“I don’t think so, Allen. Besides, there’s a police detective looking for you.”
The grin disappeared and his eyes narrowed. No doubt a reflex from the old days. “What for?”
“That judge you were talking to last night at Jonah’s.”
He made an involuntary move backward. “What about him?”
“You didn’t hear? He was murdered in the parking lot.”
“No shit! Pete Jeffreys?”
Enlightenment dawned like sunrise over a lighthouse. “Well, I’ll be damned. You
He looked at me anxiously. “Now you ain’t gonna go saying stuff like that to the police, are you? Besides, it won’t that big a bribe. In fact, it won’t even a bribe. It was more like a campaign contribution. I knowed most judges would look at my record and just because I pulled some jail time for them piddling little things I done a time or two ’fore I was full grown, they’d say Katie’s a better mama than I am a daddy even though she’s into the hard stuff and all I do’s drink a beer when I get off work. So if a little money makes a judge do the right thing by my young’uns, what’s the harm in that, darlin’?”
“Don’t call me darling,” I said, and reached for a handful of sand.
CHAPTER
10
By now it was clear that Chelsea Ann must have changed her mind about a swim and the midday sun was too blazingly hot to tempt me any longer. I put on my shirt, buttoned my skirt around my waist, shook out the towels, and walked back across the sand to the pool area, where I dumped the towels in a hamper and climbed the stairs to the open terrace. I didn’t recognize any of the people who now occupied the rocking chairs, but when I walked on into the lobby, Detective Edwards called my name.
“Talk to you a minute, Your Honor?”
“Sure,” I said, following him over to a pair of soft leather chairs on the far side of the lobby. “In fact, I was going to see if you were still here. You haven’t found the bearded man Pete Jeffreys was talking to last night, have you?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have a name for him yet.”
“Allen Stancil,” I told him. “His uncle used to be a neighbor of ours. The beard’s new, though, so I didn’t recognize him last night.”
He made a note of it on a folded yellow legal pad. “Thanks. That’ll save me having to stake out a man here and stop every guy with a beard that goes in and out. I can’t believe how many I’ve seen since you told me about him.”
“So what did you want to ask me?” I said when he had folded the pad into thirds and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket.
“Somebody said you’re married to a sheriff’s deputy over there in Colleton County. Dwight Bryant?”
“Do you know him?”
“We’ve met a couple of times. Good man. He’s not with you this week?”
I explained about the seminar in Virginia. “Want me to tell him you said hey?”
“Yes, but…” He hesitated, as if unsure quite how to phrase it. “See, I was thinking it’d be handy to have somebody on the inside of this conference. Somebody who could pick up on who might’ve had it in for Judge Jeffreys.”
“And you thought Dwight could do that?”
“Well, y’all do talk about the job, don’t you? My ex and I used to.”
I had to smile, thinking of how Dwight and I had agreed to a separation of powers before we married. He wouldn’t talk about the charges against anybody who might appear in my court; I wouldn’t ask why his department had seen fit to bring those charges, and I would keep my nose out of his business. It’s worked out rather well so far. Most of his cases wind up in superior court, and he’s seldom involved in the misdemeanors and minor felonies that wind up in mine.
As if encouraged by my smile, Edwards said, “If you’re married to a homicide detective, you have to know that small, off-the-cuff remarks can sometimes break a case, right?”
I nodded.
“I don’t suppose I could get
To be invited into a murder investigation when Dwight was always trying to keep me out of his? It was tempting.
Polishing that apple he was holding out to me, Edwards said, “Everyone I’ve talked to today either claims not to know Jeffreys except by sight or swears he’s never done anything to make himself a murder victim. That he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“
