Uncommon Clay (A Deborah Knott Mystery Book 8)

by Margaret Maron

  Then her hair brushed against his face, soft as a morning fog, smelling of spring sunshine and lilacs, and something intense and yearning had grabbed his heart and never let go. He had leaned forward and tapped Sandra Kay on the shoulder—she and Betty were friends back then and usually shared the same seat. “Change places with me, okay?”

  Thinking he only wanted to talk to the boys in the seat ahead of hers, his sister had complied. For the next month, from that day till his graduation, he and Betty sat together every morning, every afternoon. When she graduated two years later, they were married.

  Her hair was still soft, still smelled like spring lilacs, he thought, as her head drooped on his shoulder. And her tears still tore him up when she cried. He knew that a lot of his friends thought he was pussy-whipped, just as he knew there’d been times when Betty used her tears to get her way, like when she’d cried to keep Sandra Kay from coming back to Rooster Clay after her marriage to James Lucas went bust.

  He didn’t care what people thought or said.

  Even though he knew he’d done wrong by his sister, even though he’d hated to deny her a place back here at the pottery where she’d stood on tiptoes to turn her first pot on an old kick wheel, he knew he’d do it again if it was a choice between his sister and his wife.

  “Tom couldn’t do such a horrible thing,” Betty said, as if trying to convince herself. “He has a temper. I know he can fly off the handle, but put his own uncle in a kiln and turn on the burners? He’d never do that!”

  “No,” said Dillard, trying not to remember the times Tom had blown up over some trifling matter, not caring whose pots got smashed in his rage. All those smashed plates and bowls around James Lucas’s body—

  “It wasn’t Tom,” Betty said again, burying her face against his shoulder.

  He held her tightly, as much for his own comfort as hers. “Of course it wasn’t,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Without a full consideration of the cultural context, it becomes all too easy both to romanticize and to depreciate the achievements of the folk potter.

  —Turners and Burners, Charles G. Zug III

  The Montgomery Country Club wasn’t much more elaborate than a circa 1930 spacious country house that had been remodeled to have a large meeting space and a smaller kitchen. Circular tables for six had been set up for about sixty people and Fliss introduced me to members of this three-county bar association. Some of the judges I’d met before, of course, but many others, especially the attorneys, were strangers.

  I like hanging out with lawyers. Yes, arguing both sides of the law can lead to cynicism at times, but as a rule, lawyers are smart and funny, too.

  Word of James Lucas Nordan’s murder had already reached Troy. Not surprising, since both attorneys from the Nordan ED were there. Speculation flowed as freely as the wine.

  And not just about the murder.

  Sanderson’s wife was at the opposite end of the room and people were glancing covertly from one to the other. I guessed that neither intended to give an inch professionally, but they were making it awkward for those colleagues who wouldn’t want to appear to be taking sides. Since I was still scheduled to preside over their final pretrial conference tomorrow morning, I kept to the middle of the room after paying my respects to Bill Neely, who was the chief judge of the district court over here.

  Fliss seemed to have decided I needed a little diversion and immediately introduced me to a newly appointed judge from Carthage. He looked to be about five years older and a couple of inches taller than I am, with curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a trimly muscular build. Amusingly, his name was William Blackstone, just like the famous eighteenth century jurist.

  “Don’t laugh,” he said with an infectious smile. “My people were blue-collar mill hands. They never heard of Sir William. My mother named me William Cobb after the doctor that delivered me. I still don’t know if it’s because she’d used up all the family names on my four older brothers or if she hoped I’d become a doctor.”

  “You have four older brothers?” I said. “I’ll see your four and raise you seven.”

  “Really? You have eleven brothers? How many sisters?”

  “None,” I admitted.

  “Got you there, then.” He smiled. “I have three.”

  “Any twins?”

  He shook his head.

  “Two sets,” I bragged.

  “Deborah was there when James Lucas’s body was found in the kiln,” said Fliss.

  “I heard.” He shook his head sympathetically. “Rough on you. And poor old Amos. This could be his death blow.”

  “Will used to be Amos Nordan’s attorney,” Fliss explained as someone pulled her away with a question.

  “I guess he wasn’t too happy that you became a judge,” I said. A little bit of butter never hurts.

  “Oh, he fired me quite a while ago,” Will said easily.

  He scooped up two glasses of wine from a passing tray and we moved out of the flow of traffic.

  “So why did he fire you?” I asked.

  “Because I drew up the papers that gave James Lucas a lifetime right to Nordan Pottery. I tried my best to talk him out of it. He was hurting so bad after Donny died and James Lucas was talking about pulling out and moving over to Sanford. He was afraid that the pottery was going to die, too. I told him to make the trust revocable, but he thought it wouldn’t be enough to hold James Lucas here. He’s a real pigheaded ol’ cuss. Wants what he wants when he wants it and doesn’t want to hear the advice he’s paying you to give. So I did what he asked and then, sure enough, it was barely a year before he wanted to retract it. When I told him it was too airtight, I thought he was going to pick up one of his pots and crown me.

  “He’s part of a dying breed, Amos is. When he’s gone, a lot of Seagrove history will go with him.”

  At the head of the room, the association’s president was asking us to be seated and Fliss waved to us that she had seats at her table.

  As we made our way over, I thought how much Amos Nordan reminded me of my own daddy, another facet of that dying breed.

  Will Blackstone must have been reading my mind because we were no sooner seated than he said genially, “Deborah Knott. Fliss says you’re over in Colleton County. Not any kin to the famous Kezzie Knott, are you?”

  I’m sure he expected me to say no, as do most people who ask that question in that particular tone of amusement.

  “My father,” I said austerely, and watched as he tried to rearrange his face—a very attractive face, let me stipulate—into something more appropriate to the discussion of a judge’s father. Hard to do when the father in question is notorious for his bootlegging past.

  (At least I hope it’s firmly in the past.)

  (And if it’s not, I don’t want to know it.)

  A very unjudgelike giggle escaped me. “Did you mean famous or infamous?”

  He looked at me cautiously and then relaxed. “Are you really his daughter?”

  “Oh, yes. And that reminds me. He had a sly look on his face last week when I said I was coming over to Seagrove. Told me to say hey to a Miss Nina Bean if she was still alive. Who’s Nina Bean?”

  Will Blackstone laughed out loud, a deep rolling laugh that made others at our table smile even though they didn’t know what we were talking about. “It would take a book. Let’s just say that Nina Bean—the late Nina Bean, unfortunately—was probably a colleague of your daddy’s. Or competitor. And old Amos probably helped with the distribution, for all I know. He certainly made whiskey jugs and demijohns when he was a boy. In fact, I have some his daddy made. There were times when Amos paid me in pots instead of cash, so I have a pretty good collection, if you’re interested.”

  He paused and looked directly into my eyes.

  I smiled. Hell, I even dimpled. “Oh, I’m interested.”

  “These dinners never run very long,” he said, his voice too low for anyone else to hear. “If you’d like to stop
by for a drink after, I’d be glad to show them.”

  “Is a collection of pots anything like a collection of etchings?” I bantered.

  “Would you like it to be?” he asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

  Kidd might not want me, but it was gratifying to see that there really were other fish swimming in North Carolina’s ponds. Right about then, the preacher who lives in my head and monitors my impulses gave an exasperated sigh. You call this curbing your hormones?

  Right.

  “I’ll have to take a rain check tonight,” I said regretfully. “Early court tomorrow. But if I’m back in a couple of weeks . . .?”

  “Anytime,” he assured me.

  On the drive home, Fliss tried to pump me about how I got along with Will Blackstone, even though I kept telling her there was really nothing to pump.

  “He’s certainly cute, though,” I conceded. “And fun to talk to. Is he really as available as he led me to think?”

  “He led you on?” she teased. “That’s encouraging.”

  “Forget it,” I said firmly. “I’m not ready to jump into another relationship.”

  “But if you were, Will might be a good jumping-off place. And yes,” she said before I could ask again, “he’s extremely available. Divorced three or four years ago. No kids. It must’ve been fairly amicable, since nothing much was said about it at the time. I gather that he hasn’t exactly been celibate since then, but he’s discreet. Actually, there’s not a lot of gossip about him. Some of the younger clerks try to get assigned to him, but he never asks for anyone in particular. Just takes whoever’s in the rotation.”

  “Good judge?”

  She shrugged. “Competent. Keeps the calendar moving. A bit on the conservative side, but that’s normal in these parts. What can I tell you? You don’t think I’d try to fix you up with an ax-murderer, do you?”

  I grinned. “Hey, good men are hard to find these days.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  Perhaps he was no scientist or technician, but [the folk potter] approached his work in a direct, pragmatic manner and displayed an admirable competence in all he did. It is essential then to view the realities of his world with openness and understanding.

  —Turners and Burners, Charles G. Zug III

  Next morning, I carried my bag out to the car because I planned to drive on back to Colleton County directly after court. I thanked Fliss for her hospitality and promised that I’d stay with her again if I came back for the Sandersons’ next hearing anytime soon, a distinct possibility, since Judge Ferris wasn’t expected back for six months.

  At the courthouse, clerks and bailiffs were still abuzz when I arrived. Grandmotherly Mrs. Cagle and portly Mr. Anderson took their places with the slightly embarrassed self-consciousness of people unused to being so squarely in the spotlight. Because both of them had been at Nordan Pottery when James Lucas was found, they had been asked to describe and speculate on his death so many times that I think they were grateful for the anonymity of a courtroom.

  Fliss had warned me that the Sandersons were arguing their own cases, so I was not surprised to take my seat on the bench and find only two people facing me.

  “Don’t they know the first rule of law?” I’d asked Fliss.

  “That a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client? Of course they do. But once the first one announced their intent, the other felt as if it were a challenge,” she’d answered, carefully avoiding the use of gender-specific pronouns so as not to influence me.

  “I take it that one of them considers himself or herself a better courtroom attorney than the other?”

  Fliss had smiled as she shook her head. “You didn’t hear that from me, Your Honor.”

  As I opened the session, dark-haired Nick Sanderson didn’t presume upon his acquaintance with me from the day before, just gave me a polite smile and a “Good morning, Judge,” when I nodded to him.

  Kelly Sanderson was small-boned and tiny and looked as Irish as her name. She had strawberry blond hair that covered her head in short ringlets, green eyes, and an exceedingly freckled face. Her wrists and hands were also freckled. Indeed, she was probably freckled all over her body. Despite the shortness of her hair and the severity of her navy blue suit, she was such a Little Orphan Annie look-alike that I almost expected her to start singing “Tomorrow, Tomorrow” when she rose to respond to her ex-husband’s opening remarks.

  There were two minor children involved and while Mrs. Sanderson still lived with them in the marital home, both parents shared equal custody. I didn’t know how messy the divorce had been. That wasn’t any of my business. I was here strictly to preside over the distribution of the marital property acquired during their marriage.

  Happily, they seemed to have opted for civility. Almost everything they owned was listed on Schedule A, marital property upon which there was complete agreement as to value and distribution. No argument over who got the silver or how much it was worth, no bickering about granny’s hand-stitched quilts or the value of a car at the date of separation. In short, no Schedule B, D, or E.

  Schedule C was the sticking point—marital property upon which there was agreement as to value and disagreement as to distribution—and the single item there was their law office. My eyes widened at the value they’d placed on it, but both assured me that had been the going market rate for an address on Lawyers Row at their date of separation.

  “I strongly advise you to try to reach a compromise,” I told them.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Your Honor,” Mrs. Sanderson said crisply, displaying the first bit of animus I’d seen between them, “but we appear to be deadlocked.”

  I listened to their contentions as to whether or not an equal division would be equitable and they both expressed a desire to proceed to trial as soon as possible.

  “We both want this settled,” said Mr. Sanderson.

  I conferred with Mrs. Cagle and compared her calendar with mine and the Sandersons’. We agreed on a court date for week after next and I adjourned court.

  “Lieutenant Woodall asked me to see if you’d come by and see him after you finished,” said Mr. Anderson, following me into the room where I removed my robe and retrieved my jacket. “It’ll be easier to show you where he is than try to tell you.”

  The bailiff hadn’t exaggerated. The old courthouse was such a warren of mismatched additions that I’d have never found the sheriff’s detective on my own. With renovations in full swing, I wasn’t real sure I’d ever find the main entrance and the path back to my car again, since I hadn’t left a trail of breadcrumbs, but I thanked Anderson and said I hoped I’d see him when I was next over.

  “Maybe they’ll have Mr. Nordan’s killer in jail by then,” he said, turning me over to a deputy.

  Connor Woodall was on the phone when I reached his doorway and he waved me in and gestured to the chair in front of a tidy desk.

  “One of my men with the preliminary findings from the ME’s office over in Chapel Hill,” he said after hanging up. “James Lucas was still alive when he was rolled into that kiln.”

  An involuntary shudder swept over me. “What a horrible way to die.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said with a heavy sigh. “There’s a possibility that he wasn’t conscious, though. He seems to have sustained a heavy blow to the back of his head. Fractured skull and massive intercranial bleeding.”

  It was nice to talk to a deputy sheriff you didn’t have to pull every bit of information out of.

  “So who do you like for it?” I asked.

  “Well, now, it’s still early days,” he said cautiously. And then spoiled it by flushing bright red.

  This was somebody I’d love to get in a poker game. How could the poor man ever bluff? Or lie to his wife, for that matter?

  Looking at his fair hair and those eyes rimmed in straw-colored lashes, I was struck by an irrelevant thought. “Are you any kin to Kelly Sanderson?”

  He nodded. “First cousin. Why? Oh, y
eah, that’s right. You’re doing their property division.”

  “You didn’t say anything about her Wednesday night when Fliss told you why I was here.”

  “Nothing to say. Kelly and me, we don’t run in the same circles.”

  No flushing, just a matter-of-fact statement. Watching as he cued up a tape recorder, I wondered if Cousin Kelly was a snob.

  “You don’t mind if I tape your interview, do you?” he asked.

  “Half the courtrooms I work in use tape recorders,” I told him. My voice always sounds dumb on tape, but then I don’t have to listen to it.

  So he asked his preliminary questions and I answered as concisely as possible, then described everything pertinent I could think of from the day before.

  When I’d finished, he asked, “What was Mrs. Nordan’s reaction when Mrs. Gregorich said she’d seen her car go through the lane past the kilns?”

  “I didn’t notice any particular reaction. Sandra Kay said that she’d just arrived and that she hadn’t seen James Lucas since I adjourned court.”

  “Those were her specific words?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t swear specific, but certainly close enough. Sandra Kay asked where James Lucas was. June said, ‘Didn’t you see him before?’ and Sandra Kay said she hadn’t been there before. Then June said she thought she’d seen Sandra Kay’s car earlier, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it. I guess there are a lot of white cars around, though, and I myself can’t tell one make from the other.” I reached over and pressed the recorder’s pause button. “Can June?”

  Connor shrugged. “All she could tell us was that she’d caught a glimpse of a white car out of the corner of her eye and that she’d assumed it was Mrs. Nordan, but she wouldn’t want to swear to it.”

  “And what does Sandra Kay say?”

  “She says it wasn’t her.”