“I do know the difference,” she said crisply, but did not argue the point. “Why are you here, Detective? And why is that rather large officer here, too? Is he guarding Fitz?”
“It’s just standard procedure, ma’am.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “Credit me with a few brains.”
Chad Fitzhume grinned and shook his head.
Edwards smiled, too. He’d always had a weak spot for opinionated old women who spoke their minds. “You’re right, ma’am. We may be closing in on the reason why your husband was run down.”
“Reason can have nothing to do with it,” she said tartly. “Explain.”
Trying to match her straightforwardness, Edwards repeated his conversation with Judge Knott less than an hour ago.
She frowned, reliving the lunch in her mind, then nodded. “Deborah’s right. That’s exactly what Fitz said, and I should have picked up on it myself. I wish I could say that we discussed it again later, but we didn’t.”
Edwards drew a list of names from an inner pocket of his tan sports jacket. “I questioned everyone from the conference who was in the restaurant that night. Fourteen judges, five attorneys, and assorted spouses or friends. Twenty-seven names in all. I’d like you to go over the list and mark anybody you think your husband would not have known if he saw him in the restroom.”
“Men only, I suppose?”
“No, because maybe it was a woman he saw as he came out.”
She put on a pair of reading glasses and asked for a pen, then very carefully went down the list, commenting as the pen point touched and then marked through names. In the end there were three names left: one wife, one attorney, and two male judges.
Judge and Mrs. Albert Beecher, Judge James Feinstein, and Bill Hasselberger.
Hasselberger he remembered because he was an attorney, not a judge, but the other three had not stood out from the group when he questioned them earlier.
“These are the ones I don’t know, at least not by name,” said Mrs. Fitzhume. “Fitz might, though. Albert Beecher was appointed to the bench last month and we haven’t met him or his wife. Some of the others on the list I know only by sight, but if I could recognize them on the street, then they should have looked familiar to him, don’t you think? Or are you just clutching at straws?”
Before he could answer, his phone buzzed and he excused himself to walk a few steps away. “Edwards here.”
“You were right,” said the voice in his ear. “It’s South Carolina. Want to hear something funny? It’s a ‘Share the Road’ plate.”
“Too bad the judge wasn’t riding a bicycle,” Edwards said grimly.
“I got enough numbers to cross-match it to a Sidney Kyle Armstrong of Myrtle Beach, age twenty-six. I ran the name through our records here and there’s a speeding violation from last December that has a local address on it and South Carolina’s going to E us the picture from his driver’s license.”
Edwards jotted down the address that had been written on the speeding ticket, a building off Market Street. The name Armstrong sounded familiar, but he could not put a face to it. Turning back to the Fitzhumes, he asked, “Does the name Sidney Armstrong mean anything to you?”
Mother and son both shook their heads.
“You sure? Sidney Kyle Armstrong? Twenty-six years old?”
“Kyle?” said Martha Fitzhume. “One of the waiters at Jonah’s was named Kyle. He’s an actor, but he’s only eighteen or nineteen and I didn’t get his last name.”
Edwards riffled through his notes and there it was. He had interviewed the slender young man at the restaurant on Sunday. Like Mrs. Fitzhume, he had pegged the guy as being in his late teens. Judge Knott was there to look for a lost earring, and after denying it emphatically, this Kyle kid finally admitted seeing Jeffreys when Judge Knott and the headwaiter practically drew him a picture.
“Would your husband have noticed him?” he asked, knowing that most people never really look at a waiter’s face.
“Yes, of course. He waited on our table.”
“What you have to understand, Detective Edwards,” said Chad Fitzhume, “is that if a waiter says, ‘Hi, my name’s Kyle and I’ll be your server,’ she’ll introduce herself and then find out how long he’s been working there, his favorite dish on the menu, the name of his first puppy, and what he’s doing with his life.”
“My son exaggerates, Detective Edwards, but Kyle did tell us about his acting career. Surely he wasn’t the driver of that car?”
“The car’s registered to him,” Edwards said and rose to leave.
“I trust you will keep me informed,” she said, and gestured to the uniformed officer, who obediently came over to her. “I’m Martha Fitzhume, Officer. And you are?”
Edwards suppressed a grin as he stepped into the elevator and turned his thoughts back to Judge Fitzhume’s unfinished words.
“I didn’t see anyone I knew, but—” Fitzhume had said.
“
Is that how he would have ended that sentence had he not been interrupted?
It occurred to Edwards that Kyle Armstrong had been standing nearby when Deborah Knott said something about Fitzhume being the last to see him as they passed in the doorway of the restroom. The very next afternoon,
