Sand Sharks
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Margaret Maron
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England: Volumes I–IV
by Sir William Blackstone, originally published 1765–1769 (The Avalon Project, Yale Law School).
Roman Civilization: Volume II
by Naphtali Lewis & Meyer Reinhold © 1955 Columbia University Press
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats, 1893.
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ISBN: 978-0-446-55142-7
Contents
Deborah Knott novels:
SAND SHARKS
DEATH’S HALF ACRE
HARD ROW
WINTER’S CHILD
RITUALS OF THE SEASON
HIGH COUNTRY FALL
SLOW DOLLAR
UNCOMMON CLAY
STORM TRACK
HOME FIRES
KILLER MARKET
UP JUMPS THE DEVIL
SHOOTING AT LOONS
SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT
BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER
Sigrid Harald novels:
FUGITIVE COLORS
PAST IMPERFECT
CORPUS CHRISTMAS
BABY DOLL GAMES
THE RIGHT JACK
DEATH IN BLUE FOLDERS
DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY
ONE COFFEE WITH
Non-series:
LAST LESSONS OF SUMMER
BLOODY KIN
SUITABLE FOR HANGING
SHOVELING SMOKE
To North Carolina,
which has given me more than I can ever repay.
Here’s to the land of the long leaf pine,
The summer land where the sun doth shine,
Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great,
Here’s to “down home,” the Old North State!
—Official North Carolina Toast
My thanks to all the members of the North Carolina Association of District Court Judges, who over the years have let me sit
in on their conferences, shared their stories of humor and heartbreak, and answered my endless questions. I could not have
written these books without their generous help.
1
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law.… If the wife be injured in her person or her property, she can bring
no action for redress without her husband’s concurrence.
—Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780)
I
should never have suggested perfume. If I’d stuck to something plain vanilla like a lacy bed jacket or some pretty note cards
or even a box of assorted chocolates, it would have been fine. But no. I had to stop at a cosmetics counter in Crabtree Mall
for a tube of my favorite moisturizer and say to Cal, “What about that?”
“That” was a small white porcelain bottle shaped like a single perfect gardenia.
My stepson shrugged and said, “Okay,” plainly bored with this shopping trip. He and Dwight were going to drive up to Virginia
the next morning. Dwight hoped to finish cleaning out the house Cal had inherited from his mother and to put it on the market,
before driving on up to Charlottesville to teach a couple of sessions at a law-enforcement training seminar. Although Cal
would be staying with a friend while Dwight was gone, he would certainly be seeing his grandmother during the visit. Yet he
was no more enthusiastic about buying her a gift than he had been for the new jeans and shirts and sneakers he so desperately
needed.
Cal turned nine last month and he’s going to be as tall as his dad. A recent growth spurt now puts him almost shoulder-high
to me, which means that he’s outgrown almost every article of clothing he owns except for socks and the oversized Carolina
Hurricanes T-shirt he was wearing—a shirt I have to wash by hand so as not to fade the team signatures on the right shoulder.
“Is that a gardenia scent?” I asked the clerk behind the counter.
“Sure is!” she chirped, and spritzed the back of my hand with a sample bottle.
“What do you think?” I asked Cal, holding my hand under his nose.
He took one sniff and went pale beneath his freckles. His brown eyes filled with sudden tears and he slapped my hand away,
then bolted from the store and out into the mall.
Belatedly I remembered that smells can be even more evocative than music and I realized that I had thoughtlessly brought back
all the grief and terror he had felt when Jonna died. He hadn’t reacted at all to the first few blooms of the season that
I had cut for our dining table last week, had even given them a cursory sniff, their sweet aroma diffused by cooking odors.
But here on my hand? In concentrated strength just when the return to Virginia had to be on his mind?
Six months of healing ripped away in a moment by the exaggerated smell of gardenias that must surely evoke the circumstances
surrounding his mother’s death.
I took some of the clerk’s wipes and scrubbed the back of my hand till it was almost raw and every trace of the gardenia perfume
was gone, then I grabbed our shopping bags and hurried out into the mall to find Cal.
I was halfway down the long space and beginning to panic before I finally spotted his red Hurricanes shirt. He was scrunched
down beneath an overgrown ficus plant outside a video store. His back was against the wall, his shoulders slumped, and his
face was buried in his arms, atop his drawn-up knees.
I so wanted to go put my arms around him and say how sorry I was, but he usually reacts awkwardly to my hugs and kisses or
else shies away completely, and this wasn’t the time to try again. Not when I was the reason he had fallen apart. There was
a bench several feet away, so I parked the shopping bags and sat down to wait for the worst of his misery to pass.
A mall guard paused to look inquiringly at him and I caught her eye.
“It’s okay,” I murmured softly.
She grinned. “Can’t have the video game he wants, huh?”
I smiled back as normally as I could and she moved on. If only Cal’s hurt could be eased by something as simple as an electronic
game.
Eventually, he raised his head and looked around. He did not immediately see me among all the people passing back and forth
and his eyes darted apprehensively from one face to another until they met mine. Was that resentment or resignation on his
face?
Whichever, there was nothing I could do about it, no matter how much my heart ached for him, no matter how much he missed
his mother. He was stuck with me—had been stuck with me ever since Jonna was murdered back in January and he came to live
with Dwight and me, less than a month after our Christmas wedding.
I held out the bag with his new sneakers and he dutifully got up and walked over to help.
“That’s enough shopping for one day,” I said briskly. “Let’s go home.”
As soon as we were in the car, he stuck the buds of his iPod in his ears and stared out the window without speaking.
Normal behavior.
What wasn’t normal was the way he unplugged one ear after we had been driving a few minutes and looked over at me.
“Do I have to go to Shaysville? Can’t I stay with Aunt Kate while y’all are gone?”
Kate is married to Dwight’s brother Rob, and she keeps Cal during the week while Dwight and I are working. Unfortunately,
Kate and Rob and their three children were flying up to New York the next day to spend some time in the city. Kate still owns
the Manhattan apartment she shared with her late first husband and the tenant was happy to have her and her crew to come dog-sit
while he went off to Paris for a week.
When I reminded Cal of this, he went to Plan B. “Then can I go with you?”
Another time and I might have been thrilled that he would choose me instead of Dwight, but this?
“What’s going on, honey?” I asked gently. “Don’t you want to see your grandmother and your old friends?”
He sank lower in his seat and didn’t answer.
“Your dad’s going to need your help with the house, Cal.”
“No, he won’t. He’s got Uncle Will, so why does he need me? I won’t be in the way at your meeting, Deborah. Honest. I can
stay in the pool or watch television or something.”
“Is this because of your Aunt Pam?” I asked.
He turned back to the window and stared out at the setting sun without answering.
Jonna’s sister is bipolar and his last experience with her had been a terrifying ordeal. No wonder he was apprehensive about
the possibility of a repeat.
With my left hand on the steering wheel, I reached over and touched his shoulder. “You absolutely do
not
have to worry about her, honey. She’s still in the hospital and won’t be coming out anytime soon. I promise.”
I gave him a couple of miles to process my assurance, then added, “Jimmy Radcliff’s going to be really disappointed if you
stay home.”
Jimmy’s dad, Paul, is the chief of police up in Shaysville. He and Dwight are old Army buddies and Paul had promised to take
Cal and Jimmy camping on the New River while Dwight attended his conference.
Some of the tension went out of Cal’s small frame. “Okay,” he said with a nod.
“Pam’s a big part of it,” I told Dwight when we lay in bed that night, “but I think he may be dreading the house itself. It’s
going to make him remember Jonna and what his life was like before she died, so cut him a little slack if he gives you a hard
time, okay?”
He stopped nuzzling my ear long enough to murmur, “Okay,” then turned his attention back to where his hands were and what
they were doing and after that, I have to admit that I did, too.
“I’m gonna miss you,” he said later when we lay face-to-face in the darkness with our legs entwined.
“Me, too, you,” I said, kissing his chest.
“This is your first judges’ conference since we got together.”
Uh-oh.
Dwight and my brothers were inseparable as kids and I’ve known him since I was a baby. After he and Jonna split and he came
back to Colleton County to become Sheriff Bo Poole’s second in command, we would hang out together whenever we were at loose
ends and not seeing anyone. I used to cry on his shoulder about relationships that went nowhere and he would unburden his
guilt about missing Cal’s childhood and whether or not he should take Jonna back to court to amend the custody arrangements.
He was smart enough not to give details about his romantic entanglements but I always talked way too much about mine, some
of which did indeed begin with the summer conferences at the beach or end with the fall conferences up in the mountains.
“Remember that you’re a married lady now,” he growled. “Or should I ask Judge Parker to keep an eye on you for me?”
Luther Parker was the first black judge elected in our district and he takes a semi-paternal interest in me.
“You can ask,” I said, “but he’s in bed every night by nine o’clock.”
“Just see that you are, too,” he said. “Alone.”
I laughed. His tone was light, but I heard the tiniest touch of apprehension in his voice.
Nice to know your husband doesn’t take you for granted, right?
Will called the next morning to confirm the time and place to meet with Dwight. He’s three brothers up from me and makes his
living as an estate appraiser and an auctioneer. Even though he’s never had any formal training for either, he’s pretty savvy
and seems to know instinctively the value of a piece of furniture or a porcelain figurine. Occasionally he messes up on the
worth of a chest or a family portrait, “But hell,” he says, “that’s what keeps the fancy-pants dealers coming to my auctions.
They think I’m so ignorant that they’re going to get something good for pennies on the dollar. Once in a while they might
do, but most times they wind up buying what I’m selling for more than they meant to spend. It all evens out.”