money.”
I sat back from my plate. “So you’ll coerce her? She told me you’ve threatened to build a boat storage facility on Harkers Island, right next door to her daughter.”
“I do not threaten, Deborah. I merely state. Besides, it will be a very nice facility. Landscaped. Screened with flowering bushes. It will not be an eyesore. Honest.” Again that quiet complacent smile. “Assuming, that is, that she chooses to let me go ahead with it. If her husband cannot talk her out of it.”
“What about Andy Bynum?” I asked suddenly.
She made a dismissive motion with her slender hands. “Another who enjoyed power. He could stand in the door of his fish house and take or reject whatever a waterman offered him. He liked running that Independent Fishers Alliance because it gave him a forum to impose his will on the rest of us. Or to try.”
Her pager went off. She frowned at the number displayed, glanced at her delicate gold watch, and said, “Too bad. I wanted to hear about you and Levi Schuster, but it seems I have to go now.”
“Nothing to hear.” I gave a dismissive motion of my own. “We used to be together a zillion years ago.”
“Last night meant nothing?”
“We might’ve stirred some old ashes,” I admitted.
“And found a few hot coals?”
I shook my head.
(
“Then you will not mind if I—?”
“Would it matter?”
She laughed. “Probably not. Still...”
“Be my guest.”
(
• • •
As it turned out, there were so many requests for continuances in the afternoon session that we were finished for the day a few minutes before three. I quickly adjourned and headed back for Harkers Island. Dark clouds were rolling in from the west and rain that had been predicted didn’t seem far away.
By the time I got to the church where Andy’s funeral was to be preached, it was nearly packed to the brim. There were Sunday school classrooms on either side of the main sanctuary, though, and folding panels slid back so that another fifty people could be shoehorned in. I was among them. People who came even later had to stand along the back walls.
The casket was closed before the family entered—Andy’s two sons, their wives, five grandchildren, and a handful of people who could have been brothers and sisters or cousins. Seated on the side as I was, I had a good view. The daughters-in-law had red-rimmed eyes and the boys looked as if they’d done their share of mourning, too. An older woman cried silently through the whole service.
Chet and Barbara Jean sat amid a group of members of the Alliance. Or so I assumed, since at least half of them, including Barbara Jean and Jay Hadley, wore white carnations in their lapels. Two teenagers sat beside Jay. The girl looked to be seventeen or eighteen and was a younger, prettier version of her blonde mother. I’d heard the boy was only sixteen but he had a man’s growth and was darker of hair and eyes.
The choir sang “Rock of Ages” and “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” then the preacher called for prayer. He was on the charismatic side and got so carried away with such a huge audience that, at one point, he seemed to think he was conducting a revival instead of a funeral. As he spoke of repentance and salvation and exhorted us to save our souls (“For ye knoweth not the hour when the Lord shall call ye home”), I almost expected him to issue an invitation and for the pianist to break into “Almost Persuaded.”
At the last minute, however, he restrained himself and settled into an earnest detailing of Andy Bynum’s goodness and virtues and the legacy of love and respect he was leaving behind, “a monument not carved in stone, my friends, nor writ in water, but indelibly etched on the hearts and lives of people he touched.”
Near the end, he alluded to the manner in which death had come and said, “Andy’s boys, Drew and Maxton, asks y’all to search your memories of last Sunday. If anybody passed Andy out there near the banks, if anybody saw someone else out there—if you don’t want to tell the sheriff, at least find it in your heart to tell one of them.”
A final hymn, a prayer, then we rose and followed the casket out to the churchyard where a blue tent protected three rows of folding chairs and the open grave. The casket was rolled into place and the family was seated while the rest of us stood quietly and hoped the rain would hold off a half hour longer.
After another homily and another prayer, the preacher shook the hand of each family member and they went back inside the church to wait until the casket had been lowered, the dirt shoveled back in, and the wreaths arranged to cover the raw earth.
The congregation sort of shifted away from the graveside, too, as if it weren’t quite good manners to stand and stare while this was going on. Car doors slammed as some people left immediately. Most, though, lingered in small groups to shake their heads over Andy’s murder and to wonder aloud what would happen to the Alliance now. I saw Telford Hudpeth talking to Barbara Jean and Jay Hadley. Chet was in deep conversation with someone I didn’t recognize.
Detective Quig Smith was there with Deputy Marvin Willitt, who was in uniform.
“Gentlemen,” I said.
“Ma’am,” said Deputy Willitt and immediately cut out.
“Was it something I said?” I asked.
Smith grinned. “Nah. He’s supposed to be directing traffic.”
