Except for a lone desk clerk, the lobby was deserted when we got back to the hotel.
“Me for bed,” Chelsea Ann said as she and Rosemary exited the elevator for the room they were sharing.
I meant to follow their good example, but the car stopped at the next floor and there was my own chief judge, F. Roger Longmire, who was on his way back up to Room 628 with a couple of clean glasses in his hands.
“Deborah!” he exclaimed. “What the hell’s this about you finding Pete Jeffreys dead in the river?”
I gave him an abbreviated version, omitting my reason for hanging over the Riverwalk railing, but when I tried to get off at my floor, he insisted that I come on up with him and brief the others.
* * *
Room 628 was actually a suite—two bedrooms, four beds, and two baths with a Jacuzzi in one. The large living room had couches and chairs and a wet bar that was now fully stocked with the usual hard and soft drinks and the most popular mixers. A nearby table held olives, an assortment of cheeses, and several bags of crackers and chips.
I stepped into one of the bathrooms to freshen my lipstick and realized that somewhere along the way I’d lost an earring, a trio of red-and-white enameled hoops that matched my dress. I put the remaining one in my purse and hoped that its mate had fallen off in Chelsea Ann’s car and not into the Cape Fear River.
When I emerged from the bathroom, the aspirin had finally done their job and I let Chuck Teach pour me a glass of ginger ale as I was deluged with questions.
I told them everything I knew, again leaving out the reason I’d been hanging over the railing. After the usual exclamations and head shaking, someone immediately wondered who would be appointed to fill his seat.
“Too bad Bill Hasselberger’s not still living in that district,” said Steve Shaber, one of our hosts.
Julian Cannell, who was sharing the suite, shrugged. “Maybe he’ll move back now.”
“I doubt it,” said Jay Corpening, the local chief judge, as he offered me an open bag of pretzels. “I think he’s happy where he is right now. He argued a civil case in front of me last week. Took it on contingency and convinced the jury to give his client everything she was asking for. Which is not to say he won’t run for the bench down here.”
“Jeffreys’s death is sure gonna make life easier for Tom Henshaw,” Chuck Teach said.
I shot him a raised eyebrow.
“He’s filling out Judge Dunlap’s term,” he explained, referring to an elderly colleague who had abruptly decided to retire to an ashram out in the mountains. “You’ll probably meet him at the reception tomorrow night.”
I sipped my ginger ale and told him that I didn’t understand. “I thought Dunlap’s term expired this fall. What’s that got to do with Jeffreys? He’s not due to run for another two years.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting that Jeffreys wanted to run for superior court in two years,” Steve said. “Dunlap’s seat would give him a safe position for that race.”
Enlightenment dawned. In North Carolina, you can’t run for two offices in the same election, but if you hold a seat that’s not up for election, you can go ahead and run for a different judicial position, yet still keep your own seat on the bench if you lose.
Devious.
“Would he have won?”
Chuck shrugged and Steve said, “Tom’s doing a good job, but Pete had better name recognition in that district and he’s raised a hell of a lot more money. Your average voter doesn’t keep up with local judicial races. You know that. They might not’ve voted for him if they’d known he had ulterior motives, but Tom Henshaw wouldn’t have had the money to get that word out.”
“Was Henshaw at Jonah’s tonight?” I asked.
Steve frowned. “I didn’t see him there. You thinking he took out Jeffreys?”
“Somebody did,” I said. “I doubt if it was a stranger killing.”
That sobered the mood for a few minutes, and I could almost see them running a mental eye across the twenty or more familiar faces at the restaurant tonight, trying to think which one might have had a grudge against Pete Jeffreys serious enough to risk killing him. Human nature being what it is, though, the discussion soon turned to speculation about Jeffreys’s possible successors and from there, conversation among those still in the suite returned to the normal mix of politics, recent rulings from the appellate court, and new acts of the state legislature that would affect our own rulings.
Chuck and Julian backed a couple of state representatives who were up for election into a corner of the room. Tweedledee and Tweedledum wore pastel seersucker suits, one pale green, the other a light, almost white, pink. I don’t care how hot and muggy our summers can be, it takes a lot of confidence in your own manhood to wear a pink seersucker suit. That’s probably why he was drinking his beer from the bottle.
District court judges are warned not to lobby members of the general assembly, but we’re allowed to “educate and inform” and I had no doubt that those two representatives were getting a raft of informed statistics about how badly we need more judges to help with our caseloads. I’m pretty sure they were also being educated about the widening gap between superior court salaries and ours. That’s the price you pay if you want to press the judicial flesh.
And don’t think they don’t. Every election, judges get asked, “Hey, who should I vote for in this race?” Even though we can’t officially endorse anyone, candidates know that our words can influence a bunch of voters.
Beth Keever, chief judge in Cumberland County, was deep in a discussion with some others about how best to shelter the children of high-conflict divorces and how to protect domestic violence victims from their batterers when exchanging children. Beth waved her diet soda to make a point as she gave facts and figures about the feasibility and logistics of visitation centers. It’s an ongoing discussion—a good idea that probably won’t get funded.
