the two counties that comprise our judicial district.
As usual, Jerry had given us the large private room upstairs. The front glass wall lets us look out over the main pond where a lot of his catfish are raised. In the middle of the pond, a large Christmas tree cast colorful lights across the surface of the dark water. Inside the restaurant, three more trees shimmered in the softly lit rooms and were refracted by each windowpane and bit of glassware. The tree by the front door was decorated in cow ornaments of every description, from delicate hand-blown glass Holsteins to sturdy plastic Belted Galloways. The one at the foot of the staircase was devoted to fish ornaments, interspersed with an occasional clamshell angel or gilt-rimmed sand dollar that had been brought back from the coast by dedicated patrons. Those two trees were artificial, but the third was a real ten-foot fir decorated in hundreds of small clear lights and red velvet bows of varying sizes. It stood at the top of the stairs, where this year’s president of the association, my cousin and former law partner John Claude Lee, waited to welcome us individually.
In honor of the season, the tables on the upper level were covered with dark red cloths. Each round table held a centerpiece of votive candles, holly, and cedar; and because Jerry’s something of a romantic under his tough exterior and this dinner was, after all, to celebrate an impending wedding, clusters of fresh mistletoe hung above each table as well. The fat white berries gleamed translucently in the candlelight.
Jerry’s place will never be mistaken for a trendy New York bistro, but stepping into its friendly, down-to-earth warmth after a chilly walk across the windswept parking lot was like slipping into a cozy hand-knitted sweater.
Our regular meetings usually throb with hearty laughter and boisterous talk, but tonight, even though Dwight and I were almost the last to arrive, the room was subdued. Plenty of talk, not much laughter.
“Sad business about Tracy and her little girl,” John Claude said in greeting us. His wife Julia, tall and patrician, presented a cool cheek for us to kiss, then clasped my arm more warmly than usual. “It
I took Julia Lee’s words with a big block of cow salt as we headed for the open bar set up beyond the tree. Dwight might be a well-respected lawman among my peers, but for some of those peers, the respect was tinged with condescension, the respect an elitist might give to a good plumber or electrician—fine to share a beer and sandwich with in the kitchen while he fixes the thing you couldn’t, fine to play the good ol’ boy with at a ball game or when shooting a game of pool down at the local bar, but not someone you’d necessarily bring home for cocktails in the living room.
Even Tracy had alluded to Dwight’s lack of formal degrees. Never mind that his Army intelligence tours overseas and in Washington probably equaled a college education. Attorneys and judges don’t usually marry sheriff’s deputies. They’re supposed to marry another attorney, a doctor, a successful business owner, or a college professor. Dwight had a personal letter of appreciation from a former president of the United States hanging on his office wall, but he didn’t have that piece of paper signed by the president of a medical or law school hanging right beside it.
Despite the glasses that were raised in our direction as we crossed the room, there were probably several who thought that this marriage was unsuitable, especially a couple of those who’d put the moves on me in years past. But hey, I’ve been raising eyebrows all my life. Why should my final choice of men be any different?
And yet . . . ? Here in this roomful of bar members, I suddenly realized that part of the vibes I attributed to them might actually derive from that last one-on-one with Tracy last week. She had annoyed me by asking whether Dwight’s job wasn’t going to compromise my courtroom objectivity, but before that, there had also been a throwaway remark about lawmen with only a high school education. Didn’t the disparity bother me?
Distracted by all that was going on in my life at the moment, I had been much too full of love and joy to take offense. Instead, I’d laughed as I gathered up my papers to leave. “My daddy quit school in sixth grade to start making moonshine and most of my brothers are farmers or blue-collar tradesmen. Where’s the disparity?”
“I guess you’ve never worried about public opinion anyhow, have you?” she’d said, and then came that question about whether I could stay fair when judging defendants arrested by Dwight’s subordinates.
That’s when I’d snapped at her. I might not sweat the white-glove upright-pillar-of-society stuff in my personal life, but I do take my job pretty damn seriously. I’d sworn an oath to that effect on my mother’s Bible and I would bend over backwards not to break it.
Avery and Portland Brewer were tending bar when we got there. He was dapper in a black shirt and red tie; she was absolutely huge in a shapeless black suit brightened by a gold-and-silver Christmas scarf.
“If I can’t drink it, I can at least play in it,” she said.
“Hang in there,” I told her. “By New Year’s Eve, you can drink all the champagne you want.”
She gave a long-suffering grimace. “No, I won’t. I’m going to breast-feed, remember? So there goes another dry year.”
Avery mixed me a bourbon and diet Pepsi while Portland poured Dwight a beer and said, “Tracy’s baby. Did she suffer?”
“I really don’t think so,” he answered, and I hoped he wasn’t just trying to spare Portland’s feelings. “It looks like she was knocked out on impact and never regained consciousness.”
Portland touched her swollen abdomen protectively. “The only good thing in this whole sorry business is that Tracy didn’t know. She didn’t, did she?”
“No way,” Dwight assured her.
Tears glistened in Portland’s eyes. “I’ve never seen or held this baby, but I already love it so damn much that if anything happened to it—”
Avery put his arm around her. “Nothing’s going to happen, honey.”
She gave him a shaky smile. “I know that. I do know that. I said
As we moved away from the bar, we were given hugs and handshakes by every other person, but Dwight was also questioned about what, if any, progress had been made on finding Tracy’s killer.
“Don’t let this one get away,” said Doug Woodall when he and Mary Jess intercepted us.
“Not if I can help it,” Dwight said. “I’m going to need to talk to you Monday, see what cases she was working on. And I hear she got a death threat recently.”
“That was just some loser mouthing off. But anytime, Bryant. My office is at your disposal.”
