Across the table from me, Chelsea Ann’s blue eyes widened. “Omigawd!” she said in an awed whisper. “It’s him!”
“Who?” I asked, suddenly aware that the level of conversation out here on the deck had dropped in that electric moment of awareness that sweeps over a room when a celebrity enters. I turned in time to see a man tethering his dog to the railing by its leash. It was the same man who’d yelled at Jeffreys out in the parking lot.
By the time he had finished with the dog and joined his party at the nearest table, our group had stopped staring and the noise level had risen again.
“Who’s that?” I asked Chelsea Ann, who kept glancing over surreptitiously.
“Stone Hamilton.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Chelsea Ann couldn’t believe my ignorance. “Stone Hamilton. He plays the lead on
I’ve never seen the program itself, but its advertising trailers are shown so often on one of the networks that I now realized why he had looked somewhat familiar. I saw that our waiter had quickly appeared at his elbow with order pad in hand even though that was probably not his table. Indeed, a waitress with jet-black hair streaked with fuchsia immediately went over and sent him packing.
Wilmington likes to bill itself as “Hollywood East,” but this was the first time I’d ever seen an actor from one of the several shows that had been filmed around town. The closest I’d come was when trying a custody case between two prominent attorneys down here last fall. Every courtroom was tied up because, in addition to the usual calendar, a show was being filmed in the courtroom next to mine. The halls were full of extra people, power cords snaked along the floor, and a couple of wardrobe racks and some odd pieces of equipment had wound up in the back of my courtroom.
The custody case was complicated by lengthy narratives to explain and rationalize lapses of judgment on both sides. After we were interrupted for a second time, I told the young man who seemed to be the crew’s gofer that he was not to come back in until I had recessed for lunch.
Minutes later, a scowling man with a ponytail of long gray hair and the attitude of a horse’s ass erupted though the side door, trailed by the younger one.
“What do you mean he can’t come back in here till lunchtime?” he snarled.
“Sir,” I said, “we’re trying a case here.”
He glared at me. “And I’m trying to shoot some very important scenes. I need access to these clothes. Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir,” I said with more courtesy than I was feeling, “but if it’s clothes you’re interested in, I’ll be glad to have you fitted with an orange jumpsuit and paper slippers if you or any of your people come back in here again before I adjourn.”
As my words sank in, the young man behind him grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.
“Bailiff,” I said, “would you escort this gentleman out?”
Angrily ordering his flunky to wheel out the clothes racks, the director stomped away and peace reigned in my courtroom for the rest of the day. I still don’t know what show it was.
Although Chelsea Ann continued to glance over my shoulder to the Hamilton party, I found my own eyes straying back to Pete Jeffreys, who now seemed to be introducing Blankenthorpe to that bearded man with the two kids. Why did he look so familiar? Maybe the children and husband of a judge I didn’t know well?
Before I could ask someone, I noticed a familiar face at the restaurant next door.
Like Jonah’s, it, too, has open-air dining out on its porch deck and it was doing a brisk business as well, including one diner well known to me—my handsome cousin and former law partner Reid Stephenson. I had known that the Trial Lawyers Association was supposed to meet this weekend, but that was at Sunset Beach, a good forty minutes down the coast and only minutes from the South Carolina border. What was he doing up here?
His eyes eventually met mine and he lifted his glass in greeting. I gestured for him to come join us, but he shook his head and remained where he was. There were no women at his table, only men, and he knows several of the judges, so I didn’t understand his reluctance.
“Order me another margarita and don’t let them take my plate,” I told Martha. “I’ll be right back.”
I walked over to the gate onto the Riverwalk and gave Stone Hamilton’s boxer a pat on the head when he greeted me with a wiggle of his stubby tail.
Reid and his friends politely came to their feet as I joined them, even though I told them not to bother. Like the male judges in my party, they were casually dressed in chinos or khaki shorts and colorful knit golf shirts instead of their accustomed suits and ties. They pulled up a chair for me and an attorney from Fuquay-Varina said, “What are you drinking, Your Honor?”
“Margaritas,” Reid said. “Right, Deborah?”
What the hell? No one was waiting for me in my hotel room. The night was young, I wasn’t driving, and I could sleep late tomorrow.
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You know everyone here, right?” my cousin asked.
I did. If not by specific names, certainly by their familiar faces. All except one, a pleasantly homely man with a long thin face made even longer by a hairline that had receded to the top of his head. Late thirties, early forties, keen blue eyes and a mouth so wide that it literally did seem to go from ear to ear when he smiled at me and extended his hand. “Bill Hasselberger, Your Honor. I’ve heard a lot about you from Reid here.”
“I hope you don’t believe everything he’s told you,” I said, smiling back. He had long thin fingers and a firm handshake that hinted at a wiry strength.
