by Bill Noel
Brenda Lee’s version of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” serenaded us as we sat and took a sip of our drinks.
“You didn’t say anything to Neil about what we wanted to talk to him about, did you?”
“No,” I said. “He was busy, then you interrupted us when he was getting ready to tell me about the fire.”
“Good,” Charles said as Brenda finished singing. He pivoted toward the bar. “Hey, Cal, old buddy. Chris here wants to talk to Neil when he gets a chance.”
“No problem, pard. I’ll mosey in the kitchen, tell him to drop everything he’s doing. Stop fixing food. Rush out here to take a meeting with two old-timers. Will that work?”
“Good plan, Cal,” Charles said, skipping over Cal’s sarcasm.
Luckily, Cal laughed as he headed to the kitchen.
Cal delivered the hamburger to the customer at the bar as Neil came our way.
Neil turned a chair around, sat, then put his elbows on the back of the seat. “Cal said two old geezers want to talk to me.”
Charles looked around the room, then said, “Don’t see any. Since you’re here, Chris said you were going to tell him something about the fire.”
“I did?”
“Neil, you said you’d heard it was arson, that you had a couple of ideas about who may’ve started it.”
Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” proved Cal hadn’t replaced all his classic country songs with Christmas music.
Neil looked at the jukebox then at me. “I’m being paranoid. Probably doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m thinking. No need to get into it.”
“Tell us anyway,” Charles said. There was a zero chance he’d let Neil off that easy.
“Remember when Cal hired me?”
“Sure,” I said.
“He’d heard I’d been fired from the private security job in Charleston.”
Charles interrupted, “Yeah, your boss at that toy factory fired you because you were being questioned by the cops about the bookie’s murder.”
Neil nodded. “Doing my civic duty and that jackass kicked me out. Pissed me off.”
Charles said, “So?”
Charles, let the man talk, I thought. “Neil, go on.”
“I’d worked there for four years. You learn a lot about a place when you’re a night watchman. Get to snoop when no one’s around. Lots of hours with nothing to do. It’d be hard to find a thief who’d want to break in a kid’s toy manufacturing company. Anyway, I started piecing together some papers of the owner, Paul Davidson’s his name, by the way. Anyway, he was mighty careless about leaving tax papers and P&L statements on his desk. I’m no accountant, hell, I’m just a dumb country boy, but it didn’t take a number cruncher to figure there was a bunch of revenue Paul wasn’t reporting to the IRS.”
“How’d you figure it out?” Charles asked.
Neil smiled. “Didn’t have to. All I did after he fired me was make a couple of calls to the IRS office in Charleston. Guys, did you know they have a form you have to fill out to report fraud? They’ve got a form for everything.” He shook his head. “Hell, I wasn’t about to fill out a stupid form. I made the two calls, told them where and what, and if they wanted to catch a crook, they’d find him there. I wasn’t going to do all the work for them.”
“What happened?” Charles asked as if Neil wasn’t going to tell us without being asked.
Cal hummed along with Charlie Rich’s version of “Behind Closed Doors” as Neil took a sip of beer he’d brought with him to the table. No one else had entered the bar.
“One of the guys from the factory called a couple of weeks later, told me it was good I got out when I did.” Neil laughed. “He didn’t know I’d been fired. Said a group of suits swarmed all over the factory hauling out computers and everything from the file cabinets. My buddy wasn’t sure what happened next, but Paul spent a lot of time talking to lawyers and storming around the factory looking like his head was going to explode. Best news I got in years.”
“Neil,” I said, “That’s interesting. Sounds like he’s getting what he deserves, but how’s it related to the fire?”
“Suppose I left out an important part. Last week, my buddy at the factory called bitching about the extra work Paul was laying on him. He was always bitching about something. Anyway, he heard Paul telling one of his VPs he figured out who ratted him out to the Feds. Said he was going to get even with the SOB. Fellas, I’m that SOB.”
I asked, “How would he have found out it was you?”
“Don’t think he could. That’s why I’m being paranoid. I didn’t give the IRS my name. I never said anything at work hinting at me knowing about the business end of the company. Hell, I was just a dumb old night watchman.”
Two customers arrived, sat at a table on the other side of the room, placed an order with Cal, who whistled for Neil, then pointed at the kitchen.
A subtle hint, it wasn’t. Neil said he’d better do what Cal wanted. He didn’t want to get fired from another job.
Ernest Tubb’s version of “Blue Christmas” was playing, reminding everyone that Christmas was less than two weeks away.
Chapter Twelve
Charles and I went separate ways after leaving Cal’s. The temperature had become uncharacteristically warm for this time of year. Adding the bright sunshine made it feel warmer, so I walked a few short blocks to Pewter Hardware to ask Larry how his sister-in-law and nephew were adjusting to their new residence. This was the store’s busiest time of year, so I wasn’t surprised there were vehicles overflowing the small, crushed-shell parking lot.
The interior of the tiny store was more crowded than the lot. Three customers waited in line at the check-out counter, four were blocking the narrow aisle near the seasonal decorations, while two others were flipping through a battery display.
Larry manned the register. He wore a velvet Santa’s hat, but at five-foot-one, weighing a hundred pounds after a Thanksgiving meal, he looked more like one of Santa’s elves. He was self-conscious about his diminutive size, so the elf comparison was one he’d not hear from me.
I wasn’t surprised by the crowd but was surprised seeing Luke beside Larry bagging purchases. Brandon, Larry’s only full-time employee was helping a customer carry three sacks to the door.
The customers who’d been waiting to check out completed their purchases and headed for the exit. Larry saw me standing out of the flow of customers, smiled, then put his arms around Luke. The nine-year-old was only a half-foot shorter than Larry, another observation I’d keep to myself.
“Chris, check out my new employee.”
I smiled. “Have the child-labor police been in yet?”
“Hi, Mr. Landrum,” Luke said, ignoring my comment. “Uncle Larry says I’m a big help.”
“You look like you’re doing a great job. You need to ask your uncle for a raise.”
Luke chuckled. “Uncle Larry says I’m earning my rent, but I can leave whenever I want.”
I started to comment when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned to see Rose standing behind me wearing an orange Pewter Hardware sweatshirt.
“Don’t tell me Larry’s put both of you to work.”
“He’s not that cruel. As you know, I’m short on clothes so Larry contributed this to the cause. Cindy and I are going to the mall tomorrow to rectify the situation.”
“Rose,” Larry said, “why don’t you get some fresh air. Luke and I can hold down the fort.”
She nodded then turned to me. “Up for a walk?”
“I can cram one in my schedule.”
“Mom, don’t worry about me. Uncle Larry needs me here.”
Another customer was ready to check out, so Rose and I left the store in the good hands of Larry, Luke, and, I suppose, Brandon.
“Which way?” Rose asked as we walked a block to Center Street.
“Have you been on the Folly Pier?”
“Luke and I started there once, but it was so cold we turned around. Today’s nice
r, I’m up for it if you are.”
We walked six blocks to where Center Street dead-ends at the entrance to the Tides Hotel. Our walk was mostly silent, with Rose’s only comments being about the illuminated sand dollar, dolphin, crab, and turtle decorations adorning light poles along the way. The Folly Beach Fishing Pier was adjacent to the Tides, so we turned at the hotel, before making our way up the long flight of steps to the pier’s deck where a group of women were leaning against the railing watching the surf roll in. A middle-aged man was photographing two children sitting in a red chair big enough to hold someone the size of the Goodyear blimp.
“It’s a lot warmer than the last time we were here. This is a great view of the beach.”
I pointed to the far end of the thousand-foot-long structure. “It’s even a better view from out there.”
“What are we waiting for?” Rose said as she put her arm through mine and escorted me to the end of the pier.
When we reached the Atlantic end of the pier, we sat on a wooden picnic table and faced the shore. Rose was silent for a long time, before saying, “It’s weird living in the house with Cindy.”
“Were you close?”
I asked since Cindy had never mentioned a sister.
“Not really. With ten years between us, we had little in common. We have different fathers, you know.”
“I didn’t know. Cindy and I are good friends, but she seldom says anything about her life before moving to Folly.”
Rose smiled. “That’s no surprise. She’s self-contained, irritatingly so at times.”
I nodded.
“Her dad, Kenneth, was a coal miner near Evarts. That’s in Harlan County, Eastern Kentucky. He’d dropped out of high school to work in the mines. Two years later, he married our mom, Ruth, then three years after that, Cindy came along.”
“I thought she grew up in East Tennessee.”
“Her dad didn’t have much formal education, but was smart, or so mom said. She told me he realized if he kept working in the mines, his back would die before he did. He quit when Cindy was three. He’d heard about work in Tennessee from a friend who’d moved there a couple of years earlier. It was with the Sevier County Sheriff’s Office. He packed up his family and moved to Kodak.”
“Where you were born?”
She looked at the ocean for the longest time. I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me. Finally, she said, “Three days shy of Kenneth’s first anniversary with the Sheriff’s Office, he pulled a man over for speeding. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unusual until the man, later determined to be high on drugs, pulled a gun and shot Kenneth three times. He never had a chance. Cindy was four.”
“That’s horrible,” I said, wondering if that’s why Cindy seldom mentions her past.
“It got worse for Cindy. Five years later, Mom married a man named Boyd. He was a traveling shoe salesman, sold to small-town retail stores throughout the region. Mom was pregnant with me when they got married.” She chuckled without a hint of humor then stared at the water. “Boyd told mom he could put up with one kid but not two. He left town, never to be heard from again.” Cindy was Luke’s age when I was born.” She turned to me and smiled. “Cindy would kill me if she knew I was telling you.”
“She won’t hear it from me.”
“Good. Not many years after that, Cindy graduated from high school. She had little interest in studying, but to keep mom happy, she moved in a dorm at the University of Tennessee, attended school off and on for three years before quitting. Instead of moving back to Kodak, she stayed in Knoxville. For eight years she bounced around dead-end jobs. She waited tables, tended bar, even sold encyclopedias door-to-door.”
“She said she worked in law enforcement before moving here.”
“She joined the same sheriff’s office her dad was a member of. She never told me this, it’s only amateur psychoanalyzing, but I think it was so her dad would’ve been proud of her following in his footsteps.” She sighed. “Sure you won’t tell her I told you?”
“You have my word.”
She nodded. “Cindy said you were a pain in the ass but could be trusted. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
I laughed.
“While I’m spilling secrets, there’s something else. I haven’t told Cindy because I know her well enough to know if I did, she’d go all cop and blow it out of proportion.”
“I can see that.”
“The day before the apartment fire, my ex called. He was at the Crab Shack, wanted me to meet him.”
“What’d you say?”
“Chris, I was shocked. I hadn’t heard from him since I moved. He wanted to meet me without Luke. Probably shouldn’t have, but I went. Told Luke I had to walk up the street for a few minutes and left him in the apartment. I felt bad about leaving him, but he was watching a monster movie and seemed okay.” She turned to watch a large container ship lumber toward the entrance to the Charleston harbor.
I waited for her to continue.
“Lawrence, my ex, was sitting at a table acting smug. It’s one of his more-practiced looks. He’s a vice president at a Morristown bank, a job he got because his father is on the board. To put it mildly, I didn’t greet him with open arms.”
“What’d he want?”
“Us to come home—home to Morristown. Can you believe that? Mr. Hot Shot Bank Official got caught having an affair with a twenty-five-year-old teller at another bank. Now I’m supposed to come running back after the chickadee dumped him.”
“What’d you tell him?”
She surprised me with a laugh. “With two college degrees in English, I’d learned several ways to tell him to go, umm, have intercourse with himself. I used all of them, then cracked open a peanut and threw the shell at him.”
I struggled to hold back a laugh, then said, “How’d he respond?”
“It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. His face turned red, his hands gripped his drink so hard, I was afraid he’d break the glass. He dropped a twenty on the table, stared at me, and whispered, “You’ll regret it.”
“Think he started the fire?”
She shook her head. “No. That’s why I haven’t told Cindy.”
“What makes you think he didn’t?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have put it past him if it were only me. There’s no way he would’ve endangered Luke, even if there was a minuscule chance his son would’ve been in the apartment. No way.”
It may’ve been my imagination, but the wind picked up and my skin felt like the temperature dropped twenty degrees. I wish I had her confidence.
Chapter Thirteen
After walking Rose to Larry’s store, my growling stomach reminded me I’d skipped two meals, a rare event. Instead of heading home, I stopped at Snapper Jack’s, a large, multi-level restaurant on the corner of Ashley Avenue and Center Street. The restaurant is easy to give directions to since it faces the island’s only traffic light. A college-age hostess in an aqua Snapper Jack’s T-shirt escorted me to a table by a large window overlooking Center Street. In-season it would’ve been nearly impossible to get a table so quickly.
A server greeted me with a smile, a menu, an introduction, her name is Marcia and an inquiry about my drink choice. She headed to the bar once I said a glass of Cabernet. Since the restaurant had few customers, Marcia had my drink on the table before I could study the menu. She asked if I was ready to order. I begged for additional time, to which she said she’d be near the bar, for me to wave when I was ready.
Instead of studying the menu, I replayed what Rose shared about Cindy’s background plus her revelation about her ex-husband’s visit. I understood why she was confident he didn’t set the fire, but I wasn’t as understanding. It struck me as more than a coincidence he was on Folly fewer than twenty-four hours before the fire. Did he return to Tennessee after their meeting or stay in the area?
How could I find out? On a couple of instances when I wanted to know where someone had been staying, Chief LaMond provided
invaluable assistance. Her title and charm were more than enough to get hotel desk clerks to check guest registers to see if the people she asked about had stayed in their facility. I’d told Rose I wouldn’t share what she’d said with her sister, so asking Cindy was off the table. I knew an employee at the Tides who might be able to remember Rose’s ex staying there, but it’d be a long shot.
I nearly dropped my drink, when someone said, “Thought that was you.”
I turned to see Janice Raque standing by the table. “Oh, hi, Janice.”
Janice is in her late fifties, five-foot-four, with short brown hair with patches of gray sneaking in. She wore an oversized, navy-blue sweatshirt, and black slacks. She also had a bottle of Lagunitas IPA in her hand.
“You’re, umm, now don’t tell me, you’re Chris, right?” She swung the bottle in rhythm with her words.
“Good memory.”
“Remember talking to you a couple of times in Hal’s, umm, Cal’s.”
Janice had been a regular in Cal’s when she was married. According to Cal, she and her husband often got in arguments until one of them stormed out.
She looked at the bar-height stool on the other side of the table. I took the hint.
“I’m having an early supper. Want to join me?”
“Supper from a wineglass?” She chuckled. “This is my supper.” She held up the beer bottle.
Instead of answering my question, she pulled out the stool.
I handed her the menu. “I was getting ready to order. Want something to eat?”
“This is my third, maybe fourth beer. Suppose I’d better eat something to sop the hops.” She laughed.
I began wondering if she’d underestimated the number of beers she’d consumed for supper. I motioned for Marcia. I ordered fish and chips and asked Janice if she knew what she wanted. She ordered a Folly salad. I wasn’t sure what it was since I eat salad as often as I eat chocolate-covered oyster shells. Marcia asked if we needed more drinks. I hadn’t finished my wine, so I declined. Janice didn’t decline. I doubted a Folly salad would sop up enough hops to prevent Janice from falling off the stool.
