outside and in the bar). In his neat white shirt, black slacks, and preppie haircut, he reminded me of my nephew Stevie, who just graduated from Carolina: the same clean-cut wholesomeness of a kid who knows what he wants to do with his life.
“You at the university here?” I asked.
“No. UNC–Greensboro.”
Before I completely morphed into Martha Fitzhume and asked if he really did hope to manage a hotel someday, he said, “The guy who got killed? They said he was one of the judges here for dinner. You a judge, too?”
I admitted that I was.
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“Not really.”
“I must have seated him, but Kyle had that table and even he can’t remember which one he was. Not that y’all all look alike,” he assured me with a half smile.
“You remember a bearded man last night with a little girl and boy?”
“Vaguely. Why? Was that him?”
“No, but while you were getting the children seated, he came over to speak to their father.”
“Really?”
As he laid out a row of five unmatched earrings on his reservation book, I could almost see him running that part of the evening through his memory.
“Yeah, I do sort of remember him now. You think I ought to call those detectives and tell them?”
“Tell them what?” asked a familiar voice behind me.
Detective Gary Edwards.
Hank gave him a puzzled look and I quickly realized that if Edwards had been at the hotel through lunchtime, he could not have been one of the detectives here this morning. I performed the introductions and added, “Hank just realized that he did see Judge Jeffreys last night.”
“He came up to the table while I was getting the customer’s children seated, but I can’t say that I paid him any attention after that.” He turned and called to the waiter who stood staring out at the river, probably imagining himself on the prow of a ship while cameras rolled in for a close-up. “Hey, Kyle! Last night?”
“Oh, God, not more about that guy none of us can remember,” the reed-thin young man grumbled as he reluctantly tore himself away from the window.
I realized he must have been looking at his own reflection in the glass.
When Hank described his encounter with Jeffreys at Allen’s table—not that either of them knew Allen Stancil by name, but the children were memorable—Kyle admitted that yeah, now that Hank mentioned it, he
Dumpy little woman?
Ouch!
“That would be Judge Blankenthorpe,” I reminded Edwards. “Did you get to ask her yet why she didn’t label that table?”
“She thought we only wanted a seating chart for the judges. Or so she says. I saw you talking to people in the hotel dining room. Learn anything?”
“Nothing you probably don’t already know,” I told him. “Fitz—Judge Fitzhume? He seems to have been the last one of our group to see Jeffreys. He was coming out of the restroom as Jeffreys was going in and he said the restroom was otherwise empty and nobody he knew was anywhere around.”
The phone rang and as Hank answered, I said, “Are you by any chance following me?”
Edwards smiled and shook his head. “Naw. I came down to go over the interviews my squad did here this morning. Sometimes if you go back a second time right away, somebody will have remembered something. Just like you jiggled the memory of these two. Now that they know who he was, maybe they’ll remember something useful.”
Kyle moved off to stare at his reflection again with a moody frown.
“Happy hunting,” I told Edwards and with a nod to Hank, who was explaining to the caller that shrimp and grits would probably be back on the menu in the fall, I decided to go hunting myself for some new red earrings since mine seemed to be lost for good.
The Cotton Exchange, as its name implies, was once an export company that shipped that Southern commodity all over the world from the port of Wilmington. The buildings that grew up around it have housed a milling company, a granary, a printing company, a saloon, and heaven only knows what else over the last hundred years. Today the complex is a collection of small restaurants, boutiques, and some of my favorite specialty shops.
I headed first to Caravan Beads, a do-it-yourself shop that sells all the findings for putting together your own one-ofa-kind jewelry, and spent a relaxing half-hour creating a pair of red earrings from tiny featherweight enameled blocks.
“Balsa wood?” I asked the helpful clerk.
She shook her head. “Papier mache.”
Cool!
Down some steps and around a corner, a shop window displayed several vivid posters depicting marine life. One was a chart of colorful fishes, another showed seashells to be found in North Carolina waters. Yet another
