Sand Sharks

“Okay. Espresso and a piece of pecan pie.”

After the waitress left us, Reid said, “Thanks for not telling that detective about Bill’s godson.”

“No need to thank me. I would have had to if it wasn’t pretty clear that our waiter was the one who killed Jeffreys.”

“Yeah, well, I knew Bill couldn’t kill anybody and once they find that guy—”

“Didn’t you hear?” I asked.

“Hear what?”

“He crashed off I-40 up near Castle Hayne in the rain last night and killed himself.”

“No kidding!”

I told him as much as I knew from Detective Edwards’s brief account. “But they still don’t know why he killed Pete Jeffreys, not that I think that’s going to keep them awake at night. There doesn’t seem to be any link between them. Jeffreys was from the Triad and evidently Armstrong was never further east in the state than Kinston. Any chance your friend Bill knows?”

“I doubt it.”

The pie and coffees came. The pie had been warmed and topped with a scoop of vanilla maple ice cream. The smell of that nutty custard mingled with vanilla made my mouth water. Reid offered me a bite—“It’s as good as Aunt Zell’s”—but I’d eaten hushpuppies and fried crabs that night and I managed to resist.

As I sipped my coffee and the pianist inside segued from “Once Upon a Summertime” to a bluesy “Moon River,” Reid talked about his long friendship with Hasselberger, Hasselberger’s decency, his sense of humor.

“Is he good with his hands?” I asked casually.

“How do you mean?”

“You know. Can he build shelves? Rewire a lamp? Tune his car?”

Reid laughed. “I think he may know how to top off the windshield washer fluid, but I wouldn’t count on it. He’s like me. His favorite tools are a phone and the yellow pages.”

I smiled. Reid’s ineptitude with anything mechanical is legendary in our family. My brothers, who amongst them will tackle anything from a toaster to a hay baler, just shake their heads.

So there went the nebulous theory that Hasselberger might have hot-wired Armstrong’s Geo and gone gunning for Fitz. Even if the police were satisfied that Armstrong had acted alone, the final nail in that particular coffin came when Reid mentioned some mutual friends he and Hasselberger had gone out to supper with down in Sunset Beach last night before driving back to Wilmington together long after 6:30.

As we walked back down the Riverwalk, we saw the cruise boat drifting up toward us and stopped to watch.

“Dotty and I did that once,” he sighed, the moonlight making him nostalgic. “Dinner and dancing on the river.”

He hadn’t had anything to drink, so I didn’t have to worry about him getting maudlin. Dotty was remarried now, but Reid would always mourn the end of their marriage even though it was his endless catting around that finally drove her to leave him.

We reached the parking lot and he pulled out his keys and jingled them in his hand. “So when’s your conference end?”

“Thursday noon,” I said.

“See you on Friday then?”

“Probably.”

Reid’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a younger brother, so I gave him a hug and told him to drive carefully.

The cruise ship passed and nosed into a dock further up the Riverwalk. I briefly considered circling around back to catch Edwards and Chelsea Ann as they came down the gangplank, but why interrupt their evening with something that probably had no significance?

I drove back to the SandCastle, parked the car, and went inside. Too restless to go straight to my room, yet not really in the mood for the shop talk that was bound to be going on up in 628, I went into the nearly deserted bar, ordered a nightcap, and took it outside to the terrace. Except for a couple on the far end, I had the place to myself. The moon was so huge and bright that I could have read a newspaper. Instead I took a sip of my icy drink and called Dwight. He had been back in his room almost an hour, he said, and had almost fallen asleep watching a baseball game.

“How’s your judge friend?” he asked. “Did they catch the driver that hit him?”

Once again, I found myself describing how Armstrong had died.

“Wraps it up nice and tidy, doesn’t it?” he said drowsily.

“Except that no one knows why he killed Judge Jeffreys.”

“Can’t have everything.”

I heard him yawn and said, “Go to sleep, darling.”

“Yeah, I’m a little beat. There’s one more session tomorrow morning. A breakfast meeting, then I’ll pick up Cal and head home. I’ll have to give this phone back to Sandy, so it’ll be tomorrow evening before I can call you.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I just wish I was going to be there when you get home. I’ve missed you.”