Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

26

One must look… to the simple credibility of the witnesses and to the testimony in which the light of truth most probably resides.

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

At the hospital, I went back in with Martha on the off chance that Fitz was wide awake and I could ask him about who he’d seen Saturday night.

He wasn’t. But his doctor had been by and had, as the nurse predicted, told Chad that he was much encouraged by the slight improvement in Fitz’s vital signs.

Reid was there in the ICU waiting room with Chad and a couple of Fitz’s colleagues from the district who had known Chad since he was a teenager, when his father first came on the bench.

While Martha immediately went in to see Fitz, Chad said, “I asked the doctor if there was any chance that Dad would remember what happened to him.” A law professor at USC, he had naturally been very interested in learning that Fitz had probably been targeted because he could have named Kyle Armstrong as the last person to see Jeffreys alive. “He won’t remember the accident itself, of course.”

“No,” I agreed. “It all happened so fast and besides, he had his back to the car. He never saw it coming. What about earlier, though?”

“Very iffy, according to the doctor. He might remember everything up to the moment of impact or he might not remember anything past last month.” He gave an unhappy palms-up shrug. “Or for the last ten years for that matter, but I don’t want Mom worrying about that possibility till he’s conscious and we can know for sure where we stand.”

I walked out of the hospital with Reid. The trial lawyers’ conference had ended that afternoon and he was on his way back to Dobbs. It was still early, however, and he was in no particular hurry. There was no one waiting for him at the moment.

“There’s a place down on the river. Why don’t I buy you a drink before I hit the road?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”

I’m not particularly squeamish, but I admit I had a moment’s hesitation when Reid pulled into the parking lot where Pete Jeffreys had been killed Saturday night. I did park right at the front, though, instead of following Reid to the far end under the mulberry trees. Nor did I look for signs of police activity when we passed the spot on the riverbank where I had found the body.

Small tables were scattered around the rear entrance to a bar a hundred feet or so further up the Riverwalk from Jonah’s. A live jazz piano was playing inside and the mellow notes spilled out to the half dozen people who were there to enjoy the music and the soft evening air. Small boats passed back and forth on the river and we could see the lights of an oil tanker moored upriver across the way. The moon had not yet cleared the roofline of the buildings on our side of the river, but it already illuminated the marshy opposite bank where dilapidated pilings marked a line of once-busy piers. Downriver, more lights crossed the high arching bridge. A funky aroma rose from the water itself, a combination of tidal flats, mud, and decaying vegetation, a yeasty summer smell that almost made me want to wade out and set some crab pots.

I sighed and settled happily into a roomy wicker chair and when someone came out to take our order, I said, “Regular coffee, please. No cream or sugar.”

“Really?” asked Reid.

“Really.”

“Well, in that case…” He smiled up at the waitress. “I don’t suppose you have desserts?”

“Just pie. Pecan and key lime.”

“Deborah?”

“Not for me.”

“Okay. Espresso and a piece of pecan pie.”

After the waitress left us, Reid said, “Thanks for not telling that detective about Bill’s godson.”

“No need to thank me. I would have had to if it wasn’t pretty clear that our waiter was the one who killed Jeffreys.”

“Yeah, well, I knew Bill couldn’t kill anybody and once they find that guy—”

“Didn’t you hear?” I asked.

“Hear what?”

“He crashed off I-40 up near Castle Hayne in the rain last night and killed himself.”

“No kidding!”

I told him as much as I knew from Detective Edwards’s brief account. “But they still don’t know why he killed Pete Jeffreys, not that I think that’s going to keep them awake at night. There doesn’t seem to be any link between them. Jeffreys was from the Triad and evidently Armstrong was never further east in the state than Kinston. Any chance your friend Bill knows?”

“I doubt it.”

The pie and coffees came. The pie had been warmed and topped with a scoop of vanilla maple ice cream. The smell of that nutty custard mingled with vanilla made my mouth water. Reid offered me a bite—“It’s as good as Aunt Zell’s”—but I’d eaten hushpuppies and fried crabs that night and I managed to resist.

As I sipped my coffee and the pianist inside segued from “Once Upon a Summertime” to a bluesy “Moon River,” Reid talked about his long friendship with Hasselberger, Hasselberger’s decency, his sense of humor.

“Is he good with his hands?” I asked casually.

“How do you mean?”

“You know. Can he build shelves? Rewire a lamp? Tune his car?”

Reid laughed. “I think he may know how to top off the windshield washer fluid, but I wouldn’t count on it. He’s like me. His favorite tools are a phone and the yellow pages.”

I smiled. Reid’s ineptitude with anything mechanical is legendary in our family. My brothers, who amongst them will tackle anything from a toaster to a hay baler, just shake their heads.

So there went the nebulous theory that Hasselberger might have hot-wired Armstrong’s Geo and gone gunning for Fitz. Even if the police were satisfied that Armstrong had acted alone, the final nail in that particular coffin came when Reid mentioned some mutual friends he and Hasselberger had gone out to supper with down in Sunset Beach last night before driving back to Wilmington together long after 6:30.

As we walked back down the Riverwalk, we saw the cruise boat drifting up toward us and stopped to watch.

“Dotty and I did that once,” he sighed, the moonlight making him nostalgic. “Dinner and dancing on the river.”

He hadn’t had anything to drink, so I didn’t have to worry about him getting maudlin. Dotty was remarried now, but Reid would always mourn the end of their marriage even though it was his endless catting around that finally drove her to leave him.

We reached the parking lot and he pulled out his keys and jingled them in his hand. “So when’s your conference end?”

“Thursday noon,” I said.

“See you on Friday then?”

“Probably.”

Reid’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a younger brother, so I gave him a hug and told him to drive carefully.

The cruise ship passed and nosed into a dock further up the Riverwalk. I briefly considered circling around back to catch Edwards and Chelsea Ann as they came down the gangplank, but why interrupt their evening with something that probably had no significance?

I drove back to the SandCastle, parked the car, and went inside. Too restless to go straight to my room, yet not really in the mood for the shop talk that was bound to be going on up in 628, I went into the nearly deserted bar, ordered a nightcap, and took it outside to the terrace. Except for a couple on the far end, I had the place to myself. The moon was so huge and bright that I could have read a newspaper. Instead I took a sip of my icy drink and called Dwight. He had been back in his room almost an hour, he said, and had almost fallen asleep watching a baseball game.

“How’s your judge friend?” he asked. “Did they catch the driver that hit him?”

Once again, I found myself describing how Armstrong had died.

“Wraps it up nice and tidy, doesn’t it?” he said drowsily.

“Except that no one knows why he killed Judge Jeffreys.”

“Can’t have everything.”

I heard him yawn and said, “Go to sleep, darling.”

“Yeah, I’m a little beat. There’s one more session tomorrow morning. A breakfast meeting, then I’ll pick up Cal and head home. I’ll have to give this phone back to Sandy, so it’ll be tomorrow evening before I can call you.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I just wish I was going to be there when you get home. I’ve missed you.”

“Not half as much as I’ve missed you, shug. I’ve been thinking. If Mama can keep Cal, how about I hitch a ride down to Wilmington on Thursday?”

“Really?” My heart was suddenly turning somersaults.

“Well, I haven’t seen you in that new red bathing suit yet,” he drawled, and from there the conversation took a decidedly different turn.

After we finally said good night, I continued to sit there in the moonlight, nursing my drink because I was too lazy to go in and order another.

For once, indolence and sloth were rewarded. I heard low voices and glanced over to see Chelsea Ann and Gary Edwards walking toward me with their own nightcaps.

“I thought that was you,” she said. She held Edwards’s drink while he pulled two more rocking chairs closer to mine to form a rough semicircle.

“How was the cruise?” I asked.

“Awful,” Edwards said.

Chelsea Ann gave his arm a light poke. “No, it wasn’t. But we almost didn’t go.”

“Why not?”

“It seems that cruising the river in the moonlight isn’t enough. They have special entertainment every night.” She giggled. “Guess what tonight’s was?”

I shook my head.

“A murder mystery,” Edwards groaned.

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. I thought there would be dancing. Instead it was bad actors waving guns or running around with bloody knives, while everyone roared with laughter. Like murder’s a funny joke.”

“We found a place out on a deck that was away from all the mayhem,” Chelsea Ann said. “It was beautiful. Very relaxing. I’m glad we went.”

I noticed that his hand had found hers.

“Well, not to spoil the mood here, but something occurred to me this evening,” I told Edwards. “The money in Pete Jeffreys’s wallet. Didn’t you say it was over two hundred dollars?”

“Yeah. About two-sixty, I think. Why?”

“Well, Judge Blankenthorpe said they stopped at an ATM on their way to Jonah’s and he got three hundred dollars. That’s why she was so annoyed that he stuck her with his dinner check. She knew he had cash. Unless they stopped somewhere else along the way, what happened to that forty dollars?”

Edwards frowned. “Wouldn’t have been robbery. A thief wouldn’t have left that much cash and the credit cards.”

“Here’s what I was thinking could have happened. Say he started the evening with only ten or fifteen dollars in his wallet, which is why he stopped at an ATM. With a couple of drinks, his dinner would have run around fifty dollars. What if he ran into Kyle Armstrong in the restroom and that’s when they got into it? Then, instead of going back to the table, he pulls out his wallet and hands Armstrong enough cash to cover his bill and storms out the door to the parking lot. Armstrong kills him, pockets the money and goes back in and acts like nothing’s happened.”

Edwards thought about it a minute, then nodded. “I like it. Especially if—hey! Was Jeffreys gay by any chance?”

I shrugged and Chelsea Ann was equally unsure. “I haven’t heard that he was, but I didn’t know him, why?”

“Because one of the other waiters at Jonah’s is. He says he tried to hit on Armstrong last month and almost got punched in the nose. What if Jeffreys came on so strong to him in the men’s room that he freaked out?”

“Yes!” I said as the last piece of the puzzle snapped into place. “Armstrong did strike me as somebody so caught up in his own image that he didn’t have a real firm grasp on reality.”

“And if that image was one of total masculinity?” said Chelsea Ann, who’s seen as many impulsive and self-delusional people in her court as I have.

Edwards leaned back in his rocker and smiled at us. “Finally! A reasonable motive for why he killed a man we couldn’t prove he’d met before. Thanks, Your Honor.”

“Call me Deborah,” I said with a meaningful glance at their entwined fingers. “For some reason, I have this weird premonition that our paths are going to keep crossing.”

“By the way,” Chelsea Ann said sweetly. “What time’s our first session tomorrow?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said as I finished the last drops of my drink and stood up. “Sorry to have to say good night, but I really need my beauty sleep.”

Hey, I can take a hint as quick as anybody. Especially when it’s a hit over the head with a sledgehammer.