Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

27

Commodus made terms… for he hated all exertion and was eager for the comforts of the city.

—Dio Cassius (ca. AD 230)

I awoke to sunshine Wednesday morning and with the same sort of happy anticipation I used to get as a child on the day before my birthday, when I knew that there would soon be presents to unwrap.

The idea made me smile and I wondered if Dwight would mind being compared to a birthday present.

“He’d like the unwrapping part,” snickered the pragmatist.

“Don’t you have to be downstairs in twenty minutes?” asked the preacher.

“Yikes!” I said and jumped out of bed.

Fortunately I’d showered last night, so I had time to snag a peach Danish and a cup of coffee before sliding into a seat between Shelly Holt and Becky Blackmore about half a minute before Beth Keever began her presentation on “Child Support: Deviation Review and Enforcement.”

Four concurrent sessions ran from 8:30 to ten, then repeated from 10:30 to noon, with the afternoon free. We were supposed to attend two of the eight sessions.

At the ten o’clock break, the lobby buzzed with news that Jeffreys’s killer had died in a car crash.

“Poetic justice that he tried to kill Fitz with his car and wound up killing himself with it,” said some.

“Remember when Jeffreys said his opponent was gay?” Chuck Teach said. “I’m starting to wonder if guys who make a big deal out of that aren’t launching a preemptive strike.”

“The best defense is usually an offense,” one of his listeners agreed.

Another nodded. “Like my mama always said: you point your finger at somebody, you got three fingers pointing back at you.”

Unspoken was the relief that the killer had been someone else. Not one of us.

At 10:30, as I started into the room for “Criminal Sentencing Resources,” I saw Will Blackstone and his bruised face headed that way, too. As soon as our eyes met, he abruptly changed course and detoured into the session on gangs and gang crimes.

I decided not to take it personally.

Upon adjournment, I immediately drove over to the hospital. I had told Martha that I would be by to take her to lunch and when I arrived she was positively radiant.

“Come see Fitz!” she said and practically dragged me into the unit.

He was awake and he smiled when he saw me. “Hey, Deborah.”

His voice was weak and he was still groggy from so many drugs, but it was definitely Fitz. When I leaned over to kiss him, he said, “Martha says y’all’re going out to lunch?”

I nodded.

“Watch out for cars,” he said drily.

If he hadn’t been so encumbered with tubes and wires, I would have hugged him. “Want us to bring you a nice crisp softie?” I teased.

“I’d better take a rain check.” His eyelids drooped. “Sorry. I can’t seem to keep awake.”

“You rest, sweetheart,” Martha said, patting the hand that didn’t have an IV attached to it. “Chad’s right outside and we’ll be back in an hour.”

“Take your time,” he murmured as his eyes closed again.

“They’re going to move him into a room this afternoon,” Martha said. “And if he continues to improve, we can transfer him to a hospital nearer home in a few days.”

She told me that Gary Edwards had been by that morning to bring them up to date on Kyle Armstrong’s death and his probable motive for killing Judge Jeffreys.

“All because the judge made a pass at him? I should think he would have been flattered. As I recall, Pete Jeffreys was rather handsome and Kyle was decidedly not.”

Unfortunately, Fitz had no real memory of going to the restroom or of seeing Jeffreys or the waiter. He rather thought that he had, but he couldn’t be certain and Martha quit pushing him.

“What difference does it make now?” she asked.

* * *

After last night’s fried food, we were both in the mood for a fresh green salad and some crusty bread. Martha knew of just the place over on Oleander Drive.

“Best of all, it’s near a good used-book store,” she said. “I want something to read besides last year’s Newsweek and Golf Digest.”

The restaurant was in a small shopping center and had a salad bar to die for. We piled on locally grown baby spinach, arugula, oak leaf lettuce, and mustard greens, topped them with cherry tomatoes that actually tasted vine-ripened, then took our plates out to a wisteria-shaded patio. It was a typical June day, warm but not too muggy. Yesterday’s rain had washed the air so clean that it almost squeaked.

“I hope you appreciate how upscale North Carolina’s getting to be,” I said. “Did you notice that there wasn’t a single shred of iceberg lettuce on that counter?”

“Fine with me,” said Martha, who looked more rested today. “I ate enough for the whole South when I was growing up. So how’s the conference going? Am I missing any good gossip?”

“Doesn’t seem to be much,” I told her.

“Really?” She looked at me skeptically over her sunglasses. “Joy Hamilton told me that one of the judges was walking around with a very suspicious black eye.”

“Oh?”

“Will Blackstone. From 19-B, I think she said. I don’t know him. Do you?”

“We’ve met,” I admitted. “And he really does have a shiner. I heard he slipped and fell in the bathroom.”

“Not what I heard,” she sniffed. “Jane Harper said John Smith saw him come off the beach the other night with a bloody nose.”

“Maybe he ran into a piling. Or a pelican.” I dribbled some dressing over my salad and pushed back from the table. “I think I want some grated cheese. Bring you anything?”

“Well, as long as you’re going, a few bacon bits would be nice.”

By the time I got back to the table, she had forgotten all about Will Blackstone and his black eye.

After lunch, we drove a few short blocks to McAllister and Solomon, a used- and rare-book store on Wrightsville Avenue near 44th Street. If you’re a book lover, this is probably the place for you. Certainly it was the place for Judge Audrey Hamilton, whom we met leaving the store with a half-dozen vintage mystery novels in her arms. I myself would rather see the movie than read the book, but Dwight’s mother always has two or three books going at the same time and whenever we drive into Raleigh for lunch or shopping, she wants to stop by Reader’s Corner or Quail Ridge Books and Music and look at every title on the shelves. I usually kill time stocking up on CDs and greeting cards.

While Martha cruised biography and history, I went looking for the children’s section. My brother Zach had been mildly dyslexic, so Mother made him read aloud every night. I remember being transfixed by Old Yeller. Cal’s a reader like his grandmother, and I thought he might enjoy it even though we could probably rent the video.

I didn’t really expect to find a copy, but there it sat on a lower shelf. Unfortunately, it was a first edition and carried a seventy-dollar price tag. I sat down on a nearby stool and opened the pages to refresh my memory of Travis and his irritating younger brother, Arliss. Naturally I had identified with Arliss back then. My brothers thought I was a tagalong pain in the ass and didn’t hide their opinion much better than Travis did. I flipped to the heartbreaking ending and found myself choking up as if I were four again and about to sob, “No, no, NO! He can’t shoot Yeller!”

I had been aware that there were two people on the other side of the shelves from me, but the male voice was halfway through a quietly emotional reading of a poem before I came up from Yeller’s death scene and registered his words:

… And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core…

His voice broke then and after a moment the woman said, “ ‘I will arise now and go to Innisfree.’ Yes, I can see why she loved it.”

A moment or two later they came around the corner. He was in jeans and a faded Obama T-shirt; she wore hip-hugging white shorts that showed off the jeweled ring in her navel and a bright pink bandeau that matched her hair. Their eyes were suspiciously moist as if the poem he’d read had moved them both to the brink of tears. They seemed startled to see me sitting there and I was equally startled to recognize them.

“Oh, hey,” the young man said. “Did you ever find your earring?”

“Hank, right?” I slid the book back into its slot and stood up.

“Yes, ma’am.” To the girl with him, he explained, “The judge here lost an earring the other night but no one turned it in.”

“Deborah Knott,” I said, extending my hand.

“Mel Garrett,” she replied. “I work at Jonah’s, too.”

“I know. You waited on the Stone Hamilton table.”

“Wow! Wicked good memory.”

“Well, it was Stone Hamilton,” I said. Not that her fuchsia-streaked hair wasn’t also memorable. “I guess y’all heard about Kyle Armstrong?”

Both faces turned sober and Mel Garrett said, “I feel like the woman who worked alongside that serial killer—what was his name? The guy that killed all those sorority students?”

“Ted Bundy?”

“Yeah. Not that Kyle killed thirty women, but still. Two judges?”

From behind me, Martha said drily, “Only one judge. My husband’s banged up, but he’s going to live. Hello, Hank. How nice to see you again.”

“It was your husband Kyle ran down?” asked the Garrett girl. Martha nodded and the girl tsk’d in commiseration. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too, sugar.”

“I knew he had a mean streak in him, but I didn’t know it was that fu—frickin’ wide. I’m really glad your husband’s going to be okay.”

We chatted a moment or two longer, then Martha paid for the two books she’d found, a biography of John Adams and the collected letters of E. B. White.

Hank and Mel came up behind us and she said, “You know, Judge, sometimes the cleaning people leave things they find in a box in back instead of bringing them to the desk. What did your earring look like?”

I described the red-and-white hoops and she said she’d check on it. “We’re both on duty this evening if you’re over that way and want to stop by.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I might do that.”

After dropping Martha off at the hospital, I drove back to the SandCastle, where I fired up my laptop and made a note to buy an inexpensive copy of Old Yeller next time I was in Raleigh. I found a couple of messages that needed an answer, then checked out the headlines on The New York Times and The Washington Post to make sure the world was still turning on its axis. I always read The News & Observer all the way through when I’m home and keep my car radio tuned to NPR, but when I’m away like this it’s the online Times and Post. If it’s not splashed across their front pages, I figure I’m not missing anything.

And yeah, okay, whenever I’m on the Post site, I read Miss Manners, too. Doesn’t everybody?

I was in the middle of answering email when Rosemary called. “Chelsea Ann’s still on the hunt for that table but I’m tired of prowling through cluttered consignment shops. Want to come down to the beach with me?”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

She told me where she’d set up her umbrella and twenty minutes later I was seated on a towel next to hers, smoothing sunscreen on every bit of bare skin I could reach.

Rosemary had pulled her strawberry blonde hair back from her face with a black hairband that picked up the black leaves in her sarong-styled bathing suit. White flip-flops, white sunglasses, and a chunky white bracelet on her slender arm. She looked pretty fine for a woman entering middle age after dumping her husband.

“You doing okay?” I asked, and she didn’t pretend I was asking after her health.

“I’m doing better than okay,” she said with a genuine smile and showed me the title of the book she was reading: The NC Divorce Litigator’s Manual.

“You’re not going to represent yourself, are you?”

“I’m not that dumb,” she said, and told me the name of the attorney she’d retained, one of the best divorce lawyers in the Triangle. “But I am going to petition for reinstatement in the State Bar even though that means taking fifteen hours of CLE classes. I’ve been thinking about it and I believe family law’s what I want to practice. God knows I’m going to get a lot of practical pointers on equitable distribution of marital property and post-separation supplements in the next few months. Might as well take advantage of the experience.” She gave an evil grin. “Lovely to think of Dave having to pay for my professional training.”

“Too bad you have to start fresh proceedings,” I said, lying back on my towel.

“Actually, I won’t. We’ve agreed to let the original petitions go forward.”

“Even though you technically condoned the first affair by coming down here and resuming marital relations?”

“He’s decided it’d be better all around to get this over with as quickly as possible. After all, with you and Martha as witnesses to his fling with this waitress, it’s going to end up in the same place.”

There was so much complacency to her tone that I couldn’t resist zinging her. “Tell me one thing, girlfriend.”

“What?”

“Why did you condone Dave’s last affair, then turn around and set him up with that waitress?”

“Excuse me?”

“You pushed Jenna on him at lunch Sunday and then you let him think you’d be gone all afternoon on Monday.”

She sat up indignantly and pulled off her sunglasses to glare at me. “We did plan to be gone all afternoon. Airlie Gardens and then the Cottage Tea Room, but Martha got tired. Remember?”

“Oh, please, Rosemary.” I rolled over onto my side and propped myself up on one arm. “The way you kept looking at your watch? The way you persuaded us that tea on the balcony would be more relaxing so that we’d get back much earlier? The way you made sure we were right behind you when you threw the door wide open?”

She stared at me in consternation, guilt all over her face.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help myself. I notice things. And I was always good at simple math. Two plus two and all that.”

“You didn’t say anything to Martha or Chelsea Ann, did you?”

“Not yet.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t, Deborah.”

“Then you did set him up?”

“The bastard set himself up. But yeah, Chelsea Ann was right. I just don’t want to have to listen to her crowing about it the next forty years, okay? I really wanted to believe him, that he wanted to save our marriage, not throw twenty years down the slop chute. But it was all a farce. He didn’t give up his little cupcake. He just put her on hold and she agreed because it would mean less for me and more for her if we had a no-fault divorce. Once he got me to publicly condone the affair by resuming marital relations, he’d be home free. He could claim that we had sincerely tried to reconcile, but ‘O sorrow, sorrow, folks. It just didn’t work out.’ ”

As she talked, I could see Rosemary getting angry all over again. Her cheeks flushed and her green eyes shot sparks when she mimicked Dave’s voice.

“You know when you and the Fitzhumes saw us out on his balcony Sunday morning? That touching display of domestic harmony that he deliberately staged?”

I nodded.

“Twenty minutes later, I left him outside and went in to get dressed. I didn’t close the French doors all the way, but I’m sure the cocky bastard thought I’d gone into the bathroom to do my face. I came back into the room to get my purse that I’d left by the door and I heard him say, ‘We’re home free, baby. Three judges and a judge’s wife just saw us connubilling.’ ”

“Connubilling?”

“His term for connubial behavior,” Rosemary said drily.

“So as soon as Jenna presented herself, you hatched the plan?”

“Why not? It didn’t take much pushing. She was hot to trot and he never turned down an easy roll in the hay.” She grinned. “Or a splash in a Jacuzzi.”

“So the real reason he’s willing to let the original proceedings go forward is because he doesn’t want the cupcake back in Durham to hear about it?”

“Oh, I imagine she’ll hear about it,” Rosemary said complacently. She held out her sunscreen to me. “Could you get my back?”

I laughed. “Seems to me like you’ve already got it.”