Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8) Page 4

  I smiled at the name. “Does that mean Sandra Kay Nordan was born a Hitchcock?”

  “You know them?” asked Connor.

  “Not personally. Adam’s wife bought a face jug there and we did hear a scatological story of how Hitchcock Pottery became Rooster Clay.”

  “Yeah, well, did you know that brother and sister married brother and sister?” he asked me. “Her brother, Dillard Hitchcock, married James Lucas’s sister Betty. Thing is, when Sandra Kay and James Lucas split up, Betty naturally took her brother’s part, so Dillard wasn’t exactly free to invite Sandra Kay to come work with them even if she was his sister. Least that’s what I heard. Fern knows these people better than I do and she says it’s because there’s not really enough room for another full-time decorator. Especially not with their own three kids starting to take hold in the business.”

  “If your sister-in-law’s seriously into pottery, Deborah, you ought to get her one of Libbet Hitchcock’s Rebecca pitchers,” said Fliss.

  “Libbet?” I asked. “That’s an odd name.”

  “She was named for her mother,” Connor explained. “They started out calling her Little Betty and Libbet’s what it turned into after a while.”

  “Only fourteen years old,” said Fliss, “but that child really has an uncommon talent for clay and she’s going to get better when she grows up and gets a little muscle on those arms. Even her decorations are good, right, Connor?”

  “Fern says so,” he agreed. “But you know Amos.”

  “Worst chauvinist you’ll ever meet,” Fliss told me. “You were asking why Amos only gave James Lucas a lifetime, right? He wants to leave Nordan Pottery to Betty’s younger son so that the older one can get the Rooster Clay outright. Amos thinks those two boys hung the moon.”

  “But what about the girl? If she’s so talented . . .?”

  “She’s a girl,” said Connor with a what-can-you-do? shrug. He must have given his order when he came in the door, for our waitress arrived with a plate of meatloaf for him and a pitcher of tea to top off our glasses.

  “Lingerie, huh?” asked Fliss. “I can’t believe your girls are old enough to be interested.”

  “Thirteen and fifteen,” he said, proudly pulling out his wallet to show us pictures. The older one had his fair coloring and her long straight hair was so flaxen, it was almost silver. The younger one was more of a sandy blond. “Looks like her mother,” he said, which meant I then got to see a picture of his pleasant-faced wife.

  “That’s Miss Fern! She’s nice.” The words were so thick as to be almost incoherent.

  Unnoticed by us, another person had joined us, looking over our shoulders at the pictures.

  I glanced up to see a head too big for his body. At first I thought he was a shorter-than-average adolescent, then the awkward movements combined with the thick speech made me realize that here was the mind of a not very bright three-year-old confined in the small body of someone around thirty. He had straight black hair and dark brown eyes that glanced away as soon as they met mine.

  “Hey there, Jeffy,” Connor said easily, putting his arm around the childish form. “Did you see Miss Fern today?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “We went to her place today. We made bunny rabbits. Wanna see mine?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he pulled a lump of clay from the bib pocket of his denim overalls. It may have begun as a rabbit, but the ears had squished down and the cottontail now looked like a fifth paw. Jeffy displayed it proudly on his small open hand. “See, Miss Fliss?”

  “That’s some rabbit,” said Fliss, “but weren’t you supposed to let Miss Fern fire it in her kiln so it’d get hard?”

  “No!” The boy-man closed his hand defensively around the blob of clay. “It’s mine. Miss Fern said.”

  “Of course she did,” Connor said soothingly.

  “Jeffy! Come back and quit bothering those— Oh!” said the woman who’d come over to get him. “Hi, Connor. Fliss. Didn’t see it was you two sitting there.”

  By this time, Connor Woodall was politely on his feet and introducing me to Jeffy’s mom. From the things said, I soon realized that she was the same woman who cleaned for Fliss every week.

  June Gregorich was probably mid-fifties, which shouldn’t have put her in a high-risk age group when she was pregnant with Jeffy. About my height, she was more sturdily built, and when we shook hands, her palm was hard and callused, her clasp strong, which I always like. (A limp handshake is a real turnoff for me.)

  Everything about the woman spoke of strength and vigor. Her shoulder-length hair was dark brown, beginning to go seriously gray, but it was so thick and wiry that it seemed to have a life of its own, which was barely restrained by a large wooden clasp at the nape of her neck. Even without the Birkenstocks and denim skirt she was wearing, I would have remembered her by her hair and her West Coast accent. This was the salesclerk out at Nordan’s the day Karen tried to buy some of old Amos Nordan’s pottery last spring.

  “My sister-in-law was going back to California,” I reminded her, “and you said you wished you were going, too.”

  She laughed, but of course she didn’t remember us. “I’m afraid we get too many California tourists to remember them all. Will you be staying in North Carolina long this trip?”

  “Oh, I’m not from California,” I said hastily. “I live here. Or rather, I live over in Colleton County, about ninety minutes from here.”

  “She’s over to finish up with James Lucas and Sandra Kay’s divorce settlement,” Connor said. “She’s a judge.”

  “A judge?” Distracted, she cast a quick eye across the restaurant’s crowded length. Her son had wandered away and was now sitting at a table with an elderly man, who gestured to her impatiently. “I’d better go. Mr. Amos looks like he’s ready to leave. Nice meeting you, Judge. ’Bye, Fliss. Connor, tell Fern that Jeffy and his group really did have fun today, okay?”

  I shifted my chair so that I could watch the legendary Amos Nordan get slowly to his feet. He had a walking stick, and he seemed to lean on it heavily as he shuffled across the floor to the cash register by the door. It was more like a processional than an exit because people spoke to him from every table that he passed.

  “He’s something else,” Connor agreed. “Fern calls him one of the living legends.”

  “I take it your wife’s a potter, too?” I asked.

  He nodded. “She went and worked for free at Nordan Pottery when she was in high school, just to watch Amos turn those big vases. She’s so short that, even doing it in three or four sections, she could never make one that size without using a ton of clay. See how tall he is? How long his arms are?”

  I did.

  “You don’t really need to be a strong man with a long reach to throw tall pots, but it sure doesn’t hurt.”

  He watched June Gregorich pay the cashier and send Jeffy back to their table with a couple of dollar bills for a tip. “How long’s June been with Amos?”

  “About two years now, wouldn’t you say?” Fliss answered. “Right about the time Sandra Kay moved out. Or maybe a little before? James Lucas needed somebody to stay with Amos after his stroke and she’d just started cleaning for him, remember? The Nordans were good about letting her bring Jeffy. You know what the Keefers were like.”

  Connor nodded and Fliss explained to me that the Keefers had hired June Gregorich when she first came to the area two or three years ago looking for work as a shop assistant, cleaning woman, anything to earn enough to live on that would let her keep her handicapped son with her during the day. “The Keefers didn’t want Jeffy to set foot in the showroom. Didn’t want to make their customers ‘uncomfortable.’ Can you believe that?”

  I could.

  We turned back to our food. Fliss and Connor gossiped about local people, and he told me a couple of tales on Dwight Bryant I’d never heard before. Dwight’s the deputy sheriff over in Colleton and almost like another brother. I’m always glad to collect a little spare ammu
nition to keep in reserve for when he gets on my case.

  We were finishing second cups of coffee, watching Connor enjoy a generous serving of fresh peach cobbler hot out of the oven, when there was a crash of china from the back room.

  “Uh-oh,” Fliss said.

  Stomping through an archway labeled “Smoking Section” was a taller, younger, and ten times angrier edition of Amos Nordan. He wore clay-stained jeans, a tan jacket, and high-top, lace-up work boots, and he carried a thick manila folder that he must have slammed shut in a hurry, because papers were dangling from both ends.

  Close on his heels was a short blond woman in red slacks and a black T-shirt. She clutched her own manila folder of papers and was even angrier. “Yeah, run away, you—you thick-fingered clodhopper!” she cried.

  “Me? Thick-fingered?” He snorted derisively as everyone in the place stopped eating to watch. “And what do you call that bastard you shacked up with? Takes him ten pounds of clay to make a half-gallon jug,” he sneered.

  “Well, at least he’s a hell of a lot more careful with heavy-metal glazes than you’ve ever been. And you’d never see him faking stuff.”

  That brought him up short and he glanced around the room as if suddenly aware of all the watching faces. “Shut your mouth, you hear me?”

  “You don’t get to tell me that anymore, mister. If I want to talk about what you and Donny were doing with the stamp—”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t hear you talking back then, did I?” he snapped, drawn back into their fight. “You damn well kept your mouth shut long as it was putting clothes on your back.”

  “My back? Huh! Don’t you mean the clothes on Donny’s back?” There was such mocking acid in her voice that he whirled around to face her.

  “You keep your filthy tongue off my brother’s name.”

  “At least he found a way to get it up!”

  He gave her a malevolent glare and headed for the door.

  “You could’ve taken lessons from him,” she taunted him. “Or maybe you did.”

  He turned back with such venom in his face that she almost stumbled backward as she raised her folder to ward off a blow.

  “You say another damn word,” he snarled, “and I’ll smash every pot you own. Right now. Tonight.”

  “Yeah? You do and I’ll tell everybody in Seagrove your other filthy little secret.”

  For a minute, I thought he really was going to smash her in the face. Connor must have thought so, too, for he stood up and started over.

  Instead, the man spun on his heel, slapped some money down by the cash register so hard that it was a wonder the glass countertop didn’t crack, then pushed past some people in the doorway. The woman followed. A moment later, we heard two vehicles screech out of the parking lot, headed in different directions.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Don’t tell me.”

  Fliss nodded. “Yep. That’s your ED.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  It is generally asserted that the salt glaze first appeared in Germany, possibly as early as the fourteenth century. . . . In any case, there is no hard evidence of any ancestor to the long, low groundhog kiln that came into use in the early nineteenth century.

  —Turners and Burners, Charles G. Zug III

  Next morning, I left Fliss’s house earlier than I would normally because she’d warned me that parking might be tricky. Over the years, Randolph County had turned its courthouse into a warren of haphazard add-ons. Now they were in the process of getting a unified structure, and everyone was sure the new judicial complex was going to be great once it was finished, Fliss told me.

  “In the meantime, the construction work’s driving us all crazy. Every time it rains, the parking lot becomes a clay muck. I’ve already wrecked three pairs of shoes this spring.”

  Since April had given us showers night before last, I finessed the whole thing and parked beside the nearby county library so that I could walk across the street and up an unmuddy sidewalk. Once inside, I had to find the clerk of court’s office, introduce myself, and pick up the file for Nordan v. Nordan and Sanderson v. Sanderson. A clerk showed me into an office behind Courtroom D, where I changed into my black robe.

  When I entered the courtroom, the bailiff quickly said, “All rise,” and launched into the familiar “Oyez, oyez, oyez” ritual, ending in, “Be seated.”

  Besides the gray-haired courtroom clerk, a hefty bailiff, and me, there were only four other people in the courtroom: two middle-aged male attorneys in neat blue suits and white shirts, and the two people I’d seen yelling at each other in the Crock Pot last night, looking none the worse for wear—no bandages, no bruises or cuts, despite all the threats that had been hurled and the reckless way their cars had left the parking lot.

  This morning, they sat side by side at tables that were separated by less than six feet of space and stared at me in stony silence.

  As Kidd and his wife must have once sat when their marriage came unglued.

  As he and I might have sat one day if we’d ever gotten as far as a wedding ceremony, given Amber’s hostility to me. Never underestimate a child’s power over her parents.

  Congratulations, Amber, honey. You won after all.

  I pulled my thoughts back to the case at hand.

  Looking at least ten years older than his ex-wife, James Lucas Nordan appeared ill at ease here in a courtroom, with papers spread on the table before him. He reminded me of most of my brothers, men who’d rather be up and doing with their hands instead of their tongues. In his gray sports jacket and tie over dark gray slacks, Mr. Nordan looked like an old plow horse that had been specially washed and brushed for the occasion. His graying hair had been combed while wet, the comb marks still visible above his strong brow.

  Sandra Kay Hitchcock Nordan seemed to have taken just as many pains with her appearance—muted red lipstick, discreet eye shadow, and a mere hint of blusher. Her bright blond hair fell in soft waves and she wore a spring pantsuit of forest green with a crisp white eyelet shirt, gold studs in her ears, and a thin gold chain around her neck. Since they’d been together twenty-four years before separating, I had to assume she was at least mid-forties, but she certainly didn’t look it today.

  To my bemusement, she was represented by Nick Sanderson, soon to be standing before me as the plaintiff in his own pretrial conference.

  Opposing counsel for defense was Wallace Frye, another attorney I’d never met before.

  I explained my ground rules to both attorneys. “In this final proceeding, there’s no need for the usual formalities. We’ll just swear each of your clients in and let them testify from their seats at the table. Will there be any expert witnesses?”

  “None for our side, Your Honor,” said Sanderson. He had a deep resonant voice and would have been quite handsome except for a weak chin. A small beard as dark as his straight black hair would have helped his face a lot.

  “None for ours, either,” Wallace Frye sang out quickly. He was shorter, bone-thin, and possessed enough chin for two men. I had an impression of sharp intelligence and an impatience with routine procedures in the way he riffled through the papers before him.

  “Fine,” I said.

  While both parties swore on the Bible that they would each tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I opened up my laptop and clicked on to the spreadsheet program I use for EDs so I can keep a running total of the values assigned to each party.

  “Everybody have a copy of the schedules?” I asked.

  Murmured agreement.

  Schedule A was six pages long and listed everything from a car up on blocks behind the pottery, through Christmas decorations and kitchen utensils, to the marital home where Mr. Nordan still lived, but since both sides agreed on their value and distribution, we passed immediately to Schedule B. There were only twelve items here. Both agreed on who was to get them, but not the value. On the d.o.s.—their date of separation and our benchmark for all valuations—sh
e had taken their Grand Am and subsequently traded it in on a Lumina. Mrs. Nordan said she’d recently gotten a twenty-seven-hundred credit toward the newer car; Mr. Nordan claimed that old car had been worth six thousand.

  That was a fairly simple matter to decide. All I had to do was look up the retail price of a three-year-old Grand Am in the NADA book that covered the year they separated and rule that the worth of the car had been four thousand on that date.

  “But I didn’t get anywhere near that much,” Mrs. Nordan protested earnestly.

  I explained that I was obliged to go with the retail price. “It’s not what you could sell the car for, but what it would’ve cost if you’d tried to buy it at the date of your separation.”

  The leather chairs and couch were a little trickier. She said the “leather” was some sort of plastic and worth only three hundred dollars.

  “They were nicer than regular plastic,” Mr. Nordan said indignantly when it was his turn to speak. “We paid two thousand dollars for those three pieces when they were brand-new, and we’d only had them about two years when she walked out and took them with her. Real high quality. Looked like what you’d find in a lawyer’s office,” he added earnestly. “They had to be worth fifteen hundred at least.”

  If I was going to start cutting some Gordian knots, it was time to let them know I don’t play games.

  “Before we go any further,” I said, “are both parties willing to stipulate that I can find a value in between the two if the parties disagree? Otherwise, the law requires me to choose one of the values you’ve listed.”

  Mrs. Nordan didn’t wait for Nick Sanderson to answer. “I trust Your Honor’s fairness,” she said, giving me what I suppose was a woman-to-woman look of solidarity.

  “So stipulated,” Wallace Frye said crisply after a quick consultation with his client.

  “Now, Mrs. Nordan, you say the furniture is worth only three hundred dollars?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”