The motor cut off just as I was expecting to see churned sand and fouled blades, and the continued impetus carried the boat across the shallows to end up less than thirty feet away.
It was a woman about my age, mid-thirties, in white shorts, short blonde hair and those mirrored sunglasses that I hate because you never get a reading on the person’s eyes. I particularly hate them when the wearer’s carrying a .22 rifle like this unsmiling woman was. She held it loosely, with a casual ease that implied the same expertise as she’d already shown with her boat handling.
“Mind telling me what you’re doing out here?”
“Waiting for the police,” I answered, in case she decided to start pointing that thing. I gestured toward Andy Bynum’s body, but his skiff blocked her view and she didn’t immediately grasp the situation.
Although the volume was turned way down, I could hear the staticky chatter of a CB radio from the dashboard as she propped the rifle on the seat of her boat, swung over the edge into thigh-deep water that would have had me flinching and moaning, and pulled her boat over to tie up at a marker stake near me.
“What’s the law got to do with Andy’s—” That’s when she saw him.
“Good Lord Jesus! What happened?”
She waded nearer. Tiny minnows darted in and out of the dead man’s white hair and an ooze of red continued to flower from his chest.
“Looks like someone shot him,” I said.
“So that’s why Mahlon Davis took off so fast and left you out here by yourself.”
“That was Guthrie, not his grandfather.” I eased down from the piling and faced her. “Mind telling me how come you were watching us so closely?”
She gestured toward the line of stakes that enclosed most of the sandbank. “My husband Hes and me, this is our leased bottom.”
Before I could ask why that required an armed investigation, she splashed back to her boat, pulled herself in and reached for her CB mike. “Hadley to base. Over.”
Through the static, I heard a female voice. “What’s happening, Mom? Over.”
“Call Marvin Willitt. See if he’s heard he’s needed out here. Out.”
She replaced the mike and those mirrored glasses reflected my image. Well, two could play that game. My sunglasses were perched up in my hair and I pulled them down over my eyes like a mask as I asked, “Who’s Marvin Willitt?”
“Sheriff’s deputy for down east. Assigned to Harkers Island. You staying on the island?”
“Yes.”
“You knew Andy?”
“Yes, I knew him.” My feet were starting to go numb again. “Look, you mind if I sit in your boat?”
“Help yourself.”
Not the most gracious invitation I’d ever had.
She watched my ineffectual effort to hoist myself gracefully over the side, then grudgingly said, “Give me your hand.”
I was hauled up onto cracked vinyl seats of sun-faded blue with lumpy foam. After that rough-topped piling though, they felt like goosedown cushions.
“I’m Jay Hadley,” said the woman, suddenly pushing her glasses up into sun-streaked blonde hair. Sea-green eyes squinted in the sudden brightness and I saw that they were pooled with tears.
“Deborah Knott,” I said.
The radio crackled into speech.
“Willitt to Hadley. Jay? You out there, over?”
Her voice didn’t quaver.
“Yeah, Marvin. Over.”
“Guthrie Davis says there’s been a accident out by your bottom lease. He telling the truth, over?”
“Yeah, this time. Over.”
“Sit tight then. We’ll be right out. Out.”
A minute later, the same young woman’s voice spoke through the static. “Base to Hadley. Mom? Who’s hurt? Over.”
“Tell you later, Becca. Over and out.” She hung up the mike with finality.
“Your daughter?”
Again the brusque nod. “Where you staying on the island?”
“That yellow cottage across from Andy’s place, catty-corner from Mahlon Davis’s.”
She studied me openly. “I thought their names was Carlette and Celeste.”
“My cousins. You know them?”
“Not to know,” she said shortly.
I suddenly realized that this was about the longest one-on-one conversation I’d ever had with an island woman. The men might wander over when Carl was on the porch or out in the yard working on his lawn mower or fiddling with some maintenance chores, but seldom the women. If we happened to be hanging our bathing suits out on the line to dry or if we walked into the store when a wife or daughter we knew by sight was also there, they’d nod or speak, but never more than what was absolutely necessary for politeness. Sue had somehow endeared herself to Miss Nellie Em, Mahlon’s mother (and Guthrie’s great-grandmother), and the old woman will even come inside for a glass of tea; but she never visits unless Sue is there.
As for the other neighbor women, whether from pride or clannishness, they keep themselves to themselves so far as most upstaters are concerned; and Mahlon’s wife, Effrida {his only wife} is almost a pure-out recluse. The only time I ever see her outside is going to or from church or to hang out clothes.
“You knew Andy pretty well?” I asked.
“Whole island knows Andy. Whole sound, for that matter. Even up in Raleigh. He started the Alliance and he used to be on the Marine Fisheries Commission. He quit it though when it got took over too bad by pier owners and dingbatters.”
I was amused. “You mean sports fishermen from upstate?”
“Sportsmen.” She almost spat the word. “They’d run us right on off the water and out of the sound if they could.”
Andy Bynum’s face was totally awash now. Small fishes darted over his open eyes and explored his half-parted lips. Leave him here three days and there’d be nothing left but bones that would quickly pit and calcify and dissolve back into the ocean.
“Full fathom five thy father lies,” quoted Jay Hadley, unexpectedly paralleling my thoughts.
“Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
Okay, I admit it: I stared at her in mouth-open astonishment.
She pulled those mirrored sunglasses back over her eyes. “We ain’t all totally ignorant down here.” Her voice was half-embarrassed, half-belligerent. “Or maybe you think William Shakespeare’s something else that belongs to just you rich upstaters?”
“Of course not,” I answered, stung by how close to the truth she was.
We rocked in the easy swells. A few miles over, the ferry was returning from Cape Lookout to Shell Point at the end of the island. She maneuvered our boat closer to Andy’s body and made angry shooing motions with her hands. The little fish scattered.
I tried to look dispassionately at his sodden shirt.
“Hard to tell if that blood’s caused by an entrance or exit wound,” I mused. “I hope the bullet’s still inside him, though, so they’ll be able to match the weapon.”
Now it was her turn to stare. “You something with the law?”
“A judge,” I admitted. “I’ll be holding district court in Beaufort tomorrow.”
Suddenly, Jay Hadley stood and, in one practiced motion, raised the .22 and cracked off a shot into the edge of her clam bed.
“Stingray,” she said blandly.