Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

2

But man was formed for society; and, as is demonstrated by writers on this subject, is neither capable of living alone, nor indeed has the courage to do it.

—Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780)

I stood in the shower, water sluicing down my body, and lathered shampoo into my hair. I was so furious with Dwight, it’s a wonder the water didn’t sizzle as soon as it touched my skin.

Hadn’t we agreed to present a united front? For six months I had bent over backwards, trying to make up to his son for the mother he’d lost, trying to be consistent and fair and walk the line between understanding his loss and giving order and security to his life, and this was the thanks I got? Why did Dwight automatically assume I was in the wrong when I knew damn well I wasn’t? Everybody says that junk food and poor eating habits make for obese kids. Did he want Cal to grow up fat and unhealthy? And just as importantly, was Dwight going to let Cal do an end run around me every time I made a ruling that he didn’t like?

I sighed, finished rinsing the shampoo from my hair, and turned off the water to towel myself dry. I had one stepson.

One.

My mother had acquired eight when she married Daddy. How on earth did she wind up winning their love while asserting her authority?

“She didn’t,” the preacher who lives in the back of my head reminded me. “Not right away anyhow.”

I sighed again. It had taken her years with some of the older boys, but they had all come around in the end. I just wasn’t sure I had her stamina and patience.

Well, the hell with it. If Dwight wanted to go storming off like that, I wasn’t going to sit around here feeling sorry for myself.

Today was only Saturday, but there was nothing to keep me home. Although the summer conference of district court judges would not officially start until Monday, I was on the Education Committee and we planned to get together Sunday evening to begin brainstorming for the fall conference program. But hey! It was June, the hotel was right on Wrightsville Beach, and I had a new red maillot that didn’t look too shabby on me. I called the hotel, and when they told me I could check in that afternoon, that’s all I needed to hear.

I printed out the files I would need, then quickly packed and whistled for Bandit.

Daddy had volunteered to keep Cal’s dog while we were away, so I drove through the back lanes of the farm to the homeplace with Bandit on the seat beside me. Paws on the dashboard, he peered through the windshield as if he knew he was in for a great weekend.

Daddy was sitting on the top step of the wide and shady front porch when I got there. The porch catches every bit of breeze but the air was dead still today and felt as if it’d already reached the predicted high of ninety when I opened the door of my air-conditioned car. Daddy scorns air-conditioning and our muggy heat seldom bothers him.

As always, his keen blue eyes were shaded by the straw panama that he wears from the first warm days of spring till the first cool days of autumn. His blue shirt was faded and his chinos were frayed at the ankle, part of the I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-pore-ol’-dirt-farmer look that he adopted during his bootlegging days and has never seen the need to change, no matter how many nice shirts and pants his daughters-in-law and I give him. (Maidie, his longtime housekeeper, just rolls her eyes and puts everything through the washer a time or two with bleach before he’ll wear something new without nagging.) His long legs stretched down till his worn brogans rested on the lowest step.

Ladybelle, a dignified seven-year-old redbone coonhound, lay on the dirt near his feet, and Bandit was all over her in bouncy excitement the minute I let him out of the car.

Daddy stood up and shook his head at so much canine energy on such a hot day. “He don’t seem to’ve calmed down much since he come, has he?”

“That’s the terrier in him,” I said. “He’s getting better at home. You sure he’s not going to be too much trouble? Andrew said he’d pen him in with his beagles if you don’t want to be bothered with another house dog.”

“Naw, he won’t be no bother. He is housebroke, ain’t he?”

“He wouldn’t be a house dog if he wasn’t.”

“Well, then, he’ll be just fine. Ladybelle’ll let him know if he gets out of line with her.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” I said, standing on tiptoe to kiss his wrinkled cheek. “Dwight and Cal should be back Wednesday and they’ll be over to pick him up then. I’ll get home on Thursday. Maidie has our phone numbers if anything comes up.”

Daddy’s aversion to telephones was formed back when long-distance phone calls cost real money, and no matter how cheap they are these days, he’s never going to change.

“Ain’t nothing gonna come up worth a phone call,” he told me firmly.

Minutes later I was meandering through a maze of back-country roads that would take me over to I-40. Despite all the new developments that had obliterated so many of the county’s small farms, there were still fields of tobacco along the way. Here in the middle of June, few of the tops were showing any pink tuberoses yet. I passed a four- or five-acre stand of corn where a red tractor was giving the plants a side-dressing of soda. And there were still parcels of unsold fallow land where tall oaks and maples were in full leaf, where honeysuckle competed with deep green curtains of kudzu that fell in graceful loops from power wires to drape all the weaker trees. Goldenrod, daisies, and bright orange daylilies brightened the ditch banks.

Once I hit I-40, heading southeast, the wide green dividers bloomed with beds of delicate pink poppies and eye-popping red cannas. Grass and trees and bushes were so lush and green that the line about being “knee-deep in June” kept looping through my head. Robert Frost? Eugene Field? I often wish I had paid more attention to poetry in my college lit courses. Someone once described poetry committed to memory as “a jewel in the pocket.”

My pockets have holes in them and most of the jewels have fallen out.

I-40 came to an end about ninety miles later where the highway splits. To the right is the town of Wilmington proper with its meandering boardwalk along the Cape Fear River, its many seafood restaurants, the courthouse, and street after street lined with live oaks and antebellum mansions with black-and-gold historical plaques affixed to the front.

The left fork of the highway leads over to Wrightsville Beach, past a dozen or more strip malls, shopping centers, and upscale gated communities until you reach the high-rise hotels and densely packed beach houses that line the wide beaches of sugar-soft sand.

I turned in at the conference hotel and maneuvered past the cars loading and unloading to park near the entrance.

As I pulled my roller bag across the polished marble floor to the reception desk, I heard someone call, “Well, hey there, girl!”

I turned to see Chelsea Ann Pierce, a colleague based in Raleigh, and her sister, Rosemary Emerson, who’s married to a Durham judge. Chelsea Ann’s a generously built easygoing blonde with an infectious laugh. Rosemary’s the older prototype, with darker hair and a cynical sense of humor that cracks us all up.

I get my share of gooey, inspirational God-loves-you-and-so-do-all-the-women-you-know emails from various friends and relatives and those I usually delete without reading, but I never automatically delete the jokes and funny pictures or off-the-wall news items that Rosemary sends. She’s never yet duplicated anything that’s been circling through the ether for years, and it’s always something that makes me laugh out loud and then forward to a PI friend in California with a similarly warped outlook on life.

“Three minds with the same thought?” I asked, even though they were in clam diggers and bright cotton shirts. “Ya’ll figure to get a little beach time in first, too?”

Chelsea Ann shook her head. “Nope, we’re off to check out the consignment shops.” She recently sold the big suburban house that was part of her divorce settlement and bought a condo in Raleigh’s Cameron Village. “I need a narrow table for my new entry hall and the Ivy Cottage is supposed to have the best selection of used furniture around. Want to come? We’ll wait for you to check in.”

I shook my head and gestured toward the nearly deserted beach that lay beyond the clear glass walls. “Y’all go ahead. I haven’t been in salt water all season and I’m dying to get out there. I’m free for supper though. Want to meet at Jonah’s? Six-thirty?”

My hotel room on the fifth floor came with the standard king-sized bed, a decent-sized desk for my laptop, and a mirrored alcove that surrounded a Jacuzzi big enough for two. French doors opened onto a minuscule balcony that held two of those ubiquitous white plastic club chairs that seem to have taken over the world. It overlooked the beach and pool area, and my view of turquoise water was spectacular.

I immediately opened the glass doors and stepped outside. The ocean’s warm briny fragrance carried with it a faint whiff of chlorine from the pool and three hot tubs directly in front of the terrace that lay below my balcony. Too hot to sit out today though. Not when I could be down there. I didn’t bother to unpack anything except my bathing suit, beach jacket, floppy hat, and flip-flops. After slathering myself with sunscreen till I felt like a turkey getting ready for the roasting pan, I took the elevator down to the pool level. There were piles of thick white towels by the door and I grabbed a couple as I went past. The heat hit me in the face again as soon as I opened the outer door but a light breeze was blowing off the water and gulls were kiting on the currents overhead. A line of pelicans swooped past so low that they almost skimmed the tops of the waves. Although the pool was drawing a fair crowd, the beach was practically empty, and the lifeguard appeared to be playing a game on his cell phone. I saw no one I knew on my stretch of creamy beige sand as I spread out the towels, took off my jacket, and lay down on my back with my hat over my face to let the sun bake my body.

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy,” my inner pragmatist sang as he spread his own towel.

Until I felt the tension draining out of my joints and muscles, I didn’t realize how much stress I’d been under these last five months, adjusting both to marriage and to having Cal with us full-time. This would be the longest I’d been away from both of them since January, but there on the hot sand, I finally admitted to myself just how much I had been looking forward to this week.

No personal demands, no stepmother tightropes to walk. Only the give and take of professional life, and I wasn’t going to feel guilty about enjoying it or let my anger with Dwight ruin it for me.

Or so I told myself, because lying on my towel, I was beginning to feel thoroughly miserable.

“Just as you should,” scolded the preacher from the shade of his beach umbrella. “You know good and well that Dwight was clueless. If anyone needed to be jumped on, it was Cal.”

The pragmatist, who only wanted to soak up sun, gave an impatient scowl. “He’s a child. Dwight’s son. She comes down hard on him, who’s Dwight gonna side with?”

The preacher shrugged. “So? Any other child—one of her nieces or nephews—and she’d either laugh it off or tell him, ‘Good try, kid, but it’s peanut butter and apples driving up. Y’all can stop for hamburgers on the way home.’ She wouldn’t take it out on Dwight. He was right. What’s the big deal?”

“Cal doesn’t respect her decisions.”

“He’s nine, for Pete’s sake! If she’s going to drop down to the nine-year-old level every time they butt heads, why should he respect them? Stomping off sure doesn’t help.”

“I didn’t stomp,” I said.

“You stomped,” they chorused.

“Very mature,” the preacher sniffed. “That only tells Cal that he won the round. Some role model you are.”

“Go to hell,” I said and blanked my ears to everything except the cry of seagulls and the rhythmic swoosh of waves breaking on the beach.

I was almost asleep when someone lifted my hat and said, “Cynthia?”

I blinked up at a vaguely familiar face.

“Oops, sorry!” said the man. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Jeffreys?” I asked. “Peter Jeffreys?”

He nodded and gave me a closer look as I retrieved my hat and sat up cross-legged on the towel.

“Deborah Knott,” I told him. “District 11-C.”

“Well, damn!” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I should have remembered. You taught a class for new judges over at the School of Government last year, right?”

I nodded. “Who’s Cynthia? Your wife?”

“Oh, hell, no! We split up three years ago. Cynthia Blankenthorpe’s a new judge from out in Mecklenburg County. Got appointed in January. This is her first conference and I promised to show her the ropes, introduce her to people.”

I’ll just bet he had, I thought, giving him a complete examination from behind the safety of my dark glasses. Pete Jeffreys is from Greensboro, District 18. He came on during the last election, one of those princes of the bench, ambitious for higher glory. There was already talk of his running for superior court in the next election cycle. Even on tiptoes, he wouldn’t stretch to six feet, but he carried himself like a taller man and was easy to look at. Hazel eyes, a thick head of straight brown hair, cleft chin, and—now that I was seeing him stripped down to swim trunks with a towel draped over one shoulder—a slender build that was nicely muscled. Not even the slightest hint of love handles. How had I overlooked him when I was still free and single?

“He was married,” my inner preacher reminded me sternly. “And so are you now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the pragmatist, taking off his sunglasses for a better look. “But there was something else…”

Then Pete Jeffreys said, “Any chance you could rub some of your sunscreen on my shoulders?” and what had been a normal friendly smile morphed into a conceited smirk.

Men who think they are irresistible have always been a big turn-off for me and smirks make me want to slap the entitlement right off their faces.

“Sorry,” I said with my sweetest smile. “I’m afraid my bottle’s almost empty and I’ll burn if I don’t keep it on, but I’m sure you can find some at the gift shop.”

“No problem,” he said easily. “There’s Cynthia now. She probably has enough to share. See ya ’round.”

“Not if she sees you first,” said the pragmatist as Pete moved on down the beach to where a woman was spreading a colorful striped beach towel.

Even from this distance, it was clear that Cynthia Blankenthorpe was at least five years older and several pounds heavier than me. Had Pete really mistaken those muscular thighs for mine?

So not good.

On the other hand, with that name, she was probably part of the Blankenthorpes who were connected to big-time banking in Charlotte. If he was already building a wider network for future campaigns, maybe it was wishful thinking on his part.

I tucked my key card inside my hatband and headed for the water. The tide was low and still receding. A group of teenage boys and girls were further out with bright green, red, and turquoise boards but the waves were way too gentle for any real surfing, which is okay with me. I’m not a strong swimmer and big waves intimidate the hell out of me, but I do love to bobble on the swells and paddle around in the shallows.

Which I did until I was pleasantly tired. It felt downright hedonistic to go back to my room, shower, and even lie down for a nap that might have stretched right through the night if Chelsea Ann hadn’t called me to ask if I could bring along an extra sweater.

“We want to eat outside, right? If the wind’s off the river, it could get a little chilly.”

I had planned to wear my white cotton sweater tonight, but I put it aside for her and opted for a red one over a red-and-white print sundress. Dangly hoop earrings, red straw sandals, and I was ready to roll.