Sand Sharks (4 page)

“Now how you finding married life?” Judge Fitzhume asked me.

“Just fine,” I lied. “And don’t you and Martha have a fortieth anniversary coming up?”

“Forty-two,” he beamed. “And it seems like only four since I got her to the altar.”

Courtly, soft-spoken, and always polite even when disagreeing with drunken felons, Fitz had announced his retirement a few
months earlier. Although he would probably continue to fill in as an emergency judge when needed, he and Martha planned to
spend the next year traveling around the world to visit far-flung grandchildren. They were telling me their itinerary and
had gotten themselves as far as Rome when Pete Jeffreys came up with Cynthia Blankenthorpe in tow.

I have called Pete Jeffreys one of the princes of the bench, but that impression was formed at the first fall conference he
attended year before last where I watched him move confidently through the halls and meeting rooms with easy charm and instant
camaraderie. He had skipped last summer’s conference and I had skipped the fall, so I hadn’t seen him interact with our colleagues
in over a year. Now I noticed a distinct chill when he approached our table to introduce the new judge to Fitz, and I realized
that Martha had drawn back stiffly in her chair and kept her strong fingers firmly around her drink, deliberately ignoring
his outstretched hand.

Dear, ever-courteous Fitz assumed the hand was meant for him and, after a slight hesitation, shook it amiably enough.

“Bastard!” said Martha when Jeffreys and his protégée had moved on.

“Now, Martha,” he murmured.

“Not you, honey,” she assured him.

Before I could ask her to explain, the deep-fried soft-shelled crabs we’d both ordered arrived, crisp and succulent on beds
of baby greens.

As far as I’m concerned, blue claws are the tastiest crustacean in the Atlantic. You can have my lobsters if you’ll give me
all your blue crabs, especially when they’ve just molted, before their shells start to harden.

Fitz gave a sigh of pure pleasure as his own plate was set before him, and was moved to tell his favorite crab joke.

“This was back when the world was young and urgent messages went by Western Union rather than cell phones or emails,” he said,
squeezing lemon juice over a plate of buttery linguini heaped high with lumps of back-fin meat. “A man sent his mother-in-law
on a vacation at the coast to get her out of his hair. Two days later, he got a telegram from the hotel manager. ‘Regret to
inform you your mother-inlaw washed ashore this evening covered in crabs. What shall I do?’ ”

Everyone within earshot of his voice sang out, “Ship the crabs and set ’er again!”

“Oh,” he said. “Y’all’ve heard it before?”

Martha patted his hand. “Every time you order crabs, sweetheart.”

Across the table from me, Chelsea Ann’s blue eyes widened. “Omigawd!” she said in an awed whisper. “It’s him!”

“Who?” I asked, suddenly aware that the level of conversation out here on the deck had dropped in that electric moment of
awareness that sweeps over a room when a celebrity enters. I turned in time to see a man tethering his dog to the railing
by its leash. It was the same man who’d yelled at Jeffreys out in the parking lot.

By the time he had finished with the dog and joined his party at the nearest table, our group had stopped staring and the
noise level had risen again.

“Who’s that?” I asked Chelsea Ann, who kept glancing over surreptitiously.

“Stone Hamilton.”

The name meant nothing to me.

Chelsea Ann couldn’t believe my ignorance. “Stone Hamilton. He plays the lead on
Port City Blues.
Don’t you watch it?”

I’ve never seen the program itself, but its advertising trailers are shown so often on one of the networks that I now realized
why he had looked somewhat familiar. I saw that our waiter had quickly appeared at his elbow with order pad in hand even though
that was probably not his table. Indeed, a waitress with jet-black hair streaked with fuchsia immediately went over and sent
him packing.

Wilmington likes to bill itself as “Hollywood East,” but this was the first time I’d ever seen an actor from one of the several
shows that had been filmed around town. The closest I’d come was when trying a custody case between two prominent attorneys
down here last fall. Every courtroom was tied up because, in addition to the usual calendar, a show was being filmed in the
courtroom next to mine. The halls were full of extra people, power cords snaked along the floor, and a couple of wardrobe
racks and some odd pieces of equipment had wound up in the back of my courtroom.

The custody case was complicated by lengthy narratives to explain and rationalize lapses of judgment on both sides. After
we were interrupted for a second time, I told the young man who seemed to be the crew’s gofer that he was not to come back
in until I had recessed for lunch.

Minutes later, a scowling man with a ponytail of long gray hair and the attitude of a horse’s ass erupted though the side
door, trailed by the younger one.

“What do you mean he can’t come back in here till lunchtime?” he snarled.

“Sir,” I said, “we’re trying a case here.”

He glared at me. “And I’m trying to shoot some very important scenes. I need access to these clothes. Do you know who I am?”

“No, sir,” I said with more courtesy than I was feeling, “but if it’s clothes you’re interested in, I’ll be glad to have you
fitted with an orange jumpsuit and paper slippers if you or any of your people come back in here again before I adjourn.”

As my words sank in, the young man behind him grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

“Bailiff,” I said, “would you escort this gentleman out?”

Angrily ordering his flunky to wheel out the clothes racks, the director stomped away and peace reigned in my courtroom for
the rest of the day. I still don’t know what show it was.

Although Chelsea Ann continued to glance over my shoulder to the Hamilton party, I found my own eyes straying back to Pete
Jeffreys, who now seemed to be introducing Blankenthorpe to that bearded man with the two kids. Why did he look so familiar?
Maybe the children and husband of a judge I didn’t know well?

Before I could ask someone, I noticed a familiar face at the restaurant next door.

Like Jonah’s, it, too, has open-air dining out on its porch deck and it was doing a brisk business as well, including one
diner well known to me—my handsome cousin and former law partner Reid Stephenson. I had known that the Trial Lawyers Association
was supposed to meet this weekend, but that was at Sunset Beach, a good forty minutes down the coast and only minutes from
the South Carolina border. What was he doing up here?

His eyes eventually met mine and he lifted his glass in greeting. I gestured for him to come join us, but he shook his head
and remained where he was. There were no women at his table, only men, and he knows several of the judges, so I didn’t understand
his reluctance.

“Order me another margarita and don’t let them take my plate,” I told Martha. “I’ll be right back.”

I walked over to the gate onto the Riverwalk and gave Stone Hamilton’s boxer a pat on the head when he greeted me with a wiggle
of his stubby tail.

Reid and his friends politely came to their feet as I joined them, even though I told them not to bother. Like the male judges
in my party, they were casually dressed in chinos or khaki shorts and colorful knit golf shirts instead of their accustomed
suits and ties. They pulled up a chair for me and an attorney from Fuquay-Varina said, “What are you drinking, Your Honor?”

“Margaritas,” Reid said. “Right, Deborah?”

What the hell? No one was waiting for me in my hotel room. The night was young, I wasn’t driving, and I could sleep late tomorrow.

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You know everyone here, right?” my cousin asked.

I did. If not by specific names, certainly by their familiar faces. All except one, a pleasantly homely man with a long thin
face made even longer by a hairline that had receded to the top of his head. Late thirties, early forties, keen blue eyes
and a mouth so wide that it literally did seem to go from ear to ear when he smiled at me and extended his hand. “Bill Hasselberger,
Your Honor. I’ve heard a lot about you from Reid here.”

“I hope you don’t believe everything he’s told you,” I said, smiling back. He had long thin fingers and a firm handshake that
hinted at a wiry strength.

“Bill and I were in law school together,” said Reid, “and I was an usher in his wedding.”

My drink came and when the others went back to the discussion I’d interrupted—something about the association’s proposed name
change—I turned to Reid and said, “So why you didn’t come over and speak to Fitz and Martha? He’s retiring this fall.”

Reid’s dad, Brix Junior, was a close friend of the Fitzhumes and they had known Reid since he was a little boy.

“I’ll catch ’em later.” He downed the rest of his drink in one long swallow. “No way I’m going over while that ass-hole’s
there.”

“And which asshole would that be?” I asked.

“Jeffreys.” He spat out the name like an expletive.

Surprised, I asked, “What’d he ever do to you?”

“Drop it, okay?”

That’s when I realized that this was not his first drink. Probably not his second, either, but the hostility in his voice
made me shrug and back off.

A few minutes later, I finished my own drink, said all the polite and proper things to the others, and headed back to my own
group. As I passed Pete Jeffreys, he gave me a sour look and deliberately turned his back on me.

First Dwight, then Reid, and now Jeffreys?

When did I turn into Typhoid Mary?

*   *   *

By eleven o’clock the tables out on the porch were deserted except for a young couple on the far side, holding hands by candlelight
and lost in each other’s eyes. My own eyes filled with sudden tears and I wondered if Dwight and I would ever sit like that
again.

The rest of our crowd had already called it a night and Chelsea Ann and Rosemary had been urging me to leave for the last
twenty minutes, but I insisted on finishing my final drink even though I hadn’t touched it lately. For some reason, those
crabs and hushpuppies weren’t sitting too easy, although the four—or was it five?—margaritas might have had something to do
with it. In any event, I was reluctant to move till everything settled down.

“C’mon, Deborah,” Chelsea Ann said at last. “This isn’t like you. What’s wrong? You and Dwight having troubles?”

Eventually I let them help me to my feet. I wasn’t really tipsy, but I did seem to have trouble walking. While Rosemary settled
our bill, Chelsea Ann helped me down the steps to the Riverwalk. I almost made it back to the parking lot when my stomach
finally rebelled.

“Oh God!” I moaned and hurried on past the steps to get as far ahead of them as I could. Even in my misery, I had the sense
not to hurl into the wind. Instead I hung over the railing on the backwash side and lost both my dinner and all that tequila.

Chelsea Ann and Rosemary waited a discreet distance away till I had finished retching.

When I could finally lift my head, I noticed something odd. On the muddy riverbank only six or eight feet away from me, something
bobbled on the outgoing tide, half hidden by overhanging shrubbery. In such dim light, it was almost unnoticeable amid the
trash and driftwood that had collected in the branches.

It took me a minute to process what I was seeing and to realize that those two dark wet logs floating side by side were a
man’s sodden pant legs. Pete Jeffreys hung face up from a low-lying tree branch, his body almost completely submerged in the
water.

One crab clung to his fingers, a second scuttled up his bare arm, and as I backed away from the railing in horror, Rosemary
called, “What’s wrong?”

Like another wave of nausea, Fitz’s ancient joke rose in my throat and I couldn’t stop it. “Ship the crabs and set ’im again!”
I croaked.

The credibility of witnesses should be carefully weighed.

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

12:33. Sunday morning.

The nausea was pretty much gone, but my head was pounding like a military parade gone wrong—everybody marching to a different
drummer and nobody on the beat, despite the three aspirin tablets I’d swallowed.

Chelsea Ann and her sister shared a bench behind a closed candle shop across from the parking lot, while I leaned on a nearby
railing that overlooked the river. Chelsea Ann’s SUV was still parked beside Judge Jeffreys’s BMW, and both vehicles were
nosed up to the riverbank where I’d found him. The police had set up a perimeter of yellow tape around the whole lot so that
every inch could be processed for clues as to how he had wound up dangling in the water. The SUV blocked our view of whatever
they were finding on the ground next to Jeffreys’s car. Until they finished, we were stuck here to twiddle our metaphorical
thumbs.

My friends leaned their heads against the wall behind them and closed their eyes to block out the glare of the floodlights.
High in the sky, the nearly full moon added even more light. During that interminable wait, I tried to keep my head as motionless
as possible and fixed my eyes on the huge bridge at the mouth of the river as it slowly raised its middle span like an elevator
to let a tanker pass beneath. Smaller leisure boats cruised past us, their lights reflected on the water. A cool breeze kept
the mosquitoes at bay and made me glad I’d worn a light sweater.

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?”