Wilmington, NC 04 - Murder At Wrightsville Beach

one of the upstairs bedroom windows. Good old Jon had beat me to the site again, I thought, although I didn't see his Escalade parked at the curb. I waved but by then he had moved away.
    The brick bonds on the Lauder house had been laid in the English pattern design which had been popular in the twenties. Brick was beautiful and durable and provided excellent insulation.
    "Hey, Miz Wilkes," Willie called and came to meet me on the sidewalk. "Or should I be callin ' you Mrs. Yost? And what do you hear from that hero husband of yours?"
    "Hey, Willie," I called back. "When are you going to start calling me Ashley?"
    "When you start calling me Mr. Hudson." He grinned. This was our morning ritual.
    "Okay, then Mr. Hudson, I've decided against the hyphenated last name. Ashley Wilkes-Yost sounds too much like Ashley Milque -toast to suit me. So I'm sticking with Wilkes."
    Willie threw back his head and roared with laughter. " Milque -toast! That's a good one, Miz Wilkes. Anybody know you would have a hard time thinking of you as Milque -toast. Not the way you keep finding those dead bodies."
    "Let's not get started on that. You've begun the pointing, I see."
    "Sure have. Took off all them old gutters and leaders yesterday, and will have new ones up before the end of the week. This nice hot weather's just fine for pointin '."
    "You like this weather?" I asked, incredulous.
    "Love it. I was born in the summer, partial to summer ever since."
    "Are you finding much damage to the mortar?" I asked.
    "In a house this age, and with settling and all, the mortar's cracked pretty good . Some pieces are just plain missing. So my boys take a chisel and a hammer and chip away the loose mortar. They'll slosh water into the joints so them old dry bricks don't suck up the moisture out of the mortar. Then we'll trowel the mortar into the joints and be as good as done.
    "And while we're up there, we'll be looking around for missing or cracked bricks. Got a stack of new ones up there just so's we can replace the old. Selected them myself, match just fine."
    "Sometimes I wonder why folks bother to hire me and Jon, Willie. You know more about this than I'll ever know."
    "That's what I keep askin ' myself, Miz Wilkes," Willie laughed. "But then, you gotta do all that paperwork. Myself, I hate the paperwork."
    "Okay, well, I'll see you later. I'd better get inside and see what Jon is up to." I started to the door, moving backward up the sidewalk.
    "Mr. Campbell ain't in there," Willie said, giving me a puzzled look.
    I turned toward the front door, then turned back as his words stopped me. Something flashed directly in front of my face and hit the step with a loud thud.
    Willie was at my side in a flash and I didn't know he could move so fast. He was hollering like mad, yelling for his crew.
    "What was that?" I asked, feeling slightly dazed. I looked down. A brick.
    "You crazy fools !" Willie was bellowing and looking up. "Watch what you're doing up there. You almost hit Miz Wilkes!"
    His fists were clenched; laid-back Willie was furious.
    A face appeared overhead, peering down from the scaffolding. "What's wrong, boss?"
    A second face appeared near the first.
    "Don't you boys ever toss bricks off that scaffold, you hear me! Don't you got no sense?"
    "We didn't toss no bricks, boss. No sir. Not us."
    Willie looked stumped. He pulled off his hat and raked the front of the house with his eyes. "Well, somebody done tossed that brick."
    "Somebody here? No," I said. "Maybe one of the loose bricks fell off the facade." I nudged the brick with the toe of my boot. It didn't look cracked or worn. In fact it looked new.
    "Well, who's in the house?" I asked. "Who's here?"
    " Ain't nobody here but us," Willie said and frowned.
    "But I saw someone up at the window," I insisted. "I thought it was Jon."
    "I told you. Mr. Campbell's not here. Nobody here but us. Let's check the house."
    Willie and I and the two brick masons who had scrambled down off the scaffolding to join us made a thorough search of the house. We found no one. But the back and side doors were open and the screen doors were not latched. Anyone could have come in and left by the back door, unseen. But why? I asked myself.
    Willie studied me like he was seeing me for the first time. "You done got yourself involved in another murder, Miz Wilkes, and somebody tryin ' to kill you!"

15

    Could Willie be right? I asked myself as I tried to sleep that night. Had someone deliberately thrown a brick at