Home Fires (18 page)

“So why do you hang with them?” I asked.

“Raymond helped us barn tobacco last summer. He’s okay. After Cathy and I broke up, he and Charles were tight and they weren’t seeing anybody either.”

“And Charles can pass for twenty-one at convenience stores?”

He gave a shamefaced nod. “Least he can at places where they don’t look at your ID too close.”

“Closely,” I said automatically.

“Closely,” he echoed, accustomed to his mother’s corrections.

“Anyhow, the point is, Raymond didn’t burn down any churches and neither did Charles. I got a chance to talk to Raymond today and he swore they didn’t do it. They were at Charles’s trailer when Mount Olive went up. From eight-thirty on.”

“Unfortunately, no one saw them.” I bit into my pizza slice. The crust was just as I liked it, and the anchovies went nicely with the mozzarella and tomato sauce.

“How can you eat them salty things?” A.K. grimaced at my enjoyment. “Anyhow somebody
did
see them. Somebody came over to borrow a backpack from Charles around nine o’clock.”

“Why didn’t this somebody come forward?”

“ ’Cause he borrowed the backpack to go to some bass fishing tournament up in Massachusetts.”

“Why didn’t they speak up about it? Or tell Reid? He’s Raymond’s attorney.”

“Thing is, Charles knows the guy’s name is Jerry and his girlfriend’s Bobbie Jean and he lives four trailers over, but he doesn’t know either of their last names or where in Massachusetts they was going fishing.” A.K. twirled a string of melted mozzarella. “
Were
going fishing. And Charles didn’t want to say anything till Jerry got back because Bobbie Jean was going with him.”

“And?”

“And, well, it seems that Bobbie Jean’s husband said he’d kill Jerry if he caught him messing around her again and Bobbie Jean sort of told her husband she was going to see her sister in Massachusetts and he doesn’t know Jerry was going, too.”

He popped the cheese in his mouth and looked around to see if the waiters had set out another pizza on the hot bar. This early in the evening, there weren’t enough customers to merit a steady stream of fresh choices and he made do with two lukewarm slices of sausage and mushrooms.

“So, anyhow, Raymond’s getting a little worried that what if Jerry comes back and Bobbie Jean’s husband gets to him before he can come down to the police station and say they were there. So Raymond and me, we thought maybe you could tell Dwight and he could put out an APB or something and get to Jerry first.”

I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen, honey. In the first place, Dwight doesn’t have jurisdiction here. It’s a federal offense, not state. In the second place, it’s Raymond’s responsibility to tell Reid and then Reid will probably try to contact this Jerry, leave word at the trailer park for when he comes back.”

“They didn’t know whether the tournament was this weekend or next.”

When I shook my head in amusement, A.K. said huffily, “Well, jeez, Deb’rah. It’s not like they knew they were going to need an alibi. Nobody thinks like that. Can you prove where
you
were between nine-thirty and ten o’clock last Sunday night?”

“As a matter of fact, I can,” I said, remembering the long phone call Kidd and I had shared about then, he in New Bern, me lying across the bed with a report on DNA testing.

A.K. cut his eyes at me. “You gonna marry that game warden guy?”

I smiled. “I’ll talk to Reid tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, but you still didn’t answer my question.”

“No comment,” I said and signalled for our check.

One rowing the boat
Has no time to rock it

—St. Catherine’s R.C. Church

Monday morning’s court was pretty heavy. Lots of misdemeanor possessions, assaults, a couple of B&E’s, and a handful of check-bouncers. Cyl DeGraffenried prosecuted and she was as brisk and businesslike as ever as we moved through the calendar.

First up was a middle-aged black woman charged with writing two worthless checks to Denby’s, a local department store. She waived counsel and pleaded guilty with explanation.

“See, what happened was I added up wrong and thought I had more than I did. And right after that, my sister’s little boy had to have glasses and I loaned her the money I was going to use to pay the store back. She give me a check last Friday a week ago and I put it in the bank and wrote Denby’s a new check, but my sister’s check won’t no good either. She was supposed to get me the cash money by first thing this morning, but her boyfriend’s car broke down and he took her car to go to work, so she didn’t have no way to come and—”

“Where does your sister live?” I asked.

“Near North Hills in Raleigh.”

“And she has the full—” I checked the figures on the paper before me—“the full three hundred and five you owe Denby’s?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Plus eighty dollars court costs?”

“Yes, ma’am. I told her it was going to cost her four hundred for all my aggravation and she says she’s got the money sitting there soon as she can get it to me.”

“You have a car?”

She nodded.

“How long will it take you to drive to North Hills and back?”

“Two hours?” she hazarded.

“Let’s make it three,” I said. “I don’t want you speeding. It’s nine-fifteen now. If you’re back here with the money by twelve-thirty, we can dispose of this today.”

She hurried out, trailed by the accounts manager from Denby’s.

Cyl DeGraffenried called her next case, Dwayne McDaniels, 23, black. Dreadlocks and baggy pants. He pleaded guilty to driving while impaired and possession of a half-ounce of marijuana.

“What’s the state asking, Ms. DeGraffenried?” I asked.

To my bemusement, she said, “Sixty days, suspended on condition he spend twenty-four hours in jail, pay a hundred-dollar fine and get the required alcohol and drug assessment.”

“Let’s give him the whole weekend to think it over,” I said.

McDaniels was followed by Joseph Wayne Beasley, 18, also black, who pleaded guilty of driving while his license was revoked. Looking at his record, I would normally have given him a suspended sentence, maybe two weekends in jail and a five-hundred-dollar fine.

Cyl asked for the suspended sentence, one weekend in jail and a three-hundred-dollar fine and tried not to smirk when I held to my original assessment of appropriate retribution.

Robert Scott Grice, 24, white, pleaded guilty to assault on his girlfriend. To his attorney’s visible dismay Cyl suggested he be sentenced to one hundred and fifty days in jail and not go near his girlfriend’s house or place of work.

I gave him seventy-five with the same conditions.

It was like that all morning, Cyl asking lower penalties for black youths and higher for whites so that I had to toughen the one and reduce the other to reach a sense of fairness.

Just before noon, I motioned her up to the bench.

“Your Honor?” she said sweetly.

“Forget it, Ms. DA,” I said just as sweetly. “Today does not count toward our bet.”

She smiled. “So, when you want to do dinner?”

By noon, the ranks had thinned considerably and the courtroom held less than a third it had this morning.

The woman who bounced checks at Denby’s had rushed through the doors a few minutes earlier, a thin glaze of perspiration on her dark face. She was now seated on the front bench right behind the bar. A crumpled white envelope was clutched in her hands and virtue shone in her eyes.

I motioned for her to come forward. “Your sister didn’t let you down, did she?”

“No, ma’am, Your Honor. Here it is, every cent.”

“I hope you didn’t break the sound barrier, getting to North Hills and back,” I said.

She chuckled and went over to my clerk to collect the necessary papers and then out to pay the cashier what she owed.

The Denby’s manager looked pleased as he drew a line through her name on his notepad. There were still a bunch of names left though, more than would be appearing before me that day.

I recessed till one-thirty.

“All rise,” said the bailiff.

The law firm of Lee and Stephenson, formerly known as Lee, Stephenson and Knott before I became a judge, is still located in a charming story-and-a-half white clapboard house half a block from the courthouse.

Robert Claudius Lee, John Claude’s grandfather, was born there shortly after the Civil War, and so was Robert’s brother, who grew up to be my mother’s mother’s father.

If you’re Southern, you’ve already worked it out that John Claude’s my second cousin, once removed. If you’re not Southern, you probably aren’t interested in hearing that Reid is a cousin through my mother’s paternal side, but no kin at all to John Claude.

Enough to know that John Claude’s father and Reid’s grandfather (my great-grandfather Stephenson) started the firm in this very house sometime in the twenties and that Lees and Stephensons have been partners there ever since.

Although both cousins have argued cases before me many times since I came to the bench, no one has yet accused me of favoring them. If anything, Reid’s accused me of just the opposite. John Claude doesn’t accuse. If he thinks one of his cases is going to be a hairsplitter, he manages to get it heard by somebody else, not me.

Although John Claude was arguing two cases in Makely that day, Reid was expecting me for lunch and I was expecting a quiet hour to catch my breath after such a busy morning with nothing much more weighty to discuss than Raymond Bagwell’s alibi and whether we were actually going to get the thundershowers they were predicting on the breakfast news.

Instead, I came up onto the porch out of bright sunlight and when my eyes adjusted, I realized that Grace King Avery and Sister Byantha Williams were taking their leave of Reid.

Too late to run and nowhere to hide.

“Ah, Deborah!” exclaimed Mrs. Avery. “You know the Reverend Williams, don’t you? Sister Williams, this is Judge Deborah Knott.”

The elderly preacher was dressed in a pale green muumuu today. She was still a large woman, but her skin was no longer firmly rounded as in years past. It was as if her skin had stayed the same while the body beneath had shrunk two sizes. As we murmured acknowledgments, Mrs. Avery turned back to Reid.

“Is there any reason why Deborah couldn’t give us an injunction right now? He needs to be stopped, Reid.”

“Please, Mrs. Avery,” he said rather desperately. “I promise you that I’ll take whatever steps are necessary and feasible.”

“Very well. If you’re sure you understand the urgency of the matter?”

“I do, I really do,” he assured her, and to me, “Come on in, Deb’rah.”

It wasn’t quite as blatant as yanking me inside with one hand and locking the door behind them with the other, but that’s certainly what it felt like.

I hadn’t stopped by in several months, so it wasn’t surprising to see new carpets on the floor and new color on the walls. Julia Lee, John Claude’s wife, is a frustrated designer and when she gets tired of redoing their personal house, she comes down and starts moving walls and ripping up carpets here.

My former office still sat empty. I haven’t decided if that’s because I’m irreplaceable or they figure I won’t be reelected and will be coming back.

“Injunction?” I asked as I walked straight back to the rear of the house.

Several years ago, Julia had remodelled the old original kitchen. A tiny galley hidden by folding screens was at one end, the rest was a sunroom that could become a formal conference room or a comfortable place to spread out with morning coffee and newspapers.

Or lunch. The table was set for two and I knew that those waxed paper packets held creamy chicken salad sandwiches on homemade bread from Sue’s Soup ’n’ Sandwich Shop across from the courthouse.

Reid opened the refrigerator. “Tea? Or would you rather have Pepsi?”

“Pepsi, if it’s diet. Who’s got Mrs. Avery’s feathers ruffled?”

“Guy named Graham Dunn, owns the Red and White Grocery and Hardware out from Cotton Grove.” He put ice in two glasses and set them on the table beside the drink cans. “Seven years ago, Sister Williams signed a note with him for three thousand dollars.”

“Using that raggedy old church as collateral?”

“That and the acre of land it used to stand on. The note came due last year, but he let it ride because it was clear she couldn’t repay and he didn’t want to look bad by closing on the church his parents used to attend.”

Reid always jiggles the drink cans too much and some of the Pepsi foamed up when I pulled the tab. I mopped up the overflow with his paper napkin.

“But now that the church and trailer have burned?”

“Right.” Reid unwrapped his sandwich, adjusted the lettuce and tomato and bit into it. His words were muffled as he talked around a chunk of chicken salad. “He’s read the paper, seen that money is coming in from all over and figures this is his chance to clear her debt. Trouble is, when Mrs. Avery first called me yesterday, I called Louise Parker, who’s overseeing the distribution of donations. She says they haven’t yet received a single check made out to Burning Heart of God and what little undesignated money they have gotten will be prorated by membership.”

I licked a fleck of chicken salad from my fingertip. “Burning Heart of God has what? Eight members? Ten?”

“Thirteen if you count one woman who hasn’t left the nursing home in three years and a man who’s serving a six-to-ten at State Prison.”

“And did she borrow that three thousand as an individual or as an officer of the church?”

“As minister and chairman of the board of deacons, unfortunately.”

“So he’s looking to force a sale of the land and Mrs. Avery, full of noblesse oblige because of her grandfather King, wants you to stop it?”

“You got it.”

“Can you?”

He shrugged. “I can try. I’ll have to check the deed, see if it’s in her name or the church’s and then see if the church really is responsible for her debts.”

He got up for more napkins. Sue’s sandwiches are ambrosial, but messy to eat.

“You speak to Raymond Bagwell this weekend?” I asked.

“No.” He handed me a wad of napkins and sat back down across from me at the long conference table. “Is that what this lunch is about?”