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.
