Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

11

The gravity of a past offense never increases ex post facto.

—Paulus (early AD 3rd century)

Chelsea Ann and Rosemary invited me to join them on their hunt for the perfect vestibule table for Chelsea Ann’s new condo, but by the time I had changed my bathing suit for more conventional lingerie and got down to the front of the hotel where they were waiting in the car, they were snarling at each other as only siblings can.

The van’s windows were down and their angry words reached me clearly.

“He’s changed,” said Rosemary. “If I’m going to be suspicious every time a little airhead like that wanders by—”

“Give me a break,” Chelsea Ann snapped. “When are you going to realize that men like Dave don’t give a damn about what’s between a woman’s ears? All they want is what’s between her legs. Can’t you see what’s happening? Getting you to show yourself out on the balcony this morning? This public reconciliation in front of his peers?”

“You think it’s all about legalities?” Rosemary was indignant. “Condonation? In case we can’t get past this? You don’t think it could be because he loves me?”

“Sorry to interrupt when y’all are having such a good time,” I said, opening a back door to check the floor and under the seats, “but you didn’t happen to find an earring, did you?”

“No, when did you lose it?”

“Who knows?” I ran my fingers around the seat cushions. “I didn’t notice it was missing till I got back to the hotel.”

Rosemary twisted around in her seat. “You were only wearing one when we were waiting for that detective to let us go. I thought maybe it was a new style. But then I’m only a naive little housewife, so what could I possibly know?”

Heavy sighs from Chelsea Ann.

Much as I love my job when I’m wearing a black robe and have a gavel in my hand, I was in no mood to spend an afternoon arbitrating between two sisters who probably had issues going back to childhood—which one was more indulged by their mother or better loved by their father, or who got spanked for something the other one did.

I closed the door and stepped back to speak through the window. “Sorry, guys, but I’m really not interested in looking at furniture. Dwight and Cal are probably going to come back from Virginia with a truckload of it, so y’all go on without me. I’ll just run over to Jonah’s and see if someone’s turned in my earring.”

Both insisted that it wouldn’t be that much out of their way to swing past the restaurant, but I stood firm.

As they drove off, I heard Rosemary say, “Anyhow, just because your marriage went down the tubes—” and I knew I’d made the right choice.

Jonah’s was having its after-lunch lull. A few people lingered with coffee or drinks under umbrellas out on the porch, but most of the indoor tables were empty. A couple of hardy souls at the bar were getting an early start on the evening.

Kyle-the-aspiring-actor clearly did not remember me from the night before, and he was only perfunctorily sorry to say he had not found an earring. “I think someone turned in a lipstick, though. You could ask Hank.”

Hank-the-aspiring-hotel-manager was more accommodating if a little distracted. “Sorry,” he said, as he took out a small box from under the reception stand, “but it’s been crazy here today. The police only left a few minutes ago. A red-and-white earring? From last night?”

I nodded and he paused from rummaging through a box of items that ranged from earrings (none of them red and white) to sunglasses (prescription and drugstore knockoffs) and cigarette lighters (smoking is still allowed outside and in the bar). In his neat white shirt, black slacks, and preppie haircut, he reminded me of my nephew Stevie, who just graduated from Carolina: the same clean-cut wholesomeness of a kid who knows what he wants to do with his life.

“You at the university here?” I asked.

“No. UNC–Greensboro.”

Before I completely morphed into Martha Fitzhume and asked if he really did hope to manage a hotel someday, he said, “The guy who got killed? They said he was one of the judges here for dinner. You a judge, too?”

I admitted that I was.

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Not really.”

“I must have seated him, but Kyle had that table and even he can’t remember which one he was. Not that y’all all look alike,” he assured me with a half smile.

“You remember a bearded man last night with a little girl and boy?”

“Vaguely. Why? Was that him?”

“No, but while you were getting the children seated, he came over to speak to their father.”

“Really?”

As he laid out a row of five unmatched earrings on his reservation book, I could almost see him running that part of the evening through his memory.

“Yeah, I do sort of remember him now. You think I ought to call those detectives and tell them?”

“Tell them what?” asked a familiar voice behind me.

Detective Gary Edwards.

Hank gave him a puzzled look and I quickly realized that if Edwards had been at the hotel through lunchtime, he could not have been one of the detectives here this morning. I performed the introductions and added, “Hank just realized that he did see Judge Jeffreys last night.”

“He came up to the table while I was getting the customer’s children seated, but I can’t say that I paid him any attention after that.” He turned and called to the waiter who stood staring out at the river, probably imagining himself on the prow of a ship while cameras rolled in for a close-up. “Hey, Kyle! Last night?”

“Oh, God, not more about that guy none of us can remember,” the reed-thin young man grumbled as he reluctantly tore himself away from the window.

I realized he must have been looking at his own reflection in the glass.

When Hank described his encounter with Jeffreys at Allen’s table—not that either of them knew Allen Stancil by name, but the children were memorable—Kyle admitted that yeah, now that Hank mentioned it, he had noticed the guy. “He had a dumpy little woman with him and he took her over to that man’s table, too.”

Dumpy little woman?

Ouch!

“That would be Judge Blankenthorpe,” I reminded Edwards. “Did you get to ask her yet why she didn’t label that table?”

“She thought we only wanted a seating chart for the judges. Or so she says. I saw you talking to people in the hotel dining room. Learn anything?”

“Nothing you probably don’t already know,” I told him. “Fitz—Judge Fitzhume? He seems to have been the last one of our group to see Jeffreys. He was coming out of the restroom as Jeffreys was going in and he said the restroom was otherwise empty and nobody he knew was anywhere around.”

The phone rang and as Hank answered, I said, “Are you by any chance following me?”

Edwards smiled and shook his head. “Naw. I came down to go over the interviews my squad did here this morning. Sometimes if you go back a second time right away, somebody will have remembered something. Just like you jiggled the memory of these two. Now that they know who he was, maybe they’ll remember something useful.”

Kyle moved off to stare at his reflection again with a moody frown.

“Happy hunting,” I told Edwards and with a nod to Hank, who was explaining to the caller that shrimp and grits would probably be back on the menu in the fall, I decided to go hunting myself for some new red earrings since mine seemed to be lost for good.

The Cotton Exchange, as its name implies, was once an export company that shipped that Southern commodity all over the world from the port of Wilmington. The buildings that grew up around it have housed a milling company, a granary, a printing company, a saloon, and heaven only knows what else over the last hundred years. Today the complex is a collection of small restaurants, boutiques, and some of my favorite specialty shops.

I headed first to Caravan Beads, a do-it-yourself shop that sells all the findings for putting together your own one-ofa-kind jewelry, and spent a relaxing half-hour creating a pair of red earrings from tiny featherweight enameled blocks.

“Balsa wood?” I asked the helpful clerk.

She shook her head. “Papier mâché.”

Cool!

Down some steps and around a corner, a shop window displayed several vivid posters depicting marine life. One was a chart of colorful fishes, another showed seashells to be found in North Carolina waters. Yet another illustrated the twenty-five most common sharks off our coast, from hammerheads and bull sharks to the sand sharks we used to catch when we went pier fishing.

To my rueful amusement, the final poster was titled “Land Sharks” and cartoon drawings of various sharks had been rendered into courtroom scenes with each type of shark taking on lawyer-like aspects exaggerated for comic effect. As I bent for a closer look, Cynthia Blankenthorpe came out of the shop and paused beside me.

“Cute, huh?” She jiggled a well-filled tote bag, from which protruded a rolled-up poster. “I just bought my niece one as a gag gift for passing her bar exam. She always swore she was never going to be a land shark, yet here she is, following in her dad’s and my footsteps.”

Kyle the waiter had called her a dumpy little woman. She was indeed short, and yes, this was not a svelte figure. But although the tight black biking shorts she wore did nothing for her hips, she was built of solid muscle, not fat.

“You do one of those table charts for that detective this morning?” she asked, falling in beside me as I walked downstairs.

I nodded.

“Me, too, only he made me come back a second time because I left out one of the people Pete talked to. A man with two small children.”

“Allen Stancil,” I said without thinking.

She stopped in mid-step. “Yes! You know him?”

“We’ve met,” I admitted.

“He contribute to your campaign?”

“No. Yours?”

“Not yet. Maybe not ever now that Pete’s dead.” She gestured to a nearby soda shop that was decorated like an old-fashioned ice cream parlor with little round three-legged tables and black wire chairs. The signs were all in that fat curlicue lettering that reminds me of the early 1900s. “Could I buy you a drink? Talk to you a minute?”

“Okay,” I said, curious as to where this was leading.

We went inside, ordered diet colas, and took them over to a wobbly back table. She put her tote on one of the dainty chairs and sat down across from me. As she unwrapped her straw and stuck it in the icy beverage, I noticed again the wicked red scratches on her right hand that I had seen last night in the party suite, four of them, each about an inch apart.

She saw me looking and said, “I misjudged a yucca when I was out on my bike yesterday and those needles did a job on me. I’m lucky I didn’t get one in the eye.”

“Adam’s needle and thread,” I murmured, remembering Mother’s colloquial name for the vicious plant.

“Haven’t heard it called that since I was a kid.” Cynthia smiled and for a moment her broad plain face lost the frown lines between her eyes before she turned serious again. “So what’s the story on Allen Stancil?”

“Story?” I asked cautiously.

“Pete told me he was a blue-collar roughneck who’s become a successful businessman. I got the impression that he donated heavily to Pete’s upcoming campaign and Pete thought he might contribute to mine, too. Before I take anybody’s money though, I want to know if it’s clean.”

“And you didn’t think Pete was?”

“Oh, hell, no. I’ve heard how he operated when he was in private practice. Talk about your sharks. And once he hit the bench, there’ve been all kinds of rumors. One of my friends told me he even solicited campaign contributions from the lawyers in his courtroom while he was holding court. Wanted them to pledge specific amounts right then and there.”

For some reason, that shocked me even more than realizing that he’d taken money to give Allen custody of his children.

Most attorneys, as a matter of pragmatism, will contribute a token amount to a sitting judge’s campaign, but to to be bullied into naming a dollar amount in open court? As if it’s going to be a quid pro quo for whether that judge will listen to your argument with an open mind? That’s like watching acid eat away at the whole concept of judicial fairness that this country was founded on.

“Why wasn’t he reported to the ethics committee or to Justice Parker?” I asked.

Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe he was, but I haven’t heard anything about it. You?”

I hadn’t.

“If Peter Jeffreys was such bad news, though…”

“Why was I letting him lead me around?” The frown lines between her eyes deepened. “I’m the new kid on the block, remember? This is my first conference. For all I knew, important people were winking at his conduct. He came on strong. Said all the right things. I only realized yesterday that he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”

“How was that?”

“He thought I was a Blankenthorpe heiress.”

“You’re not?”

She shook her head. “My dad’s uncle is the one who started the bank. Not my grandfather. We’re from the poor side of the family, relatively speaking.”

I smiled at the pun.

“I guess that’s why it ticked me off that he stuck me for his dinner. We stopped at an ATM on the way over so he had at least three hundred in his wallet, but then he went to the restroom and never came back.”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Around nine-thirty or a quarter to ten.”

That fit with what Fitz had said.

“So how come you didn’t tell the police about Allen Stancil?” I asked.

“Because I’m too damn literal-minded.” She set her drink cup down on the tiny metal table so hard that the ice rattled and the table almost tipped over. “He said to write down all the judges that Pete had talked to and where they were sitting and that’s what I did. The judges. Allen Stancil isn’t a judge. So is he clean or isn’t he?”

“He’s been known to cut a corner or two,” I said, “but unless he wants a government contract to put gutters on courthouses, you’d probably be safe taking a contribution from him. He may ask for favors down the line, but you can always say no.”

“Good.” She finished her drink and reached for her tote bag. “Speaking of favors, can I ask you for one?”

“Sure.”

“Could you take this bag back to the hotel for me? I can sling it across my handlebars, but it’ll be easier if I don’t have to mess with it.”

“No problem,” I said.

We walked out to the parking lot together and I put her bag in the trunk of my car while she unlocked her bike chain and put on her helmet. The late afternoon heat was oppressive. Not even the hint of a breeze.

“Sure you don’t want a lift back?” I said.

“Heavens, no!” she exclaimed. “Everything’s so flat, I probably won’t even break a sweat.”

With that, she wheeled out of the lot and pedaled down Water Street.

I closed the trunk and broke a sweat just walking fifty feet to a nearby shop called Blowing in the Wind, where I bought kites for Cal and his cousins. Back in March we had spent a Saturday morning making paper kites from directions I found on the Internet, but they crashed and ripped in the spring winds. Cal’s had flown the longest and he was just getting the hang of how to maneuver the string when it did a suicide dive into a maple tree.

These were made of sturdy nylon and should last longer. I even bought an extra one for Dwight and me.

Still in a shopping mode, I went on down to Two Sisters Bookery. In addition to books and book-related tchotchkes, they have the best assortment of funny, funky cards around and I always stock up when I’m in Wilmington.

I was smiling at one of them when someone bumped into me. I turned and there was a man of late middle age, about my height, wearing black jeans and black T-shirt, his graying hair tied back in a ponytail.

I recognized the director I’d threatened with an orange jumpsuit and braced myself for snarls.

Instead, he started to apologize, did a double take, and said, “I’ll be damned! It’s the ballsy judge. Hey, Jilly! C’mere. It’s that judge I was telling you about.”

A slender woman in wrinkled white clam diggers, a faded blue T-shirt, and a soiled white canvas hat strolled down from the front of the store. No makeup, no jewelry, not even a ring or watch. No sunglasses either, yet my eyes had passed right over her when I came in.

She wasn’t exactly homely, but without eye makeup, her fair brows and lashes were almost invisible from five feet out; and with her signature long auburn hair bundled into the crown of that canvas hat and a nearly flat chest, she really did fade into the woodwork.

Then she flashed that thousand-watt smile, and there was no doubt that this was indeed the actress who had captivated Dwight and enough other men to lift her out of featured roles in crash-and-burn videos and into a starring role on a prime-time network show.

“Jill Mercer,” she said, sticking out her hand for a no-nonsense shake.

“Deborah Knott,” I told her.

“Oh, God,” the man groaned. “Judge not? Lest ye be judged?”

“I do get a lot of that,” I admitted.

“I still get the mercenary/mercy puns,” the actress said. “And I have it in my contracts that I’ll never have to work with any actor named Jack.”

“School?” I asked.

“Fifth grade to eighth. The very worst time.”

I nodded in sympathy. “I had to put up with the Little Debbie cupcake jokes. I still won’t let anyone shorten my name.”

As we exchanged childhood mortifications, the director stood beaming at us as if he were a father who had just arranged a successful playdate for his daughter.

“Come have a drink with us,” he said, “and tell us all the things we get wrong in Jilly’s courtroom scenes.”

“Sorry,” I said, newly reluctant to admit that I’d never seen their show.

Before I could dredge up an excuse, he snapped his fingers and said, “Oh wait. I forgot. We have a meeting in twenty minutes. Tell you what. Why don’t you come back tonight and watch us film a car crash?”

“Do come,” Jill Mercer said. “It’ll be fun. You’ll get to watch Stone go on his pretty little ass.”

“Don’t be catty, darling,” said the director, whose name I still didn’t know.

He told me where to be and the time and promised to buy me that drink.

“Thanks,” I said, figuring that Chelsea Ann could bring me up to speed by then.