The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

32


They are very graceful, many even say beautiful.

—The Turkey Vulture Society




Tuesday night (continued)

The moon, four nights from full, was high in the western sky as Dwight drove home along endlessly branching back roads that were nearly deserted at that hour—deserted, that is, of humans and their vehicles. Every few miles his headlights were reflected in the eyes of a rambling possum or a feral cat crouched in the weeds of a ditchbank. As he drove through the creek bottom near the farm, he slowed to let a fox safely pass in front of him. Had he been going faster, he thought, Crawford’s abandoned buzzards would have had fresh meat for breakfast.

He had driven even slower than usual, using the time to turn the day’s events over in his mind and uneasy about what the rest of this day might hold. Despite his earlier flip answer to Sigrid, he knew that Deborah was troubled that Martin Crawford hadn’t been arrested nor even officially questioned.

True, it was the FBI’s case. True, there was no physical evidence to link him to the motel murder; and yes, it was true that he had rescued Anne and her colleague.

But to condone a cold-blooded murder because the CIA only demoted and reassigned the man who had killed Crawford’s partner and closest friend? Who had almost killed Crawford himself?

He could live with what he’d done, but could Deborah? Or would this taint what they had together? She was a judge, and while she had skirted close to the letter of the law, she had never actually broken it…except…well, yes, there was that time she stabbed Allen Stancil.

And he couldn’t help grinning as he remembered how she couldn’t be trusted around an unguarded neon sign. As a teenager, she had stolen a blue guitar, and he’d never heard a clear explanation of how she acquired that OPEN TILL MIDNIGHT sign.

All the same, taking a life was a hell of a lot different from taking a neon sign. Those were things she’d done before she became a judge and took an oath to uphold the law, an oath he knew she took seriously.



Except for a light in the kitchen, the house looked dark. Nearly midnight. She was probably already in bed, he thought. Asleep. He had half expected her to call sometime during the evening, but she hadn’t, which made him even more apprehensive. Taking a deep breath, he closed the door of the truck and stepped onto the back porch.

As he reached for the doorknob, Deborah opened the door. She was still dressed, and without speaking, she went into his arms for an embrace that melded into a long, slow, hungry kiss that he wished would never end.

Nevertheless, he sensed an underlying uncertainty in her kiss that made him step back and look down into her eyes. “We need to talk.”

“Yes,” she said.

Lifting a jacket from a peg beside the door, she joined him in the yard; and as they walked toward the pond, she linked her arm through his, which gave him hope. He found himself remembering another moonlit night down there on the pier, a mild spring night when she was home from hearing a divorce case over in Moore County and getting over a breakup with her latest boyfriend. It had taken all his willpower to keep his hands clasped around his drink, to keep from confessing that he’d loved her for years and wanted to be with her forever.

Sometime during his drive home, the wind had shifted. Instead of bone-chilling gusts out of the northeast, he felt a flow of warmer air from the west. Overhead, veils of thin clouds scudded across the moon, yet there was more than enough light to let them walk the familiar path without stumbling.

He told her first about Ginger Todd, of the incriminating pictures Martin Crawford had taken of her with a camera fastened to one of his circling buzzards, and of how Jeremy Harper had copied those pictures and tried to blackmail Mrs. Todd.

They walked out on the pier and moonlight glistened on the still dark water. She listened without comment when he repeated the conversation he and Sigrid had with Crawford at the airport. He also told her what his former colleague had said about the murdered pilot. “I’m not trying to justify it, Deb’rah, just saying that I know where he’s coming from.”

“Because you know where he’s been?” There was no judgment in her question. Indeed, it was not really even a question.

The silence stretched between them.

“Maybe I should have arrested him or turned him over to the feds, but…”

“But it got complicated, didn’t it? Bits and pieces of your own life got caught up in the equation.”

She started to move away, but he put his hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him.

“Do you really want me to tell you what happened in Germany?”

She returned his steady gaze for a long moment without flinching, then the consciously neutral lines of her face softened in the moonlight.

“Someday,” she said as she reached up and gently touched his face. “When you’re ready. If you want to.”

She walked down to the post that Annie Sue and Reese had wired with a switch at Christmas. Red, blue, and yellow lights gleamed through the water off the far end of the pier. The surface above bubbled and foamed, then that silly fountain the kids had installed suddenly shot up into the air, changing colors as the lights revolved.

He followed and put his arms around her, and when she leaned back against his chest, he knew she was okay with his decision.

“Cal was out in the garden this afternoon,” she said, fitting her body more closely to his. “He says our peas are coming up.”

A light breeze ruffled her hair as the wind shifted further to the west.

It held the promise of rain, the promise of spring.





APRIL 2011





Acknowledgments



My continuing thanks to Rebecca Blackmore, Shelly Holt, John Smith, and Shelley Desvousges, who went to law school and became district court judges so that I didn’t have to. Without their expert knowledge and their willingness to share that knowledge, Deborah Knott could not have been elected dogcatcher.

Brenda Foldesi, Sharon Woods Hopkins, and Lisa Logan walked me through the process of buying a house in Colleton County.

Brainstorming sessions with Bren Bonner Witchger, Mary Kay Andrews, Alex Sokoloff, Diane Chamberlain, Katy Munger, and Sarah Shaber—the other six of our Weymouth 7—were indispensable when I wrote myself into a corner with this book and couldn’t get out. And Weymouth itself continues to welcome us twice a year.

Vicky Bijur, who will be my agent and friend till one of us dies, has been my trusted advisor and support since we were both newbies.