Shooting at Loons Page 12

  I bought an eastern edition of the News and Observer and was over by the Tshirts (“I’m Mommicked!” said one), half eavesdropping and half reading the headlines, when someone said, “Morning, Judge.”

  It was Jay Hadley with a jug of milk in her hands. “How’s it going?” I said.

  She hefted the jug. “Fine, if you don’t count kids waiting for milk for their cereal.”

  I stepped back to let her pass, but she hesitated. “Look, I don’t have time to talk right now, but you going to be at Andy’s funeral this evening?”

  “Remind me again when it is,” I hedged.

  She named a church on the west end of the island. “At four o’clock.”

  I told her I certainly hoped to be there if I could adjourn early.

  “Good.” She gave a brusque nod and hurried on up to the cash register.

  • • •

  As I drove out of the yard forty minutes later, Mahlon was still hard at work on the trawler. At Andy’s house diagonally across the road, I noticed a patrol car and a pickup that belonged to one of the Bynum boys. Good thing Jay Hadley had reminded me about the funeral. My cousin Sue would appreciate it if I went.

  “Sunshine along the Crystal Coast this morning,” said the announcer on my radio, “with clouds moving in this afternoon. Fifty percent chance of rain, increasing to eighty percent by midnight.”

  Score another for Mahlon.

  At the courthouse, when I popped my head into Chet’s chambers, he said he planned to adjourn early, too. “Barbara Jean wants to go to the funeral.”

  “How is she this morning?” I asked.

  His face was a bit drawn and his smile didn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes when he said, “I hope you didn’t take her seriously last night. She always lets Linville upset her for some reason.”

  “Well, I know how crazy she is about y’all’s daughter,” I said diplomatically.

  “I’ve tried to stay out of it,” he said with sudden determination, “but if Linville’s going to keep bugging Barbara Jean... I swear to God I really wish Midge Pope’d gone on and lost that motel of his before he ever met Linville. Or if I’d blocked the sale of the Ritchie House, hell, she’d be waitressing out at the Sanitary right this minute.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Naw, probably not. But that was the push she needed and without it, I honestly don’t think she’d be where she is today, messing with Barbara Jean’s head and getting her all wound up.” He sighed. “The thing is, far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if Barbara Jean did sell Neville Fishery. Jill doesn’t want to run it. Her husband’s a biologist with Duke’s marine lab here. He doesn’t want it.”

  “Your grandson?”

  “He’s one year old, for Christ’s sake! Who knows what he’ll be doing in the year Twenty-Fifteen? I seriously doubt if it’s messing with menhaden.”

  I thought how I’d feel if I had to sell Knott land. “But won’t it kill Barbara Jean to give up her father’s factory?”

  “Only if it’s to Linville Pope,” he said grimly.

  • • •

  The morning session was mostly domestic. A young woman came forward and petitioned the court for an uncontested divorce. She was twenty-two, they had been married fourteen months according to the papers, and everything seemed in order.

  “No children?” I asked, verifying the documents.

  “No, ma’am,” she answered softly.

  “And no property?”

  “No, ma’am.” Her thin fingers pleated the soft floral pattern of her skirt.

  I signed the papers. “Divorce granted.”

  She continued to stand there and gazed at me uncertainly. “Is that all there is?”

  I know how she felt. Even if you run away with a man you’ve known less than seventy-two hours and get married on a whim by a magistrate you’ve never seen before, there are still vows to repeat, rings to exchange, a ritual. This child probably had the white veil and satin gown and six bridesmaids in pink tulle, with her mother and his lighting the candles from which they took flames and merged into one flame forever; and now, less than two years later, it came down to some legal papers filed and signed and a judge saying “Divorce granted.”

  “That’s it?” she repeated.

  “That’s all,” I said gently. “You’re now legally divorced.”

  She walked out of the courtroom, still dazed.

  • • •

  At the lunch break, I didn’t want to run into Lev at one of the waterfront restaurants and I was getting a little tired of fish twice a day anyhow, so I sneaked out to a salad bar at one of the fast-food places. To my surprise, Linville Pope was tucked into a corner booth alone.

  She looked up with a pleased smile, moved aside some of the papers scattered across the table and invited me to join her.

  When I observed that one wouldn’t expect to find her at a Shoney’s, she grimaced and said, “I hope you are right. Some nut has found my usual lunch spot and keeps making scenes. It seems easier to eat here till he gets over it.

  “Zeke Myers?” I asked, spreading alfalfa sprouts across the top of my salad.

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Do you know him?”

  “No, but I was in the Ritchie House Monday and heard him shouting. Something about a boat?”

  “Oh yes. It was indeed about a boat.” Her small fingers tore a hot roll into neat pieces and she buttered one very precisely. “But I do not want to bore you.”

  When I assured her she wouldn’t, she told me about the large cabin cruiser she and her husband had bought down in Florida.

  “Midge wanted to run day trips out to the Cape or take small private parties out to the Gulf Stream for a day of fishing, but it did not work out—my husband was never well enough to outfit it—and the boat is much too big for me to run alone, so I sold it to Zeke Myers, who thought he could make a go of it. He bought it as is and he got a very fine bargain, whatever he may think at the moment.”

  She swallowed the morsel of roll and began to butter another, as I lifted a lettuce leaf in search of a third black olive.

  “So why’s he so mad?”

  “Because when he went to get a commercial license for the boat, he discovered that it had been built in Taiwan.” I still didn’t see the problem.

  “It seems there are federal cabotage laws in this country which prevent a foreign-built boat from being used for commercial purposes in domestic waters. Something to do with protection of jobs in our own boatyards perhaps?”

  She said it without much interest. I thought of how much money Zeke Myers must have paid even for a “very fine bargain.”

  Setting down my glass of iced tea, I said, “No wonder he’s angry.”

  She shrugged. “There are solutions if he would explore the possibilities, but he is having too much fun feeling that I screwed him over.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Her lips curved in a cat-in-the-cream-pitcher smile. “Maybe I did,” she said candidly. “But not fatally. Instead of following me around town and harassing me, if he would spend half that energy on the phone to his congressman, he could ask him to originate a private bill in the House and get an exception from the cabotage restrictions. They do it all the time, I am told. It may take him a little time and aggravation, but in the end, he could have the license he needs. That is what my husband would have done once we found out about the law.”

  “Do you by any chance play chess?” I asked.

  “No, I never had time for board games,” she said. “I would rather play for real.”

  “You mean for money.”

  “Why not? Having money is another way to keep score and a lot more fun than not having it. Power is even better, of course.” A shadow crossed her placid face as she pushed her plate aside and centered her tea on the table before her. A memory from earlier years of subordination?

  “Be honest,” she said. “Why else did you become a judge?”

  “I thoug
ht I could make a difference,” I answered primly. “For the greater good.”

  “So do we all, Deborah. So do we all.” She leaned her head back against the booth and her fine ash-blonde hair fell away from her face to accentuate the delicate skull just beneath her fair skin. “That is ninety-nine percent of the problem down here: everybody thinks they know what is best for everyone else. It would be amusing if it were not so sad.”

  “And if it weren’t messing with people’s livelihoods,” I added tartly.

  “It is not messing with livelihoods,” she corrected me gently. “No, no. It is messing with power. Every one of those people who are so vocal could find other ways to earn a living. They just do not want to. They are like the spotted owl loggers. They want to go on doing what they are used to doing. What their fathers were used to doing. Without one single change, even though the changes I am working toward will profit everyone in the long run and maybe even raise their quality of life. Look at your friend Barbara Jean. If she would sell to me tomorrow, I would give her half again what Neville Fishery is actually worth and she could walk away from all this controversy a very well-to-do lady. But she will not. And why?”

  “Power?” I asked, playing the part she’d cast me in.

  Linville leaned forward, her fingers laced around her tea.

  “Well, what would she be if she did not have the fishery? What would she be in charge of? Money cannot begin to replace the psychic satisfaction she must get out of signing paychecks for twenty-three black men and a half-dozen whites. They give her respect. Their families give her respect. People pay attention when she speaks out at a hearing. She will never give that up of her own free will. Not for mere money.”

  I sat back from my plate. “So you’ll coerce her? She told me you’ve threatened to build a boat storage facility on Harkers Island, right next door to her daughter.”

  “I do not threaten, Deborah. I merely state. Besides, it will be a very nice facility. Landscaped. Screened with flowering bushes. It will not be an eyesore. Honest.” Again that quiet complacent smile. “Assuming, that is, that she chooses to let me go ahead with it. If her husband cannot talk her out of it.”

  “What about Andy Bynum?” I asked suddenly.

  She made a dismissive motion with her slender hands. “Another who enjoyed power. He could stand in the door of his fish house and take or reject whatever a waterman offered him. He liked running that Independent Fishers Alliance because it gave him a forum to impose his will on the rest of us. Or to try.”

  Her pager went off. She frowned at the number displayed, glanced at her delicate gold watch, and said, “Too bad. I wanted to hear about you and Levi Schuster, but it seems I have to go now.”

  “Nothing to hear.” I gave a dismissive motion of my own. “We used to be together a zillion years ago.”

  “Last night meant nothing?”

  “We might’ve stirred some old ashes,” I admitted.

  “And found a few hot coals?”

  I shook my head.

  (“Liar!” whispered the preacher.)

  “Then you will not mind if I—?”

  “Would it matter?”

  She laughed. “Probably not. Still...”

  “Be my guest.”

  (“You’re gonna be sorry you said that,” warned the pragmatist.)

  • • •

  As it turned out, there were so many requests for continuances in the afternoon session that we were finished for the day a few minutes before three. I quickly adjourned and headed back for Harkers Island. Dark clouds were rolling in from the west and rain that had been predicted didn’t seem far away.

  By the time I got to the church where Andy’s funeral was to be preached, it was nearly packed to the brim. There were Sunday school classrooms on either side of the main sanctuary, though, and folding panels slid back so that another fifty people could be shoehorned in. I was among them. People who came even later had to stand along the back walls.

  The casket was closed before the family entered—Andy’s two sons, their wives, five grandchildren, and a handful of people who could have been brothers and sisters or cousins. Seated on the side as I was, I had a good view. The daughters-in-law had red-rimmed eyes and the boys looked as if they’d done their share of mourning, too. An older woman cried silently through the whole service.

  Chet and Barbara Jean sat amid a group of members of the Alliance. Or so I assumed, since at least half of them, including Barbara Jean and Jay Hadley, wore white carnations in their lapels. Two teenagers sat beside Jay. The girl looked to be seventeen or eighteen and was a younger, prettier version of her blonde mother. I’d heard the boy was only sixteen but he had a man’s growth and was darker of hair and eyes.

  The choir sang “Rock of Ages” and “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” then the preacher called for prayer. He was on the charismatic side and got so carried away with such a huge audience that, at one point, he seemed to think he was conducting a revival instead of a funeral. As he spoke of repentance and salvation and exhorted us to save our souls (“For ye knoweth not the hour when the Lord shall call ye home”), I almost expected him to issue an invitation and for the pianist to break into “Almost Persuaded.”

  At the last minute, however, he restrained himself and settled into an earnest detailing of Andy Bynum’s goodness and virtues and the legacy of love and respect he was leaving behind, “a monument not carved in stone, my friends, nor writ in water, but indelibly etched on the hearts and lives of people he touched.”

  Near the end, he alluded to the manner in which death had come and said, “Andy’s boys, Drew and Maxton, asks y’all to search your memories of last Sunday. If anybody passed Andy out there near the banks, if anybody saw someone else out there—if you don’t want to tell the sheriff, at least find it in your heart to tell one of them.”

  A final hymn, a prayer, then we rose and followed the casket out to the churchyard where a blue tent protected three rows of folding chairs and the open grave. The casket was rolled into place and the family was seated while the rest of us stood quietly and hoped the rain would hold off a half hour longer.

  After another homily and another prayer, the preacher shook the hand of each family member and they went back inside the church to wait until the casket had been lowered, the dirt shoveled back in, and the wreaths arranged to cover the raw earth.

  The congregation sort of shifted away from the graveside, too, as if it weren’t quite good manners to stand and stare while this was going on. Car doors slammed as some people left immediately. Most, though, lingered in small groups to shake their heads over Andy’s murder and to wonder aloud what would happen to the Alliance now. I saw Telford Hudpeth talking to Barbara Jean and Jay Hadley. Chet was in deep conversation with someone I didn’t recognize.

  Detective Quig Smith was there with Deputy Marvin Willitt, who was in uniform.

  “Gentlemen,” I said.

  “Ma’am,” said Deputy Willitt and immediately cut out.

  “Was it something I said?” I asked.

  Smith grinned. “Nah. He’s supposed to be directing traffic.”

  “Really?”

  “Okay, and asking a few questions, too. Making himself available in case somebody takes to heart what the preacher was saying.” He glanced over to where two laborers from the funeral home were shoveling dirt. “You ever been to New Orleans?”

  “That’s an odd question.”

  “I was just thinking about the difference in water tables. How they have to bury their dead above ground. Not like here.” He shook his head. “Going to be hard keeping developers out of this place. Too much high ground over here.”

  It looked pretty flat to me, but I suppose these things are relative.

  We were standing at the edge of the crowd, two virtual outsiders. As long as we were alone, I felt free to say, “From what the sons are asking, I gather that there’s been no progress toward finding Andy’s killer?”

  “Wouldn’t say that exactly. W
e’ve been up and down the island asking questions, especially houses on the sound side. People can be right vague about what they’ve seen.”

  “But somebody did see something?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Now, Judge.”

  As we spoke, his denim-blue eyes roved the crowd and he nodded courteously whenever anyone made eye contact. “You’re staying in that little yellow house behind Clarence Willis, right?”

  “Yes. It belongs to my cousins.”

  “They ever have anything stolen?”

  “Not that I—well, maybe a couple of spinner reels. A tape player, stuff like that.”

  “He file a report?”

  “No. He figured he knew who took it and it was never all that much.”

  “Mickey Mantle Davis, hmm?”

  “He did use to be right bad for taking stuff that wasn’t nailed down,” I admitted.

  “Still is,” said Smith with a slow smile that told me he’d heard about a hand puppet accusing Mickey Mantle of bicycle theft.

  “But that’s from off-islanders, and once my cousins got some decent window locks, it pretty much stopped. Mickey Mantle would never bust a window on them.”

  “How long you known the Winberrys?” he asked abruptly.

  “You do jump around, don’t you? Is this relevant to something?”

  “Just wondering. Somebody said you went to a party with them the other night. I guess judges hang out a lot together though.”

  “No more than sheriff’s deputies,” I said.

  As if to disprove my point, Chet picked that minute to walk over and ask if I’d like to ride in to Beaufort with them for dinner. “One of us could run you back across by boat later.”

  “Thanks, Chet, but it looks like rain and I think I’ll make it an early night tonight,” I told him.

  As he walked away to collect Barbara Jean, who seemed to be having a strategy meeting with several of her colleagues, I saw that Quig Smith was smiling again.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just thinking about late nights and such. How well you know Kidd Chapin?”

  I grinned. “More to the point, Detective Smith, how well do you know him?”