Shooting at Loons

by Margaret Maron

  Andy Bynum’s papers were on the table right where I’d left them last night and the sight of them rolled such a heavy black stone over my lighthearted mood that I grabbed up a bag of stale bread and told Kidd, “Let’s go feed the gulls while the coffee’s making.”

  “You do remember I’m supposed to be staking out loon hunters, don’t you?”

  “Mahlon won’t know you’re Wildlife. He’ll just think I’m a loose woman.”

  He laughed. “You go ahead. I’ll shave and start breakfast.”

  As I started out the door Kidd said, “Listen, Ms. Judge. You know what I said about oyster season? It really did close the thirty-first of March.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe we ought to talk about it when you get back. Scrambled eggs or over easy for you?”

  “Over easy,” I said and went out into the bright April sunshine. The seriousness of his tone brought back that sinking feeling. Was this his tactful way of telling me that it’d been fun, but now the season was closed on any further relationship?

  “One of these days you’re going to remember that it’s caveat emptor,” said the preacher.

  “Nothing wrong with carpe diem,” comforted the pragmatist.

  I was already into a Scarlett O’Hara mode on Chet, so I added Kidd to the things I’d think about later and surrendered myself to the delight of feeding gulls on the wing.

  One or two are always cruising the shoreline and as soon as the first gull swooped to catch a bread morsel, a dozen more appeared from nowhere until the bright blue air around me was filled with flashing white wings. Playing the wind, they hovered over the water like hummingbirds in midair as I tossed the broken pieces high above me, then they wheeled and dipped and soared again until all my bread was gone.

  As I turned back to land, Mahlon Davis greeted me from his porch with a smile that turned to a scowl when two large white trucks pulled into the lot beside his.

  They were from that Morehead waste removal service that Linville Pope had hired to clear Mahlon’s debris from her property. One had side railings for hauling, the other held a pint-size yellow bulldozer.

  Mahlon’s thin shoulders stiffened angrily as three muscular workmen got out of the trucks and began letting down a steel ramp to off-load the dozer.

  “They must not know Linville Pope’s dead,” I said.

  Mahlon gave a threatening growl and struck off across the lot. I followed, sensing the beginning of a brawl. And wasn’t I a judge? Didn’t I know how to arbitrate?

  By the time I picked my way through the junk and brambles, things had already begun to escalate. Mahlon’s accent was too thick to let me distinguish his stream of angry threats, but evidently the workmen were understanding every abusive term. One of them had grabbed a shovel from the back of the truck and looked as if it wouldn’t take much more before he swung it at Mahlon’s head.

  As I approached, Mahlon said to me, “Them bastards’re saying if I don’t move my boat they’re going to push it off.”

  “We got our orders from the property owner,” said the beefiest of the three men. He had a clipboard in his hand and he thumped the flimsy yellow top sheet.

  “From Linville Pope?”

  “That’s right, lady.”

  “But she was killed yesterday,” I said.

  “See?” said Mahlon. “And she’s a judge. She knows the law.”

  “You really a judge?” asked the man.

  I nodded.

  “And Mrs. Pope really is dead?”

  “Yes.”

  The man with the shovel lowered it and the other workman loosened his clenched fists. It looked for a moment as if that might be that, but their boss stood firm and said, “Well, ma’am, I’m real sorry to hear she’s dead and all, but she put a deposit down and we signed a contract and far as I’m concerned, that’s something him and the lawyers can work out. I need this job and I’m going to do it less’n you want to serve me with papers to quit.”

  He had me there and he knew it. He looked at Mahlon. “We’ll start on the other side, but when we get to this side, mister, if you ain’t moved that boat, I promise you we’re going to move it for you.” Again he thumped his clipboard. “She made a particular point of that boat in this contract.”

  “The hell you say!” howled Mahlon. As he stormed across the lot back to his shed, he was cursing so loud and so viciously that I was glad Guthrie was at school and not around to hear or get cuffed in his anger.

  “Now listen,” I said to the boss. “Can’t you—”

  “Uh-oh!” said the youngest workman and he quickly headed for the near truck, just as a shot rang out.

  I whirled and there stood Mahlon at the front of his boat shed with a rifle in his hands and I could only watch in stunned horror as he fired again. As if in slow motion, I heard it hit the truck behind us. Another sharp crack and the boss worker crumpled beside me. Blood splattered across the yellow contract on his clipboard and jerked me back to real time.

  “Mahlon, my God! What are you doing?” I screamed and ran toward him. “Stop!”

  He banged off another shot at the other two men who were diving for cover, but as I got to him, he suddenly swung the .22 to point straight at me. Such hot rage blazed in his eyes that it hit me I was looking down the barrel at Andy and Linville’s killer.

  Oysters, I thought inanely. That’s what Kidd meant. A week into April, on a tide-washed sandbar where oysters don’t grow, yet I’d seen a half-dozen scattered there near the body of a man who would never take a shellfish out of season. And that night Guthrie had come across in the twilight to say “Grandpap brought home some oysters today and Granny says do you want some?”

  “Don’t do this, Mahlon,” I pleaded, but even as I spoke, the barrel swung to the right and he fired toward the road. Almost deafened by the explosion, I looked back in time to see Kidd duck down behind a Carteret County patrol car that had pulled up beside the cottage. The shot spiderwebbed its windshield.

  Then I felt the hot barrel between my shoulder blades and Mahlon yelled, “Y’all keep away from me! Y’all don’t get back, I’ll shoot her. I swear to God I will.”

  I saw Kidd straighten up and I screamed, “Stay back!”

  Then Mahlon prodded me. “Walk on the other side of the boat,” he ordered.

  Numbly, I went. Around on the seaward side, blocks and boxes formed rough steps that led up to the boat railing for easy access over the side. Prodded by the rifle barrel, I went up and over and Mahlon followed till we reached the unfinished cabin and looked out through glassless window holes.

  We were six feet or more above the ground, almost parallel to the shoreline. To the left was the sea. To the right, houses and the road beyond. The man Mahlon had shot lay motionless in the weed-filled lot. Cars were stopping along the road edge beyond Clarence Willis’s trailer, and knots of people stared and pointed to us. I couldn’t see Kidd, but someone was crouched behind the patrol car’s open door and 1 heard the crackle of a two-way radio, so professional help was probably on the way if someone didn’t do something stupid first.

  “Mahlon, listen to me,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Shut up!” he snarled. Then almost immediately, “All I ever did was mind my own business and try to make a living and they won’t let me.”

  “But Andy lent you money,” I said softly. “He gave you an engine.”

  “No, he didn’t!”

  “But—”

  “I seen him Saturday night and maybe I might’ve had a beer or two too many, but he talked to me like I was dirt. Said I was too sorry to finish a boat. Said if I did, I’d probably wreck it like the other one. Said his mind was full changed and he worn’t gonna throw good money after bad. Next day I’d been out and shot me a turtle and was coming in with some oysters, too, when I seen him over yonder clamming and I went out to talk to him reasonable-like to see if he’d change his mind back ‘cause I had to have that motor and he certainly worn’t using it. I even
tried to give him some of my oysters and he started yelling about taking stuff out of season, when hell, season hadn’t even been closed a week. Besides, I didn’t get ‘em to sell, they was for us to eat. And he said men like me was what was holding back his shitty Alliance. Said he’d see me in hell ‘fore I’d get so much as a net sinker out of him so I grabbed out my gun and said well say hello to the devil for me.”

  Carefully, I turned till I was facing him and the gun was only inches from my chest. “Mahlon, what you did was in the heat of the moment. I’m not saying you’ll get off scot-free, but it’s not half as bad as if you stand up here and think about it and then shoot somebody else.”

  His unshaven chin clenched tightly and his glittering eyes darted wildly from my face to the men who’d gathered behind the patrol car.

  “All I wanted was to be left alone so me and my boys could make a living like we always done. But they keep changing it, telling us we can’t do this, we can’t do that, and Andy worn’t gonna let me have the engine and that bitch over to Beaufort worn’t gonna let me finish building the boat. I told her just give me till the end of May and me and my boys’ll pick up every scrap of our stuff. It worn’t doing her no harm, but she just stood there on the end of her landing like she owned the world and everything in it and said she’d given me all the time I was going to get from her.”

  “She shouldn’t have said that,” I soothed, “but think of Guthrie, Mahlon. How’s he going to feel if he comes home from school and hears you’ve killed innocent people that never did you any harm?”

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Mahlon—”

  He jammed the rifle barrel into my stomach. “Dammit, I said turn around!”

  I turned and a dozen thoughts crowded through my head at once: how sad my daddy was going to be and my brothers, but at least it’d be quick and—”Kidd, no! Go back!”

  Again that deafening explosion of the gun in my ear and an instant of bewilderment until the rifle crashed to the deck behind me.

  When I looked back, Mahlon had slumped against the cabin ledge, a bloody hole beneath his chin.

  14

  O sinners, the heralds of mercy implore,

  They cry like the patriarch, “Come.”

  The Ark of salvation is moored to your shore,

  Oh, enter while yet there is room!

  The stormcloud of Justice rolls dark overhead,

  and when by its fury you’re tossed,

  Alas, of your perishing souls ‘twill be said,

  “They heard—they refused—and were lost!”

  —Kate Harrington

  “You suspected Mahlon Davis all the time?” I asked.

  “Well, him and three more,” said Quig Smith. “One of the neighbors saw him coming in from that direction around one o’clock.”

  We were seated at the kitchen table sharing a six-pack and a big bag of corn chips. It was a little before twelve and the rescue wagon had been and gone twice; the first time with the seriously wounded waste disposal man, the second time with Mahlon’s body. Except for a steady stream of island neighbors bringing food and comfort to Mahlon’s family, the crowds had dispersed and there was little to show for what had taken place that morning.

  At last things had quieted down enough for Quig to take our statements and to satisfy my unanswered questions.

  I rooted around in the refrigerator and found pimento cheese and some stuffed olives, which I set on the table. “Who were the others?”

  “Remember how Jay Hadley tried to make us think the whole family went to church Sunday morning?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Her son Josh was seen out near the lighthouse around eleven and then again at one. He’s sixteen and a hothead and we heard he didn’t like Andy flirting with his mom. Then there was Scratch Kinlow. You know him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Lives on the north side of the island. He tried to punch Andy out over the weight of his catch last month, and he made some serious threats. Nobody actually saw him out near Shackleford, but his buddy was there and you don’t usually see the one without the other.”

  “What about Chet Winberry?”

  “The judge?” He rubbed his chin and gave me a quizzical look. “You thought maybe him?”

  “Well you were the one asking me at Andy’s funeral how good a friend he was, and it was awfully convenient that his guns got stolen when they did.”

  “Oh, they turned up yesterday evening. Pawnshop over in Havelock.”

  I was too embarrassed to tell him my theories. That first day in his office, he’d reminded me that some men took messing with their livelihoods more serious than somebody messing with their wives, but had I listened? No, I’d gone looking for fancy upstate motives instead of basic bedrock.

  And Kidd sat there through the whole exchange, eating corn chips and pimiento cheese with a bland expression on his face, and never said a word about fiduciary trusts, the Ritchie House or forged signatures. Who can find a virtuous man who doesn’t blab everything he knows? His price is above rubies.

  “Sure would have helped if you’d thought to mention about Davis bringing in oysters last Sunday,” Quig said as he popped a final olive in his mouth and rose to go.

  “If you’d told me about oysters being out of season and not growing on tidal sandbars,” I reminded him, “maybe I would’ve.”

  “We gotta get her a schedule and teach her some rudiments of marine biology,” Quig told Kidd. “And that reminds me. You gonna be at the clean water hearing tonight?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Kidd.

  Quig grinned. “Naw, I didn’t think you would.”

  While Kidd walked out to the car with him, I called Chet’s number.

  “Deborah!” he said. “You just missed Barbara Jean. She’s gone antiquing with a friend over near Goldsboro.”

  Was his tone a little too hearty?

  “That’s good,” I said evenly, “because it’s you I’m coming to see.”

  • • •

  Kidd rode over with me.

  The light on the Earl C. Davis Memorial Bridge went from green to yellow and I accelerated across before it could draw up to let a tall-masted boat through.

  “Who was Earl C. Davis anyhow?” I wondered aloud when I was safely on the other side.

  “Owen and Earl/Own the world./Watch out! Soon/They’ll own the moon.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what they used to say down here when I was a boy. Right after the moon landing. I guess Owen Fulcher and Earl Davis were supposed to be sharp traders.”

  “Like Linville Pope?”

  “Don’t know, shug.”

  We rode in silent thought through Bettie, then across North River, and south on Highway 70. When we neared the outskirts of Beaufort, Kidd said, “What are you going to do with those papers?”

  “What should I do with them?”

  “Not for me to say, Ms. Judge.”

  • • •

  I left Andy’s papers locked in the trunk.

  Chet seemed not to have heard of the morning’s events and I was too edgy to tell him. He was surprised to see Kidd with me, but made a smooth recovery as he showed us out to the sunlit terrace and said, “Get anybody a drink?”

  I refused and Kidd allowed as how maybe he’d walk down to Chet’s landing. “Give y’all a chance to talk.”

  “He knows, doesn’t he?” Chet asked, sitting heavily in one of the Adirondack chairs beneath the purple wisteria.

  “Yes, but no one will ever hear it from him.”

  “What about you?”

  “Chet—”

  “Look, I’m not going to beg. Just try to understand, okay? Between Jill starting to date and the fishery, too, Barbara Jean had her hands so full that she didn’t have any time left over for me.”

  “And Linville did?”

  “She was the one who encouraged me to get into politics. My career was going nowhere till then. I was just a small-town at
torney, tending to the legal needs of my father-in-law’s business. Hell, Deborah, half my outside clients were court-appointed.”

  He got up and freshened his drink. “Sure I can’t—?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t make it easy, girl.”

  “News flash, Chet: not every ‘girl’ is in your world to smooth things over for you.”

  He sighed. “I don’t see what the big deal is. Nobody got hurt. The Janson estate got every penny it had coming. If I hadn’t let Mr. Janson sell it to Linville—”

  I arched my eyebrows. “Let him sell? A man in a coma?”

  “Then you do know everything,” he said, with a sick look on his face.

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “All the same,” he argued, “the old inn was falling down. It couldn’t stand to wait another year while the heirs finished bickering. By that time, the roof would have fallen in and they’d have gotten a lot less than Linville paid.”

  “A preservationist and a humanitarian,” I gibed.

  Chet flushed. “You think I haven’t kicked myself a hundred times since then? Especially when Linville started after Neville Fishery. She’d never put the screws to me. That wasn’t her style. But just knowing that I was the one who gave her the start that she built on has been pure hell these last six months.”

  “I can believe that,” I said.

  Encouraged, he leaned forward. “What I did was wrong. I admit it. But don’t think it hasn’t eaten at me all these years. I know people say I go too easy on white-collar defendants sometimes, but whenever some poor slob comes up before me embezzling a few thousand, or cheating on his taxes, I have to think that there but for the grace of God. Everybody’s done things they’re ashamed of, Deborah. Haven’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not that it’s an excuse. But when you know how much some people are getting away with and what you’ve done hasn’t really hurt anybody—” He sighed, set his drink on the wide arm of his chair, stretched his long legs straight out till he was nearly horizontal, and in a tone so low I almost couldn’t hear, he muttered, “Shared shabbiness.”

  “What?”