Boneyard Beach

by Bill Noel

  Harriet and Connie were talking but kept glancing at Abe. If they missed anything he said, it wasn’t much. Theo and David were in a stimulating conversation about their leg problems, swelling and aching, and the best brand of support socks.

  Chester moved his chair closer to Charles but didn’t interrupt Abe as he told us more than we could understand about how the price of silver futures in India affected gold in the United States. Charles attention drifted and I was surprised that it was more than he, the ultimate trivia collector, wanted to know.

  Charles turned to Chester. “So tell us about your group?”

  “Charles, I owe it all to your dear aunt. When that sweet and sexy, if I might add, Melinda came into my life last year, I was about ready to check out.” He shook his head. “I was in the final stretch of time in this world. My wife, Rosie, God rest her soul, was already with our maker. We were childless, and if I was honest with myself, I hadn’t contributed one little kidney bean to society. I was ready to go.”

  Charles leaned over and patted Chester’s knee. “Now Chester, don’t be—”

  “Hold on, Charles, I haven’t finished.”

  Charles sat back and pointed his palm at Chester. “Sorry.”

  Chester looked at me and then at Charles. Abe was still leaned back in his chair and taking in everything. “As I was saying, your aunt barreled into my life full of energy, humor, and despite her terminal disease, more hope and positive outlook than anyone I’d ever known. To use a word that was popular before most people were born, I was smitten.”

  Charles hesitated and then said, “Aunt M. sure liked you.”

  Chester’s face turned red. “Shouldn’t tell you this seeing that you’re her nephew, but if I’d been a few years younger, I think she and I would have had more fun on the Serta than sleeping, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t think there could be any doubt, and neither did Charles who said, “I understand.”

  “Eww!” Harriet said.

  I didn’t think that she and Connie had missed much.

  Chester coughed and leaned closer to Charles. “Anyway, Melinda recharged my batteries. She convinced me that I wasn’t nearing the end, but was only beginning to enjoy my twilight years, and that I needed to get in shape and smell the roses.” He chuckled. “And smell the rose, the wine kind, if you get my drift.”

  “So,” I said before Charles did, “the walking group is to help you get in shape?”

  He reached down and patted his calf. “She said with a little work, I’d once again be a chick magnet and sexier than ever.”

  “Eww!” Connie and Harriet said concurrently.

  They scooted their chairs closer to Chester. Our conversation was more interesting than whatever they had been talking about.

  “Tell them your silly-ass rules,” Harriet said. She had no trouble finding things to complain about.

  Chester frowned at her. “They’re not silly, they’re thorough.” He turned back to us. “I started the group as a New Year’s resolution and promise to Melinda, well, to her spirit since by that time she was already up there charming God.” He pointed to the ceiling, but I suspected he meant to heaven rather than Melinda and God hanging out on the roof. “Members must be at least sixty to join; don’t want any of those young whippersnappers horning in and trying to make us marathon runners.”

  I glanced around the room. There wasn’t a gnat’s chance in a bat cave of that happening.

  “I lied about my age to get in,” Connie said. She had scooted her chair even closer.

  “No she didn’t,” Chester said. “That’s why I made up a two page application and had each applicant show proof of age. Even her.” He pointed at Connie.

  “Yeah,” Theo said. He moved closer to the expanding group around Charles and me. “At first he said a driver’s license would do and then anal Chester said it was too easy to forge so he made us show a passport or an original birth certificate. Know how hard it is for folks our age to come up with an original birth certificate?”

  “You know that’s not the reason, Theo,” Chester said. “Two of you don’t have driver’s licenses any more, and one of you, whom I will not identify, had your license yanked by the police after you ran down three stop signs and the next day drove your car down the boat ramp into the river.”

  “Whatever,” Harriet said. “The point is why in the hell do we need to go to all that trouble to walk around Folly Beach? You wouldn’t find any of these silly-ass rules back in Montana where I grew up,” she groused. “We didn’t need rules and silly-ass papers to fill out. Yep, I remember back when this was a free country.”

  Theo showed more energy than I had noticed when he pointed outside. “And then foreigners came and stole it from the Indians.”

  “You would know,” Harriet said. She winked at Theo. “You were there.”

  “I want to make sure our group stays within the defined parameters,” Chester said.

  Harriet raised her hand and was acknowledged by Chester. “Tell the boys about the last statement on your silly-ass application.”

  Chester shook his head. “All it says is, ‘The .5 Club will not be liable for members who fall and break a part of their body or drop dead during any group-organized walk.”

  “Wise addition,” Abe said. “Good risk management.”

  Harriet exhaled. “Legal gobbledygook, bull-hockey if you ask me.”

  Chester leaned forward and glared at her. “I didn’t ask you.”

  How could I not want to be a part of this fun group, I wondered.

  “So where’d the groups’ name come from?” Charles asked.

  Chester shook his head. “Sorry Charles, that’s a secret. Only official members of the group are privy to knowing.”

  Harriet mumbled, “That’s the next to last statement on the silly-ass application.”

  Chester ignored her, or perhaps didn’t hear her. “I’ve got an idea,” he said, snapped his fingers, and looked at Charles and then at me. “You two boys might be old enough. Why don’t you join us?”

  “Only if you can find your original birth certificate or passport,” Harriet said. “Martians and illegal aliens don’t need to waste time applying.”

  “Wow, that’s a great idea,” Charles said.

  Great, since that was the reason for walking by Chester’s house. I also suspected that Charles was enthused because he would learn what .5 meant.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, I was sitting at my kitchen table, sipping coffee and filling out Chester’s two-page application chock-full of questions and “silly-ass” rules. I wondered why he needed my shoe size, but if I wanted to be a member of the .5 group, whatever that meant, I had to play by his rules. I was also thinking how positive an impact Charles’ aunt had on Chester. Even after her death, she’d touched many lives.

  I refilled my coffee and questioned what I could learn about Larry’s nemesis by strolling around Folly. Abe seemed like a nice enough guy. He asked more questions than I was comfortable with, but appeared interested in the others, and wasn’t asking anything too personal. If he had an ulterior motive, it wasn’t apparent; then again, that’s what defined a good con artist.

  Someone pounding on the door interrupted my peaceful morning; something that was happening way too often. Mel was on the screened-in porch, looking like he did the last time that he’d disrupted my morning, except today he wore a camouflaged fatigue cap with Semper Fi on the crown.

  “Don’t take this old Marine more than once to know where there ain’t food,” he said, and shoved a box from Dunkin’ Donuts at me and squeezed past me into the room. “You’re not out of coffee, are you?”

  He was already in the kitchen and looking for a mug. “Speaking of food,” he said although I didn’t recall talking about the subject, “why the hell wasn’t I invited to the big shindig the other night? I turned the big 6-0 this year.”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t make the guest list.”

  “Oh
well,” Mel said, “it’s water over the damn dam. Probably had something to do with me hardly knowing that little-squirt, hardware store guy.”

  I nodded like I thought that that minor detail might have been the reason he wasn’t invited.

  “Don’t think it’s because I’m queer, do you?”

  “No. Most likely it was because Larry and Cindy don’t know you well enough to appreciate your charming, warm, and friendly personality.”

  Mel stared at me; his often-displayed frown deepened. “You making fun of me?”

  “Yep.” I opened the box and offered him the first donut.

  “Thought so,” he mumbled because his mouth was already full of the bigger portion of a chocolate glazed goodies. He then smiled and a crumb slipped out of his mouth.

  “I don’t suppose you’re here to feed me and let me make fun of you,” I said and took a bite of a sugar-coated cholesterol builder.

  He finished the first donut with one more bite and grabbed another.

  “Cop came to talk to me again last night.”

  “Have you talked to Chief LaMond?”

  “Umm, no.”

  There went that advantage, I thought. “Who was it?”

  Mel snarled. “Detective Asshole.”

  “Adair?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “Asked if I knew someone named Drew Casey. I asked him if that was the body they found. He said something like ‘I’m asking the questions,’ I refrained from smacking the crap out of him, and told him that I didn’t think I knew anyone with that name.”

  I shared that Casey was the dead student.

  His frown deepened. “Chris, I’m afraid this Casey person may be gay. It’s starting to hit a little close to my crib.”

  “Did Adair say Casey was gay?”

  “No, but he asked me if I’d ever been to LeBar.” Mel sat back in the chair and appeared to lose interest in the donuts.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Downtown Charleston, half block off North King.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No surprise. It’s a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood gay bar. You straight folks lead such a sheltered life, never get out, never experience the joys of the world.”

  And he said all that with his patented frown. “What’d you tell him?”

  “Told him that I’d been there a few times. Maybe twice with Caldwell; a couple of times by myself. I wasn’t a regular.”

  Caldwell Ramsey and Mel had been together for several years and lived in a small house on the outskirts of Charleston. Caldwell, at six-foot-five, towered over Mel, had played basketball at Clemson in the mid-eighties, had a quick smile, something that his partner had never mastered, and was African American.

  “Did Adair ask if you were gay?”

  “Shit no.” He reached for another donut. His appetite had returned.

  “Did you tell him you were?”

  “Negatory. No ask, no tell. Didn’t figure it was any of his freakin’ business.” He paused, looked at the depleting collection of donuts, and then back at me. “I don’t hide my sexual preference; at least not since I was mustered out of the not-so-gay-friendly United States Marine Corp.” He held his arms out to the side. “As you can tell from my non-pastel wardrobe, I don’t flaunt it either. It’s a part of me the same as my cheerful disposition.” He winked, a glimmer of humor showing through. “I don’t give it much thought.”

  “Did you get the impression that the detective was implying that Drew Casey was gay?”

  “No doubt. I gave it a lot of thought last night, couldn’t sleep, and Caldwell’s in Nashville this week so I couldn’t talk to him about it. “I don’t have gaydar, can’t tell if a fellow’s gay just by looking at him, but the more I thought about it, several of the kids on the excursion just might have been of my persuasion.”

  “Why?”

  “Most of my college groups are opposite-gender attached—guy-gal, gal-guy, couldn’t pry them apart with a crowbar. This group was different, but I didn’t think about it until after asshole detective left last night. The group was all-friendly like but didn’t seem hitched-up M-F. It could also have been my imagination running wild after the kind of questions assho—Adair kept asking.”

  “How did Adair leave it?”

  “He ran out of questions. He asked me some things about others in the group and I told him that I didn’t know anything more than what I told him the first time.” Mel paused and looked at the ceiling and started to reach for another donut, but pulled his hand back. “He said we might need to talk further.”

  “That’s it?”

  “He told me not to leave town.”

  I’d watched enough television to know that it’s seldom a good sign when the cop tells you not to leave town. I pointed that out to Mel and he agreed that it was not the ending for their conversation he would have desired. It took me fifteen minutes to convince him that contacting an attorney would be in his best interest; three more minutes for him to decide that he didn’t know any attorneys; and, another minute for me to remind him that he did know one, an attorney who owed him a big favor.

  Sean Akers was one of Folly’s four practicing lawyers and had been a friend for as long as I had lived on the island. Sean had been half of the law firm of Aker & Long until Long was murdered and the police had fingered Sean as the prime suspect. During those traumatic few days, Dude had introduced me to Mel and with the captain’s help and his Magical Marsh Machine, we were able to find the killer and come within a hair of losing our lives in the process.

  The weather was still nice so Mel and I walked three blocks to Sean’s second floor office on Center Street two doors from City Hall.

  “Morning, Marlene,” I said to the receptionist as Mel and I entered the office of Sean Aker, Attorney at Law.

  Marlene had been holding her pet Shih Tzu on her lap and sat her canine companion on the floor and looked at her watch. “Chris, what brings you out so early?”

  It was ten, but that was early for anyone to be visiting the law office that handled mainly DUIs, criminal defense, family practice law and estate law and more mundane wills. Many of Sean’s clients didn’t get out of bed, or meet bail, until afternoon. I asked if she remembered Mel and she smiled and said “of course,” and then I asked if the boss was in.

  Marlene smiled and looked at Sean’s closed door. “He’s here, been on a call, off the phone now and asleep if you ask me. Let me check.” She dialed his extension. Sean answered and she told him who was here and he said he’d be right out.

  Sean opened the door with a hand-painted parachute over it, reflecting one of his hobbies—skydiving, not painting. He glanced at me and moved to Mel and gave him an exaggerated hug which clearly made the former Marine uncomfortable. Sean was in his mid-forties, about my height but weighed a zillion pounds less, and had short, curly hair. His white, Ben Silver polo shirt, khakis, and deck shoes on sockless feet were in strong contrast to Mel’s battlefield attire.

  Sean stood back from Mel and looked at me. “What trouble are you two bringing me this morning?”

  He signaled us into his office. “Marlene, hold all my calls.”

  She giggled. “As if you’re going to get any this early.” She picked her dog up and placed it where it had been when we had entered.

  The office had a schizophrenic feel to it. There was an orange surfboard leaned against the wall in the far corner and a packed-parachute in the other corner. Then there was a foot-high bronze statue of Lady Justice on his desk. One side of her scales held paperclips; the other red jellybeans. The candy had been there so long that I suspected that it would be as chewy as the paperclips. Three law books were piled beside the statue and a dozen legal folders were stacked on top the legal tomes.

  This was Mel’s first visit to the skydiving, surfing, scuba-diving attorney’s office. Mel filled one of the side chairs in front of Sean’s desk. He looked around the office and focuse
d on the parachute, which I admit, was not a normal law office accessory.

  “Planning on jumping out the window?” Mel asked.

  Sean turned toward where Mel was looking and chuckled. “Considering some of my clients, I’ve thought about it a few times, but that’s not why it’s here. Some buddies and I are going skydiving this afternoon. I didn’t want to leave it on the motorcycle.”

  “I jumped a few times when I was in the service,” Mel said. “Gotten smarter in my old age, wouldn’t do it again if a damned Sauroposeidon was chasing me off a cliff.”

  “A what?” Sean asked before I could show my ignorance.

  “Big-assed dinosaur. Enough about you. Chris here,” he hesitated and pointed his thumb at me, “thinks I need a good attorney. I didn’t know any good ones, so we came to see you.”

  Sean leaned back in his chair and winked at Mel. “Not the way to start; showing how stupid I am by embarrassing me in front of Chris by talking about a sopodun, or whatever you called that dino-thing, and then saying that I’m not a good attorney.”

  “See,” Mel said. “There you go again, all about you. Can you use your law school learnin’ and help me?”

  Sean pulled a yellow legal pad out of his top drawer and grabbed a pen from under today’s Charleston Post and Courier. He put on his lawyer’s face. “Okay, what’s up?”

  “This poker-up-his-ass detective from Charleston hinted that I killed some stupid college kid. He didn’t arrest me but came back again and—”

  “Whoa,” Sean interrupted. He glanced over at me, and tilted his head, as if to say, “What have you brought me now?” He turned back to Mel. “Start from the beginning.”