Read Online Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron - Free Book Online Page B

me exactly how that made him the man.
    As I headed up the path to the cottage, the maniacal cry of a migrant loon rang across the sound.

5
    We are waiting by the river,
We are watching by the shore,
Only waiting for the boatman,
Soon he’ll come to bear us o’er.
    Though the mist hang o’er the river,
And its billows loudly roar,
Yet we hear the song of angels,
Wafted from the other shore.
    —Miss Mary P. Griffin
    Tuesday’s court began slowly as we finished off the traffic violations and moved on to various misdemeanors (which I could hear) and some extra probable-cause felonies (which would have to be bucked up the next level to superior court).
    Despite Mahlon’s optimistic talk, I wasn’t terribly surprised when a familiar figure came up to the defense table and signed the form waiving his rights to an attorney.
    Mickey Mantle Davis.
    According to the ADA, he sat accused of stealing a bicycle from the deck of the
Rainmaker
, a forty-footer out of Boston, currently berthed at the dock on Front Street. The state was hoping to prove probable cause to prosecute as a felony burglary.
    “How do you plead?” I asked.
    He stood up with a happy smile because he had just recognized me. “Not guilty, Judge, ma’am.”
    Technically, I could have recused myself right then and there, but Mickey Mantle Davis would’ve had to go over to one of the piedmont or mountain districts to find a judge that hadn’t heard of him. From the time he was fourteen and buying beer with a stolen driver’s license, Guthrie’s father has been smashing up cars and smashing up boats and smashing up every second chance people still try to give him because shiftless as he is, he’s still a likeable cuss. He’d work hard for a week, then lay out drinking for two weeks; steal your portable TV on Friday night, then bring you a bushel of oysters on Saturday—a walking cliché of the good-hearted, good-timing wastrel who had so far managed to stay, if not out of trouble, at least out of a penitentiary.
    Good luck to Mahlon keeping him on a trawler the whole of shrimping season.
    “Call your first witness,” I told the ADA.
    A Beaufort police officer took the stand and, after my recording clerk swore him in, testified how the dispatcher had radioed a description of both the bike and the thief. Within the hour, he’d seen the defendant pedaling such a bike toward the Grayden Paul drawbridge, heading for Morehead City. Upon being stopped and questioned, Mr. Davis had claimed that he’d found the bike by the side of the road and was taking it over to Morehead City to put a found ad in the
Carteret County News-Times
.
    “No further questions,” the ADA said dryly.
    “Me neither,” said Mickey Mantle.
    “Call Claire Montgomery,” said the ADA.
    On the bench behind him sat the three fashion plates I’d noticed at lunch the day before. Claire Montgomery was evidently the blonde ponytailed youngster. As she took the witness box, hand puppet and all, I was surprised to see that she wasn’t the eleven-or twelve-year-old I’d originally assumed, but at least nineteen or twenty. I was so busy shifting mental gears that the clerk had almost finished administering the oath before I registered that it wasn’t—strictly speaking—Claire Montgomery’s hand which lay on the Bible held up by the bailiff. Instead, her hand was inside the doll’s body and she manipulated it so that the puppet raised its right hand and touched the Bible with its left. Although the young woman’s lips moved, I assume it was the puppet’s voice that swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
    “State your name and address,” said the ADA.
    The puppet gave me a courteous nod and seemed to say, “Our name is Claire Montgomery and we live at Two-Oh-Seven—”
    “Just a minute, Miss Montgomery,” I interrupted. “This is a serious court of law, not a vaudeville stage. I must ask you to put aside the doll.”
    “But we saw him take our