dodge, a single shot pierced her jugular just above the small green-and-red cloisonne Christmas wreath pinned to the collar of her white cashmere sweater.
There was one quick glimpse of jetting blood, the sound of screeching brakes, then her car swerved away and crashed headlong into an overpass abutment.
The other driver touched the accelerator and sped on through the early twilight without a single look back in the rearview mirror.
Traveling north on the interstate in his unmarked sedan, Colleton County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Castleman had his eye out for Judge Deborah Knott’s car. Word had come through the dispatcher from Major Bryant that the judge was unaccountably late and not answering her cell phone, so if anyone should happen to spot her . . .
No sign of the judge’s car, but up ahead Castleman did see one that matched the profile of the more brazen drug traffickers who frequented this stretch of interstate through North Carolina. Only one person in the car, so he didn’t bother calling for the usual backup. He had just switched on the blue lights hidden behind his radiator grille when a second call came through that a white Lexus had crashed into the abutment where Possum Creek Road crossed over I-95.
He immediately thumbed his mike. “I’ll catch it, Faye.”
The suspect car ahead had obediently pulled over, but with his blue lights still flashing and his siren now wailing as well, Castleman gave a go-ahead wave to the sullen-looking Hispanic inside, made a U-turn across the grassy median, and headed south.
At the crash site, several civilian cars had stopped. Their passengers milled around, trying to keep warm while they waited for professionals to arrive and take charge. A tall man strode forward when he spotted the badge on Castleman’s heavy leather jacket.
“I was a medic in Iraq,” he told the deputy. His warm breath made little puffs of steam in the chilled air. “The driver’s dead but there’s a baby girl in the backseat that looks to be hanging on by her toenails.”
Baby girl?
More sirens and flashing lights lit up the darkening evening as an ambulance and a patrol car swerved to a stop. Red and blue strobes flashed over the car’s bloody interior and made the white leather seats and steering wheel look as if they had been splashed with chocolate syrup then dusted with powdered sugar when the air bag popped open.
In the backseat, several gaily wrapped Christmas packages lay jumbled by the impact. The medic pointed to a small one about six inches square.
“I don’t know what’s in it, but it’s heavy as hell and it was on the kid’s chest when I got here. Probably what knocked her out.”
A large bruise had begun to darken the forehead of the baby girl buckled into the car seat. Otherwise, she did not move.
The driver’s face was obscured by the deflated air bag and the front end of the car was so badly smashed that the baby was already on an ambulance to the hospital before they could get the car pried open enough to get her out.
“Oh dear God!” said one of the deputies when the dead driver’s face came into view. “Y’all see who this is?”
“Christ almighty!” swore Castleman, peering over his shoulder. “I was in court with her just this morning.”
CHAPTER 1
Florence Hartley,
I had adjourned court a little early that bleak December afternoon after taking care of everything I could without a prosecutor (the assistant DA had a late doctor’s appointment), but I’d heard that the party outlet in Makely sold inexpensive wedding favors and, yeah, yeah, with less than two weeks till the big day, you’d think I would have already taken care of every detail worth mentioning.
Wrong.
Having avoided it for this long, I was now so hooked on this whole wedding thing that I was like a junkie who needs just one more fix. Although my sisters-in-law didn’t know it, what I planned to wear was already hidden in an empty closet at Aunt Zell’s house, along with my shoes, gloves, and the dark red velvet cloak that would ward off December’s chilly winds going to and from the First Baptist Church over in Dobbs. (That the hooded cloak flattered the hell out of my dark blond coloring was purely incidental.) My bouquet had been ordered. The country club had been booked for a simple champagne reception, the gold band I would place on Dwight Bryant’s finger had been engraved and entrusted to Portland Brewer, my matron of honor, and when I left home that morning, I was completely caught up on all my thank-you notes. (One good thing about a Christmas wedding is that greeting cards can do double duty.)
The only item lacking was the little bride and groom for the cake. And trust me, I do know they’re tacky and not exactly cutting edge, but my bossy, opinionated family wouldn’t feel it was a real wedding cake if I only had rosebuds and ribbon icing. I’d ordered a cake topper off the Internet—one in which the groom was dressed in a formal blue police uniform—but it still hadn’t come. Kate Bryant, Dwight’s artistic sister-in-law, had volunteered to paint the uniform brown like the one Dwight would be wearing and to change the bridal gown, too, but she was going to need a couple of days to work her magic and one of my own sisters-in-law had suggested I might could find something suitable at the Makely store.
“Sorry,” said the clerk. “You should have tried us back in the spring.”
“Back in the spring, I didn’t know I was going to need one,” I told her.
At that point, I should have walked out of the store and headed straight back to Dobbs, but I saw so many cool stocking stuffers for my numerous nieces and nephews that I completely lost track of the time. It didn’t help that traffic on the interstate was so backed up by an accident or something that I got off at the next exit and had to negotiate unfamiliar back roads.
“Dammit, Deb’rah, where’ve you been?” growled my groom-to-be when I pulled into a slot in front of his
