“Is that what she did?” As we walked along their dock, I was trying not to catch a spike heel in the cracks between the wide, salt-treated planks.
“Well, not in my kitchen,” she said dryly. “But yeah, the Washington Neville brought in its largest haul of the season today. Let’s just hope the wind doesn’t shift till after Linville Pope’s party. The smell of cooking menhaden smells like jobs and income to most of us, but it stinks to her. She’d rather see our black workers on welfare or fetching and carrying for the white tourists.”
“Now, honey,” said Chet as he handed us into the stern of their rakish little inboard speedboat. “You promised to be nice tonight.”
“I promised not to spit in Linville’s face,” she grinned. “Nothing was said about being nice.”
“Fireworks?” I said hopefully, leaning forward from my seat behind them. “Drinks tossed? Fistfights? Hair-pulling?”
“Not by me.” Barbara Jean parodied ladylike virtue. “My factory is sitting in the middle of some choice waterfront property that Linville’s dying to develop, but you won’t hear me bring up the subject.”
Chet started the motor with a moderate roar that immediately leveled off to a quietly expensive purr as we slid gently away from the landing dock. The low sun shafted beams of gold up through bands of mauve and blue-gray clouds. The wind was so light it barely ruffled our hair and Chet kept our speed just above a fast walk as we rounded the point and headed northwest.
“So brief me about Linville Pope,” I said. “Other than the fact that you don’t like her, what else should I know to keep me from putting my foot in my mouth?”
“You want the chamber of commerce gloss or to back of Rose’s dirt?”
“Oh, the catty version, by all means.”
“Trailer trash from Cherry Point,” she said flatly.
Seated behind the wheel, Chet laughed and reached out a hand to tousle her blonde curls. “Deb’rah said catty, honey, not bitchy.”
She considered. “Okay, maybe not trailer trash, but her father was career military—some say a staff sergeant; she says a light colonel—and when he was reassigned, she was a junior at East Carolina, so she stayed behind. She’d already got her hooks into Midge Pope by then. He inherited a broken-down old motel over at Atlantic Beach and after they married, she got a broker’s license and used the motel to leverage the Ritchie House. Now she’s got about six agents working for her and Pope Properties handles some of the priciest real estate in the area.”
“I’m impressed. The Ritchie House must have a license to mint money.”
“Yeah, well Chet tried to talk old Mr. Janson out of selling it so cheaply, but she sweet-talked her way past him.
She looked at Chet. “What else?”
“Hinges on her heels?” he suggested, as a string of brown pelicans crossed our bow.
“Oh God, yes! All a man has to do is touch her and over she goes. I’ll say one thing for her though. At least she’s not dumb enough to shit up her own landing.”
“That means she doesn’t mess around with any local married men,” Chet translated. He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Lord knows I’ve tried to change her mind often enough.”
We laughed.
“Where’s her husband in all this?”
“Midge? Drying out again near Asheville last I heard. She’s after some Jew-boy right now. A Boston lawyer, is it, hon?”
Chet caught my expression and Barbara Jean caught his.
She twisted around in her seat. “Deborah knows I don’t mean anything ugly by that, don’t you, Deborah? If Midge Pope never cared who or what his wife screwed, why should I? But this new guy is Jewish and he is from Boston, so what’s wrong with saying it?”
“Long as some of your best friends are black,” I said wryly.
I don’t think she got it because she started talking about someone named Shirl Kushner.
Even so, it was lovely to slip along the shoreline like this. The slap of water against our hull, the snap of the ensign in the stern, and the cry of gulls all around exaggerated the differences, but for a moment I was reminded of being on a train, slicing through backyards and alleyways usually hidden from view. Had we been driving through the street along this same stretch of land, we’d have glimpsed only the public facade masked by live oaks and yaupon, not these wide terraces, lush flower gardens, and sturdy docks with some sort of water craft tied up at each.
For some reason, I’d assumed that Linville Pope lived over in Morehead. Instead, it seemed we’d barely gotten onto the water good until Chet was putting in at a long private pier with white plank railings. Other boats were there before us and several hands reached out to take the line Chet threw and to help us step onto the dock when the line was secured.
More people spilled across the broad flagstoned terrace that began at the end of the planked walk. Everyone greeted Chet and Barbara Jean, and names and faces blurred as my friends rattled off introductions.
One elderly white-haired lady—“Miss Louisa Ferncliff, this is Judge Knott”—grasped my arm dramatically. “My dear, how on earth could you manage to sit in court after such a horrible, horrible experience?”
She made it sound like a breach of good taste that I hadn’t gotten the vapors from finding Andy Bynum’s body. I smiled vaguely and trundled after Barbara Jean.
Two white-jacketed black men were passing trays of white wine or taking drink orders and the older one spoke warmly to Barbara Jean. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him, too.
“Deborah, meet Micah Smith,” she said. “He was one of the chanteymen when my daddy first took over. Helped pull the nets before everything went hydraulic, then helped with the cooking till he retired last year. He said he was going to sit on a dock and fish the rest of his life.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he told me. “And I found out fishing every day quits being fun when you can fish every day. Now I he’p Miz Pope when she gives parties. And what can I fetch you two pretty ladies tonight?”
I opted for a Bloody Mary since I hadn’t eaten anything except an English muffin for breakfast and a cone of frozen yogurt at lunchtime. Barbara Jean wanted a margarita. “And where’s our hostess, Micah? Judge Knott hasn’t met her yet.”
He pointed toward a set of open French doors that led into the house. “She’s in yonder.”
“Come on, Deborah. We’ll go make nice and then I’ll introduce you to one of the richest and hunkiest bachelors here. You like to marlin fish? You should see some of those million-dollar boats up close.”
Without waiting for an answer, she hauled me through the crowd and only laughed when I muttered, “If this is just a few friends over for drinks, what constitutes a real party?”
• • •
Drink in hand, Linville Pope stood facing us as we entered the long living room, but her attention seemed totally focused on the man to whom she was speaking. I remembered how still she’d sat in the restaurant yesterday when accosted by that angry shouter. An unusual ability, this knack she had of centering a pool of stillness and silence around her small body.
“How nice you could come,” she said when Barbara Jean had introduced us. “I didn’t realize when we spoke Sunday night that you’d been involved with Andy Bynum’s death. How awful for you.”
I barely heard because her companion turned and it was the same man who’d sat in court this morning with the Llewellyns, the couple who were related to the puppeteer. Not much taller than me, he had short wiry hair which was flecked with gray, as was his neatly clipped beard.
I suddenly felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of me as Linville Pope said, “And this is Levi Schuster. I believe you two have met before?”
Lev smiled and said, “Hello, Red. So. Don’t I get a kiss for old times’ sake?”