Sand Sharks (16 page)

Less than an hour after we got there, though, Martha was clearly winded and we wound up accepting a ride back to the car from
a passing golf cart. “This getting old is for the birds,” she complained as she climbed out of the cart.

Rosemary glanced at her watch and said, “Instead of having tea out somewhere, let’s go back to the hotel. Dave bought a huge
box of pastries for our breakfast this morning and we barely put a dent in them. We can sit on the balcony and put our feet
up. Besides, I want to show you the beautiful roses he brought me.”

Martha laughed. “No diamond earrings? No pearls? That man’s got a lot to learn about getting out of the doghouse.”

“Well,” said Rosemary, trying to look modest. “He did say something about a new car.”

At the hotel, we trailed Rosemary down the hall to the room she now shared with Dave. She waited for us at the door, key card
in hand, and when we had caught up with her, she swiped the card and pushed open the door.

From within came the sound of a bubbling Jacuzzi, a squeal of panic, frantic splashing, and Dave’s “What the hell—?”

Rosemary stepped inside, then stopped short. The entryway and the sliding closet doors were faced with mirrors and the Jacuzzi
sat in a mirrored alcove just beyond. Martha Fitzhume was in front of me, but reflected in the mirror were multiple images
of a head of bright red hair as it disappeared beneath the soap bubbles. Dave was chest-deep in bubbles and his face was almost
the same shade of red.

“You bastard!” Rosemary wailed. “I do
not
believe this!”

Unable to hold her breath any longer, Jenna the wannabe SBI agent surfaced long enough to see the shock on our faces and immediately
submerged again.

Martha put her arm around Rosemary. “Come on, sugar. Unless you want us to drown ’em both for you, you don’t need to stay
here.”

As she herded us out, I couldn’t resist one backward look. Dave’s face said it all: punitive alimony, generous child support,
and at least half of everything he currently owned.

An obligation to do the impossible is null and void.

—Celsus (ca. AD 67–130)

W
e went back to Chelsea Ann’s room. Martha sent me up to hers for a bottle of bourbon while she filled the ice bucket, and
Rosemary retreated to the bathroom to get control of her tears.

“I’m so sorry, sugar,” Martha said when Rosemary emerged with red-rimmed eyes. “Y’all looked so happy yesterday morning out
there on his balcony. I can’t think why in the world he’d mess around with that idiot child when he has a beautiful smart
wife like you. And right when you’d taken him back.”

“Oh, come on, Martha,” Rosemary said, taking a deep swallow of the drink I’d handed her. “A fresh firm young body over this
forty-three-year-old wreck? You know exactly why.”

“Only because he’s a sex addict,” Chelsea Ann said loyally.

Rosemary clasped her sister’s hand. “Thanks for not saying you told me so.”

“Yeah, well, the afternoon’s still young, kid.”

Martha poured herself a drink, put her feet up, and leaned back against the pillows on one of the beds. “Make a note of the
date and time, ladies. We’ll all come to court for you. Vacuum his assets, right?”

“Right!” we chorused and clinked our glasses in solidarity.

“Want me to have that little bitch fired?” asked Martha.

Rosemary shook her head. “It’s not her fault. If I could fall for his lies, if he could make me believe he was a changed man,
what chance did that dumb kid have?”

Martha waved the bottle in my direction, but I had volunteered to drive her and Fitz to the reception later, so I passed.
Not Rosemary, though.

After an hour, she was well on her way to being thoroughly sloshed when she handed her key card to Chelsea Ann. “Would you
and Deborah mind going up and getting my things? I don’t think I can stand to see him again right now.”

We agreed, but when we got to Dave’s room, he didn’t respond to our knock. Chelsea Ann used the key card and cautiously cracked
the door. “Dave?”

No answer.

We stepped inside and almost tripped over the wet towels that were flung on the floor. The Jacuzzi had been drained, although
several long red hairs decorated the bottom. The closet doors were open, but nothing was inside except for two of Rosemary’s
dresses. No masculine toiletries in the bathroom. No sign of his clothes in the dresser, no second suitcase.

“The bastard’s checked out,” Chelsea Ann said. “Good.”

A large vase of roses had begun to drop their crimson petals on the desktop. Probably bought on sale at a grocery store. I
dumped them in the nearest wastebasket.

We carried Rosemary’s things back to Chelsea Ann’s room and Rosemary called down to the front desk to confirm what we suspected.
Yes, ma’am. Judge Emerson had checked out twenty minutes ago. Did Mrs. Emerson want to keep the room? It was paid for till
eleven the next morning.

“No, thank you,” Rosemary said.

Martha was determined to punish him every way possible. “Who’s his chief over there? Joe Turner? I shall make a point of telling
him that Dave cannot claim credit for attending this conference,” she said magisterially, as she rose to go get ready for
the evening reception.

“Could you give Fitz my regrets?” Rosemary asked plaintively. “I don’t think I feel like going out again this evening.”

“Of course, sugar,” Martha said. “Charge your room service to Dave’s tab, then you get a good night’s sleep and just think
about all that lovely alimony you’re gonna collect.”

Because I had volunteered to drive the Fitzhumes, Chelsea Ann asked if she could hitch a ride as well, and we agreed to meet
in the lobby at 6:30.

I called Dwight, who was on his way out to supper with some other deputies, then scribbled a few words on a note card so that
I could remember the sequence of the funny story I wanted to tell on Fitz at his roast tonight. Fresh lipstick and I was good
to go.

The sun was more than an hour from setting as we crossed the parking lot to my car. I had planned to pull up to the door,
but the others trailed after me. I had just pressed my remote to unlock the door and turned back to see where Martha and Fitz
were when a red car dug out from its parking spot several spaces over and hurtled toward us.

For one bewildering moment I felt as if I were back on last night’s sidewalk, watching them film the hit-and-run scene for
Port City Blues
. Same screeching tires, same noisy acceleration, same female scream, only this time I was the one screaming. The car’s right
bumper hit Fitz and tossed him in the air like a sack of potatoes. He landed against Martha, who went sprawling to the pavement,
too, her white suit suddenly splashed with blood.

Without touching the brakes, the driver careened down the drive and out onto the street that ran the length of the island,
narrowly missing the gateposts.

Even as I ran to Martha and Fitz, cell phones were flipping open all around me, their frantic owners pushing the 911 buttons.

Martha was dazed and bleeding profusely from a scrape on her cheek and another on her hand. She tried to push herself upright,
unaware that it was Fitz’s body that kept her pinned to the pavement. He was unconscious but breathing. I grabbed a roll of
paper towels and a bottle of water from the trunk of my car and we made wet pads to ease Martha’s wounds and stanch the blood.
We were afraid to move Fitz before medical help arrived but Chelsea Ann slipped off her jacket and made a cushion for Martha’s
head. Between us, we managed to keep her calm.

It seemed hours before we heard ambulance and police sirens, although another glance at my watch showed that only twelve minutes
had elapsed.

Two patrol cruisers got there first. One uniformed officer and a security guard from the hotel held back the onlookers while
a second officer began questioning us for details on the car.

All I could say was that it was an older red car. A hatch-back.

“There was something about the wheels,” Chelsea Ann said.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, remembering now. “The hubcaps were spinners.”

My nephew Reese is crazy about his truck and one of the many chrome extras he’s bought for it is a set of hubcaps that keep
spinning even after the truck stops.

An ambulance from the New Hanover Regional Medical Center swung into the parking lot and was directed over to us. The paramedics
hopped out, checked Fitz’s vital signs, and immediately put a cervical collar on his neck, then lifted him onto a stretcher.
I heard one of them mutter, “BP’s tanking and one lung’s collapsed.”

They fitted him with an oxygen mask before loading him into the ambulance—Martha, too.

Strong-willed, imperious Martha looked at me beseechingly. “Deborah?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

“Ma’am, I’ll need your statement,” said one of the officers. “You can’t leave.”

“The hell I can’t,” I told him and slammed the car door on his protests.

As the ambulance rolled down the drive, I slid my key into the ignition, pausing only when Chelsea Ann yanked open the other
door and jumped in. Flooring the gas pedal, I caught up with the ambulance and hung tight. Even after they turned the sirens
back on and sped through red lights, I sailed through with them.

“Omigawd!” Chelsea Ann shrieked when I swerved around a pickup and almost T-boned a blue convertible full of white-faced college
kids.

I saw that she had retrieved Martha’s purse. “Is her phone there?”

A moment of rummaging and she came up with it in her hand. “What’s their son’s name? Chad?”

“Sounds right,” I said.

Moments later, she had scrolled through Martha’s contact list and found the son’s number on speed dial.

Weaving in and out of the vacation traffic that clogged the island’s main two-lane street, I listened with only half an ear
as Chelsea Ann explained who she was and what had happened.

By the time she finished, we had crossed the causeway and were streaking down the four-lane highway that was the quickest
route to the hospital on 17th Street. Adrenaline was still pumping through my system when we finally turned into the appropriately
named Ambulance Drive and pulled up at the emergency entrance.

I let Chelsea Ann off to stay with Martha and went to find a parking space.

Fitz was nowhere in sight when I got back to the emergency entrance, but I was told I could go back to where Martha’s cuts
and scrapes were being treated. Either it was a slow Monday evening or the hospital was exceptionally well staffed for her
to be seen so quickly.

Happily, her injuries seemed to be superficial. The gash on her hand needed only a few butterfly bandages to close it up.
Her face would be red and bruised for several days, but she was quickly regaining her equilibrium. I hoped the nurses realized
that it was only a matter of time before her polite requests to know what was happening with Fitz turned into a full-scale
reminder of a patient’s legal rights and the rights of a spouse to be kept informed. Yet all they could tell her was that
he had been taken directly to surgery.

Their son Chad called twice during his drive up from South Carolina. He had immediately phoned his sisters, which meant that
Martha soon had one frantic daughter calling from California and another from Rome. Each clamored to know if she should catch
the next flight out. Martha was usually so decisive that this not knowing what to tell them left her impatient and frustrated;
but until he was out of the operating room, there was nothing she could do.

Friends from the conference came to sit with us in the ICU waiting room, and the judges from Fitz’s district brought pizza
and milled about to lend support. Poor Fitz got his roast in absentia as we tried to keep our spirits up by remembering funny
things he had said or done in his long career on the bench. It wasn’t a wake, but it was damn close to it. And through it
all we kept circling back to why the accident had happened and why didn’t the driver stop?

Drugs? Alcohol? Or was it that someone had suddenly recognized that Fitz was the one who gave him jail time or ruled against
him in court and impulsively decided to get even? Most defendants who come to district court wind up admitting sheepishly
that yes, they are indeed guilty of the offenses with which they’ve been charged, and if they are angry, it’s usually toward
their accusers or the police. Nevertheless, I have been threatened by an occasional belligerent, as have most judges. So far
as I know, though, those threats have seldom been carried out. All the same, it’s been known to happen in other states.

“Fitz with an enemy? Nonsense!” Martha said firmly. “If it was deliberate—and mind you, I say
if
—then he must have mistaken Fitz for someone else.”

Nevertheless, a vengeful defendant was one of several theories that kept us going round and round like blind mice hunting
for a way out of the maze.

I was almost grateful for the distraction when Detective Gary Edwards arrived shortly after seven with a Wrightsville police
officer in tow for courtesy’s sake and asked to question us. Chelsea Ann and I were the only two there who had seen it happen.

“Let me buy y’all a cup of coffee or something,” Edwards said, and the four of us went down to the hospital cafeteria where
they were still serving supper. Once we were seated with coffee that wasn’t as bad as I expected, Edwards tore open a packet
of sugar, emptied it into his mug, and told us that one of the doormen had watched the whole thing. “He says it looked like
the driver was deliberately aiming for the Fitzhumes. What was your impression?”

“Well, there was certainly enough room for him to have missed them if it wasn’t accidental,” I said, and Chelsea Ann agreed.

“He didn’t slow down at all. In fact, I think he was still accelerating. I feel like kicking myself though.”

“Why?” Edwards asked. “You couldn’t have stopped him.”