“Bill and I were in law school together,” said Reid, “and I was an usher in his wedding.”
My drink came and when the others went back to the discussion I’d interrupted—something about the association’s proposed name change—I turned to Reid and said, “So why you didn’t come over and speak to Fitz and Martha? He’s retiring this fall.”
Reid’s dad, Brix Junior, was a close friend of the Fitzhumes and they had known Reid since he was a little boy.
“I’ll catch ’em later.” He downed the rest of his drink in one long swallow. “No way I’m going over while that ass-hole’s there.”
“And which asshole would that be?” I asked.
“Jeffreys.” He spat out the name like an expletive.
Surprised, I asked, “What’d he ever do to you?”
“Drop it, okay?”
That’s when I realized that this was not his first drink. Probably not his second, either, but the hostility in his voice made me shrug and back off.
A few minutes later, I finished my own drink, said all the polite and proper things to the others, and headed back to my own group. As I passed Pete Jeffreys, he gave me a sour look and deliberately turned his back on me.
First Dwight, then Reid, and now Jeffreys?
When did I turn into Typhoid Mary?
* * *
By eleven o’clock the tables out on the porch were deserted except for a young couple on the far side, holding hands by candlelight and lost in each other’s eyes. My own eyes filled with sudden tears and I wondered if Dwight and I would ever sit like that again.
The rest of our crowd had already called it a night and Chelsea Ann and Rosemary had been urging me to leave for the last twenty minutes, but I insisted on finishing my final drink even though I hadn’t touched it lately. For some reason, those crabs and hushpuppies weren’t sitting too easy, although the four—or was it five?—margaritas might have had something to do with it. In any event, I was reluctant to move till everything settled down.
“C’mon, Deborah,” Chelsea Ann said at last. “This isn’t like you. What’s wrong? You and Dwight having troubles?”
Eventually I let them help me to my feet. I wasn’t really tipsy, but I did seem to have trouble walking. While Rosemary settled our bill, Chelsea Ann helped me down the steps to the Riverwalk. I almost made it back to the parking lot when my stomach finally rebelled.
“Oh God!” I moaned and hurried on past the steps to get as far ahead of them as I could. Even in my misery, I had the sense not to hurl into the wind. Instead I hung over the railing on the backwash side and lost both my dinner and all that tequila.
Chelsea Ann and Rosemary waited a discreet distance away till I had finished retching.
When I could finally lift my head, I noticed something odd. On the muddy riverbank only six or eight feet away from me, something bobbled on the outgoing tide, half hidden by overhanging shrubbery. In such dim light, it was almost unnoticeable amid the trash and driftwood that had collected in the branches.
It took me a minute to process what I was seeing and to realize that those two dark wet logs floating side by side were a man’s sodden pant legs. Pete Jeffreys hung face up from a low-lying tree branch, his body almost completely submerged in the water.
One crab clung to his fingers, a second scuttled up his bare arm, and as I backed away from the railing in horror, Rosemary called, “What’s wrong?”
Like another wave of nausea, Fitz’s ancient joke rose in my throat and I couldn’t stop it. “Ship the crabs and set ’im again!” I croaked.
CHAPTER
4
12:33. Sunday morning.
The nausea was pretty much gone, but my head was pounding like a military parade gone wrong—everybody marching to a different drummer and nobody on the beat, despite the three aspirin tablets I’d swallowed.
Chelsea Ann and her sister shared a bench behind a closed candle shop across from the parking lot, while I leaned on a nearby railing that overlooked the river. Chelsea Ann’s SUV was still parked beside Judge Jeffreys’s BMW, and both vehicles were nosed up to the riverbank where I’d found him. The police had set up a perimeter of yellow tape around the whole lot so that every inch could be processed for clues as to how he had wound up dangling in the water. The SUV blocked our view of whatever they were finding on the ground next to Jeffreys’s car. Until they finished, we were stuck here to twiddle our metaphorical thumbs.
My friends leaned their heads against the wall behind them and closed their eyes to block out the glare of the floodlights. High in the sky, the nearly full moon added even more light. During that interminable wait, I tried to keep my head as motionless as possible and fixed my eyes on the huge bridge at the mouth of the river as it slowly raised its middle span like an elevator to let a tanker pass beneath. Smaller leisure boats cruised past us, their lights reflected on the water. A cool breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay and made me glad I’d worn a light sweater.
Any man’s murder is regrettable, but none of us knew Jeffreys well enough to feel any grief. Although I had
