Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

8

Not cohabitation but consent makes a marriage.

—Ulpian (ca. AD 170–228)

By the time Chelsea Ann and I finished comparing diagrams and prodding each other’s memory, we had managed to name nineteen judges and their spouses plus several attorneys that we’d seen the night before. “What about Judge Henshaw?” Edwards asked.

Chelsea Ann wrinkled her nicely arched brows. “Who?”

“I don’t know him and you probably don’t either,” I said. “He’s finishing out Judge Dunlap’s term.”

“Never met him,” she agreed.

“Steve Shaber said he didn’t see him either.”

We also agreed that Pete Jeffreys had been seated two tables away from ours, yet neither of us had noticed when he left.

“Judge Blankenthorpe drove over with him,” I said. “What does she say?”

“That he called for the check and before it came, he got up and left the table. She says she thought he was going to the restroom, but he never came back. She wound up paying his share of the tab and hitched a ride back here with—” He paused to decipher his notes. “With Judge Fitzhume and his wife. Do you know if they’re staying here at the SandCastle?”

“They are,” I said. “And for what it’s worth, that bearded man may be, too. I saw him and the two children out in the lobby about a half-hour ago.”

We finished up and signed our sheets, during which time Chelsea Ann and Edwards seemed to find it necessary to exchange phone numbers.

“Just in case you remember something,” he said, “or I think of something else I need to ask you.”

Like whether or not she was in a relationship? Or whether she would go out with him after this investigation was over? I was the one who had found Jeffreys’s body and he didn’t bother to ask for my number. On the other hand, he was a detective and had probably detected that Chelsea Ann’s left hand was free of rings.

As we walked back down the hall, I reached over and brushed her cheek.

“What?” she said, pausing to look into a nearby mirror. “Something on my face?”

“Just getting rid of the little yellow feathers,” I told her.

She grinned. “Am I looking like the cat that ate the canary?”

“And washed it down with cream,” I said.

“So? I’m forty-one years old. Don’t I have a right?”

“Absolutely. And speaking for every woman who’s going to turn thirty-nine this summer, we do appreciate what a role model you are for the rest of us.”

She smoothed her blonde curls complacently. “Thank you, thank you.”

“C’mon, ol’ lady,” I said. “Let’s go find you a rocking chair.”

We put on our sunglasses and went out onto the terrace where indeed there was a long row of high-backed white wooden rockers. We dragged two of them down to the far end where we would be in the shade and out of the way of casual passersby. With a nice wind coming off the ocean, the air was hot but not oppressively muggy. The terrace overlooked the pool area with its many coral-colored umbrellas and coral lounge chairs, yet it was high enough to let us see over the umbrellas to the beach where gentle waves chased and were chased by squealing toddlers. A group of small boys worked at building an ambitious sand castle almost as tall as they were.

Maybe I should have let Cal come with me instead of going to Virginia, I thought. Maybe a few days of one-onone without Dwight to complicate things would have let us work out our relationship and reinforce the ground rules.

I sighed and leaned back in the chair.

Unfortunately, Chelsea Ann heard my sigh. “How’s being a stepmother working out?”

“Great,” I said, rummaging in my tote for sunscreen. “In fact I was just thinking how much Cal would love this.”

“And you and Dwight are really okay?”

“Sure.” I slipped off my shirt and smoothed sunscreen on my face, arms, and shoulders. “We’re fine.”

“So what was last night about?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t remember getting maudlin about that couple in the corner when we left?”

I shook my head.

“You wanted to go over and give them your blessings.”

I flushed. “Must have been the tequila.”

“And that’s another thing. I’ve never seen you so completely hammered.”

“Dwight and I are just fine,” I said again, unhappily aware that he still hadn’t called. I offered my sunscreen and asked, “But what’s with Rosemary and Dave?”

The diversion worked. She took the bottle with tightened lips. “I could throttle my stupid sister!”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“I think he’s trying to shaft her and she’s just going to stand there and let it happen.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t know that he had an affair with one of the paralegals in his old law office?”

“No. When?”

“January.”

“January this year?”

“That’s when she found out about it. God knows how long it’d been going on.” She dabbed lotion on her nose and smoothed more on her arms. “Wasn’t the first time he’d cheated on her either, but she wouldn’t listen to me or anyone else. She was sure that his flirting was just a automatic habit and nothing to take seriously.”

“She was wrong,” I said.

“He’s hit on you, too?”

“At your birthday party last year.” Although Dave had made light of it when he saw how outraged I was on Rosemary’s behalf, I knew, as any woman knows, that he would have had his hand up my skirt with the least bit of encouragement.

“This last time, he was just a little too careless and Rosie heard about it at school.”

I knew that Rosemary had named her older daughter after herself but I hadn’t seen the child in two or three years. “She’s what now? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

“Sixteen, and the girl who told her is the niece of one of Dave’s former law partners. Rosie came straight home and threw up all afternoon. Seeing Rosie like that really shook her up. She made Rosie promise not to say anything to Dave till she could confront him herself, then she made a few phone calls and learned that it was true.”

She capped the sunscreen bottle and handed it back to me. “When he wouldn’t move out, she applied for a divorce from bed and board. You didn’t hear about it? It was all over the courthouse in Durham.”

I reminded her that Durham’s almost fifty miles from Dobbs and unless the details are particularly salacious, rumors about a colleague’s personal life don’t always travel outside that judge’s district.

All the same, a “divorce from bed and board” constitutes a public and legal separation under North Carolina law. Rosemary would have had to prove that Dave had committed adultery, but that shouldn’t have been hard. If they stayed separated for a year, the divorce would be almost automatic.

“So what are they both doing here this weekend?” I asked.

“She asked if she could come down with me. Said we could have a girly weekend. Said Dave had told her he was going to skip the summer conference.”

“But he’s here and she still stayed?”

“I told you I want to wring her neck. You heard her last night. She lied to me. She knew he was going to be here, but he sweet-talked her into coming anyhow. He’s spent the last two months courting her like they were teenagers. Flowers, funny cards, presents. He’s convinced their daughters that it was a one-time aberration and they’re ready to forgive him. You remember how Rosemary took on Mom’s care when she broke her hip after Christmas?”

I nodded.

“He told the girls that the affair was partly Rosemary’s fault for neglecting him then.”

“And they bought it?”

“They’re not alone,” Chelsea Ann said angrily. “Rosemary’s buying it, too. I’m pretty sure she slept with him last week. And it’s not as if she doesn’t have a law degree.”

As judges, we both knew what Dave Emerson knew and what Rosemary must surely know, too. If marital relations are resumed after a divorce from bed and board has been granted, that nullifies the divorce action.

“Maybe he really does love her,” I said, remembering how my cousin Reid really had loved his wife even though that didn’t stop him from cheating on her time after time.

“You think?” she asked cynically. “Or do you think that it’s because a fault-based action usually means that the cheating spouse gets the short end of the stick when it comes to alimony and property rights? If he can get her back to bed with him down here and enough of our colleagues realize that they’re sharing a room and cohabiting…”

“Condonation,” I said, a term which means that the aggrieved party condones, i.e., forgives the adultery by resuming marital relations. That effectively erases the charges of adultery and levels the field if they later decide to divorce after all.

“You got it.” Chelsea Ann’s tone was bitter. “And speak of the devil.”

I followed her line of sight and saw Dave Emerson walk out onto the balcony of his room a few floors up. He was bare-legged, as if just out of the shower, and wore one of the hotel’s terry cloth robes so loosely tied that his hairy chest was exposed. Carrying a mug in one hand and newspapers in the other, he sat down on one of the chairs, set his mug on the small table, and began to read. He did not seem to see us and Chelsea Ann certainly did not wave.

Just then Fitz and Martha spotted us and walked over to speak. Both were in flip-flops and green bathing suits and both wore white cotton sun hats. Fitz had a towel around his neck and looked trim enough for a sixty-five-year-old man, Martha wore a short white beach jacket and her legs were still good.

“A police detective’s looking for y’all,” I said.

“He can just keep looking,” said Martha. “We plan to get a swim in before lunch and the pool gets too hot.”

As they started to move away after the usual pleasantries, Martha said, “Oh, look! There’s Rosemary and Dave.”

Chelsea Ann groaned when she saw Rosemary join Dave on the balcony. She, too, wore a terry robe. Although her belt was tied tightly, it was clear that she had nothing on underneath.

“I’m so glad they’re back together again,” said Martha, effectively squelching any hope Chelsea Ann might have harbored that none of our colleagues suspected that the marriage was in trouble or that they would witness anything that looked like condonation on Rosemary’s part.

She looked so troubled that I jumped to my feet and tried to pull her up, too. “We’re paying beach rates for our hotel rooms here, so let’s get our money’s worth. I’ll get us an umbrella, you go change and meet me out there, okay?”

“Okay.” She said it with all the enthusiasm of someone who darkly suspected there would be jellyfish.

Ten minutes later, one of the cabana boys pitched my bright coral umbrella on a fairly empty stretch of sand. I tipped him, then spread out my towels and took off my jungle print skirt. I rolled both shirt and skirt into a rough semblance of a pillow and lay down to wait for Chelsea Ann to join me.

The sand beneath my towels was warm and relaxing, and waves and gulls created a white sound that almost drowned out the squeals of laughter from the children who played in the shade of the lifeguard’s stand a few hundred feet away. I told myself that I was only going to rest my eyes till Chelsea Ann came, but last night’s late hours caught up with me.

I’m not sure how long I had been sleeping when I became aware of footsteps scrunching on the sand as they approached. They stopped at the edge of my towel. Thinking it was Chelsea Ann, I turned my head and looked up into the face of the bearded man who had spoken to Jeffreys last night.

“Well, hey, darlin’,” he said.