The Marsh

by Bill Noel

  You can’t slip anything important by my buddy, I thought. “Do you remember ever seeing Sean in GB’s?”

  “No, and don’t remember a Sally Lou either; what’s the point?”

  “The point is that if Colleen learned something from a customer in GB’s that could have caused Long trouble and she was killed because of what she learned, most likely she heard it from the killer. If Sean didn’t frequent GB’s, the odds are low that it was him.”

  “Pretty weak,” said Charles. “I hope it’s true, but I still’d put money on Sean.”

  I didn’t totally disagree with him about the assumption being weak.

  We had spent a lot of time talking about possible suspects, but other than discovering a connection—a weak connection—between the two murders, we didn’t know much more than we had when I discovered Colleen’s body.

  Or did we? I was bothered by something I had heard the other night at GB’s; but the more I tried to remember, the further it slipped away. What could Colleen possibly have heard at work that made her such a threat—enough of a threat to kill her? What was Harley afraid of? What was he hiding? Could the two deaths be unrelated and Cal’s alias-challenged “friend” have misunderstood what she heard that connected the two? Could Charles and I do what the police with all of their resources and tools had failed to do? Could we find the killer? Why were we risking our lives nosing in?

  Before I could come up with answers or more realistically, determine that I didn’t have a clue, the phone rang. I barely recognized Amber’s voice. I sat in the chair in the back of the gallery.

  She sniffled and started her sentence twice before she said, “Give me a second.”

  I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold tight, tight enough to squeeze the hurt out of her voice, but said, “Sure.”

  The sound of plastic striking a hard surface rattled in my ear. I heard her blow her nose and then the rustle of the phone receiver. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could do this without crying.”

  I held my breath. The only sound I heard was the loud grating of the air conditioner and a couple of vehicles rolling up Center Street.

  “Chris, I’m a coward, I know it. You deserve better, but I can’t do this in person. Sorry … Here goes. I love you, and have for three years. I didn’t want to at times, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “I know—”

  She interrupted, “I don’t think I can go on dating you. Jason has to be my priority. I … I know it’s not your fault and you wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt him or me. I also know that you won’t stop until you find out who killed that lawyer and that girl, or … or you get killed trying.” She sniffled. “I’m sorry, Chris; God knows, I’m sorry. Please don’t call me back or try to see me. Maybe someday … maybe … I love you.”

  The line went dead. So did my heart.

  I stared at the phone and then lowered my head. I don’t know how long it was before I had the energy to stand, and then I felt like I was in a fog. I didn’t know if I wanted to yell, cry, curl into a ball and sit in the corner, or shut my eyes tight and pretend the phone had never rung.

  Instead, I walked to the front door, turned off the lights, walked out onto the sidewalk, locked the door, and began walking. I nearly tripped over a beagle that was enjoying the sunshine while its owner stood in the middle of the sidewalk talking on a cell phone. I didn’t want to cross the street because I would see the Lost Dog Café and think of Amber; I couldn’t walk toward the ocean because I’d pass her building—probably where she had called from. I headed away from town on one of the side streets that immediately put me in a residential area—no sidewalks, no vacationers on the streets, no happy, laughing children to make me feel more miserable that I felt. I walked and walked. Unlike the beach or the center of town, many of the residential streets and yards were shaded by canopies of oaks and large palmetto trees.

  The sun rapidly bowed toward the horizon behind me, and the trees had already thrown dark shadows. I wandered until I stopped on Hudson Street in front of a sign that echoed my feelings and mood: Dead End. It was an omen; I ignored the warning and continued to the spot where the road ended at the marsh. I paused and caught my breath as I leaned against the red-and-white striped barrier strategically placed to prevent either the most stupid or most inebriated drivers from plowing into the marsh. The warm, red colors from the setting sun reflected off the billowy clouds that hung low over the lush, green spartina grass. The only sound I heard—other than the sloshing of blood pulsating through my arteries—was a flock of birds off in the distance and the happy yapping of a small dog. I pictured its wagging tail as its master ventured into the yard to deliver the evening meal. For a moment, I wished I could be as happy as the dog, or even the birds as they flew in circles over the wetlands.

  I considered walking on, but knew the view wouldn’t get better, so I lowered myself onto one of the small concrete barriers that marked the end of the road. From the way I felt, the barrier was as much symbolic as real.

  I didn’t know how long I had moped, pondered, and flat-out became more and more despondent, but the next thing I realized was that it was pitch dark and my phone was ringing.

  “Chrisster. Be Dudester,” came the familiar voice, breaking me out of my less-than-stellar mood. “We got poop for you; barrel on over.”

  The next thing I heard was nothing. Dude had hung up. And here I was, at the end of the road: no Heather around to use her psychic ability to tell me where Dude was, no Charles to tell me if Dude’s use of poop was more significant than what I thought it meant, no clue as to who we were. So I did all I knew to do: I hit the Last Call button and crossed my fingers that Dude would answer.

  Miracles did happen.

  “Dudester, state your need.”

  “Where are you and who are you with?” I stopped; saying anything else would have been counterproductive.

  “Loggerhead’s … Mad Melster.”

  He hung up—again.

  I didn’t call back. I slowly stood, turned back toward town, realized that the walk was more than I would have chosen, but didn’t have a choice. Dude had called me no more than three times in the years I had known him, so I knew if he asked me to join him, there was a good reason. I hoped it wasn’t just to shovel poop.

  Loggerhead’s Beach Bar was a wooden, one-story, elevated yellow building directly across the street from the Charleston Oceanfront Villas, the largest condo complex on the island. It had begun to rain by the time I arrived at the bar. Water ponded on the parking lot and reflected the blue neon lights that outlined the roof of the elevated bar. The Folly Beach Bluegrass Society invaded Loggerhead’s each Thursday evening, and several weeks, weather permitting, they performed on the outdoor patio—“Pickin’ on the Patio,” according to signs plastered around town.

  Tonight’s festivities had been forced inside by the rain, but I could still hear guitars and a banjo as I climbed the steps and opened the glass door to the restaurant, bar, pool hall, pinball machine arcade, and weekly gathering spot for fans of bluegrass music. GB’s open-mike Tuesdays were liberally cloned from the weekly bluegrass event.

  An illuminated, two-tiered bandstand was in the far corner and was bookended by two large Yamaha speakers. A half-dozen guitar and banjo cases sat on the floor to the right of the bandstand, and seven bluegrass musicians leaned into three mikes on the crowded stage. Three of the musicians looked like they had just walked in from the beach, two others wore jeans, and one was dressed in black, with boots and a straw, fedora-style hat. While the group was as varied as could be, their music was great—a significant difference from GB’s open mike night. Most of them had gathered every Thursday for the loosely organized Bluegrass Society and were more than familiar with the song selections.

  Multi-taskers in the bar could listen to the music, watch baseball on the flat screen t
elevision to the left of the stage, and read the Kona Longboard, Yuengling, and Budweiser signs behind the musicians.

  The rest of the bar was as crowded as the bandstand. Several natural-stained pine booths were to the left of the stage and were already packed with customers enjoying the typical beach menu. There were only a handful of tables in front of the musicians, and they were full. Seven bar-height, black-vinyl-covered swivel chairs were near the bamboo-faced bar and occupied. Approximately a dozen other patrons edged in among the lucky few who had the chairs.

  Dude and Mad Mel were lucky enough, or had arrived early enough, to have commandeered two of the swivel chairs at the far end of the bar, away from the bandstand. They were in deep conversation; their heads almost touched so they could hear over the banjo licks and the lyrics of the bluegrass standard, “Fox on the Run.”

  Dude didn’t see me coming and fell to the side of the barstool when I tapped his shoulder. “Whoa, Chuckster, nearly axed me!”

  He was almost on the floor, so I assumed being axed wasn’t good.

  “Sorry, Dude,” I said.

  Mel started to laugh but stopped when Dude turned to him and hopped back on the chair. “Hey, Chris,” he said. He held out his extra-large hand and gave mine a definitive shake. A bored, middle-aged bartender wearing a spaghetti-strap, yellow tank top and black shorts leaned toward me and then picked up Mel’s empty Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle and tapped it on the bar. I took the not-so-subtle hint and ordered white wine. The bartender tapped the bar again, slightly harder than before, and both Mel and Dude nodded for another round. She mouthed a toothy grin and headed to the cooler at the other end of the bar—her sales pitch had succeeded.

  “Me … we … be glad you shuffled over,” said Dude. “Full moon be tonight.”

  “Reason you two are here. Right?” I said.

  “No all-hammerz in you,” said Dude. “We …”

  “Enough damned chit-chat,” interrupted Mel before Dude could break out in a monologue and utter three or four more words.

  Dude’s head bobbed between Mel and me. “Mel told me stuff. Me not great detective like you and the Chuckster; wasted words on me; so, you be called … and,” Dude threw both arms in the air. “Ta-da, here you be.”

  The wine arrived in the nick of time, and I took more than a generous sip. I figured I’d need it. I turned to Mel. He had on the same sleeveless, leather bomber jacket and camo pants he had worn during our marsh escapade. His Semper Fi camouflage fatigue cap was replaced by a dark-brown golf cap with the M&M candy logo in green on the crown. If the letter “m” hadn’t made it into the alphabet, Mel would have been lost—or named Nel.

  “Okay, here goes,” he said and then took a sip of his new Pabst. “I’ve got a friend … a close friend … who lives with me.” Mel looked down at his beer bottle. “My friend’s a rock promoter in Charleston.” He looked up and grinned. “Handles most of the big tours that hit the Lowcountry, and some of the up-and-comers too—the kind of groups small bars can afford.”

  “Beach Boys once,” interrupted Dude. “‘Round, round, get around.’ Cool.”

  Mel gave him a sideways, dirty look and continued, “He’s threatened to stick an ice pick in my ear every time he hears I’ve been listening to Bluegrass music.” The smile suddenly disappeared. “Well, anyway, yesterday I told him about our trip to the marsh to check out the dead zone and some of the other characters you guys were talking about.”

  “Yeah, tell him,” said Dude. The peace symbol on his T-shirt glowed in the reflection of the stage lights.

  Mel turned his mad-Marine stare on Dude, and then turned back to me. “Yeah, well, my … friend knows nearly every bar owner in Charleston County. He’d be great at reconnaissance. Anyway, he knows Greg Brile. They go back to when Brile had the rock bar; hired some of the cheaper acts that my friend promoted.”

  An enthusiastic version of “Rocky Top” drowned out Mel’s words, but I did catch something about Brile struggling to pay Mel’s “friend” his fees and that the “friend” had to make several trips to the bar to collect. The song ended, and most of the group left the stage for a “beer break.” My aging, high-note-challenged ears appreciated lack of amplified sound.

  “Tell him all,” urged Dude.

  Mel jerked his head toward Dude. “Damned draft-dodging pinko druggy,” he said and then shook his head. “This is my story. Use you own few words when I’m done … Damned hippy.”

  Mel pulled a cigar from one of the many pockets in his cut-off field pants, put it in his mouth, and reached for a retro-looking lighter shaped like a pin-up girl from the forties. He looked at the lighter and slammed it back on the bar. “Damned no-smoking rules.” He then turned back to me. “Caldwell … that’s my friend … said that when Greg was a day shy of going under, he found someone who wanted to be his partner—a silent partner, said Caldwell.”

  Dude held his beer bottle in front of Mel’s face. “Who be it? Tell the Chrisster,” interrupted Dude.

  “Hush, you damned ate-up hippy,” said Mel. He pushed the beer bottle out of his face and pointed the unlit cigar at Dude. “I told you I don’t know who the partner is; Caldwell doesn’t know either, so don’t ask.”

  Dude and Mel showed so much love toward each other that I thought I’d better push the conversation forward or witness a murder—or at the least, a court-martial of Dude by the Marines. “Did your friend, uh, Caldwell, tell you anything that could help?”

  “Don’t know if it’ll help or just be a bum scoop, but he did say that Brile told him that he had found a ‘sucker’ to buy into the business; said that the sucker was a crooked attorney. Help, I don’t know.” Mel took off his M&Ms hat and waved it in front of Dude.

  Dude smiled. “Imaginary smoke be gone.”

  “And he didn’t have any idea who the attorney was or where he was from?” I asked.

  Before Mel answered, Dude said, “Crooked attorney—don’t narrow field, do it?”

  Considering the entire universe of attorneys, no, I thought. But in my small corner of the world, only one attorney had been murdered in the last couple of weeks; one attorney’s office had been torched; and only one attorney had been accused of being crooked—Tony Long.

  The conglomeration of musicians had re-gathered on the bandstand and started strumming Bill Monroe’s signature song, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” The amplified sound made it nearly impossible to hear whatever few words Dude had tried to say. I leaned over to Mel and asked if Caldwell had shared anything else. I think his answer was no, so I thanked him for the information and patted Dude on the arm and weaved my way through the crowd to the exit. Jamie, a member of the band and one of the society’s organizers, nodded to me as I passed the stage. Being recognized is a good feeling—most of the time.

  If the crooked attorney was, in fact, the late Tony Long, did that mean Greg Brile should be added to the list of suspects? If Long was the attorney, it still didn’t mean that Brile would have had any reason to kill him. What was the motive?

  Fortunately, the rain had stopped, so I didn’t have to rush home; my legs were still sore from Charles landing on them and already feeling tight for the walking tonight, and besides, I wasn’t in a hurry to get home and rehash my conversation with Amber.

  Charles, formerly the paragon of punctuality, had been arriving at the gallery later and later, a trend that coincidentally started about the time he had begun dating Heather. From a few comments in recent months, I suspected the sheets on the bed in his small apartment didn’t get nearly as much wear as they had the last couple of decades. Friday mornings were decent for attracting customers—not decent enough to pay the bills, but enough to beat most of the other weekday mornings. I arrived early and cranked up the air conditioner to be ready for the swarm of customers. Charles was nowhere to be seen.

  I had poured my first cup of coffee when the
bell over the front door rang. I was pleased with myself for being prepared and with a mug of coffee in hand, walked to the door that separated the back room from the gallery, a large customer-service grin on my face.

  My smile disappeared as quickly as a shooting star. Harley was at the door, his back turned toward me. A chill ran down my spine as I watched his trembling hand turn the deadbolt. He hadn’t seen me, and I quickly calculated my chances of getting to the back door and to freedom before he could reach me—slim if any at all was my alarming conclusion.

  What could I grab as a weapon? Where was Charles’s cane when I needed it? Where was Charles? What was it about the gallery?

  A couple of years ago, I was nearly blown into unrecognizable pieces by a bomb as I sat in this room; and now, Harley, a man whom I would bet on in a wrestling match against a grizzly bear, locked the door on any help that could save me. The adage that “there’s nothing to fear but fear itself” had never been more absurd.

  Harley turned away from the door and saw me standing in the back corner. He had never been the spitting-image of a GQ model, but he looked more disheveled than usual. His eyes screamed lack of sleep. He had on bib overalls with the strap over his left shoulder unbuttoned. His work boots were mud-splattered. His burly, muscled arms nearly ripped out the seams in his shirt.

  “Hi,” he said. He took two steps toward me.

  I had never heard the simple greeting sound so ominous. He took a pack of Camels from his work-shirt pocket, shook out the unfiltered cigarette, and lit one without taking his eyes off me. It wasn’t the time to tell him that I didn’t allow smoking in the gallery. I nodded and gave him my best faux smile.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  I hoped he was asking and not telling me that that was all the time I had left. I continued to force a smile and nodded again.

  He pointed his beefy index finger toward the back room, and I obediently led him into the room and out of sight of anyone who might look in the plate-glass storefront window. I continued to look around for a weapon, any weapon, but didn’t find anything that would even the odds. I sat on one of the rickety chairs at the table, and Harley glanced at the Mr. Coffee on the other side of the room. I didn’t fool myself into thinking I could kill him with kindness but asked if he wanted a cup. He didn’t answer but walked to the machine and grabbed a Piggly Wiggly mug from the counter. Not sure why, but I saw it as a sign of hope.