Sand Sharks (25 page)

Chad shook his head. “C’mon, Mom. It’s not going to help Dad for you to keep skipping meals.”

I was surprised and saddened to see her this indecisive. It was so unlike Martha to dither. She stood again. “You’ll call
me if there’s any change?”

“I’ll call,” he said patiently.

“All right then. Let me just take one more look at him,” she said. “Do you want to see him, Deborah?”

It was as bad as I’d imagined. Poor Fitz had a huge bruise on the side of his pale face and there seemed to be a dozen different
tubes and wires attached to his body—drainage tubes from his surgery, an IV drip to keep him hydrated, catheter, heart monitor,
and God knows what else.

“His color’s so much better tonight,” Martha said to the nurse. “Don’t you think?”

“I do,” the nurse said kindly.

Martha walked over to him, took his hand, and in a normal tone of voice said, “Deborah’s here to see you, sweetheart. Can
you open your eyes and say hey to her?”

To my total amazement, not to mention Martha’s, Fitz’s eyelids fluttered and actually opened. He tried to speak but his words
were unintelligible. He squeezed Martha’s hand and tried again.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Martha crooned with tears in her eyes. “You’re in the hospital. You got hit by a car but you’re going
to be all right.”

The nurse who was monitoring him came over to the other side and fiddled with the dials on the equipment. “How you doing,
Judge Fitzhume?”

More slurred syllables, then his eyes closed again and his grip loosened.

“His blood pressure and pulse rate are looking better,” the nurse said. “And his heartbeat’s almost back to normal.”

Martha was more reluctant than ever to leave, but the nurse finally convinced her that Fitz needed to rest undisturbed after
his first exertion. “For all we know about comas, he could be wide awake tomorrow morning or it may take him another few weeks,
but I think the doctor will say this is encouraging.”

It was a little after seven before we got to a nearby seafood restaurant recommended by the nurse.

When we were seated and a waiter came over to bring us our menus, Martha didn’t look up while he told us that his name was
Michael and that he’d be our waiter and if there was anything special we needed—

“I’ll have a vodka collins,” she interrupted coldly. “What about you, Deborah?”

“A glass of Riesling, please.”

When he had gone away to get our drinks, Martha said, “Between Kyle the actor and Jenna the slut, I’m through making nice
to waiters. From now on, I don’t give a damn where they go to school or what they want to do when they finish growing up.
If you hear me ask this Michael one single thing other than if the soft-shelled crabs are fresh or frozen, please kick me.”

I laughed. The old Martha was back.

*   *   *

We were assured that the crabs were indeed fresh and we both ordered them. When they came, Martha dug into hers with relish.

“I guess I was hungrier than I realized,” she said sheepishly.

Fitz’s attempt to speak had her almost giddy with relief.

“I don’t mind telling you, Deborah. I’ve been really, really scared.”

“Of course you were. Who wouldn’t be?”

“I know that Fitz and I are down to the short rows—no, don’t look at me like that. Death is a fact of life, sugar. I’m not
being morbid and I don’t need you or anybody else to pat my hand and tell me that these are the best years. They’re not. The
best years were when the kids were little and there was a lifetime of those golden possibilities ahead for Fitz and me. Things
to do, places to go, young bodies and young muscles to go and do with. No arthritis, no daily pills, life stretching out endlessly
before us.” She finished her vodka collins in two swallows. “No, these sure as hell are
not
the best years. All the same, they’re
our
years and every minute is still precious. Everything ends. That’s life. But for that—that
creature
to try and kill Fitz to cover up what he’d done? I hope he’s roasting in hell.”

Michael breezed over about then. “Everything all right here?” he asked cheerily.

Martha held up her empty glass. “Another one of these, please.”

They both glanced at my wineglass. It was still half full.

“I’m driving,” I said.

When we finished eating and the bill came, Martha insisted on paying.

“Then I’ll leave the tip,” I said.

I opened my wallet to fish out some bills and a small slip of paper floated to the floor. It was the ATM receipt.

Martha saw me frown and asked, “Something wrong, sugar?”

“Not really,” I answered.

What I had remembered could wait. No point in wrecking Chelsea Ann’s evening by calling Detective Edwards in the middle of
their supper cruise, and it probably wasn’t important anyhow.

One must look… to the simple credibility of the witnesses and to the testimony in which the light of truth most probably resides.

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

A
t the hospital, I went back in with Martha on the off chance that Fitz was wide awake and I could ask him about who he’d seen
Saturday night.

He wasn’t. But his doctor had been by and had, as the nurse predicted, told Chad that he was much encouraged by the slight
improvement in Fitz’s vital signs.

Reid was there in the ICU waiting room with Chad and a couple of Fitz’s colleagues from the district who had known Chad since
he was a teenager, when his father first came on the bench.

While Martha immediately went in to see Fitz, Chad said, “I asked the doctor if there was any chance that Dad would remember
what happened to him.” A law professor at USC, he had naturally been very interested in learning that Fitz had probably been
targeted because he could have named Kyle Armstrong as the last person to see Jeffreys alive. “He won’t remember the accident
itself, of course.”

“No,” I agreed. “It all happened so fast and besides, he had his back to the car. He never saw it coming. What about earlier,
though?”

“Very iffy, according to the doctor. He might remember everything up to the moment of impact or he might not remember anything
past last month.” He gave an unhappy palms-up shrug. “Or for the last ten years for that matter, but I don’t want Mom worrying
about that possibility till he’s conscious and we can know for sure where we stand.”

I walked out of the hospital with Reid. The trial lawyers’ conference had ended that afternoon and he was on his way back
to Dobbs. It was still early, however, and he was in no particular hurry. There was no one waiting for him at the moment.

“There’s a place down on the river. Why don’t I buy you a drink before I hit the road?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”

I’m not particularly squeamish, but I admit I had a moment’s hesitation when Reid pulled into the parking lot where Pete Jeffreys
had been killed Saturday night. I did park right at the front, though, instead of following Reid to the far end under the
mulberry trees. Nor did I look for signs of police activity when we passed the spot on the riverbank where I had found the
body.

Small tables were scattered around the rear entrance to a bar a hundred feet or so further up the Riverwalk from Jonah’s.
A live jazz piano was playing inside and the mellow notes spilled out to the half dozen people who were there to enjoy the
music and the soft evening air. Small boats passed back and forth on the river and we could see the lights of an oil tanker
moored upriver across the way. The moon had not yet cleared the roofline of the buildings on our side of the river, but it
already illuminated the marshy opposite bank where dilapidated pilings marked a line of once-busy piers. Downriver, more lights
crossed the high arching bridge. A funky aroma rose from the water itself, a combination of tidal flats, mud, and decaying
vegetation, a yeasty summer smell that almost made me want to wade out and set some crab pots.

I sighed and settled happily into a roomy wicker chair and when someone came out to take our order, I said, “Regular coffee,
please. No cream or sugar.”

“Really?” asked Reid.

“Really.”

“Well, in that case…” He smiled up at the waitress. “I don’t suppose you have desserts?”

“Just pie. Pecan and key lime.”

“Deborah?”

“Not for me.”

“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.”

“Not half as much as I’ve missed you, shug. I’ve been thinking. If Mama can keep Cal, how about I hitch a ride down to Wilmington
on Thursday?”

“Really?” My heart was suddenly turning somersaults.

“Well, I haven’t seen you in that new red bathing suit yet,” he drawled, and from there the conversation took a decidedly
different turn.

After we finally said good night, I continued to sit there in the moonlight, nursing my drink because I was too lazy to go
in and order another.

For once, indolence and sloth were rewarded. I heard low voices and glanced over to see Chelsea Ann and Gary Edwards walking
toward me with their own nightcaps.

“I thought that was you,” she said. She held Edwards’s drink while he pulled two more rocking chairs closer to mine to form
a rough semicircle.

“How was the cruise?” I asked.

“Awful,” Edwards said.

Chelsea Ann gave his arm a light poke. “No, it wasn’t. But we almost didn’t go.”