a rage that I just snatched up that strap and strangled him. At that point, I didn’t care if anyone saw me or not. But once I’d thrown him into the river and nobody had seen me, I thought I might get away with it. Then you and Judge Knott came back to the restaurant Sunday morning and she mentioned the judge who saw me follow Jeffreys into the restroom. I knew I had to get rid of him before he said anything about me.”
He had killed Kyle late Monday afternoon—a crushing blow on the head that he thought would not be noticed with all the other damages a car crash can inflict on a body, not realizing that blood doesn’t spurt once the heart stops beating. And he had been incredibly lucky that neither roommate had walked in while he was packing up the would-be actor’s things. After sending the car with Kyle’s body off that exit ramp late last night, he had pedaled Kyle’s bicycle back to Jonah’s in the rain with all the loose ends neatly tidied away.
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