Sand Sharks dk-15 Page 4

  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.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  The principles of law are these: to live uprightly, not to injure another man, to give every man his due.

  —Ulpian (ca. AD 170–228)

  Except for a lone desk clerk, the lobby was deserted when we got back to the hotel.

  “Me for bed,” Chelsea Ann said as she and Rosemary exited the elevator for the room they were sharing.

  I meant to follow their good example, but the car stopped at the next floor and there was my own chief judge, F. Roger Longmire, who was on his way back up to Room 628 with a couple of clean glasses in his hands.

  “Deborah!” he exclaimed. “What the hell’s this about you finding Pete Jeffreys dead in the river?”

  I gave him an abbreviated version, omitting my reason for hanging over the Riverwalk railing, but when I tried to get off at my floor, he insisted that I come on up with him and brief the others.

  * * *

  Room 628 was actually a suite—two bedrooms, four beds, and two baths with a Jacuzzi in one. The large living room had couches and chairs and a wet bar that was now fully stocked with the usual hard and soft drinks and the most popular mixers. A nearby table held olives, an assortment of cheeses, and several bags of crackers and chips.

  I stepped into one of the bathrooms to freshen my lipstick and realized that somewhere along the way I’d lost an earring, a trio of red-and-white enameled hoops that matched my dress. I put the remaining one in my purse and hoped that its mate had fallen off in Chelsea Ann’s car and not into the Cape Fear River.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, the aspirin had finally done their job and I let Chuck Teach pour me a glass of ginger ale as I was deluged with questions.

  I told them everything I knew, again leaving out the reason I’d been hanging over the railing. After the usual exclamations and head shaking, someone immediately wondered who would be appointed to fill his seat.

  “Too bad Bill Hasselberger’s not still living in that district,” said Steve Shaber, one of our hosts.

  Julian Cannell, who was sharing the suite, shrugged. “Maybe he’ll move back now.”

  “I doubt it,” said Jay Corpening, the local chief judge, as he offered me an open bag of pretzels. “I think he’s happy where he is right now. He argued a civil case in front of me last week. Took it on contingency and convinced the jury to give his client everything she was asking for. Which is not to say he won’t run for the bench down here.”

  “Jeffreys’s death is sure gonna make life easier for Tom Henshaw,” Chuck Teach said.

  I shot him a raised eyebrow.

  “He’s filling out Judge Dunlap’s term,” he explained, referring to an elderly colleague who had abruptly decided to retire to an ashram out in the mountains. “You’ll probably meet him at the reception tomorrow night.”

  I sipped my ginger ale and told him that I didn’t understand. “I thought Dunlap’s term expired this fall. What’s that got to do with Jeffreys? He’s not due to run for another two years.”

  “Ah, but you’re forgetting that Jeffreys wanted to run for superior court in two years,” Steve said. “Dunlap’s seat would give him a safe position for that race.”

  Enlightenment dawned. In North Carolina, you can’t run for two offices in the same election, but if you hold a seat that’s not up for election, you can go ahead and run for a different judicial position, yet still keep your own seat on the bench if you lose.

  Devious.

  “Would he have won?”

  Chuck shrugged and Steve said, “Tom’s doing a good job, but Pete had better name recognition in that district and he’s raised a hell of a lot more money. Your average voter doesn’t keep up with local judicial races. You know that. They might not’ve voted for him if they’d known he had ulterior motives, but Tom Henshaw wouldn’t have had the money to get that word out.”

  “Was Henshaw at Jonah’s tonight?” I asked.

  Steve frowned. “I didn’t see him there. You thinking he took out Jeffreys?”

  “Somebody did,” I said. “I doubt if it was a stranger killing.”

  That sobered the mood for a few minutes, and I could almost see them running a mental eye across the twenty or more familiar faces at the restaurant tonight, trying to think which one might have had a grudge against Pete Jeffreys serious enough to risk killing him. Human nature being what it is, though, the discussion soon turned to speculation about Jeffreys’s possible successors and from there, conversation among those still in the suite returned to the normal mix of politics, recent rulings from the appellate court, and new acts of the state legislature that would affect our own rulings.

  Chuck and Julian backed a couple of state representatives who were up for election into a corner of the room. Tweedledee and Tweedledum wore pastel seersucker suits, one pale green, the other a light, almost white, pink. I don’t care how hot and muggy our summers can be, it takes a lot of confidence in your own manhood to wear a pink seersucker suit. That’s probably why he was drinking his beer from the bottle.

  District court judges are warned not to lobby members of the general assembly, but we’re allowed to “educate and inform” and I had no doubt that those two representatives were getting a raft of informed statistics about how badly we need more judges to help with our caseloads. I’m pretty sure they were also being educated about the widening gap between superior court salaries and ours. That’s the price you pay if you want to press the judicial flesh.

  And don’t think they don’t. Every election, judges get asked, “Hey, who should I vote for in this race?” Even though we can’t officially endorse anyone, candidates know that our words can influence a bunch of voters.

  Beth Keever, chief judge in Cumberland County, was deep in a discussion with some others about how best to shelter the children of high-conflict divorces and how to protect domestic violence victims from their batterers when exchanging children. Beth waved her diet soda to make a point as she gave fact
s and figures about the feasibility and logistics of visitation centers. It’s an ongoing discussion—a good idea that probably won’t get funded.

  When the pretzel bag came around again, I snagged a couple to ease the hollow in my stomach and joined a group that included Roger Longmire and Cynthia Blankenthorpe, who had not looked particularly shocked when I described finding Jeffreys’s body.

  She had changed into a pair of white duck walking shorts that emphasized her muscular thighs and calves and reminded me of Tour de France cyclists. Those could have been Lance Armstrong’s legs. If they’d been mine, I’d have tried to disguise them in a long skirt or looser pants, but she sat like a man, with her left ankle resting on her bare right knee. Her unpolished nails were cut short and there were raw-looking red scratches on her right hand. Her bangs and the ends of her shoulder-length hair looked sun-bleached, as if the rest of her light brown hair had been protected from the sun by a helmet or cap. Maybe she really was a cyclist. Face, arms, and legs were certainly well tanned. No worries about skin cancer here.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” I said.

  “Did they say if it was quick?” she asked as Roger shifted over to make room for me on the couch. She had an easy air of confidence that probably came from growing up a Blankenthorpe in Mecklenburg County.

  “I would imagine it was,” I said, with more assurance than I felt. “I’ve been told it only takes a few seconds for the brain to shut down.”

  I tried not to think of those few seconds. It’s all relative, isn’t it? As Einstein pointed out, an hour passes in an instant when you’re sitting with a lover. When you’re sitting on a hot stove, a few seconds stretch into eternity.

  “His car’s still there,” I said. “Didn’t you ride over with him?”