"That's an awful big a.s.sumption you're making there, Ms. Judge. Maybe Bynum kept checking his watch so he'd know when the tide was low enough to dig clams."

I pushed away from the papers, overwhelmed with something close to nausea. I liked Chet and Barbara Jean. But I'd liked Andy and Linville, too, and it sickened me to think that one friend could kill another.

For a moment I felt like taking the advice given to Odysseus: I should put an oar on my shoulder and march inland until I got so far from the ocean and fishing and all these self-absorbed coastal conflicts that people would ask me what strange object I carried on my shoulder.

As if from far, far away, I heard Kidd's voice. "Ms. Judge?"

Abruptly, I stood and looked straight up into his hazel eyes. Our lips were only inches apart. "My name is Deborah."

"I knew that," he said, and bent to kiss me.

The kiss went on and on until it seemed we both must drown in Homer's wine-dark sea. Our lips parted for a moment and his breathing was as ragged as mine before he drew me to him again. Automatically, I started toward the bedroom, then hesitated. We weren't stupid teenagers any longer.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, "but we can't. I don't have any protec-"

He laid his fingers on my lips and gave a lopsided smile. "Now I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but lettuce and peppers and tomatoes and ice cream weren't all I brought with me this evening."

Delighted laughter suffused me. "I bet you were an Eagle Scout."

"And a member of the Optimists," he said solemnly.

a a a It is absolutely true what they say about men with long thin fingers, but his hands were so gentle and so slow that I was roused to a frenzy before I finally found out for sure.

Afterward, when we lay tumbled and satisfied against the pillows and against each other, his hands lazily wandered across my body. "Anybody ever tell you what beautiful b.r.e.a.s.t.s you have?"

I gazed down at them in the semi-darkness of the room. "Eight-cow b.r.e.a.s.t.s," I said smugly.

"Huh?"

"There's this huge stack of National Geographics in our attic. When I started to develop, I got really self-conscious about it because all my friends were getting these little round scoops of ice cream and I was getting cones. Then I came across one of those pseudo-sociological studies of some African tribe-you know the kind of thing they used to do where they'd show the native women half naked, but the men were only photographed from the navel up so that you never got to see their manhood?"

He laughed. "Yeah, I remember."

"Well, according to the article, round-breasted women averaged six cows in the marriage market, but the fathers of cone-breasted women could get eight cows."

He cupped both of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his hands and kissed them. "These are worth at least ten."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" I asked, letting my own hands begin to wander.

"Not fat. But I do like knowing it's a woman in bed with me, okay?"

"Okay."

a a a The nicest thing about the cottage's bathroom was that Carl had salvaged from somewhere an old claw-footed tub that was deep and wide and long enough for two. We ran it full of hot water, dumped in some bubble bath Celeste or Carlette must have left here once, and soaked for an hour, talking lazily about this and that. I knew that I'd have to go to Quig Smith tomorrow with what I'd found, but for tonight...

The telephone beside the bed rang sharply at eleven-ten.

"Deborah?" said my Aunt Zell. "Was that you I saw just now on the news, leaving the house where that Beaufort woman was murdered?"

I admitted it was and made light of my involvement. Aunt Zell doesn't fuss, but she does worry and she wasn't happy to think I'd stumbled into a second shooting.

"You take care of yourself, you hear?"

"I will," I promised, then told her goodnight and reached for Kidd.

I usually try to take Aunt Zell's advice whenever I can.

Besides, he was much, much better than Fudge Ripple ice cream.

13.

Throw out the Life-Line to danger-fraught men,

Sinking in anguish where you've never been:

Winds of temptation and billows of woe

Will soon hurl them out where the dark waters flow.

Throw out the Life-Line! Throw out the Life-Line!

Someone is drifting away;

Throw out the Life-Line! Throw out the Life-Line!

Someone is sinking today.

-Edward S. Ufford Every morning, by the time I got vertical, Kidd Chapin had been gone, so when Mickey Mantle's banty roosters woke me at seven-thirty Friday morning, I was amused to turn over in bed and find his head still on the pillow beside me. Along with the rooster crows, a cool breeze drifted in through the open windows.

"No coffee in bed?" I asked, snuggling down under the quilt.

"Don't mind if I do," he yawned. "I'll take mine black."

I hit him with my pillow. "Just because you were top oyster last night doesn't mean I'm going to turn into Henrietta Hausfrau."

He let out a m.u.f.fled yelp and wrapped those long skinny legs around mine.

"On the other hand," I said, wriggling free, "fair is fair, I suppose."

"And even in the morning, you're more than fair." He caught my hand and pulled me down for a long kiss that started at my lips and wound up on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "In fact," he said huskily, "I'll up my offer to twelve cows and a bushel of clams."

"Throw in a peck of oysters and I'll put in a good word for you with my daddy."

"Oysters are out of season," he murmured and began to do such entrancing things with my body that it was another twenty minutes before I got out of bed and said "Coffee" with much more firmness than I felt.

Jeans, sneakers and a Carolina sweatshirt, then out to the kitchen where I filled the coffee maker with cold water and measured out four scoops of a Kenyan blend I'd found in the freezer.

Andy Bynum's papers were on the table right where I'd left them last night and the sight of them rolled such a heavy black stone over my lighthearted mood that I grabbed up a bag of stale bread and told Kidd, "Let's go feed the gulls while the coffee's making."

"You do remember I'm supposed to be staking out loon hunters, don't you?"

"Mahlon won't know you're Wildlife. He'll just think I'm a loose woman."

He laughed. "You go ahead. I'll shave and start breakfast."

As I started out the door Kidd said, "Listen, Ms. Judge. You know what I said about oyster season? It really did close the thirty-first of March."

"So?"

"So maybe we ought to talk about it when you get back. Scrambled eggs or over easy for you?"

"Over easy," I said and went out into the bright April sunshine. The seriousness of his tone brought back that sinking feeling. Was this his tactful way of telling me that it'd been fun, but now the season was closed on any further relationship?

"One of these days you're going to remember that it's caveat emptor," said the preacher.

"Nothing wrong with carpe diem," comforted the pragmatist.

I was already into a Scarlett O'Hara mode on Chet, so I added Kidd to the things I'd think about later and surrendered myself to the delight of feeding gulls on the wing.

One or two are always cruising the sh.o.r.eline and as soon as the first gull swooped to catch a bread morsel, a dozen more appeared from nowhere until the bright blue air around me was filled with flashing white wings. Playing the wind, they hovered over the water like hummingbirds in midair as I tossed the broken pieces high above me, then they wheeled and dipped and soared again until all my bread was gone.

As I turned back to land, Mahlon Davis greeted me from his porch with a smile that turned to a scowl when two large white trucks pulled into the lot beside his.

They were from that Morehead waste removal service that Linville Pope had hired to clear Mahlon's debris from her property. One had side railings for hauling, the other held a pint-size yellow bulldozer.

Mahlon's thin shoulders stiffened angrily as three muscular workmen got out of the trucks and began letting down a steel ramp to off-load the dozer.

"They must not know Linville Pope's dead," I said.

Mahlon gave a threatening growl and struck off across the lot. I followed, sensing the beginning of a brawl. And wasn't I a judge? Didn't I know how to arbitrate?

By the time I picked my way through the junk and brambles, things had already begun to escalate. Mahlon's accent was too thick to let me distinguish his stream of angry threats, but evidently the workmen were understanding every abusive term. One of them had grabbed a shovel from the back of the truck and looked as if it wouldn't take much more before he swung it at Mahlon's head.

As I approached, Mahlon said to me, "Them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds're saying if I don't move my boat they're going to push it off."

"We got our orders from the property owner," said the beefiest of the three men. He had a clipboard in his hand and he thumped the flimsy yellow top sheet.

"From Linville Pope?"

"That's right, lady."

"But she was killed yesterday," I said.

"See?" said Mahlon. "And she's a judge. She knows the law."

"You really a judge?" asked the man.

I nodded.

"And Mrs. Pope really is dead?"

"Yes."

The man with the shovel lowered it and the other workman loosened his clenched fists. It looked for a moment as if that might be that, but their boss stood firm and said, "Well, ma'am, I'm real sorry to hear she's dead and all, but she put a deposit down and we signed a contract and far as I'm concerned, that's something him and the lawyers can work out. I need this job and I'm going to do it less'n you want to serve me with papers to quit."

He had me there and he knew it. He looked at Mahlon. "We'll start on the other side, but when we get to this side, mister, if you ain't moved that boat, I promise you we're going to move it for you." Again he thumped his clipboard. "She made a particular point of that boat in this contract."

"The h.e.l.l you say!" howled Mahlon. As he stormed across the lot back to his shed, he was cursing so loud and so viciously that I was glad Guthrie was at school and not around to hear or get cuffed in his anger.