Page 119 of Nightshade

“Uh, I think the last time was when he called to complain that Judge Harrell was making too much of a wake with his boat,” Tash said.

“Really?” Stilwell said. “I wouldn’t think that old Viking could make that much of a wake. Besides, I pick him up most Fridays and he doesn’t come plowing in.”

“It’s when he leaves. He’s always in a hurry to get back, I guess. When he heads down the lane behind the BMC, he rocks the floating dock and the tenders. Sometimes there are members out there and they get mad.”

“You ever tell the judge to mind the wake?”

“I have, yeah. But I think it only encourages him. I don’t think he likes those rich guys ever since they kicked him out.”

“Wait a minute—they kicked him out? When was that? What did he do?”

“He didn’t really do anything. But for, like, fifty years they used to give the judge assigned to the island court an honorary membership.”

“Like the mayor.”

“Right, and I think it was mostly so the judge could have lunch at the club after he came over to hear cases. But Judge Harrell has a boat and that was new. I guess before him, the judges used the Express. But Harrell comes by boat, and so he really started using the club—you know, coming over on weekends, using their moorings like a real member, not an honorary one.”

“And they didn’t like that.”

“No. So they said no more membership, and they told him it was, like, a belt-tightening move. But everybody knew the real reason—including the judge. The club members don’t like outsiders acting like they belong.”

Stilwell nodded as he thought about Judge Harrell’s fall from grace at the Black Marlin Club. Heaven help any member who had to appear before the judge as a defendant.

People started lining up in the aisles to exit before the ferry was even docked. Stil and Tash waited to stand up until after the joltof the vessel hitting the rubber liners of the pier. Stilwell slung his backpack over his shoulders and managed the two roller suitcases as they got off. Tash asked him if there was anything from Vons he wanted her to pick up and he said they might need coffee for the brewer at his house.

They split up on Crescent, Stilwell heading toward home and Tash going up Sumner to the grocery store.

Two minutes later Stilwell was dragging the two roller bags behind him through modest crowds of tourists when his phone buzzed in his pocket. There was a number on the screen he didn’t recognize, but he stopped and took the call anyway, anticipating that he would be telling someone that he was off duty until further notice.

But it was Lionel McKey, the reporter from theCall,engaging in the reporter’s trick of calling from a line that wouldn’t be recognized in hopes that a reluctant source would answer.

“What do you want, Lionel?” Stilwell said. “I’m off duty, and if this is about Friday, you know I can’t comment pending the outcome of the investigation.”

“It’s not about Friday,” the reporter said. “It’s about the press release the sheriff’s office just put out.”

“I don’t know anything about a press release. You’ll have to call—”

“They say they’ve solved the woman-in-the-water case. That’s our story, and I’d hoped you would have at least given me a heads-up before it went out to every newsroom in the damn county.”

“Wait a minute. Just hold on a second.”

“Fine.”

Stilwell looked around. Tourists were passing on both sides of him and it wasn’t the right place for a call like this. He spotted an empty bench facing the harbor. He slipped the phone into his shirt pocket, grabbed the handles of the suitcases, and dragged themover to the bench. Sitting down, he retrieved the phone from his pocket.

“Lionel, do you have the press release there?” he asked.

“Yeah, they just put it out,” McKey said.

“Okay, read it to me.”

“It’s kind of long.”

“Just read it to me. I haven’t seen it. I can’t comment on it if I don’t know what it says, okay?”

That was an old cop trick. To act like you’re willing to comment if the journalist will reveal what he’s got.

“All right, I’ll read it,” McKey said. “It says: ‘Today the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced its findings in the homicide of twenty-eight-year-old Leigh-Anne Moss, whose body was found May twenty-third in Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island. Moss was bludgeoned to death before her body was weighted with a boat anchor and submerged in the harbor. In an intensive ten-day investigation, detectives from the homicide unit and the sheriff’s substation in Avalon were able to identify Daniel Easterbrook, age forty-four, of South Pasadena, as a suspect in the case. Today—’”

---