Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8) Read online

  The clerk, a middle-aged woman with wiry brown hair, Birkenstocks over thick brown socks, and paint flecks on her cheek, had been standoffish until she saw the address printed on the check Karen wrote for the set of wonderful gray-and-purple plates, and then she’d become downright chatty in her homesickness for California. She confided that James Lucas did occasionally let a piece of old Amos’s work go for the right price, but she wasn’t authorized to sell any and he was at a folklife conference out in the mountains. “I’m afraid he won’t be back till Monday night.”

  “I’ll be on a plane back to California by then,” Karen had said regretfully.

  “Wished I was going to be in the seat next to you,” the woman had sighed.

  So Karen had come away without a piece of Amos Nordan pottery and now, a year later, the whole collection would no doubt be listed on one of the inventory sheets of this ED.

  An ED—the equitable distribution of marital property—comes after the divorce is final and is the last fence to be jumped before the two parties are finally, legally, quit of each other. It can also be the most exasperating thing a district court judge has to adjudicate.

  If there’s no marital property or if both parties agree on who’s to get what and there are no minor children involved, no problem. The headaches come when he says, “My mama gave me that cedar chest. It was her grandmother’s,” and she says, “Your mama gave it to both of us for a wedding present.”

  She says, “We bought them scale-model race cars together and they’re worth five thousand dollars.”

  He says, “I bought most of them out of my own paychecks and they’re only worth three thousand.”

  Except for their personal clothes and maybe their toothbrushes, everything of value in a couple’s possession on the date of their separation—every piece of real estate, every vehicle, every set of silver, crystal, or Tupperware—everything has to be written down, with notations of how much it’s worth, who has it, and who wants it. These are broken down into eleven separate schedules, but the main five list marital property upon which both parties agree as to value and who’s to get it, marital property upon which there is agreement as to distribution but not value (“Okay, he can have them model cars, but I want it marked down that they’re worth more’n he says they are”), marital property with an agreed value but disagreement as to who gets them, marital property in which there’s total disagreement both as to the value and the distribution, and a list of items where the dispute is over whether an item even is marital property in the first place (great-grandmother’s cedar chest, for instance).

  There are also lists of items that neither party wants (and yes, I’ve heard of a couple who tried to list their minor children here), lists of separate possessions of each party, lists of separate debts and marital debts. Finally there are the affidavits of the expert witnesses.

  Sometimes the two parties will agree to use the same appraiser; more often, each gets his or her own and the evaluations will be no closer together than if the two had done the appraisals themselves.

  That’s where judges come in. Keeping in mind that “equitable” is not always “equal,” it’s up to us to decide what’s fair.

  Looking over the summations of the two EDs I’d been assigned, I saw that the Nordan case had been dragging on for months. The judge who was supposed to preside at their final hearing had suffered a mild stroke and was now in a rehab center down in Southern Pines.

  The other case, an attorney and his wife, also an attorney, were at the final pretrial conference stage. Nick and Kelly Sanderson. Two attorneys in a fight to the death in a small city where everyone knows everyone else and has probably already chosen sides?

  No wonder I’d been specialed in.

  I followed 64 all the way into Asheboro and pulled in at a Comfort Inn just before the 220/74 interchange. According to the map and directions I’d been sent by the chief district court judge’s office, it was clean, convenient to the courthouse, and comparatively cheap—always a plus in a state that’s not particularly lavish with its per diem.

  I entered the lobby a minute or two after six and started to check in, but the clerk on duty hesitated before swiping my credit card.

  “Deborah Knott? Judge Knott?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He gave me back my credit card, along with an envelope that bore my name in a large spiky handwriting. “She said for me not to check you in before you read this.”

  She? I ripped open the envelope.

  Hey, Deborah!

  Judge Neely told me you were coming over to do some EDs. Why are you staying at a motel when I’ve got two empty bedrooms? I’ll be in the office till 7, then at the house.

  Call me!

  Fliss

  Below were listed two phone numbers, one for work, the other home.

  I knew she lived in the district but had almost forgotten that her law practice was here in Asheboro.

  The clerk obligingly gestured to the phone at the end of the counter and canceled my reservation while I dialed.

  She picked up on the first ring and her voice was as husky as ever. “Felicity Chadwick.”

  “Hey, girl!” I said. “How come you’re working so late?”

  “Private sector,” she said in that throaty drawl. “An eighteen-year-old at Princeton who thinks money grows on trees. Billable hours, remember?”

  I listened for sour grapes in her tone, but there didn’t seem to be any.

  “Actually, I was just killing time waiting for you,” she said. “I’ll come right over and you can follow me home, okay?”

  “You sure?” I asked. “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “Don’t be silly. See you in fifteen minutes, okay?”

  It was actually less than ten when she arrived. We hadn’t seen each other in several months and we each sneaked appraising glances even as we hugged and laughed.

  She had a sleek new haircut, and the rich chestnut color looked so utterly natural that I’d have never guessed a bottle if I didn’t know her real hair was mousy gray.

  “Like it?”

  “I do,” I assured her truthfully. “It takes off at least ten years.”

  We went through the You’re-sure-this-is-no-trouble?/Of-course-not routine a final time, then I was back in my car, following her lead as she made a suicidal left turn out of the parking lot, then an almost immediate right onto 220 south to Seagrove.

  “You’re only ten miles away from the best Bloody Marys in this part of the state,” she had bragged.

  As we drove through the wooded countryside, brilliant with bursts of dogwoods and flowering Judas trees, I had to smile, thinking again of our first meeting.

  It was in a motel in Burlington.

  New Judges’ School.

  New district court judges have to attend one sometime during their freshman year on the bench. It’s how we learn about payroll options, ethics, decorum, and where to order new robes. We also get cultural sensitivity training, mediation pointers, and updates on laws governing the bulk of our cases: DWI, domestic violence, child support, child custody, etc.

  Due to a booking error on someone’s part, Fliss Chadwick and I wound up assigned to the same room. By the time we realized what had happened, all the motel’s nonsmoking single rooms were taken. At least the room had two beds. Nevertheless, my heart sank when I realized I was stuck for a whole weekend with this tall, serious-looking woman, a woman at least ten years older, whose dark hair was streaked with gray. It didn’t help that she seemed to be a total slob, to boot. Already her belongings were strewn across both beds and both sides of the dresser, as if some secret agent had torn her luggage apart looking for a microchip.

  “Sorry,” she said, scooping up lingerie and tank tops and dumping them on the floor on the other side of her bed. “I couldn’t find my corkscrew. Chardonnay or Merlot? Or would you rather have a Bud?”

  She was funny, earthy, and totally serious about the law, yet ready to kick back at the drop of
a black silk bra (witness that ice chest in the corner stocked with beer and wine). Our room became party central that weekend and probably wrecked any hopes I might have had of building a reputation for sobriety and wisdom among my new colleagues. On the other hand, I noticed that very few of those new colleagues had to have their arms twisted. In fact, that was the weekend I finally understood, once and for all, the irony implicit in “sober as a judge.”

  Overall, a very educational two days.

  Like me, Felicity Chadwick was a Democrat appointed by the governor. Unlike me, she lives in a heavily Republican district and was not reelected last November, which was why she was back in private practice.

  I had called her to sympathize when I heard she lost, but this was the first time we’d seen each other since a conference up in the mountains before the election. We’d roomed together then, too, and this time I brought the corkscrew, but it didn’t help. Two minutes after Fliss walked in, the room was a cheerful shambles.

  I could just imagine what her house looked like. Still, so far as I knew, she was married. Maybe he was a slob, too.

  A mile or so outside of Seagrove, she gave two quick blinks of her left-turn signal and abruptly turned into a long narrow driveway lined with blooming cherry trees. A quarter of a mile off the hardtop, she stopped at the back of a modern stone house framed in drifts of dogwoods, upright mountain laurels, and sprawling pink azaleas.

  Fliss hopped out of her car and grabbed my overnight bag while I gathered up my purse and the files that had spilled across the seat.

  She held the back door open for me and led the way into a kitchen with clean and shining countertops. No dirty dishes in the sink, no clutter of pans on the stove. Beyond was an equally tidy family room.

  “Call the cops,” I said. “You’ve been burgled.”

  “What?” Her eyes quickly scanned the rooms. “Where? I don’t see anything out of place.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “No way could you have left your house this neat. Someone’s obviously been here. Unless the world’s best cleaning person just left?”

  Fliss laughed and led me down the hall to a pristine guest room. “June’s good, but she only comes once a week. Monday’s her regular day.”

  That was three whole days ago. The Fliss Chadwick I knew could’ve trashed the place in three hours.

  “You’re telling me this is the new you?” I dumped my things on the bare dresser. “Along with a new haircut, you got a personality adjustment and turned into Martha Stewart?”

  She set my bag on a chest at the end of the bed and smiled. “Better. I finally got rid of the junk in my life. Starting with Winslow Prentice Chadwick the Fourth.”

  I suddenly realized how very little I knew of Fliss’s personal life. We’d recognized each other as compatible spirits, but she probably knew more about me. Yes, she’d talked about her practice before she’d been appointed to the bench and she’d talked about her son Vee, so nicknamed because he was the fifth Winslow Prentice Chadwick, but her mentions of WP-Four had been fleeting and incidental, the way of long-married couples when they’ve been together for so many years that everything’s taken for granted, like the ground underfoot or the sky overhead.

  Still, I usually pick up on bitchy remarks and if she’d dropped any about her husband last October, they’d gone right past me. I wasn’t hearing any regret in her tone, though. More like smug satisfaction.

  “What’d you do?” I asked. “Bag him up and set him out by the curb?”

  “Actually, I stuck him in a recycling bin and got started on the legalities,” she said cheerfully as she pulled towels and washcloths from a linen closet in the hallway. “He’s not a bad man. I expect someone will come along one of these days and get a few more miles out of him.”

  “Not another woman already out there waiting?” I asked, thinking of Kidd’s soon-to-be-former Mrs. Ex.

  “Nothing that interesting,” she assured me. “Come on. Let’s get that Bloody Mary I promised you.”

  In the kitchen, I watched her pull out bottle and jars and a tall aluminum shaker.

  “When Vee went off to Princeton last fall, I realized he was the only thing holding Winslow and me together. I also realized that he and Vee had been making me crazy all these years. Believe it or not, I’m not a natural slob— at least, no more than normal—but those two are such neat freaks that messiness became my passive rebellion against their aggressive attempts to control my whole life.”

  She grinned. “Least, that’s what my therapist said. Made sense to me.”

  “You’re in therapy?” I was surprised. She always seemed so at ease with herself.

  “Was. I got really depressed last November. At first I thought it was a combination of Vee going off to college and then losing the election—I just couldn’t face going back into private practice. So Winslow insisted that I go see a therapist over in Winston. Two sessions were all it took to put everything in proper perspective. He still doesn’t know what hit him.”

  She mixed together tomato juice, Texas Pete, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, and God knows what else with a healthy shot of vodka, then added an even healthier stalk of celery to each glass and lifted hers in a toast of welcome.

  “So what’s happening with you these days? Still seeing that game warden? What was his name? Kip?”

  “Kidd,” I said, cautiously sipping. Despite the chilled tomato juice, a tingle of chili warmed my tongue and throat all the way down. “Ummm. This is delicious.”

  We carried our drinks into the den that had probably belonged mostly to WP-Four but which now was all Fliss’s. A nicely proportioned space. One wall was nothing but windows and a pair of French doors that opened onto a deck shaded by dogwoods and maples. The other wall was covered floor to ceiling with white-enameled shelves behind gleaming glass doors. The shelves were mostly empty except for a few pieces of pottery.

  At the far end of the room, a large cluttered desk had been angled to face the door, and white azaleas in a dark blue jug shed their petals over a desk calendar and pencil mug. Here, finally, was a trace of the old Fliss I knew. The low bookcase behind the desk was filled with reference books. On top were a couple of small face jugs, those idiosyncratic pieces of glazed stoneware shaped to look like scowling faces. Bits of white porcelain formed misshapen teeth inside the open mouths. Newspapers and magazines lay heaped on the low table in front of a new-looking pale gray leather sofa with squishy pink and gray pillows. The couch was made for lounging and Fliss kicked off her shoes and sank into it with a contented sigh, gesturing me to an equally comfortable chaise sprigged in spring flowers.

  As I slid off my own shoes and leaned back against the pillows, Fliss said, “Now, what about that guy of yours?”

  I shrugged, but hey, it was a good story and I hadn’t brought a house present, so I told her all about my midnight drive, drawing out the suspense of getting into Kidd’s house without waking him, his soft snores, stubbing my toe. Law school trains us to unfold dramas for a jury’s edification and Fliss listened as raptly as any jury I’d ever addressed. She smiled in all the right places and when I described exactly how I’d discovered another woman in his bed, she fell back into the pillows laughing. I took another swallow of my Bloody Mary and laughed, too.

  Laughed, and then found myself getting angry all over again at how he’d done me dirt.

  “To think I let a game warden—a rabbit sheriff, for Pete’s sake!—get to me like that,” I said, working up to righteous indignation. “An overgrown Boy Scout—that’s all he is. Give him a dog and turn him outdoors and he’s happy as a beagle with a treed possum. If he’s ever read a book that wasn’t about hunting or fishing, I couldn’t tell you what it was. When I suggested a movie, it had to have at least one car chase and one huge explosion or he’d grumble about it the whole way through. He’s not even all that good-looking, so what the hell did I ever see in the bastard besides maybe that goofy smile of his?”

  “Goofy sex?” Fliss suggested so
ftly.

  “Well, yes,” I admitted. “He’s really good in bed, can’t deny that. Those slow hands. And we laugh at the same things and I can—could talk to him about anything, and—”

  To my absolute horror, I realized that tears were stinging my eyes.

  “I don’t cry,” I told Fliss, choking back a sob. “I never cry. Not over men anyhow. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be for a sorry snake’s belly like Kidd Chapin.”

  Then she was there beside me, taking the glass from my shaking hands and hugging me while my heart finished breaking.

  Eventually I pulled away and with a mumbled “Sorry” I bolted for the nearest bathroom and put a cold wet cloth on my face till my nose quit looking so pink and some of the red was gone from my eyes.

  “Feel better?” Fliss asked sympathetically when I came back.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Surprised, I realized I actually did. I’d been so angry all week over Kidd’s betrayal that I’d blocked out my genuine grief at losing him. For the first time in my life, I’d actually begun to think of white organza and bridal showers and whether he’d ask for a transfer over to Colleton County or if I could commute from New Bern. I’d thought about puttering in the kitchen together, of spoiling his grandchildren if Amber ever came to accept me. Hell, I’d even begun to try out the phrases in my mind— “My husband thinks . . . my husband says . . . let me check with my husband and get back to you.”

  I felt myself tearing up again, and to divert the hurt and loss welling up inside, I paused by the nearly empty shelves and looked at the few pieces of pottery. “Local work?”

  Fliss got up and came over. “I’ve finally started my own collection.”

  “Do all these bare shelves mean your husband had a collection?”

  “And thank God he wanted it,” she said fervently with a smile as bright as her new red hair. “He had these cabinets specially built so they wouldn’t collect dust. Can you believe it? Living in the middle of the richest lode of folk pottery in the country, Winslow collected Meissen porcelains—delicate little sandwich plates and teacups hand-painted with flowers and English motifs. And all of it having to be washed once a year by hand in a towel-lined sink. No wonder I was a slob. The floor was just about the only surface in the house that didn’t have his fussy little china doodads on them.”