Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron Page B

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