“Sue said it could be your something blue,” Aunt Zell had told me.
Mother had loved Dwight and I would never stop wishing she could have known that we would wind up together. That last summer, when she was telling me all her secrets, I had asked how she had come to marry Daddy.
“It was his fiddle,” she said. “He played himself right into my heart.” Then she clutched my hand and said, “Oh Deborah, honey. Try to marry a man who can make you laugh.” She paused and looked at me thoughtfully. “I wonder if you’ve met him yet?”
Well, of course, I thought I had, but that little romance went bust before the leaves turned. Dwight was in the Army back then, stationed overseas when Mother died, and nowhere on my radar.
I brushed my hair, dabbed moisturizer on my face, then applied lipstick and mascara with a light hand. My skirt had such deep pockets that I could do without a purse. Keys (car and room), lipstick, a thin wallet, and I was ready to roll.
CHAPTER
15
The door to Room 628 was once again on the latch, but the voices and laughter were more subdued. Everyone using their indoor voices. I wondered if Allen or his ex-wife had come down and asked for quiet during the children’s naps. Like me, some twenty-five or thirty people were skipping lunch for a handful of nuts, chips, the fruit tray, and a soft drink. A few were nursing beers or a glass of wine, but the hard stuff sat unopened on the sideboard.
Hard politics had been abandoned, too. I had spotted Roberta Ouellette, the judge from Jeffreys’s district, out on the balcony in conversation with Addie Rawls from District 11 and some man who had his back to the door, so I circled past various animated groups, exchanging smiles and handshakes as I went. The snatches of conversations I overheard seemed to be about vacation plans, children and their college applications, the speeding ticket one judge had gotten while passing through the district of his mortal enemy, and an impassioned defense of her beloved Cleveland Indians by Shelly Holt, who will quit the bench in a heartbeat and run for baseball commissioner if it ever becomes an elective position.
Becky Blackmore, also from Wilmington, was using a ballpoint pen on Mark Galloway’s hand to illustrate the symbols certain gang members tattoo on their knuckles while Joe Setzer and Hank Willis wished him luck in washing them off before he had to pass sentence on a Crip or Blood.
Just as I was about walk through the open French doors, I recognized the other judge who was talking to Roberta.
Last spring, a year ago, while still reeling from my breakup with the game warden, I was specialed into Asheboro to adjudicate the equitable distribution of marital property between two high-profile couples, a pair of prominent attorneys and two well-connected potters from nearby Sea-grove. * I was invited to the local bar association dinner and it was there that I met Will Blackstone, a newly appointed judge. No relation to the famous jurist of the eighteenth century, he quickly told me. We were both at loose ends and when he asked me to dinner a few nights later and followed it up with an offer to show me his pottery collection, I accepted even though I figured that showing me his pottery would be the Seagrove equivalent of showing me his etchings.
Three minutes after he left to slip into something more comfortable, he was back wearing nothing but his brand-new judicial robe and a bronze-colored condom. I told him I’d get my own robe from my car and we could do the kinky judge-on-judge scenario he had planned. While he mixed us another round of drinks, I hopped in my car and drove away as fast as I could. I do have some judicial standards, thank you very much, and I knew I’d never be able to wear that robe again had I gone along with that session.
I decided that I could catch Roberta later. No way did I want to make small talk with Will Blackstone.
Steve Shaber was restocking the ice buckets when I reached the door. “Hey, didn’t you just get here?” he asked. “Was it something I said?”
“Something you didn’t say,” I told him. “Like where you and Judge Cannell stashed the caviar and smoked salmon.”
He gave a look of mock indignation. “You mean you didn’t see them right beside the goose-liver pate and the Dom Perignon?”
“Well, I did see the champagne, but those plastic flutes are so tacky I couldn’t bring myself to pour any.”
He laughed and told me to come back later. “We’ll have room service send up a case of Baccarat crystal just for you.”
Down in the lobby I had paused to watch some children play with the creatures in the touching tank when Chelsea Ann, Rosemary, and Dave strolled in.
“Oh, good!” said Rosemary. “We were going to come find you. See if you wanted to come to Airlie Gardens with us.”
“Airlie Gardens?” asked Martha Fitzhume, who was seated in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs. “May I come, too? I’ve never visited it and Fitz is meeting with the other chief judges this afternoon, so it would be a good opportunity. Unless five of us are too many for one car?”
“Not a bit,” said Rosemary. “Dave’s already begged off. Gardens always bore him.” Her husband gave a what- can-I-tell-you? shrug.
“There’s a tearoom I’ve been wanting to try, as well,” Rosemary said. “So why don’t we do the garden, get tea, and then plan to be back here when the chiefs’ meeting breaks up around six?” She glanced at her watch. “That’ll give us almost three hours. You don’t mind, do you, darling?”
“Not a bit, honey.” He leaned in to give her a husbandly peck on the cheek. “Y’all have fun and don’t worry about me. I’ll find something to do.”
Airlie Gardens is one of Wilmington’s jewels. Like many public gardens, this one started as the hobby and playpretty of a rich woman. Originally part of a huge estate, the gardens now cover sixty-seven acres, ten of them
