The water boiled with furiously stroking arms and kicking legs as they churned off toward the approaching rowboat. I let them go. After yesterday’s ball game, the muscles in my arms were too sore for competition.
Daddy and whoever was with him had either fished all they wanted or else the bass weren’t biting because my swimming area was too far away to seriously disturb the fish at that end.
Dwight pulled himself onto the pier and he slicked his wet hair back with both hands, then shaded his eyes against the sun. A pleased smile lit his face as the boat came closer. “Well, looky who’s here.”
It was Terry Wilson, a special agent with the State Bureau of Investigation and one of my favorite ex-boyfriends. Terry came between a law professor at Carolina and the current assistant secretary of a state department in Raleigh that shall remain nameless. I came between wives number two and three. Daddy’s crazy about Terry and had sort of hoped I might be number three, the good woman that would settle Terry down and give him a stable home life.
As if.
Kidd included, Terry’s more fun than any man I’ve ever known, but I wasn’t reared to take a backseat to any body or any thing and he’d made it clear up front that his boy Stanton came first and the job came second. Since he was working undercover narcotics back then, I soon saw the futility of trying to take our relationship beyond the fun and games. Wife number three didn’t last long enough to wreck our friendship and Terry still makes me laugh with the best war stories of any of my law enforcement friends.
I had a matching grin on my face as he rowed the old boat toward my pier.
Terry and Dwight and some of my brothers played baseball in the same high school division. They still go hunting together and he has standing fishing privileges in all the ponds on the farm.
Just as Terry threw the rope to Annie Sue to tie up, Dwight’s pager went off.
He muttered a mild oath and looked around as if to see a phone magically appear.
Actually, one did. Annie Sue’s friend Cindy had her cell phone tucked into the pocket of her T-shirt that was hanging on one of the pier posts. “Help yourself,” she told him.
I pulled myself out of the water and listened unabashedly.
Dwight still had his watch on and I saw him check the time. “Around three-thirty, you say? And you got there ten minutes ago? Good. Secure the scene and call for the van and backups. I’ll be there”—again he checked his watch—“in, say, twenty-five minutes, thirty at the most.”
He replaced Cindy’s phone and said, “Okay if I change clothes up at the house, Deb’rah?”
“Of course,” I said.
Terry shipped the oars and stepped up onto the pier. “You got to leave the minute I get here?”
“Yeah,” said Dwight. “Somebody went and got herself killed at the Orchid Motel over in Dobbs.”
CHAPTER | 5
What caused the mighty elemental disturbance, the possibilities of its recurrence and the danger which constantly hangs over other cities are given in detail.
A murder out on the bypass? Naturally enough, we assumed that whoever got killed at the Orchid Motel was a tourist who probably brought her own problems as well as her killer from somewhere outside the county. Nothing to concern us beyond the usual curiosity. Our momentary gloom was perfunctory and more because it was dragging Dwight away than because of an anonymous death.
“Too bad,” we said. We clicked our tongues and shook our heads, then went back to the pleasures of a lazy warm Sunday. As the sun began to set in a blaze of gold and purple, the menfolks dressed the bucket of fish Daddy and Terry had caught while Minnie and I made cornbread and salad.
My back porch is fully screened and plenty big for a large round table and lots of chairs. The table was one I’d found in Robert’s barn and works just fine when I hide the water stains and scratches with a red-checkered tablecloth. The chairs at the moment are cheap white plastic deck chairs and I only have four. Even with the four from my dining area inside, we were going to have to fill in with those folding aluminum lawn chairs that are always just a little too low for any eating table.
Some of the kids don’t like fish, so I fetched a couple of twenties and was going to send Reese and A.K. out for pizzas, but they’d already conferred with the rest of their cousins and decided that the seven of them would stop somewhere on their way into Garner for a movie they all wanted to see at the new multiplex.
“But we sure do ’preciate your generosity,” said Reese, plucking the bills from my hand with a big grin.
Zach had to leave, too. “Barbara’ll be home soon and we’re supposed to go over and take supper with her sister.” He cast a regretful eye at Minnie’s cornbread.
With the dogs milling around his feet, Daddy sat on the porch steps downwind from Terry and lit a cigarette while they watched Andrew and Seth fuss with getting the charcoal hot enough. The grill was one that Haywood and Isabel gave me when they bought a new gas model last month and this was the first time I’d had it out.
April murmured sounds of dismay as she rummaged in my sparsely filled kitchen drawers and cabinets for plates, glasses and flatware. All she could find were three or four mismatched plates and mugs, four glasses and some odds and ends of tableware—discards Aunt Zell had given me till I could get around to buying new.
“Over there,” I said, gesturing toward the cupboards Will had built into the wall behind my dining table.
Mother was townbred and of the generation of young women that picked out table patterns by the time they were sixteen and registered them at Belk’s or Ivey’s. Her family was solidly middle-class, with a wide circle of equally well-to-do friends who gave her at least a dozen bridal showers, which means that she brought a ton of china, silver, and crystal to the farm when she married Daddy, a dirt farmer who’d never before even held a silver spoon, much less eaten from one.
She had willed it all to me, her only daughter, and when I moved into my new house, Daddy boxed it up and brought it over on the back of his old Chevy pickup. Full-service china for sixteen with meat platters, lidded bowls, and tureens. Silver for twenty. Enough crystal wine goblets to drink France under the table. It took up every inch of Will’s cabinets.
“You can’t serve cornbread and pond fish on Royal Doulton,” April protested. “Do you know how much it would cost to replace one of those plates?”
“Why?” I asked with a perfectly straight face. “Did you plan on breaking some?”
“Deborah!” It was the same voice she would have used on one of her sixth-grade students.
“Look,” I said. “This stuff hasn’t been used since Mother died and Christmas was about the only time she ever used it herself. It’s either that or paper plates and plastic forks and I hate plastic forks.”
We compromised. Paper plates, plastic cups, sterling silver.
“We should have given you a proper housewarming,” Minnie said and April nodded.
I laughed. “Come on, you two! Cotton Grove may think it’s ready for the twenty-first century, but house-warmings for single people?”
“We could have started a trend,” Minnie said regretfully.
“Never mind,” April told her. “It’ll make Christmas easy on all of us for the next few years. You’ve always been hard to shop for, Deborah. Now we can give you house stuff. Stainless flatware and water glasses.” An impish grin spread over her freckled face. “And cute little napkin rings and salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like kittycats.”
“Don’t forget Tupperware,” said Minnie.
“Teflon!”
“Aprons!”
“Oven mitts that look like vegetables!”
Laughing, they stepped onto the porch to set the table and Seth called through the screen. “I guess we’re skipping church tonight?”
Minnie gave him an inquiring look. “Unless you want to go?”
“Well, I believe I’d rather sit right here and give thanks for this fish and this company,” Seth said happily.
&nbs
p; * * *
In the end, nine of us sat down to supper because Amy and Will arrived just as the first, smaller fish were coming off the grill.
“Sorry we couldn’t get here in time to help,” Amy said.
“That’s okay,” Terry said magnanimously, as if catching half the fish cleared him of further obligations. “You and Will can wash dishes.”
Will took one look at the disposable plates and cups and said, “Done!”
Amy took one look at the silver and said, “You don’t put this in your dishwasher, do you?”
“Why not?” I asked.
April had just taken a bite of crusty cornbread, but she rolled her eyes at Minnie, who laughed and passed me the salad.
Pond fish, bass excluded, are too small to split or scale if you’re going to grill them, and they’re full of bones. They’re also wonderfully succulent and these were cooked to perfection.
“Fresher’n this and they’d still be swimming,” said Daddy, as he expertly laid open a little sunperch and deboned it.
The first few minutes were devoted to food talk, then Seth mentioned Dwight and how he had to leave for a homicide at the Orchid Motel.
Amy looked up in interest. “Any of y’all know Lynn Bullock? We heard that’s who it was. One of the EMS drivers told somebody in ER that she was choked to death. They say Tom and Marie O’Day found her stark naked with just a black stocking tied around her neck. Stiff as a board, too.”
Amy works on the administrative side at the hospital and hears every rumor that floats through the medical complex.
“Lynn Bullock?” I asked, removing a small bone from my mouth. “Not married to Jason Bullock?”
Amy nodded. “She’s one of our LPNs.”
I put down my fork. “That can’t be right. I was sitting next to him at the ball game last night when she called him from a motel in Yanceyville.”
“How’d he know?” asked Will.
“I assume he knows his own wife’s voice.”
“No, I mean how did he know she was calling from Yanceyville?”
“Because she and her sister had gone antiquing up there.”
There was a slightly cynical smile on Will’s lips, a smile just like the one on Terry’s. Though butter wouldn’t melt in either mouth these days, both men know a thing or two about creative cheating. There’s a reason they’ve both been married three times.
Seth and Andrew merely looked interested. Seth because he’s never looked at another woman since Minnie, Andrew because, even though he messed up two marriages before April came into his life, infidelity was never the problem.
“Bullock,” said Daddy. “Didn’t one of Vara Seymour’s girls marry a Bullock?”
“I believe her mother’s name is Vara,” said Amy. “But I was thinking Lynn’s maiden name was Benton.”
“Likely was,” Daddy said, helping himself to another fish. “Vara, she sort of got around a bit.”
“Who’s Vara Seymour?” Minnie asked.
“Charlie Seymour’s girl. Little Creek Township. He used to do some work for me. She were a pretty little thing, Vara were, but her mammy died when she was just starting to ramble and Charlie didn’t know nothing about raising a girl.”
From his tone of voice, I could guess what work Lynn Bullock’s grandfather had done for him. He’s out of the business now, of course, but Daddy was once one of the biggest bootleggers on the East Coast and he’d financed a string of illegal moonshine stills all over this part of the country before Mother reformed him.
“I don’t know what kind of a woman her mother was,” said Amy, “but Lynn herself was bright as sunshine.”
“Won’t never nothing wrong with Charlie Seymour’s brains,” Daddy said mildly.
“Excellent LPN,” Amy said. “She was really good with scared pre-op patients. One of those people who never saw a stranger. She’d start in talking to them like she’d known them all her life. Didn’t mind getting her hands dirty either. A lot of doctors are going to miss her.”
“But not all?” I asked, picking up on something in her tone.
“Well-l-l.”
“What?”
Amy shrugged. “I don’t think we have to worry about Dr. Potts crying at her funeral. Lynn got her husband to represent Felicia Potts for their divorce.”
“What’s so bad about that?” asked Terry as he took another piece of cornbread.
“Ask Deborah.”
The Potts divorce took place in May so it was still quite clear in my mind. It was the first case Jason Bullock had argued before me. Might have been his first case in association with Avery and Avery, for all I knew. Equitable division of marital property in a bitterly contentious divorce.
Felicia and Jeremy Potts had met and married at Carolina. Felicia soon dropped out and went to work full-time in order to help Jeremy get his undergraduate degree, then to send him to med school. Nine years later, having completed medical school and his residency at Dobbs Memorial, and having passed all his boards, he was poised to join a lucrative private practice there in Dobbs. At that point, Dr. Jeremy Potts suddenly decided Felicia hadn’t “grown” as a doctor’s wife and he had filed for divorce.
They had been formally separated for over a year when the case came to me for final disposition. There wasn’t much marital property beyond the furniture in their rental apartment and two five-year-old cars, and Dr. Potts generously offered her all the furniture and a ten-thousand-dollar settlement. He also offered to pay college tuition if Felicia now wished to go back for a degree.
Jason Bullock, who had only recently taken on Mrs. Potts’s case, asked me to consider Dr. Potts’s own degrees as marital property.
“You think you can split up a medical license like a set of dining room chairs?” sneered the good doctor.
His attorney asked to speak to his client in private. When they came back to the bargaining table, the attorney announced that Dr. Potts was also willing to pay reasonable room and board while Felicia was in college, a term not to exceed three years.
Jason Bullock smiled, then produced pay stubs and cancelled checks to prove that Felicia had indeed financed most of Jeremy Potts’s medical education.
Although our State Supreme Court has ruled that professional licenses aren’t marital property, it has ruled that “any direct or indirect contribution made by one spouse to help educate or develop the career potential of the other spouse” could be taken into consideration when granting alimony. Bullock’s argument and those cancelled checks convinced me that Potts would still be slogging through medical school without his wife’s help and I granted Mrs. Potts so much alimony that my clerk’s jaw dropped. I even provided for an annual accounting of his income with an accountant of her choice if she decided later to come back for a bigger bite sometime in the future.
Potts’s attorney gave immediate notice of appeal.
“You’re free to take it to Raleigh,” I had told him, feeling pretty sure that my ruling was solidly grounded in the law. “In the meantime, her alimony payments start now.”
Most of this occurred in open court and the results were public record so it wasn’t a betrayal of anyone’s confidence to tell about the case over fish and cornbread.
“But why would Potts be angry at Lynn Bullock,” I asked, “when it was Jason Bullock that handled the wife’s divorce?”
Again, Amy knew the details. “Felicia Potts studied accounting before she quit school and when they came to Dobbs, she got a job in Ralph McGee’s office till he died.”
(The late Ralph McGee, father of Annie Sue’s friend Cindy, had been a CPA over in Dobbs.)
“That’s how she met Lynn. Ralph did the Bullocks’ taxes.”
“And that affected the Potts divorce?” asked Minnie.
“Absolutely! Felicia was going to accept the good doctor’s first offer,” said Amy, “and Lynn heard him bragging about it at the hospital. I told y’all Lynn Bullock was one smart cookie? When Jason was in law school, she used to read some of
his casebooks and one of those cases covered a similar situation. Felicia didn’t have any money to hire a good lawyer and it’d never dawned on her that a degree could be like marital property, but once Lynn talked Jason into taking the case on a contingency basis, Felicia went back and pulled every tax record and every receipt from their whole marriage.”
Daddy nodded. “Sounds like something a granddaughter of Charlie Seymour’s would think of.”
“Lynn Bullock?” Will cocked his head at his wife. “Long blonde hair? Built like a brick outhouse? Wasn’t she the gal we saw Reid with at the North Raleigh Hilton last Christmas?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to speak ill of the dead,” Amy said, “but yes, she did play around on the side a little.”
Again Daddy nodded. “Just like her mama.”
CHAPTER | 6
Such a night of horror as the unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to pass has fallen to the lot of few since the records of history were first opened.
September 1—cont’d.
—Edouard 37.5°N by 70°W. Winds 85 knots & dropping fast as it heads to N. Atlantic. No longer a threat to anybody.
—Hurr. Dolly pounded Mexico. At least 2 people dead.
—Fran 23.9°N by ?? W. Winds steady at 75 kts.
—Gustave—
Stan threw down his pencil, unable to concentrate.
Upon returning from evening worship, he had come straight to his room and turned on his radio to the weather station, but he’d been too distracted to copy off all the numbers accurately, much less put them in coherent order. There were floods in Sudan, monsoons in Pakistan, earthquakes in Ecuador and maybe he’d use them in his report and maybe he wouldn’t, but right now, all he could think about was the storm raging behind the closed door of his parents’ bedroom.
A quiet storm. No flying shoes or hair irons crashing into lamps. No shrieked accusations or thundering counterblasts. Even with his own door cracked, he could barely hear his mother’s low voice, quick and tight and cold with a towering anger usually reserved for racist whites who threatened the dignity of her world.
Normally when she raged, his father’s voice would be heard rumbling beneath hers, soothing, reassuring, reasoning. Tonight, he seemed to speak only when she paused after a torrent of questions, and even then, his words were short and fell away to a silence quickly filled with more of her anger.
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