Sand Sharks

While the ice melted in our glasses and the occasional judge wandered by, Chelsea Ann regaled me with incidents from the show, its legal courtroom goofs, and gossip about Jill Mercer and Stone Hamilton.

“He’s real eye candy,” she said. “I’m going to be so disappointed if he turns out to be gay.”

“Why don’t you come along with me and check him out for yourself?” I said.

Her green eyes lit up like sparklers. “Really? It would be all right?”

“I don’t see why not. That Stackhouse guy said he wanted some feedback from a real judge. This way he’d be getting a twofer and you can stop me from putting my foot in my mouth.”

“Like that’s possible,” she said with a laugh.

We agreed to meet in the lobby later that evening and maybe get supper somewhere on the drive over.

*   *   *

When the elevator stopped at my floor, Martha Fitzhume was waiting for the doors to open.

“Oh, good!” she said. “I was on my way up to the party suite for a drink and I hate drinking by myself.”

“Where’s Fitz?” I asked, allowing myself to be dragooned.

“Having a nap. Bless his heart, he wore himself out in the pool after lunch. His retirement’s not coming a day too soon for either of us. He just doesn’t have the stamina he used to have, Deborah, and I want him to myself while we’re both still healthy enough to travel and enjoy each other.”

On the sixth floor, the door to 628 was on the latch, and talk and laughter met us as we neared the suite. Martha knew everyone, of course, and I had met most of them. The one totally unfamiliar face belonged to Tom Henshaw. A barrel-shaped man in his late forties, he was completely bald in front and on top, but thick brown hair covered the sides and back of his head. I had been told that he was normally a shy, quiet man, but this afternoon he was downright gregarious.

It’s not that he was celebrating the death of the man who had challenged him for his recently acquired seat on the bench, but neither was he in mourning. He greeted me so warmly that I almost expected him to hug me and thank me for finding Pete Jeffreys’s body, as if I’d somehow been responsible for his suddenly safe seat. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a good thing he hadn’t been at Jonah’s last night. Otherwise, he’d be near the top of my list of suspects.

All the same, looking around the room reminded me that I didn’t actually have a list of suspects. Several of my colleagues had been at Jonah’s, yet I couldn’t visualize any of them as a killer. Yeah, yeah, given the right provocation, I’m sure a lot of people could kill in the heat of the moment, with or without true intent. Look how close I’d come to fatally stabbing Allen. A few centimeters in either direction and I could be sitting in prison right now.

But to walk the length of the parking lot? To come up behind someone and take him unawares? That’s malice aforethought. Deliberate intent.

“Surely none of these laughing, talking, pleasant faces could conceal a hatred that intense? ” said the kind-hearted preacher.

“Oh, please,” said the pragmatist.

Martha fixed us each a vodka collins, I snared a bowl of nuts, and we went out onto the large balcony that wrapped around the corner of the suite. Two others were there before us, Judge Lillian Jordan and a younger man who was sworn in last year. There were only three chairs at the round white plastic table and he jumped up immediately, insisting that we take his.

Lillian smiled as we watched him bolt back into the air-conditioned room. “Thanks for rescuing us,” she said. “We were boring each other to death, but he was too polite to think of a good excuse to leave and—”

“—And you were too kind-hearted to tell him to push off,” Martha said, handing me my drink.

Lillian is the judge I hope I grow up to be. She’s maybe fifteen years older, but doesn’t look a day over forty. A trim figure, light brown shoulder-length hair, a genuine interest in people, and a quick sense of humor, yet there is a gravitas about her that invokes confidence in what she says and how she rules. Some judges coast on the issues, relying on these twice-a-year conferences to keep them current on new laws and new rulings from our state supreme court. Lillian is always on top of the law and is seldom reversed. She doesn’t allow any nonsense in her courtroom, but she gets her point across quietly and firmly. Most attorneys respect her even when she rules against them.

Unfortunately she’s a committed Democrat in a Republican district and no longer bothers to run for election. Fortunately our Democratic governors keep appointing her to fill vacancies or act as an emergency judge. She had driven over from Randolph County this afternoon and was interested to hear about my finding Pete Jeffreys’s body.

“Only if you feel like it, though,” she said, taking a single cashew from the bowl I’d brought out. “It must have been horrible and you’re probably tired of telling it.”

“That’s okay,” I said and gave her the condensed version.

“As close as you are to the Triad,” I said, “did you hear about any of the allegations against him?”

She nodded without elaborating and I wondered if she had spoken to the ethics committee.

Martha was more willing to talk about his flawed approach to the law and I finally learned that she had found him detestable even before he came to the bench. “It wasn’t proved, but I’m pretty sure he bribed someone at a Burlington lab to give a phony result on the blood test. My cousin’s daughter went through hell before she could prove Jeffreys’s client was the father of her son.”

My head came up on that one. “A Burlington lab?” I couldn’t quite remember the name. “Jane- something?”

“Jamerson Labs. You heard about that?”

“Heard about it? It came unraveled in my courtroom. I didn’t know Pete Jeffreys was involved, though.”