Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

22

The proconsul will look into the truth of the facts you allege and will make it his care that no injustice is perpetrated.

—Caesar Augustus (63 BC–AD 14)

DETECTIVE GARY EDWARDS (TUESDAY AFTERNOON,

JUNE 17)

Driving back into Wilmington, Edwards thought that the sky might be brightening up to the west even though the rain was as heavy as it had been when he crossed the causeway earlier in the day.

Despite the rain, determined tourists were thick along the Riverwalk. A long line of umbrellas waited in front of the information booth at Market and Water Streets and another line had formed at the trolley car stop. The shops down at Chandler’s Wharf were busy, too, as people darted from one storefront to another as if trying to run between the raindrops. The parking lot at Jonah’s was full and he had to drive well past the row of waterfront restaurants before he found an empty space.

His black umbrella had a broken rib, but it kept the worst of the rain off as he splashed across the cobblestones to Jonah’s. He stood it in a corner of the porch, not much caring if it got stolen or not, and went inside, where the smell of deep-fried shrimp and hushpuppies almost made him forget the big breakfast he’d eaten earlier.

Between the air-conditioned interior and the warm summer rain outside, the windows overlooking the Riverwalk were too fogged up for him to see the water.

Although it was now almost 2:30, the restaurant’s main room was at least half full of customers who dawdled over coffee or dessert before plunging back out into the rain. At the bar, more people nursed beer mugs or wineglasses and watched a baseball game being played somewhere under clear blue skies while four or five members of the waitstaff and the bartender chatted off to the side, all the time keeping a watchful eye on their stations in case someone should call for the bill.

The manager was there at the reception stand when Edwards entered and he gave the detective a sour look. “What now?”

“I’m still trying to find Kyle Armstrong. You hear from him yet?”

He waited till the manager finished his rant about inconsiderate, unreliable help and then said, “He seems to have skipped town. You have any idea why?”

The manager gave him a shrewd look. “Hey, you don’t think he had anything to do with that judge getting killed, do you?”

“What do you think?”

“Kyle? Naw. It’s gotta be a coincidence. He’s been talking about Hollywood from the day I first hired him. Maybe he finally just up and went.”

“Maybe,” Edwards said. “When’s payday?”

“Friday.”

“So you still owe him money for the weekend?”

“Two shifts. Yeah. Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch.”

“Seems to me if I was taking off for LA, I’d get every penny owing me first.”

“That’s you,” the manager said. “Kyle’s a space cadet.”

“All the same, I want to talk to everybody who was here Saturday night, starting with you.”

“Me? I wasn’t on the floor and I left around eight.”

“Yeah? You didn’t come out to welcome the judges or ask them how everything was?”

“I’m not that kind of a manager. I make sure everything’s running smoothly behind the scenes and leave the front to whoever’s working this reception stand. Unless there’s a major problem, I don’t come out.”

While the manager continued to insist he did not normally interact with the customers, Edwards glanced around and decided that the empty side room was as good a place as any to conduct his interviews. It was separated from the main room by a waist-high wall topped by glass windows that went up to the ceiling so that there was plenty of light and he would not be overheard by the diners. “How about we talk in there?”

“It’s set up for a tour group that’s coming in at five,” said the manager, “but yeah, I reckon you can use it, long as you don’t mess it up too much. Who you want to start with?”

“Who do you have?”

The manager looked around. “There’s Mandy, but she was off this weekend. Mel was here. I think she and Kyle got into it a little. Hank was working reception. Art, Clarence, and Mike, of course, at the bar.”

“Tell me about Mel. How long’s she been working here?”

“Just since the season started. Same for most of them. Kyle’s been here about three years. He and Mike both. They work year-round.”

“You say Kyle and this Mel mixed it up? Why?”

“Who knows? I’ll send her in and you can ask her yourself, okay?”

“No, let me talk first to the guy that was working reception. Hank? He the one I spoke to Sunday?”

The manager nodded.

“Yeah, we worked the lunch shift Sunday,” said the waiter. “You came to ask us about the judge that got killed Saturday night, remember? He sat at Kyle’s table.”

Hank Barlow was as earnest as Edwards remembered from Sunday: clean-cut, neatly trimmed hair, polished shoes, crisp shirt. There were dark circles under his eyes today and he smothered a yawn as he sat down.

“Sorry. I thought I could sleep in this morning, but Sam called and said they were shorthanded and now it sounds like Kyle might not make it in this afternoon. Sam says you told him Kyle’s left Wilmington?”

Edwards realized he should have told the manager to keep his mouth shut about that. Too late now.

“Did he tell you he was moving?”

Barlow shook his head and explained that this was his first summer working down here at the coast. “We usually head for the mountains but Mel thought the beach would make a good change.”

“You go to school in Greensboro, right?”

“Yeah, UNCG.”

“You or this Mel ever hear of Judge Jeffreys before Saturday night?”

Hank shook his head.

“What about Kyle? He in school?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Are you guys friends? Hang out together?”

“Not really. I only met him last month. We drove out to the beach when I first got here, and we’ve gone for drinks at one of the clubs once or twice with some of the others, but he… well, all he wants to talk about is acting—what shows he’s trying to get on, how they screwed up his tryout, or how people are always doing him dirt. It’s all about him.”

“Think back to Sunday morning,” Edwards said. “Did you get the impression that he didn’t want to admit that he had waited on Judge Jeffreys?” The younger man considered it and then shook his head. “Not really. I don’t think people register on his radar unless they’re connected to the movie or television industry.”

“And the last time you saw him?”

“He got off Sunday afternoon at four. I was supposed to get off then, too, but I told Mandy I’d cover her dinner shift so she could go to a friend’s wedding. I had a half-hour break, though, and Kyle asked me to give him a lift back to his place so that—”

“You gave him a lift? He didn’t have his car?”

“No. He usually rides his bike over unless it’s raining but the front tire had a slow leak and he didn’t want to ride on it until he could fix it. He said he was going to patch it first and then he was going to drive down to Southport to see his cousin.”

“Cousin?”

“Yeah. I think she’s an invalid or something. He made it sound like it was a real drag, but at the same time like he ought to get a pat on the back for doing something nice for her.”

“You really don’t like him very much, do you?”

“He’s okay. Just immature.”

Edwards almost had to smile. Kyle Armstrong was nearly five years older than this serious young man.

“I dropped him at his place on Walnut Street a little after four and that’s the last time I saw him.”

“Who else doesn’t like him here?”

“I don’t think any of us particularly dislike him unless it’s Mel. We all tend to help each other out in a pinch, but Kyle’s pretty lazy unless it’s somebody in television and then he’s right there, Mr. Helpful and ‘Can I get you water and do you want a lemon in it, sir?’ He tried that Saturday night when Stone Hamilton and his friends were here. It was Mel’s table and she almost had to beat him back with a stick to get him to butt out.”

“Yeah,” said Mel Garrett, the waitress who’d worked Stone Hamilton’s table Saturday night. A rising senior at UNCG like Hank, she had jet-black hair streaked with fuchsia and a dirty mouth that she tried to control after apologizing for laying the F-word on him. (“Sam keeps telling me I’ve got to dial it back.”) Like all the others, she knew that Armstrong had waited on the murdered judge and that he was now missing. It seemed to confirm her already negative opinion of him. “The little bastard’s always trying to horn in if you get any of the Screen Gems people. And yeah, he has a temper on him. Sneaky as hell, too. You piss him off and he’ll screw up your order if he can. Shift yours down on the list or mix up the drinks so your tables start complaining about the lousy service and stiff you on the tips.”

“I’ve had to watch him,” said the bartender. Of all the waitstaff, he had worked at Jonah’s the longest. Almost three years now. Kyle had started a month or two after him. The rest came and went with the seasons. “I caught him trying to palm one of my tips and I told him if he ever did it again, I’d beat the crap out of him. But he’ll sneak and mix up the drinks on a waiter’s tray if he’s ticked off at them.”

“No,” said Art Taylor, an English major at George Mason University, who had also worked the porch Saturday night. “I can’t say I noticed that he paid much attention to that judge or any of the others either. Of course, I wasn’t paying much attention to him.”

“Sorry,” said the other waiter, a pre-law student at Wake Forest, who had been on duty during the relevant time. “My tables were all in the bar area Saturday night. If Kyle was upset about anything, I didn’t see it. Actually, I thought he was in a pretty good mood. Excited because a new casting director was here. I think he even got the director’s card. And yeah, I did hit on him a week or two after I started work here. I thought he was going to punch me out. Talk about denial! Just as well though. He doesn’t care about anybody except himself. No room between him and the mirror, if you know what I mean.”

There was one more waitress who had worked the dinner shift Saturday night, but she would not be in till four. Edwards filled the time with questions for the rest of the staff even though they had not been on duty then.

Those who had spoken to Armstrong on Sunday were all under the impression that he had barely noticed Jeffreys.

“Could he be lying?” Edwards asked.

“Well, he is an actor,” one young man said.

“He’s not that good an actor,” said another.

The bouncy little blonde who had been there when he came in that morning said that she had been off all weekend and that she didn’t have much to do with Kyle anyhow. The only thing they ever talked about were their bicycles.

“Bicycles?”

“Yeah.” Her twin blonde ponytails were tied with purple beads that bobbled up and down when she nodded her head. “I brought mine over with me from Charlotte. Thought it would help me stay in shape, y’know?”

And a very nice shape it was, thought Edwards, keeping a perfectly straight face.

“Does Kyle like to ride, too?”

“He thinks it’s good exercise. Builds up his muscles. In fact, his bike is out there on the rack right now.”

“Could you show me?” Edwards asked.

“Sure. Just let me tell Hank in case my table wants their check while I’m gone.”

Out front, Jonah’s porch took a jog at the far end where azaleas were thickly planted. Rainwater ran off the porch roof and splashed onto a bike rack that was almost hidden among the wet bushes. Tethered to the rack by a chain and padlock was an older model all-terrain bike with wide tires and a shiny green frame.

“I noticed it when I got here this morning,” she said.

“I thought he didn’t come to work yesterday.”

“He didn’t.”

“But the bike—?”

“I figured he caught a ride home from work Sunday and just hasn’t had a chance to come back for it.”

“No. Hank Barlow said he drove Kyle and the bike both to his apartment Sunday because it had a leak in the tire. So Kyle must have ridden it back here sometime between Sunday evening and this morning.”

“Whatever,” the young woman said, evidently becoming bored with his speculation and heading back inside.

Edwards followed. “When did you last see him?” he asked.

“Friday maybe? When the shifts changed? He usually works the four-to-eleven dinner shift and I work the eleven-to-four lunch shift. Weekends can get a little crazy, y’know? Sam barks a lot but as long as everything’s covered and we keep up with our hours, he doesn’t really care if we switch off or double up. My girlfriend got married down in Southport this weekend, and Kyle and the others covered for me so that I could be off. He was supposed to work the dinner shift yesterday and he never showed. I thought maybe he’d gotten his time mixed up. Is he in trouble?”

“I’m afraid so. You and he friends?” She shrugged and her twin ponytails swayed back and forth. “I guess. As much as anybody here. He isn’t much of a people person, y’know? Besides, I’ve got a boyfriend and Kyle… ? I don’t think he’s into girls very much.”

“Gay?”

“I don’t know about gay. Just not very interested either way. He really, really wants to get into television. That’s pretty much all he talks about, but he’s not doing much to make it happen, y’know? Doesn’t take classes. Doesn’t try out for an internship. He does go on casting calls, and then he’ll spend the rest of the week griping because someone always beats him out.” She hesitated and her pretty little brow furrowed. “It’s weird, though.”

“What?” Edwards asked.

“He’s really fussy about this bike. Keeps the frame waxed and everything oiled so it won’t rust, y’know? It’s not like him to leave it out in the rain without a cover on it.”

Upon being asked, no one admitted seeing Kyle or his bike after Hank Barlow dropped him off in front of his apartment before coming back to work the Sunday evening shift.

When the final member of Saturday night’s waitstaff checked in shortly before four, she could add nothing to what had already been said.

In the end, Edwards was left with the picture of a fiercely closeted, narcissistic loner and not a single hint as to why he would have killed Judge Peter Jeffreys.