privately decided to make discreet inquiries tomorrow, that didn’t stop me from speculating with Rosemary and Chelsea Ann as we waited. Like me, they had also noticed a coolness from some of our colleagues as he moved from table to table.
“I’ve been thinking,” Chelsea Ann said. “Remember the guy that carjacked and killed a girl last fall? How he wasn’t even supposed to be on the streets because he’d violated probation. Didn’t Jeffreys handle that case?”
It’s always a judgment call between time in our overcrowded prisons or supervised probation. I couldn’t remember the details, only that it’s a judge’s worst nightmare: that we’ll set a bail too low or give probation to someone who then goes out and kills.
“Wasn’t there something about a custody case when he first came to the bench?” asked Rosemary.
“I thought it was about the way he ran his campaign,” said Chelsea Ann. “Some mud he slung at Hasselberger?”
“Hasselberger?” I asked. “Bill Hasselberger? Is that who he ran against?”
“Yeah, you know him?”
“Not really. He was here with Reid tonight at the restaurant next door and Reid introduced him. I thought he was a local, though.”
“He is now,” said Chelsea Ann. “I heard he was so pissed when he got beat that he moved his practice down here so he wouldn’t have to plead a case in Jeffreys’s court.”
“I’ll bet Roberta Ouellette would know,” I mused. “Isn’t she in his district?”
After a half hour of going round and round, we lapsed into weary silence and I turned back to the distant bridge, which had now lowered itself back into place. Despite the late hour, headlights flashed back and forth from an intermittent stream of cars and trucks.
The local newspaper and television reporters had left shortly after the body was loaded onto a gurney, but a boyish young blonde in baggy blue cotton trousers and a white tank top had figured out that we weren’t part of the crowd that had gathered to gawk and she casually made her way down the Riverwalk to where we were. She looked like a teenager out too late until she flashed press credentials that ID’d her as Megan Somebody-or-other from WHQR, the local NPR station. She just happened to have a tiny voice recorder in the pocket of those baggy slacks and she was polite about pointing the mic at Chelsea Ann and Rosemary on the bench. “I hate to bother you, but would you mind talking about what happened here tonight?”
My friends shook their heads and she gave me an inquiring look.
“Sorry,” I said, “but we really can’t discuss it.”
I should have kept my mouth shut because she immediately homed in on me. “Could you at least confirm that you were the one who found the body?”
Almost against my will, I nodded and that cute little camel nose edged itself further under the tent flap. “That must have been such a shock.”
She reminded me of my niece Emma. I didn’t say anything, but just like Emma, this budding Anne Garrels was not easily deterred. “You’re all judges, right? Down here for the conference at Wrightsville Beach? I’m supposed to interview Justice Parker out there on Tuesday.”
Our identities would soon be common knowledge, so again I nodded, ignoring the fact that Rosemary was the wife and sister of judges, not a judge herself.
“Did you know him? Was he a friend? A close colleague?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but I really don’t think I should say anything else. I’m sure your police department will give you a statement when it’s appropriate.”
“Okay,” she said cheerfully. The recorder and mic disappeared back into her pocket. “But maybe you could give me a little background on Justice Parker? I mean, I know she’s only the third woman to be chief justice of the state’s supreme court, but what’s she like as a person?”
That seemed harmless enough, so I cautiously told her about Sarah Parker’s professionalism, the esteem with which her peers held her, that she had a quietly impish sense of humor and that she seldom spoke on or off the record without weighing her words.
“Never married?”
I shrugged. “I know absolutely nothing about her personal life.”
“Then what about her public life? What could I ask her that a million other reporters haven’t already?”
“You could ask about her journals.”
“She keeps a journal? Where all the bodies are buried?”
I laughed. “I don’t have the foggiest idea. But if she says she does, let me know, okay?”
“Sure. You have a card?”
I actually had my purse open before I realized what she was really after. “Good try, kid.”
She laughed, too, then turned serious. “If he was a friend, I really am sorry you had to be the one to find him.” She paused and considered. “Or even if he wasn’t your friend, it still sucks, doesn’t it?”
A moment later, she was down the wooden steps and eeling her way onto Front Street, past the dozen or so curious people who stared over at the police activity as if waiting for something more exciting to happen.
“Hey, guys,” one of them finally called. “Where’s Jill Mercer?”
I hadn’t known who Stone Hamilton was, but Jill Mercer got her break as the good girl gone bad in an action video Dwight had rented back when we were just friends in a strictly platonic relationship. According to Chelsea Ann, who says she only watches
