Shooting at Loons Read online

“That’s when he was killed?”

  “Between twelve and one, looks like, according to stomach contents. He had a Coke and Nabs at Cab’s around ten-thirty or eleven. They say he made a phone call and kept checking his watch before he left. We reckon if he went straight from the store, he was probably out on the shoal by noon. Jay Hadley saw him there around twelve-thirty. After that—” He shrugged.

  “Trouble is, it was Sunday. Lot of fishermen go to church, lot of sportsmen—strangers—head out through the channel that nobody ever saw before. And most people that live down here and have a boat, they’d have their own landing to go and come from.”

  “What about motive?”

  “Most people don’t get to be sixty without making a few enemies,” Smith said vaguely.

  “Was it something to do with his fish house, or because of the Alliance? Or was it personal?” I persisted.

  Smith rubbed his chin. “Well, you know, Judge, down here, messing with a man’s living’s about as personal as messing with his wife.”

  “And you don’t plan to tell me a damn thing, do you?”

  I smiled to show I wasn’t taking it personally and he rubbed his chin some more, then said, “We got somebody to come out with a underwater metal detector after you and Jay Hadley left.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I got to thinking how you said you and the Davis boy turned the body straight over without shifting it. So, figuring he fell straight forward, we did some measuring and some angle projections and we got lucky. ‘Long with some old rusty nails and a real nice little anchor, we found a new-looking slug. Sent it up to Raleigh to see what the SBI lab can tell us about it. Looked like a .22 to me, which won’t be a lot of help ‘cause half the county’s bought a .22 at one point or another and the other half’s stolen one or two.”

  “Jay Hadley had a .22 in her boat,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah. And somebody said they saw her shoot a gun while y’all were out there.”

  Lots of binoculars had probably swept the area once she’d radioed for help, so it didn’t surprise me to hear that we’d been observed. Nor to realize that Smith wanted to hear about the incident.

  “She said she saw a stingray.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Guess it’d make as good a reason as any if you were scared some hotshot lawman might notice you had a recently fired rifle on your boat,” I said blandly.

  He laughed. “Maybe I ought to sign you up to be a mosquito, too.”

  • • •

  Afternoon court was more wildlife violations (the hunting season for tundra swans was long over and loons haven’t been in season since 1919). Worthless checks, minor drug possessions and an obscene phone caller carried us up to adjournment. At the recess, Chet Winberry knocked on my door while I was signing a show cause order for one of the attorneys.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said. “Linville’s invited us to her party, too, and Barbara Jean said if you want to come by after court and freshen up at our place, we could go on over together.”

  It was a welcome invitation. I’d stuck a garment bag with party clothes in my car that morning, and this would save me having to change in chambers and then figure out exactly where Linville Pope lived.

  Chet adjourned his court earlier than mine, but he’d sketched a map and sent it down with his clerk. The directions looked simple enough: straight east on Front Street till you almost ran out of land at Lennox Point, which was less than two miles across North River Channel from Harkers Island as the gull flies.

  I’d been to parties at the Winberrys’ house in North Raleigh when he was still an attorney with the state and they were alternating weekends back and forth from Beaufort, but this was a first for down here.

  After passing Liveoak Street, a main artery back to Highway 70, Front Street meanders on down along Taylors Creek, so close to Carrot Island that you can see the famous wild ponies grazing its sparse vegetation. At the town limit, Front makes a sharp left turn and dead ends into Lennoxville Road right at Beaufort Fishery, a collection of tin-sided buildings inside a chain-link fence. Moored out front was a large trawler, the Coastal Mariner. Somewhat further on down, but less than half the size, was Neville Fishery, the only other menhaden factory still left on the coast of North Carolina. The trawler anchored there was much smaller. Rustier, too.

  I drove slowly, enjoying the views that opened between ancient moss-draped live oaks. As a kid, I’d often taken Spanish moss home from the coast and draped it on our own trees, but our inland air is too dry and it never wintered over. To my left, azaleas flamed around the foundations of spacious houses set back from the road. To my right, Carrot Island stood out crisply in the April sunlight, and I rolled down my windows so I could enjoy the cool salty air.

  Eventually I passed a landmark on Chet’s map and started counting mailboxes till I came to one that serviced a nearly unnoticeable lane that curved off through yaupon, myrtle and scrub pines. Once through the wall of shrubbery, I saw an attractive low white brick house that spread itself modestly in its own grove of shady live oaks. Beds of red, pink and white azaleas interplanted with tulips and white ageratum wound extravagantly through the grounds. All in all, except for the boat dock out back and the water beyond that, it wasn’t so very different from their North Raleigh house.

  Barbara Jean met me at the door, still in jeans and sweatshirt, with a familiar smell of fish in her hair. She handed me a light-on-the-bourbon and Pepsi, just the way I like it, and insisted on taking my garment bag. We went straight down a wide hall and into a spare bedroom, Barbara Jean talking the whole way.

  “Have you talked to Quig Smith? Are they any closer to finding who killed Andy?”

  “Not that he’s saying,” I told her. “He was killed with a .22 and Smith says everybody down here has one.”

  “Not us,” said Chet from the doorway of their bedroom. “Not anymore.” He gestured toward an empty gun case at the other end of the hall. “Somebody jimmied the lock last week and took all four of our guns, including the .22 my dad gave me when I was twelve.”

  “And we need to file an insurance claim on them, too, hon,” said Barbara Jean as she laid my bag across a comforter patterned in bright daffodils. “I should have told you to spend the night, Deborah, instead of making that drive back to Harkers Island. Why don’t you? Then you won’t have to worry about how many drinks you have. I can lend you a toothbrush and nightgown. No trouble.”

  “Just how late do cocktail parties last down here?” I asked curiously.

  “Anywhere from two hours to two days,” said Chet.

  He’d already showered and dressed and looked exceedingly handsome in his navy blazer and pale gray slacks. Barbara Jean told him so and he leered back at her.

  Barbara Jean was taller than me, with good facial bone structure, nice legs and a figure well worth a spare leer or two, even in her work clothes.

  For a moment, they reminded me of my brother Seth and his wife Minnie. Must be nice to be a grandmother and still have a husband look at you that way.

  She showed me towels and hair dryer, then went off to bathe while Chet trailed along. “To help,” he explained.

  The Winberrys were not what you’d call wealthy—the bulk of Chet’s practice had been Neville Fishery before his appointment to that state commission, and Barbara Jean’s little fish meal factory probably didn’t net her much more than Chet’s salary these days. I gathered it had been quite profitable all during her childhood, however, and family investments allowed her and Chet to raise their only daughter in comfortable luxury.

  This had been her bedroom and the adjoining shower had pale yellow tiles, each hand-painted with a single spring flower and no two alike, so that it took me longer to look at each tile than it did to wash my hair and bathe.

  Another five minutes with towels and blow dryer, then I slipped into a cream-colored silk jumpsuit that did good things for my hair and skin. Body lotion, makeup, chains of crystals and pearls to soften the
tailored shirt top, more crystals for my ears; finally a flat Mexican purse woven of turquoise and red and gold to add a touch of color.

  “Very nice,” Chet said appreciatively, but it was clearly Barbara Jean who delighted him more. Her short navy-blue dress had long skintight sleeves. Cut high in front to accent a string of antique pearls, its low back revealed skin that was still smooth and supple.

  Chet was tall, yet Barbara Jean topped his shoulders in her high heels as they led the way down to their boat landing. He pulled her close and I heard him murmur, “That the perfume I bought you last week?”

  When she nodded, he smiled back at me. “Old lady looks pretty good to’ve cooked up a half-million fish today, doesn’t she?”

  “Is that what she did?” As we walked along their dock, I was trying not to catch a spike heel in the cracks between the wide, salt-treated planks.

  “Well, not in my kitchen,” she said dryly. “But yeah, the Washington Neville brought in its largest haul of the season today. Let’s just hope the wind doesn’t shift till after Linville Pope’s party. The smell of cooking menhaden smells like jobs and income to most of us, but it stinks to her. She’d rather see our black workers on welfare or fetching and carrying for the white tourists.”

  “Now, honey,” said Chet as he handed us into the stern of their rakish little inboard speedboat. “You promised to be nice tonight.”

  “I promised not to spit in Linville’s face,” she grinned. “Nothing was said about being nice.”

  “Fireworks?” I said hopefully, leaning forward from my seat behind them. “Drinks tossed? Fistfights? Hair-pulling?”

  “Not by me.” Barbara Jean parodied ladylike virtue. “My factory is sitting in the middle of some choice waterfront property that Linville’s dying to develop, but you won’t hear me bring up the subject.”

  Chet started the motor with a moderate roar that immediately leveled off to a quietly expensive purr as we slid gently away from the landing dock. The low sun shafted beams of gold up through bands of mauve and blue-gray clouds. The wind was so light it barely ruffled our hair and Chet kept our speed just above a fast walk as we rounded the point and headed northwest.

  “So brief me about Linville Pope,” I said. “Other than the fact that you don’t like her, what else should I know to keep me from putting my foot in my mouth?”

  “You want the chamber of commerce gloss or to back of Rose’s dirt?”

  “Oh, the catty version, by all means.”

  “Trailer trash from Cherry Point,” she said flatly.

  Seated behind the wheel, Chet laughed and reached out a hand to tousle her blonde curls. “Deb’rah said catty, honey, not bitchy.”

  She considered. “Okay, maybe not trailer trash, but her father was career military—some say a staff sergeant; she says a light colonel—and when he was reassigned, she was a junior at East Carolina, so she stayed behind. She’d already got her hooks into Midge Pope by then. He inherited a broken-down old motel over at Atlantic Beach and after they married, she got a broker’s license and used the motel to leverage the Ritchie House. Now she’s got about six agents working for her and Pope Properties handles some of the priciest real estate in the area.”

  “I’m impressed. The Ritchie House must have a license to mint money.”

  “Yeah, well Chet tried to talk old Mr. Janson out of selling it so cheaply, but she sweet-talked her way past him.

  She looked at Chet. “What else?”

  “Hinges on her heels?” he suggested, as a string of brown pelicans crossed our bow.

  “Oh God, yes! All a man has to do is touch her and over she goes. I’ll say one thing for her though. At least she’s not dumb enough to shit up her own landing.”

  “That means she doesn’t mess around with any local married men,” Chet translated. He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Lord knows I’ve tried to change her mind often enough.”

  We laughed.

  “Where’s her husband in all this?”

  “Midge? Drying out again near Asheville last I heard. She’s after some Jew-boy right now. A Boston lawyer, is it, hon?”

  Chet caught my expression and Barbara Jean caught his.

  She twisted around in her seat. “Deborah knows I don’t mean anything ugly by that, don’t you, Deborah? If Midge Pope never cared who or what his wife screwed, why should I? But this new guy is Jewish and he is from Boston, so what’s wrong with saying it?”

  “Long as some of your best friends are black,” I said wryly.

  I don’t think she got it because she started talking about someone named Shirl Kushner.

  Even so, it was lovely to slip along the shoreline like this. The slap of water against our hull, the snap of the ensign in the stern, and the cry of gulls all around exaggerated the differences, but for a moment I was reminded of being on a train, slicing through backyards and alleyways usually hidden from view. Had we been driving through the street along this same stretch of land, we’d have glimpsed only the public facade masked by live oaks and yaupon, not these wide terraces, lush flower gardens, and sturdy docks with some sort of water craft tied up at each.

  For some reason, I’d assumed that Linville Pope lived over in Morehead. Instead, it seemed we’d barely gotten onto the water good until Chet was putting in at a long private pier with white plank railings. Other boats were there before us and several hands reached out to take the line Chet threw and to help us step onto the dock when the line was secured.

  More people spilled across the broad flagstoned terrace that began at the end of the planked walk. Everyone greeted Chet and Barbara Jean, and names and faces blurred as my friends rattled off introductions.

  One elderly white-haired lady—“Miss Louisa Ferncliff, this is Judge Knott”—grasped my arm dramatically. “My dear, how on earth could you manage to sit in court after such a horrible, horrible experience?”

  She made it sound like a breach of good taste that I hadn’t gotten the vapors from finding Andy Bynum’s body. I smiled vaguely and trundled after Barbara Jean.

  Two white-jacketed black men were passing trays of white wine or taking drink orders and the older one spoke warmly to Barbara Jean. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him, too.

  “Deborah, meet Micah Smith,” she said. “He was one of the chanteymen when my daddy first took over. Helped pull the nets before everything went hydraulic, then helped with the cooking till he retired last year. He said he was going to sit on a dock and fish the rest of his life.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he told me. “And I found out fishing every day quits being fun when you can fish every day. Now I he’p Miz Pope when she gives parties. And what can I fetch you two pretty ladies tonight?”

  I opted for a Bloody Mary since I hadn’t eaten anything except an English muffin for breakfast and a cone of frozen yogurt at lunchtime. Barbara Jean wanted a margarita. “And where’s our hostess, Micah? Judge Knott hasn’t met her yet.”

  He pointed toward a set of open French doors that led into the house. “She’s in yonder.”

  “Come on, Deborah. We’ll go make nice and then I’ll introduce you to one of the richest and hunkiest bachelors here. You like to marlin fish? You should see some of those million-dollar boats up close.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she hauled me through the crowd and only laughed when I muttered, “If this is just a few friends over for drinks, what constitutes a real party?”

  • • •

  Drink in hand, Linville Pope stood facing us as we entered the long living room, but her attention seemed totally focused on the man to whom she was speaking. I remembered how still she’d sat in the restaurant yesterday when accosted by that angry shouter. An unusual ability, this knack she had of centering a pool of stillness and silence around her small body.

  “How nice you could come,” she said when Barbara Jean had introduced us. “I didn’t realize when we spoke Sunday night that you’d been involved with Andy Bynum’s death. How awful for you
.”

  I barely heard because her companion turned and it was the same man who’d sat in court this morning with the Llewellyns, the couple who were related to the puppeteer. Not much taller than me, he had short wiry hair which was flecked with gray, as was his neatly clipped beard.

  I suddenly felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me as Linville Pope said, “And this is Levi Schuster. I believe you two have met before?”

  Lev smiled and said, “Hello, Red. So. Don’t I get a kiss for old times’ sake?”

  6

  Jesus calls us o’er the tumult

  Of our life’s wild, restless seas...

  In our joys and in our sorrows,

  Days of toil and hours of ease.

  —Mrs. Cecil F Alexander

  “Red?” asked Barbara Jean. “But she’s a blonde.” She gave my hair a critical look. “Sort of. Sandy anyhow. So why Red?”

  You’d have to be thicker than a creosoted piling not to sense the waves cresting around us, and Barbara Jean’s not thick.

  Her question gave me time to find breath enough to steady my voice—I think it was steady—before I took his outstretched hand and said, “Hello, Lev.”

  “It’s short for Redneck,” Lev told Barbara Jean. My hand was swallowed up in his. I’d forgotten how big his hands were. He was only one and three-fourths inches taller than me, yet each hand would make almost two of mine. Hands that had picked me up when I slipped on those icy steps, hands that later pulled me down upon him, hands that guided my—

  “Enough of that now!” warned the preacher.

  Abruptly, I pulled my hand free.

  “Redneck?” Linville Pope was prepared to be amused. “I am sure there is a story here.”

  “She was the only one in my ethics class,” he explained.

  “Lev was a graduate assistant when I was in law school at Columbia,” I said. “And redneck wasn’t the only category I filled.” I was back in control now and glibly prepared to amuse. “I forget exactly what the point of it was—demographics maybe, or the insularity of urban ethnicity—anyhow, this was one of those huge lecture sessions when Lev was subbing for the professor. He asked everybody who was Jewish to raise a hand and about two-thirds of the class did. Then he asked all the Catholics and another third of the hands went up. Then he asked for all the Protestants and four hands went up: me, one black guy, and two Asians, which meant I was the only WASP as well.”