Point taken, I decided, and I made myself breathe deeply till I calmed back down. Just in time, too, since my yard seemed to be filling up with large animals. Through the window, I saw Zach’s teenage son Lee, Andrew’s Ruth and Seth’s Jessica arrive on horseback, escorted by Blue and Ladybelle, the farm’s boss dogs, and a couple of Robert’s redbones.
How Herman’s Annie Sue over in Dobbs had heard so quickly, I didn’t know, unless she was already on the farm, but here she was, getting out of her car with her friend Cindy McGee, and both wore bathing suits under their T-shirts.
Since it was just family and nobody I needed to impress, I changed into a faded old black bathing suit and topped it with a “big-and-tall” white cotton dress shirt that Haywood outgrew this spring. It’s loose and airy on me, perfect for keeping the sun off my bare arms.
Until I had this house of my own, I hadn’t quite realized how much I loved giving parties and having people come.
Seth, who was helping me carry lawn chairs from the garage, smiled when I said that. “Must be the Mama Sue in you.”
“That woman sure did know how to throw a party,” agreed Dwight, putting a couple of chairs under each arm. He’d arrived in a bathing suit and T-shirt as faded as mine, his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes on a hanger in his truck.
Mother’s parties and her hospitality were legendary. I had neither the space nor the help that she’d had, but I liked the thought that I might be carrying on her tradition.
* * *
The kids were jumping in and out and Minnie was bobbing around on a big fat inner tube when I got down to the pier. We’d had so much rain this month that the pond’s surface was almost even with the pier and I jumped right in. The water’s deep enough there to take a running dive off the end, but I’ve resisted all entreaties for a real diving board.
“Only if you all agree to wear helmets,” I tell my nieces and nephews, having seen too many head injuries for one lifetime.
(They tell
“Here comes Granddaddy!” called A.K. “Race y’all to him.”
The water boiled with furiously stroking arms and kicking legs as they churned off toward the approaching rowboat. I let them go. After yesterday’s ball game, the muscles in my arms were too sore for competition.
Daddy and whoever was with him had either fished all they wanted or else the bass weren’t biting because my swimming area was too far away to seriously disturb the fish at that end.
Dwight pulled himself onto the pier and he slicked his wet hair back with both hands, then shaded his eyes against the sun. A pleased smile lit his face as the boat came closer. “Well, looky who’s here.”
It was Terry Wilson, a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation and one of my favorite ex- boyfriends. Terry came between a law professor at Carolina and the current assistant secretary of a state department in Raleigh that shall remain nameless. I came between wives number two and three. Daddy’s crazy about Terry and had sort of hoped I might be number three, the good woman that would settle Terry down and give him a stable home life.
As if.
Kidd included, Terry’s more fun than any man I’ve ever known, but I wasn’t reared to take a backseat to any body or any thing and he’d made it clear up front that his boy Stanton came first and the job came second. Since he was working undercover narcotics back then, I soon saw the futility of trying to take our relationship beyond the fun and games. Wife number three didn’t last long enough to wreck our friendship and Terry still makes me laugh with the best war stories of any of my law enforcement friends.
I had a matching grin on my face as he rowed the old boat toward my pier.
Terry and Dwight and some of my brothers played baseball in the same high school division. They still go hunting together and he has standing fishing privileges in all the ponds on the farm.
Just as Terry threw the rope to Annie Sue to tie up, Dwight’s pager went off.
He muttered a mild oath and looked around as if to see a phone magically appear.
Actually, one did. Annie Sue’s friend Cindy had her cell phone tucked into the pocket of her T-shirt that was hanging on one of the pier posts. “Help yourself,” she told him.
I pulled myself out of the water and listened unabashedly.
Dwight still had his watch on and I saw him check the time. “Around three-thirty, you say? And you got there ten minutes ago? Good. Secure the scene and call for the van and backups. I’ll be there”—again he checked his watch—“in, say, twenty-five minutes, thirty at the most.”
He replaced Cindy’s phone and said, “Okay if I change clothes up at the house, Deb’rah?”
“Of course,” I said.
Terry shipped the oars and stepped up onto the pier. “You got to leave the minute I get here?”
“Yeah,” said Dwight. “Somebody went and got herself killed at the Orchid Motel over in Dobbs.”
CHAPTER | 5
What caused the mighty elemental disturbance, the possibilities of its recurrence and the danger which constantly hangs over other cities are given in detail.
A murder out on the bypass? Naturally enough, we assumed that whoever got killed at the Orchid Motel was a tourist who probably brought her own problems as well as her killer from somewhere outside the county. Nothing to concern us beyond the usual curiosity. Our momentary gloom was perfunctory and more because it was dragging Dwight away than because of an anonymous death.
