information sheets. “I wish we could help, but with so many people in and out, unless he came over and asked a specific question, he’d’ve had to be wearing a hot pink tutu for us to notice him. Do hope they catch him though.”
Judge Knott handed him back the picture with a rueful smile. “I was so sure this was how he knew.”
“It’s still a logical premise,” Edwards assured her.
“Is there anything else I can do for you right now?”
“Well, it’d be helpful if you could refresh my memory and point out the Beechers and Judge Feinstein.”
“I think that’s Judge Beecher at the end of the hall,” she said and guided him through the judges who were gathering for the afternoon session.
As he trailed along behind her, he found himself thinking that Dwight Byrant was probably a lucky guy with this sexy, down-to-earth woman for a wife. Well liked by her peers, too, if one could judge by the warmth of the smiles that greeted her as they passed.
She paused a step away from a threesome who seemed to be one-upping each other on how to get delinquent dads to pay their child support.
“—and I told him I didn’t care how he paid his arrears, but he was going to be doing community service eight hours a day for no pay till they were. Two days of picking up trash along the highway and he found the money.”
“Yeah, I tell ’em, ‘Hey, I don’t have a problem.
She smiled. “I always want to talk to you, Chuck, except that right now I want to meet Judge Beecher.”
Now that she had identified him, Edwards remembered that he was the one who couldn’t put many names on the diagram of Jonah’s porch tables. A middle-aged white man with a shock of graying black hair and polished rimless glasses, Beecher took the hand she offered him with a ready-to-be-amused look on his face.
“I’m Deborah Knott, District Eleven-C,” she said. “Welcome to the bench. How’re you liking the view?”
He smiled. “A little scary. Sure is different, isn’t it?”
“If you hold that thought, you’ll do fine. You remember Detective Edwards, don’t you?”
He nodded and Chuck Teach turned with a hopeful look. “Any news for us, Detective?”
“Soon, we hope,” he said, deliberately vague. “Wonder if I could speak to you a minute, Judge Beecher.”
As they moved off to one side, Judge Knott said she would try to find Feinstein for him.
“Have you and Judge Fitzhume met yet?” he asked.
Puzzled, Beecher shook his head. “No. I heard about his accident, of course. You know if he’s gonna be all right?”
“Too soon to say.”
“Damn shame.”
“He was at Jonah’s Saturday night.”
“That’s what they tell me, but he must have been a few tables away.”
“You didn’t see him in the restroom or outside it around nine-thirty that night?”
“No, once we got to the restaurant, I didn’t leave the table till we were all ready to leave.”
“What about your wife?”
“She went to the ladies’ room around eight.” He looked at Edwards sharply through those shiny glasses. “You gonna tell me what this is about?”
“Just tying up some loose ends, sir. He seems to have been the last one to definitely see Judge Jeffreys as he was leaving the men’s room and we were hoping that you could add to that.”
“What time was that?”
“Around nine-thirty.”
“Then I can’t help you there, Detective. My wife wasn’t feeling well and we left shortly before nine.”
“What about your waiter?”
“What about her?”
“Your waiter was a woman?”
Beecher nodded.
So much for that line of inquiry, Edwards thought as Beecher rejoined the others. He realized that he was going to have to go back to the restaurant and pinpoint precisely which tables Kyle Armstrong had served if he was going to have any luck linking the guy to Jeffreys.
Behind him, a voice said, “Detective Edwards? James Feinstein. Judge Knott said you wanted to speak to me?”
Again it was someone he had spoken to on Sunday and asked for his help on the seating diagrams. A wiry black man, mid-forties, with a long thin face and keen brown eyes set deep in their sockets. He wore a blue golf shirt tucked into khaki pants with creases so sharp he could have peeled an apple with them. Edwards remembered his first assessment of the man: someone who did not like to waste time and who did not easily suffer fools, a judge who knew the law inside out and probably would not have much sympathy for slackers who showed up in his
