Sand Sharks

Ouellette looked surprised and pleased. “Bill Hasselberger? You know Bill?”

I nodded. “He and a cousin of mine were at Jonah’s the other night. Or rather, on the porch of the restaurant next door to Jonah’s.”

“What’s he doing now, do you know? I’ve lost track of him since he left the bench.”

“He’s in private practice down here. Has a house in Wilmington.”

“Bless his heart. It really all came down on him, didn’t it? Losing his election, losing his wife. But I didn’t know that little boy was his godson.”

“I don’t think he talks about it much. But what about the other cases Jeffreys mishandled?” I asked. “You’re from the Triad area. Anybody here have a personal involvement with, say, the carjacker or the DWI cases that got dismissed?”

She gave me an amused smile. “Have you traded your robe for a detective’s badge?”

“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “Just terminally curious as to why someone killed him down here rather than in Greensboro.”

Her smile turned serious. “You honestly think it was one of us?”

“Not really.” I hesitated. Detective Edwards hadn’t told me not to mention the waiter, and if he’d told Martha Fitzhume, then it was a safe bet everyone else would soon know. “Does the name Kyle Armstrong mean anything to you?”

Ouellette shook her head. “Who’s he?”

“A waiter at Jonah’s. Owns the car that ran Fitz down.”

She frowned. “He killed Judge Jeffreys and then tried to kill Judge Fitzhume? Why?”

“I was hoping you might’ve have heard of a connection to them.”

She turned the name over again. “Kyle Armstrong? Sorry. Have you tried Joe Turner or Bill Neely?”

Both were chief judges in neighboring Triad districts. I’d actually spoken to both of them during the afternoon break and had gotten equally blank looks. But the Triad stretches from Winston to Greensboro to High Point and holds over a million people. Even though the judicial community is relatively small and gossipy, how likely was it that any judge would know another’s enemy? Especially if that enemy was a seemingly innocuous waiter with aspirations to stardom?

All sorts of fantastic scenarios scrolled through my head. Maybe there wasn’t a connection between Jeffreys and the waiter. Maybe it really was a local, someone like Hasselberger, who killed Jeffreys in the heat of the moment and then stole Armstrong’s car to run down Fitz. If the waiter was a cyclist, wouldn’t he normally leave his car parked somewhere for days on end and ride his bike back and forth to work? I myself have never actually hot- wired a car, but most of my brothers know how.

As does Allen.

Allen?

“Oh, please!” said the preacher, who was getting tired of this fruitless round and round. ??He had his children with him that night, remember?”

“Yeah, but he left early enough that he could have brought the children back here to the hotel and then returned to the parking lot,” said the pragmatist, who couldn’t leave it alone. “If Fitz saw him, Allen could’ve read the schedule at his leisure and would’ve known when Fitz would be crossing the parking lot.”

“And what’s his motive for killing Jeffreys?”

“How the hell do I know? I’m looking at opportunity right now.”

“Half of Wilmington had opportunity. Give me a motive.”

By now Roberta Ouellette had been swept into a conversation with Shelley Desvouges and Yates Dobson, who were looking at pictures of Aubrey Hamilton’s cats. I dumped my unfinished drink and decided to get out of the hotel for a while.

When I stepped out of the elevator into the hotel lobby, I saw Detective Gary Edwards standing by the touching tank that had been abandoned by the child guests now that the sun was out again.

He smiled at me and returned a sand dollar to the tank. “I was hoping I’d see you.”

“Wish I had some information for you,” I said, “but if there’s a connection between Kyle Armstrong and Pete Jeffreys, I can’t find it. Any luck locating him or his car?”

“Unfortunately.” With a grim face he told me that Kyle Armstrong was dead.

I was shocked. “What happened?”

“Looks like he loaded up all his things and was going to skip town when he ran off an exit ramp near Castle Hayne and crashed into a tree. If you and Chel—I mean, Judge Pierce—haven’t picked up on anything substantive, I doubt if we’ll ever learn why he killed the judge.”

“So that’s it? You’re closing the case?”

“As soon as we get the autopsy results and write the report.” His eyes strayed past my shoulder and his face lit up.

I turned and saw Chelsea Ann emerge from the elevator, her blonde curls shiny, fresh lipstick and eye shadow, a lowcut yellow dress with a swirly skirt. She carried my white cotton sweater over one arm.

“Hope you don’t mind if I borrow it for one more night,” she said, smiling up at Edwards. “Gary and I are going to take a dinner cruise.”