Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

5

The principles of law are these: to live uprightly, not to injure another man, to give every man his due.

—Ulpian (ca. AD 170–228)

Except for a lone desk clerk, the lobby was deserted when we got back to the hotel.

“Me for bed,” Chelsea Ann said as she and Rosemary exited the elevator for the room they were sharing.

I meant to follow their good example, but the car stopped at the next floor and there was my own chief judge, F. Roger Longmire, who was on his way back up to Room 628 with a couple of clean glasses in his hands.

“Deborah!” he exclaimed. “What the hell’s this about you finding Pete Jeffreys dead in the river?”

I gave him an abbreviated version, omitting my reason for hanging over the Riverwalk railing, but when I tried to get off at my floor, he insisted that I come on up with him and brief the others.

* * *

Room 628 was actually a suite—two bedrooms, four beds, and two baths with a Jacuzzi in one. The large living room had couches and chairs and a wet bar that was now fully stocked with the usual hard and soft drinks and the most popular mixers. A nearby table held olives, an assortment of cheeses, and several bags of crackers and chips.

I stepped into one of the bathrooms to freshen my lipstick and realized that somewhere along the way I’d lost an earring, a trio of red-and-white enameled hoops that matched my dress. I put the remaining one in my purse and hoped that its mate had fallen off in Chelsea Ann’s car and not into the Cape Fear River.

When I emerged from the bathroom, the aspirin had finally done their job and I let Chuck Teach pour me a glass of ginger ale as I was deluged with questions.

I told them everything I knew, again leaving out the reason I’d been hanging over the railing. After the usual exclamations and head shaking, someone immediately wondered who would be appointed to fill his seat.

“Too bad Bill Hasselberger’s not still living in that district,” said Steve Shaber, one of our hosts.

Julian Cannell, who was sharing the suite, shrugged. “Maybe he’ll move back now.”

“I doubt it,” said Jay Corpening, the local chief judge, as he offered me an open bag of pretzels. “I think he’s happy where he is right now. He argued a civil case in front of me last week. Took it on contingency and convinced the jury to give his client everything she was asking for. Which is not to say he won’t run for the bench down here.”

“Jeffreys’s death is sure gonna make life easier for Tom Henshaw,” Chuck Teach said.

I shot him a raised eyebrow.

“He’s filling out Judge Dunlap’s term,” he explained, referring to an elderly colleague who had abruptly decided to retire to an ashram out in the mountains. “You’ll probably meet him at the reception tomorrow night.”

I sipped my ginger ale and told him that I didn’t understand. “I thought Dunlap’s term expired this fall. What’s that got to do with Jeffreys? He’s not due to run for another two years.”

“Ah, but you’re forgetting that Jeffreys wanted to run for superior court in two years,” Steve said. “Dunlap’s seat would give him a safe position for that race.”

Enlightenment dawned. In North Carolina, you can’t run for two offices in the same election, but if you hold a seat that’s not up for election, you can go ahead and run for a different judicial position, yet still keep your own seat on the bench if you lose.

Devious.

“Would he have won?”

Chuck shrugged and Steve said, “Tom’s doing a good job, but Pete had better name recognition in that district and he’s raised a hell of a lot more money. Your average voter doesn’t keep up with local judicial races. You know that. They might not’ve voted for him if they’d known he had ulterior motives, but Tom Henshaw wouldn’t have had the money to get that word out.”

“Was Henshaw at Jonah’s tonight?” I asked.

Steve frowned. “I didn’t see him there. You thinking he took out Jeffreys?”

“Somebody did,” I said. “I doubt if it was a stranger killing.”

That sobered the mood for a few minutes, and I could almost see them running a mental eye across the twenty or more familiar faces at the restaurant tonight, trying to think which one might have had a grudge against Pete Jeffreys serious enough to risk killing him. Human nature being what it is, though, the discussion soon turned to speculation about Jeffreys’s possible successors and from there, conversation among those still in the suite returned to the normal mix of politics, recent rulings from the appellate court, and new acts of the state legislature that would affect our own rulings.

Chuck and Julian backed a couple of state representatives who were up for election into a corner of the room. Tweedledee and Tweedledum wore pastel seersucker suits, one pale green, the other a light, almost white, pink. I don’t care how hot and muggy our summers can be, it takes a lot of confidence in your own manhood to wear a pink seersucker suit. That’s probably why he was drinking his beer from the bottle.

District court judges are warned not to lobby members of the general assembly, but we’re allowed to “educate and inform” and I had no doubt that those two representatives were getting a raft of informed statistics about how badly we need more judges to help with our caseloads. I’m pretty sure they were also being educated about the widening gap between superior court salaries and ours. That’s the price you pay if you want to press the judicial flesh.

And don’t think they don’t. Every election, judges get asked, “Hey, who should I vote for in this race?” Even though we can’t officially endorse anyone, candidates know that our words can influence a bunch of voters.

Beth Keever, chief judge in Cumberland County, was deep in a discussion with some others about how best to shelter the children of high-conflict divorces and how to protect domestic violence victims from their batterers when exchanging children. Beth waved her diet soda to make a point as she gave facts and figures about the feasibility and logistics of visitation centers. It’s an ongoing discussion—a good idea that probably won’t get funded.

When the pretzel bag came around again, I snagged a couple to ease the hollow in my stomach and joined a group that included Roger Longmire and Cynthia Blankenthorpe, who had not looked particularly shocked when I described finding Jeffreys’s body.

She had changed into a pair of white duck walking shorts that emphasized her muscular thighs and calves and reminded me of Tour de France cyclists. Those could have been Lance Armstrong’s legs. If they’d been mine, I’d have tried to disguise them in a long skirt or looser pants, but she sat like a man, with her left ankle resting on her bare right knee. Her unpolished nails were cut short and there were raw-looking red scratches on her right hand. Her bangs and the ends of her shoulder-length hair looked sun-bleached, as if the rest of her light brown hair had been protected from the sun by a helmet or cap. Maybe she really was a cyclist. Face, arms, and legs were certainly well tanned. No worries about skin cancer here.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said.

“Did they say if it was quick?” she asked as Roger shifted over to make room for me on the couch. She had an easy air of confidence that probably came from growing up a Blankenthorpe in Mecklenburg County.

“I would imagine it was,” I said, with more assurance than I felt. “I’ve been told it only takes a few seconds for the brain to shut down.”

I tried not to think of those few seconds. It’s all relative, isn’t it? As Einstein pointed out, an hour passes in an instant when you’re sitting with a lover. When you’re sitting on a hot stove, a few seconds stretch into eternity.

“His car’s still there,” I said. “Didn’t you ride over with him?”

“I did,” she said, reaching for the bowl of cashews on the coffee table. “But when I was ready to leave, I couldn’t find him, so I hitched a ride back with the Fitzhumes.”

“What time was that?”

She shrugged. “Around ten or so. Why?”

“The police are asking who saw him last.”

“I doubt that was me.”

“Did you know him long?”

“Not really.” She took a hefty swig of whatever was in her glass. “I have to run this fall and to give him his due, he was willing to introduce me to his donors and to the other judges here.”

“Sounds like you didn’t care for him all that much,” I said.

She shrugged. “He came on a little strong. For some reason, he decided he was going to be my mentor… give me advice on how to run my campaign, show me the ropes, he said.”

The short man perched on the arm of her chair rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, I just bet he did.”

He was built like a bowling ball—round and solid, with the same amount of hair. I felt as if I should know him, but I couldn’t put a name to his pudgy little face.

“Bernie Rawlings,” he said, intuiting my lapse. “From the mountains of Lafayette County. You covered court for my brother last fall. Almost got yourself killed, I hear.” He described the outcome of a murder investigation from my time up there in Cedar Gap. As I expected, a lack of evidence had kept one of the culprits from being charged even though everyone was pretty sure he was the killer.

As we talked, others had come and gone, mostly gone until there were only a half dozen of us left. Steve and Julian began to gather up the empty cans and bottles and to store the cheese and olives in the small fridge. It wasn’t exactly here’s-your-hat-what’s-your-hurry, but yeah, it was pushing two a.m. and well past time for respectable judges to call it a night.

I always ask for a room near the elevator, which means that I’m also near the ice machine and vending area. When I said good night to the others and exited at my floor, I heard someone filling an ice bucket. Martha Fitzhume emerged from the alcove with an ice bucket and a can of Coke and seemed surprised to see me.

“I didn’t realize we were neighbors,” I said.

Her white hair was rumpled as if she’d slept on it wrong. In lieu of pajamas, she wore gray knit pants and an oversized purple T-shirt from Fitz’s last election. A sheen of moisturizer glistened on the bony angles of her patrician face.

She was equally observant. “You look like hell, sugar. I heard about Jeffreys. You all right?”

“Just tired,” I said, key card in hand. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

“Not me, Fitz.” She shook her head ruefully. “Those damn crabs. He ate all of his and half of mine, too, and now he has indigestion. I thought maybe a Coke would settle his stomach. You reckon there was something wrong with them? I heard you got sick, too, or was that because of finding Pete Jeffreys?”

“Probably the margaritas,” I admitted.

“I suppose the police questioned you about this evening?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t find it necessary to repeat what I said about him, did you?”

“No.”

“Good. Fitz is always telling me I run my mouth too freely at times.”

“But why did you dislike him, Martha?”

“Just stuff,” she said with a vague wave of the Coke can. “You know how word goes around.”

“What stuff?” I persisted.

“Don’t get me started.” She moved past me toward a door down the hall that had been left on the latch. “It’d probably take an hour and I need to get back to Fitz. Don’t you worry though. I didn’t kill the bastard. Fitz wouldn’t’ve let me.”

I couldn’t help smiling as I swiped my key card in the lock. No way could Martha have strangled Pete Jeffreys and dumped him into the river, but there was also no way Fitz could’ve stopped her from trying if she’d set her mind to it.

Moonlight spilled through the windows of my dark room, and without switching on the lamps I crossed over to the balcony doors and stepped out into the humid night air. Beyond the multilevel pool decks, the gazebos, and the deserted pool lay the ocean. No whitecaps and almost as calm as a millpond. The tide was dead low and what waves there were rolled gently onto the sand and quietly dissolved in white foam. The moon was three or four nights from being full and it sparkled on the slowly undulating water like a handful of golden sequins tossed by a careless mermaid.

The moon, the stars, the thick brine-ladened air—I had stood gazing out to sea like this on dozens of other summer nights and memory held me in its grip, sending kaleidoscopic images coursing through my head of weekends with Mother and Daddy and my brothers back when I was a child: musty summer cottages borrowed from a more affluent aunt or uncle, pallets of quilts on the floor, sand underfoot no matter how often the floors were swept.

A week at the beach for high school graduation, chaperoned by my brother Seth and his new bride: beach music and shagging the night away on the boardwalk at Atlantic Beach and sneaking sips of beer when Seth’s back was turned, trying to forget for a few hours at a time that Mother would be dead by the end of that summer.

Then, after I was grown, that heady mixture of freedom and abandon, and yes, the mild flirtations with a colleague or two here in this very hotel during summer conferences.

But I had never been to the beach with Dwight. No memories of kissing him with salty lips, of making love to him in the moonlight on a deserted stretch of sand.

I sighed and stepped back into the air-conditioned room, switched on the lights, and drew the curtains. My cell phone lay amid a clutter of tissues and lipsticks where I had unthinkingly left it when I changed purses earlier in the evening. I’m not quite as bad as Daddy about talking on phones, but the fact is that I don’t like being tethered to one and the older I get, the more often I seem to forget to carry mine or to switch it on. It exasperates the hell out of Dwight, who never turns his off. I flipped it open and saw that I had missed several calls. Chelsea Ann’s number was there, along with my friend Portland’s, and several I didn’t recognize, but Dwight’s?

Nada.