“In the spirit of the season, hmm?” I said, matching her deadpan face. “Very well, then, Mr. Adams. Both sentences to run concurrently. And I hope your daughter recovers soon.”
Bridesmaids are always being told that those long Cinderella-type gowns they’re required to buy can be worn again to cocktail parties and formal occasions.
Not true.
And the three short dresses I’ve walked down various aisles in? One was a sickly shade of brown for an autumn wedding, one was stiff satin in Pepto-Bismol pink for Valentine’s Day, and the third had a lime green bodice, a wide coral waistband, and a turquoise flared skirt. (I believe that wedding was supposed to evoke the beach.)
So when I picked out my wedding dress, I really did plan to wear it again. The strapless silk brocade sheath had a side slit to make dancing easier and was the color of pale champagne. A matching fitted jacket had kept it ladylike for the wedding, but tonight I substituted a silky soft stole woven in subtle stripes that merged from pale beige to deep gold. I had put my hair up in a modified french twist, and added gold earrings, my new gold bracelet, and a necklace that lay like a flat gold collar. When I emerged from our bedroom, the look on Dwight’s face was worth all the trouble I had taken with my makeup.
“Oh, wow, Aunt Deborah!” said Jess.
Cal beamed at us. “You and Dad look really nice.”
I curtsied and Dwight, who looked more than nice in his dark suit, gave a formal half bow, then held my coat for me. As he opened the door and I was giving last-minute instructions, car lights swept across the yard.
“Emma and Ruth and some of the others are coming over, if that’s okay,” Jessica said. “We want to work on our party piece. We’re doing something special this year.”
Every year, we gather at Daddy’s for a big communal Christmas dinner in the potato house where we held our reception last year. After the food is cleared away and gifts have been opened, everyone’s encouraged to step up to the front and perform—to play or sing, recite a funny poem, act out an original skit, or collaborate on something amusing. Mother started the tradition the year she married Daddy as a way to help her young stepsons develop self-confidence. From the conspiratorial grins Jess shared with Cal, this year’s performance might top last year’s. That one had a heavenly choir that swooshed around overhead on swings hung from the rafters while Richard flew down from the back on a cable slide, waving sparklers that almost set the tree on fire.
“No sparklers inside,” Dwight said sternly as the kids trooped past.
“Don’t worry, Uncle Dwight,” Stevie said with a laugh. “It’s warm enough tonight that we can set up on the porch.”
“Set what up?” Dwight asked suspiciously.
“Ask us no questions, we’ll tell you no lies,” chanted Jess, who seemed to have bounced back from the heavy load she was carrying earlier. “Just remember that you promised to call when you’re leaving Dobbs, so we can get all our props cleared away before you get home.”
“And give us time to put out all the fires and sweep up the glass,” Richard added with a mischievous glance at the others.
Delighted to be included in the merriment, Cal straddled the back of the leather couch as if he were riding a horse and called to us that he’d keep an eye on everybody.
They saw us off in high glee.
Dwight and I had both gotten home late and this was the first quiet moment we’d had together. At the end of the drive, before he turned onto the hardtop, Dwight looked over at me and smiled. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself,” I said and leaned in for a kiss.
“How ’bout we just skip the dance and go check in at the Dik-a-Doo Motel?”
I drew myself up in indignation. “Why, Major Bryant. Just what sort of woman do you think I am?”
“Not think, Judge Knott. Know.”
The moon, now in its last quarter, would not rise until well after midnight, but zillions of stars were crisp sharp points of silver and the air was so clean and clear that the Milky Way swirled with more brilliance than I had noticed in months.
As we drove, I asked him about his interview with Joy Medlin. “Did she admit that she was the one who put booze in Mallory’s Coke?”
“Where on earth did Jess find time to tell you that?”
“She didn’t. She did come up to my courtroom after you kicked her out of your interview with Joy, though. She was worried because Joy was talking to you without an attorney present.”
“Joy Medlin was reminded of her rights,” Dwight said. “More than once.”
“I’m sure she was, darling. I’m not accusing you of anything wrong. But if she was on edge because of taking herself off painkillers, I can just imagine someone like Zack Young arguing about the admissibility of whatever she told you.”
“I’ve been in the burn box before,” he reminded me.
Between Jess, Dwight, and needing to satisfy my own curiosity, I realized I’d have to recuse myself if Joy were charged with a crime and came up before me, so I went ahead and said, “But she did spike Mallory’s drink, right?”
“With more than vodka,” he said grimly. “She threw in a Vicodin for good measure.”
“But why?”
“Remember what Mama told you about how Mallory liked to flirt with other girls’ boyfriends?”
I nodded.
“She was pulling the same thing with the Loring boy. Joy says Mallory texted him just before he wrecked the car and offered to give him good phone sex once he was alone.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Joy blamed Mallory for the wreck and she’s probably right. Mayleen’s going to get the phone company to pull that message. If it’s as raw as Joy says it was, there’s no question it would have excited a horny teenage boy who’d had too much to drink and was hot to dump his passengers and get home.”
“Oh, Lord.” I sighed.
“Yeah.” He pulled a DVD from his jacket pocket. “Look, I don’t want to spoil the whole evening, but would you mind if I play a disc that Charlie Barefoot made of Mallory’s last voice mail? She was leaving him a message when she crashed. It’s pretty hard to take, but we’ve all listened to it several times and we can’t quite agree.”
“Agree about what?”
“Listen to it first. I don’t want to influence your interpretation.”
I took the disc and slipped it into the player. A moment later, I heard Christmas music and Mallory’s voice scolding her brother for not picking up and for wrecking the holidays for her and their parents. There was an annoyed injunction to an oncoming car to dim its lights, then the sound of the crash. Her moans and her call for her mother broke my heart and I wondered if Sarah and Malcolm had heard it. When all was silent, I reached out to replay it, but Dwight turned up the volume and said, “No. Listen.”
Very faintly as if from a distance, I heard a motor catch and then fade away.
He gave a nod that I could turn it off and said, “So what’s your take?”
“I need to hear it again,” I said and pressed the play button.
Once again the Christmas music, Mallory’s voice, the crash, and another car engine.
“You hear it?”
“I did,” I told him. “Did you ask Charlie about it?”
He looked puzzled. “Ask him about that other car?”
Now it was my turn to look puzzled. “No, about what he cut out of the message.”
“Huh?”
“Isn’t that what you meant?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll play it again. This time, try not to listen to Mallory’s voice. Listen to the music.”
I pressed PLAY again and a syrupy sweet version of “Silent Night” performed on bells could be heard beneath the dead girl’s voice. This time, because he was listening for it, Dwight could clearly hear that the music skipped a few bars. Had there been singing, it would have been the equivalent of several words missing between “holy infant” and “sleep in heavenly pe
ace.”
“Well, damn!” said Dwight.
CHAPTER 25
It is a fair, even-handed, even noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.
—A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Have Sarah and Malcolm heard this?” I asked, when Dwight had listened to the disc twice more.
Each playing took away some of the horror and heartbreak for me, but I imagined it would be progressively worse for Mallory’s parents.
“Yeah. Charlie said he let Sarah hear it at the hospital and then he made copies so she could listen to it with Malcolm the next day. I don’t get it, though. Why the hell would he cut it?”
Dwight likes to think that he can compartmentalize and keep his official life strictly separate from the personal, but he’s really not much better at it than I am. Given his druthers, I was pretty sure he’d ditch our dinner dance, drop me back at the house, and go make Charlie Barefoot shake loose an unedited version of the message Mallory had left on his voice mail.
“Look at it logically,” I said as we neared the country club. “If the deletion had anything at all to do with the wreck itself, other people on the road, a big dog or a deer, wouldn’t he leave that in?”
“I guess.”
“So I’ll bet she was probably yelling at him for something he’s either ashamed of or doesn’t want you or Malcolm to know about.”
He dimmed his lights against a steady stream of oncoming vehicles. “How do you make that assumption?”
“What you just said. He let Sarah listen to it at the hospital, so that means she heard an unedited version on his cell phone. He wouldn’t have had time to make a copy yet. I’m willing to bet that what Malcolm heard the next day was the same as this copy here. Maybe he was doing drugs or something that he knew Malcolm would hit the roof over, but that Sarah might let slide. Or maybe he said something ugly to Mallory that he didn’t want Malcolm to know about now that she’s dead. For all we know, he could’ve accused her of sleeping around or breaking up relationships like Joy said and the deletion was about that. Maybe he’d heard a rumor that she was partly to blame for Stacy Loring’s wreck and killing two kids. He’d feel pretty awful if she died upset about something like that, wouldn’t he?”
“I guess,” Dwight conceded.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “If you’ll put this out of your head for tonight and just enjoy the evening, I’ll break our separation of powers agreement this one time so you don’t have to drive all the way into Dobbs tomorrow to find another judge.”
“You’ll sign me a search warrant?”
“Well, it does sound as if he’s concealing evidence in an official investigation. If any other officer gave me this much cause, I wouldn’t think twice about it. Deal?”
He grinned. “And all it’s going to cost me is wining and dining and dancing with you for a few hours?”
“That’s all.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Your Honor.”
An enormous live Christmas tree, decorated in gold ornaments and tiny yellow lights, cast a golden glow over the vaulted entrance hall. Because the country club had been built in the mid-seventies, when new money from the Research Triangle began overflowing from Wake into Colleton County, no corners had been cut. Floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear of the hall overlooked the eighteen-hole golf course, and there were the usual tennis courts, the obligatory outdoor swimming pool, and a small gym with exercise machines.
When I was single, in private practice, and living in Dobbs with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, I had joined because it was a good place to entertain clients and Uncle Ash was on the membership committee. Once I became a judge, however, I let my membership drop and have had no reason to regret it. Neither Dwight nor I play golf or tennis, we can swim in the pond in warm weather, and we get plenty of exercise working around our yard.
But it’s always fun to come in for special occasions like tonight, and we were greeted by so many old friends and professional acquaintances that it took us over twenty minutes to get to the main ballroom and locate Portland and Avery. Dwight had been slightly self-conscious about not owning a tux, and he was relieved to see that dark suits like his far outnumbered the more formal ones. Uncle Ash looked elegant in his tux, though, and Aunt Zell was beautiful in a rose-colored sleeveless gown with a matching rose-colored lace jacket.
Her hair had turned silver while she was still in her forties and her soft curls brushed my cheek when she greeted me with a kiss. Except for their hair, she and Mother had borne only a fleeting resemblance to each other, and it pained me to realize that Mother would be nearing eighty had she lived.
I showed her the bracelet that Dwight had given me and her smile widened. “I saw it before you did, honey.”
“You did?”
“Dwight came by the house and took lunch with us one day. Before he went and had it engraved, he wanted to know if I thought it’d go with Sue’s bracelet.”
I hugged her again. “I’m glad you said yes.”
“Now y’all be sure to save us both a dance,” said Uncle Ash as he took Aunt Zell’s hand and tucked it on his arm. “I’m gonna want a turn around the floor with the second-prettiest gal here.”
She laughed and patted Dwight’s arm. “And I’ll lower my standards for you, honey.”
We stopped at the reception table to hand in our tickets and get the drink tickets that came with our reservations, then went on into the ballroom that had all the partitions rolled back to create the largest space possible. Avery was on his way back from the bar with two full glasses and he offered to show me our table while Dwight went to fetch our own drinks—bourbon and cola for me, with branch water for him.
“I’d give you a hug,” Avery said, “if I thought I wouldn’t spill my wife’s daiquiri down your back.”
“I’ll consider myself hugged,” I told him, thinking once again how lucky it was that Portland and I genuinely liked each other’s mates. Avery’s an attorney from Wilmington, and when he and Por first hooked up, I’d been afraid it would affect our friendship, but he’s as easygoing as Dwight and has a great sense of humor. Back whenever I was between men and needed a last-minute escort, Avery had never shown any snobbery if I drafted Dwight to make up a foursome, nor had he ever acted as if there was a difference between his law degree and the way Dwight had earned his commission as an officer in the Army. In fact, Por told me later that Avery had early on asked her if I was ever going to wake up to the fact that Dwight was not my brother.
Despite saying that she would get the club manager to pull up two extra chairs to a table for two, Portland seemed to have snagged a table for four. Space between the tables was tight, but there are times when I don’t mind being jammed and squeezed and this was one of those times. The more people, the more festive, and I was smiling happily when I slid into a chair across from my childhood friend.
She just shook her head at me. “I keep forgetting that you love last-minute Christmas shopping, too. Great stole, by the way.”
There was nothing much she could do with dark hair that was so thick and curly except to keep it clipped short, but her crystal earrings flashed sparks of fire and the plunging neckline of her black halter-topped dress showed off a figure she had worked hard to return to its pre-baby slenderness.
“Big difference from last year this time,” I said.
“Oh, honey! Last year this time I was bearing down and cussing Avery and trying to tell my obstetrician I’d changed my mind about having a baby.”
Avery made a big show of looking at his watch and said, “Actually, last year at this precise time, our daughter was already twelve hours old and you were cussing me because I wouldn’t bring you a burger with double cheese and onions and a margarita on the side.”
“And hadn’t I damn well earned them?”
“Right. You’d have given the baby colic right away.”
<
br /> Their affectionate bickering ended when Dwight joined us, but before he could put our drinks down, Diane Hobbs and her husband Randy appeared at his side. Randy, a recently retired magistrate, was resplendent in a tux with a red paisley cummerbund, and Diane, who works for our dentist, wore a strapless red silk gown that showed off toned upper arms that would have put Michelle Obama to shame.
I thanked her for the chocolate-covered fried pecans she had sent by Dwight. “My nieces and nephews eat anything they can get their hands on, but I think I hid them where they won’t find them. They’re too good to be devoured by kids with underdeveloped taste buds.”
She laughed and announced that she was there to claim a dance with Dwight.
The median age of the people here tonight looked to be about sixty-five and the band had probably been instructed not to play any music written after the fifties unless it was slow versions of the Beatles. That was okay with me. There’s a time and a place for everything and I was totally in the mood for the romantic music of that era.
Randy Hobbs is a dear and he never once stepped on my toes, but I was ready to change partners when “Moonlight in Vermont” came to an end and the band segued into “Moon River.”
For a man of his size and build, Dwight is surprisingly good on the dance floor. He’s not a flashy dancer, no Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly moves, but he gives the impression that he could if he wanted to, which makes it fun to follow his lead.
We found Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, and after dancing to “Moonlight Becomes You”—“I’m sensing a theme here,” Uncle Ash said dryly—we took a turn around the floor with Luther and Louise Parker to the tune of “Blue Moon.” He’s the district’s first black judge and he was resplendent tonight in a tux with a red-and-gold cummerbund that matched Louise’s long gown.
We returned to our table a moment before Avery and Portland got back, too. Even though the ice had melted in our drinks, they still tasted good after the dancing.
The waiters began to bring out our plates and the band took a break while we ate. I chose the poached salmon and Dwight took the stuffed chicken breast so that we could eat off each other’s plate if one entrée proved less tasty than the other. Por and Avery did the same and Avery insisted on treating us to a bottle of Riesling so that they could toast our anniversary and we could toast the birthday of their daughter, who was home being spoiled by Por’s parents.
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