Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

4

The credibility of witnesses should be carefully weighed.

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

12:33. Sunday morning.

The nausea was pretty much gone, but my head was pounding like a military parade gone wrong—everybody marching to a different drummer and nobody on the beat, despite the three aspirin tablets I’d swallowed.

Chelsea Ann and her sister shared a bench behind a closed candle shop across from the parking lot, while I leaned on a nearby railing that overlooked the river. Chelsea Ann’s SUV was still parked beside Judge Jeffreys’s BMW, and both vehicles were nosed up to the riverbank where I’d found him. The police had set up a perimeter of yellow tape around the whole lot so that every inch could be processed for clues as to how he had wound up dangling in the water. The SUV blocked our view of whatever they were finding on the ground next to Jeffreys’s car. Until they finished, we were stuck here to twiddle our metaphorical thumbs.

My friends leaned their heads against the wall behind them and closed their eyes to block out the glare of the floodlights. High in the sky, the nearly full moon added even more light. During that interminable wait, I tried to keep my head as motionless as possible and fixed my eyes on the huge bridge at the mouth of the river as it slowly raised its middle span like an elevator to let a tanker pass beneath. Smaller leisure boats cruised past us, their lights reflected on the water. A cool breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay and made me glad I’d worn a light sweater.

Any man’s murder is regrettable, but none of us knew Jeffreys well enough to feel any grief. Although I had privately decided to make discreet inquiries tomorrow, that didn’t stop me from speculating with Rosemary and Chelsea Ann as we waited. Like me, they had also noticed a coolness from some of our colleagues as he moved from table to table.

“I’ve been thinking,” Chelsea Ann said. “Remember the guy that carjacked and killed a girl last fall? How he wasn’t even supposed to be on the streets because he’d violated probation. Didn’t Jeffreys handle that case?”

It’s always a judgment call between time in our overcrowded prisons or supervised probation. I couldn’t remember the details, only that it’s a judge’s worst nightmare: that we’ll set a bail too low or give probation to someone who then goes out and kills.

“Wasn’t there something about a custody case when he first came to the bench?” asked Rosemary.

“I thought it was about the way he ran his campaign,” said Chelsea Ann. “Some mud he slung at Hasselberger?”

“Hasselberger?” I asked. “Bill Hasselberger? Is that who he ran against?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Not really. He was here with Reid tonight at the restaurant next door and Reid introduced him. I thought he was a local, though.”

“He is now,” said Chelsea Ann. “I heard he was so pissed when he got beat that he moved his practice down here so he wouldn’t have to plead a case in Jeffreys’s court.”

“I’ll bet Roberta Ouellette would know,” I mused. “Isn’t she in his district?”

After a half hour of going round and round, we lapsed into weary silence and I turned back to the distant bridge, which had now lowered itself back into place. Despite the late hour, headlights flashed back and forth from an intermittent stream of cars and trucks.

The local newspaper and television reporters had left shortly after the body was loaded onto a gurney, but a boyish young blonde in baggy blue cotton trousers and a white tank top had figured out that we weren’t part of the crowd that had gathered to gawk and she casually made her way down the Riverwalk to where we were. She looked like a teenager out too late until she flashed press credentials that ID’d her as Megan Somebody-or-other from WHQR, the local NPR station. She just happened to have a tiny voice recorder in the pocket of those baggy slacks and she was polite about pointing the mic at Chelsea Ann and Rosemary on the bench. “I hate to bother you, but would you mind talking about what happened here tonight?”

My friends shook their heads and she gave me an inquiring look.

“Sorry,” I said, “but we really can’t discuss it.”

I should have kept my mouth shut because she immediately homed in on me. “Could you at least confirm that you were the one who found the body?”

Almost against my will, I nodded and that cute little camel nose edged itself further under the tent flap. “That must have been such a shock.”

She reminded me of my niece Emma. I didn’t say anything, but just like Emma, this budding Anne Garrels was not easily deterred. “You’re all judges, right? Down here for the conference at Wrightsville Beach? I’m supposed to interview Justice Parker out there on Tuesday.”

Our identities would soon be common knowledge, so again I nodded, ignoring the fact that Rosemary was the wife and sister of judges, not a judge herself.

“Did you know him? Was he a friend? A close colleague?”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but I really don’t think I should say anything else. I’m sure your police department will give you a statement when it’s appropriate.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. The recorder and mic disappeared back into her pocket. “But maybe you could give me a little background on Justice Parker? I mean, I know she’s only the third woman to be chief justice of the state’s supreme court, but what’s she like as a person?”

That seemed harmless enough, so I cautiously told her about Sarah Parker’s professionalism, the esteem with which her peers held her, that she had a quietly impish sense of humor and that she seldom spoke on or off the record without weighing her words.

“Never married?”

I shrugged. “I know absolutely nothing about her personal life.”

“Then what about her public life? What could I ask her that a million other reporters haven’t already?”

“You could ask about her journals.”

“She keeps a journal? Where all the bodies are buried?”

I laughed. “I don’t have the foggiest idea. But if she says she does, let me know, okay?”

“Sure. You have a card?”

I actually had my purse open before I realized what she was really after. “Good try, kid.”

She laughed, too, then turned serious. “If he was a friend, I really am sorry you had to be the one to find him.” She paused and considered. “Or even if he wasn’t your friend, it still sucks, doesn’t it?”

A moment later, she was down the wooden steps and eeling her way onto Front Street, past the dozen or so curious people who stared over at the police activity as if waiting for something more exciting to happen.

“Hey, guys,” one of them finally called. “Where’s Jill Mercer?”

I hadn’t known who Stone Hamilton was, but Jill Mercer got her break as the good girl gone bad in an action video Dwight had rented back when we were just friends in a strictly platonic relationship. According to Chelsea Ann, who says she only watches Port City Blues because it’s set in Wilmington and not because Stone Hamilton is hot, Mercer plays a sexy, trash-talking judge.

“Just your run-of-the-mill district court judge who moonlights in an after-hours blues club,” Chelsea Ann had said.

“Oh great,” Rosemary said now. “They think we’re shooting scenes for that show.”

Chelsea Ann squinted at her watch. “Five more minutes,” she muttered, “and then we’re out of here even if I have to commandeer a squad car. I have a breakfast meeting first thing in the morning and y’all know what I’m like if I don’t get at least six hours of sleep.”

Almost as if he’d heard her, the lead detective came over to us.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, ladies… uh, ma’ams? Or is it Your Honors?” Amused by his own confusion, Detective Gary Edwards shook his head and smiled at us. “I’ve never addressed more than one judge at a time. Do y’all have a collective title?”

Cute.

Chelsea Ann, who’s currently between guys, sat up to give him a second and third look.

Early forties. Blond. Starting to beef up just a little through the waist.

And yeah, even though there’s now a wedding band on my own third finger, I found myself automatically checking out his.

No ring. No sign that he’d ever worn one.

Hmmmm.

(“That’s quite enough of that, missy,” the preacher said starchily.)

(The pragmatist shrugged. “She’s allowed to look, long as she doesn’t touch.”)

Rosemary yawned and said, “Can we go now, Detective Edwards?”

“Sorry,” he said again. “I know you gave statements to the responding officer, but I need to hear it from Judge Knott myself if you don’t mind, ma’am.”

I did mind. I minded very much, but he pointed his own voice recorder at me and once again I had to tell the humiliating story of losing my dinner, which was how I had come to see Judge Jeffreys dead in the water.

“What about earlier?” Edwards asked. “Who was he seated with? Who didn’t like him?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know him that well and I didn’t pay much attention to him.” No way was I going to have him focus on Martha Fitzhume or Reid before I had a chance to find out why they thought Jeffreys was a prick. “He came by our table with one of the new judges, Judge Blankenthorpe from Charlotte. I think he was with her most of the evening.”

“She staying out at the conference hotel?” he asked.

“Probably. She was on the beach there this afternoon.”

Chelsea Ann and Rosemary offered up two or three more names of judges they’d seen with Jeffreys and I described his run-in with Stone Hamilton over Hamilton’s dog.

“Dog?” Edwards asked sharply. “Hamilton’s dog bit him?”

“Tried to. Or so Judge Jeffreys said. Hamilton didn’t think so. Anyhow, the dog was on a leash,” I said.

“You didn’t happen to notice what kind of a leash, did you?”

I shook my head and then winced as those marching drummers in my head banged their sticks against my temples.

“Blue,” Chelsea Ann said from her bench. “One of those retractable nylon bands. He used it to tie the dog to the railing while he ate. Why?”

Edwards walked back to her and said, “That’s what he was choked with.”

“Stone Hamilton’s leash?” Chelsea Ann fluffed her blonde hair back into its usual curls and shook her head. “Never. He and his group and his dog left while Pete Jeffreys was still here.”

“You a fan of his, Your Honor?”

“Absolutely, Detective Edwards.” She pulled out her keys and jingled them purposefully. “Now, if you’d just ask one of your men to move the tape so I can get my car out, I’d really appreciate it.”

He stepped back with a mock salute—“Yes, ma’am!”—and called over to tell one of the uniforms to let us leave.

Once we were in the car, I could see Chelsea Ann’s face in the rearview mirror. “Did you just twinkle at that Edwards guy?” I asked. “You did! You twinkled at him.”

As the uniformed officer lowered the tape at the exit of the parking lot and signaled for us to drive through, Chelsea Ann grinned and said, “So?”

Rosemary sighed and laid her head against the seat. “I thought you said that a chest for your new entry hall was the only thing you intended to bring back from the beach this year.”

Chelsea Ann gave her sister a reassuring pat on the arm. “I haven’t loaded him in my trunk,” she said. “Yet.”