by Bill Noel
Charles pulled his chair closer to their table. “Doing what?”
Nemo scooted his chair to the left so Charles could get closer to the table. “It’s a Welsh idiom. It means the same thing as raining cats and dogs.”
“Damned PhD talk,” Robbie said.
I suspected the other two would have given Nemo several reasons why we shouldn’t join them if Charles and I hadn’t been listening.
Before Nemo had finished his Welsh idiom lesson and his feeble okay, Charles pointed to their empty bottles. “Next round’s on me.”
I knew who round’s on me referred to, but it appeared to mitigate our invasion.
Robbie’s hand holding the beer bottle went back in the air and the waitress returned for the additional drink orders.
“Terrible about what happened to Mel, wasn’t it?” Charles said like he hadn’t heard what they had been saying.
Once again, Nemo glanced at his fellow captains and turned to Charles. “Never good when something bad happens to someone in your group.”
Timothy said to no one in particular, “If Mel killed that kid, he needs to be thrown in jail.”
I leaned closer to the table and to Robbie. “Glad we ran into you, Robbie. I was talking to your sister and she said that you knew for certain that Mel did it.”
Robbie looked at the beer bottles and then up at me. “I may have said it, but if I had to swear on a stack of Bibles, I’d say I don’t know.”
“Why’d you tell her that you knew?” Charles asked.
Timothy interrupted. “I’ll tell you why, because it’s true. It doesn’t take a genius to see that if Mel had put the make on that kid while they were at that deserted beach, the kid would have been repulsed. Mel had to shut him up, plain and simple.”
Nemo pointed his empty beer bottle at Timothy. “You don’t know that for a fact. Just because Mel’s gay, doesn’t mean he did anything wrong.”
“Queer and living with a nig . . . an African man, you mean,” snarled Timothy.
“Timothy, don’t be such an ass,” Robbie said. He turned to Charles and then to me. “Sorry guys, we’re all shook about this. Timothy doesn’t mean anything bad about it. Mel’s okay.”
Didn’t mean anything bad, right, I thought.
Nemo glared at Robbie. “You think he did it too? Don’t get all apologetic and saccharine because Mel’s buddies are here.”
Robbie shook his head. “All I said was if Mel wasn’t taking so much of our business, we would have enough to survive. To your question Charles, I don’t know if Mel killed him.”
Nemo pointed to the empty bottles in front of Robbie. “Not what you said two beers back.”
Timothy reached toward Nemo and accidentally knocked over an empty bottle. “It’s such a mess,” Timothy said. “My wedding’s going down the crapper.” He waved his hand around toward Robbie and Nemo. “Our business sucks. This murder has everybody nervous. Crap, it’s a mess.”
“George W. Bush said, ‘It will take time to restore chaos and order.’”
It was only a matter of time before Charles tried to top Nemo’s Welsh idiom.
Robbie took off his FB cap and pointed it at Charles. “You’re worse than Nemo with weird talk.”
Nemo ignored Robbie. “Chaos is already here.”
It didn’t take Nemo’s PhD to figure that out.
The waitress returned with the drinks and cleared the empties off the table.
Charles took a sip and looked at Nemo. “So you think that Mel killed the student?”
Nemo said, “You bet.” The other two nodded.
For the next twenty minutes, the captains shared a lot of bantering, mild arguments, countless reasons why business was down, and somehow how it was all Mel’s fault. Their speech began to slur, and I realized that we had learned all we were going to.
Rain, old ladies and sticks, and cats and dogs continued to pound the roof, and I wondered if there was a Welsh idiom for throwing Mad Mel under the bus, or in this case, boat.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charles and I hadn’t had as much to drink as the other three guys, but the next morning my head felt like it had a balloon inflating in it. I had drifted in and out of sleep and was nowhere near rested when I pulled myself out of bed. I kept thinking of Mel on Boneyard Beach with the students and not being able to come up with any scenario for him to harm the student. It also bothered me that a group of his colleagues would have jumped to the conclusion that he was guilty based on his sexual orientation. It seemed more like wishful thinking to eliminate a competitor. They were homophobic, but were they so petty to want him out of the way because of his competition? Or was I that wrong about Mel?
Then there was Abe’s murder. I knew Larry better than I knew Mel, but realized that there were dark corners of his past that he’d never shared. He and Cindy had a whirlwind romance and were married after knowing each other a few months. Did she know what he was capable of? And finally, why did I open myself to serious problems by not telling Detective Adair the reason that I was at Abe’s? Was friendship worth going to jail over?
I didn’t have ready answers, but I knew one thing. I had to mend fences with Cindy. We had been good friends for a long time and I hated how our conversation at Crosby’s had ended. Instead of sulking around the house, I called to see if she was available for lunch. At first she hesitated and started making excuses, but then said she could find an hour for me. We agreed to meet at Rita’s for an early meal.
I arrived ahead of Cindy and opted for an outdoor table. Last night’s heavy rain had cleared out the humidity and it was turning out to be a nice day. I hoped that after my lunch with Cindy that I felt the same way.
Since I’d arrived on Folly, Rita’s Seaside Grille was the third iteration of a restaurant on one of the island’s prime restaurant locations. The outdoor patio faced the Folly Pier, the Tides Hotel, and the Sand Dollar, Folly’s iconic bar. Early lunch arrivals wore everything from bathing-suit cover ups, to dress shirts, and one table of diners had already started happy hour. My head throbbed when I saw five beer bottles on their table.
Cindy parked her unmarked car in front of the Pier, saw me, and smiled. A good sign, I hoped.
“So what’s with the lunch invitation?” she asked as she sat across from me. Her smile was intact but didn’t seem as sincere as it did when she was crossing the street.
No reason to beat around the bush. “I want to apologize.”
She nodded. “I admire a man who starts a conversation that way. But since I’m not great at catching nuances, you’ll have to explain what you’re apologizing for.”
The waitress arrived before I told her. I’d noticed over the years that police chiefs get quicker service than us common folks.
Cindy ordered a Pepsi and the “biggest, baddest” burger the chef could “fry up,” and I stuck with a burger and told the waitress that it didn’t have to be that big or bad.
The waitress headed to the kitchen. “Smartass,” Cindy said, and wasn’t referring to the waitress.
I didn’t deny it. “I apologize for not telling Detective Adair why I was at Abe’s.” I hesitated but Cindy didn’t say anything. “I was afraid that if I told Adair, he’d start looking at Larry for the murder.”
Cindy stared at me and then said, “Of course he would, Chris. Any decent cop would, but because Larry had a gripe with Abe, didn’t mean he killed him.”
Gripe was an understatement. I took a deep breath, and said what I really wanted to tell her. “Cindy, it tears me up to say this, but part of me thinks that Larry may be guilty.”
I waited for her to explode.
She continued to glare and then looked toward Center Street before turning back to me. “You’ve known Larry longer than I have, but I think I know him better than you do. I hope I do. He hadn’t even mentioned Abe to me until he moseyed into town to stomp on Larry’s happiness. Even now, I feel that there’s a lot of their shared past that Larry’s not talking about, and that’
s okay. We all have stuff hidden in caves and crannies that we don’t want brought into the light of day.” She grinned. “Some of the stuff I did back home when I was a youngin’ would’ve given my parents reason to adopt me out if they found out; my preacher would’ve had to add extra sermons; and the local cops would’ve been shopping for more handcuffs. But I digress. To be honest, I’ve given a lot of thought about what happened. As a cop, I know he doesn’t have an alibi and has more reasons to want Abe dead than he did for him to live. And ….”
She broke eye contact and looked down at her water; a tear ran down her cheek. I wanted to walk around the table and comfort her, but I knew that she would break my arm before she’d let me hug her in front of a dozen people.
She looked up, wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “Do I think Larry killed him?” she said in a low voice, and moved her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Part of me does, but I want with all my heart to believe that he didn’t. I have to believe that, I do.”
I resisted reaching across the table for her hand. “I know.”
She blinked back another tear and wiped her nose with her napkin, and said, “I won’t tell you what to do, and I’ll still love you—in a sisterly sort of way, of course.” She tried to smile but failed. “I’ll love you regardless what you choose to do.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell Adair why I was there. I know it might get you in trouble; I suppose I’ll be in trouble too; and worst of all, it will put Larry in Adair’s crosshairs.”
“Do what you have to.”
“Cindy, last year when members of First Light church were getting killed, I underestimated another one of the detectives, Michael Callahan. Other than Karen, I had little faith in the detectives from the sheriff’s office.”
“With good reason,” she said.
“True. Regardless, Callahan came through, and from what I hear, Adair is as good. I need to trust him. If Larry’s innocent, and my gut tells me that he is, Adair will find the killer.”
“Do you think he didn’t do it?”
“Yes, the more I think about it, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to shoot Abe that night.”
“Because you were at Abe’s house and Larry wouldn’t have risked hitting you?”
“That, and because Larry had no idea what Abe and I had discussed and what we may have agreed to. If he’d bought my story about Larry not having any money and your hubby’s plan to tell everyone about his past, there wouldn’t have been a reason to shoot him.”
“True, but—”
Her cell phone interrupted. She looked at the screen, said she had to take the call, and walked to the back of the patio.
Our food arrived while Cindy was on the phone.
I watched as she said a few words, listened for what seemed like an eternity, said a few more words, and listened more. She took the phone from her ear, muttered a profanity, and returned to the table.
“Everything okay?”
She plopped back down in her chair. “You’re not going to like it.”
I motioned for her to continue.
“That was Detective Cox.”
The name wasn’t familiar. “Who?”
“He’s one of the detectives working with Adair on the Drew Casey case. I met him last year; seems like an okay guy. He used to surf over here so he’s familiar with Folly.”
“And why won’t I like what he said?”
“I called him the other night and he said he’d let me know what they had on Mel. He was vague and said that he wasn’t sure he could get into it until Mel’s attorney got all the information. They’ve got it now.” She took a bite of burger.
I still didn’t hear an answer in what she had said, but, unlike Charles, I was going to let Cindy tell me when she felt like it.
She looked around the patio and leaned closer. “When they searched Mel’s house, they found a bloodstained rag in an old tool box in the garage.”
My heart sank. “The kid’s blood?”
She nodded.
I looked at a young mother carrying her crying toddler to the side exit and then toward the ocean. “Mel’s not stupid,” I said. “Why would he keep something as obvious as a rag with the kid’s blood in his garage? He’s being framed.”
“There’s more. One of the students who was on the boat swears that he saw Mel near where they found the body.”
I tried to remember everything Mel had said about that night. Hadn’t Mel said that he stayed with his boat except to go to the bathroom and then he went in the opposite direction of the group and from where Casey was killed?
“How did the witness recognize Mel in the dark? And, from what Mel had said, most everyone was almost drunk when they got to the beach and all were when they left. How credible is the witness?”
“I’m just repeating what Cox said.” She tilted her head and lowered her voice even more. “Chris, even if it’s almost dark, Mel’s easy to recognize. It’d take a mighty high blood-alcohol content for someone to confuse him for a twenty-year-old college student. Cox is confident about their case.”
Cindy had a valid point about recognizing Mel, but why would the ex-marine lie about staying with his craft if a dozen people—drunk or not—could have said otherwise?
“I think you’re wrong about this one,” Cindy said.
I had lost my appetite and pushed the fries around on my plate; the burger remained untouched.
I wondered if I was the only person who believed Mel was telling the truth, and more importantly, wondered how I could prove it. The weather was still beautiful, but my head was filled with storm clouds and fog.
Cindy had to get to the office for a meeting with one of her officers and thanked me for the apology and the food she had barely touched. She left through the side exit and I took a couple of bites of cold burger and realized that I was no longer hungry. There would never be a good time to call Detective Adair, so I called the cell number listed on the card he’d given me. Part of me wanted it to go to voicemail, but instead he answered and I told him that I had some information about the Pottinger shooting and thought he might be interested. He was quite interested and said that he’d be at my house in a half hour.
Detective Adair was more rumpled than he had the last time we’d met. He still wore his like-new blazer, but his tan and blue striped tie had what looked like a mustard stain on it, and his white shirt had lost its starch. I invited him in and offered him my chair. He looked around for options; seeing none, he unbuttoned his blazer and sat. I offered him something to drink, and like during his previous visit, he declined.
He took the small notebook out of his pocket. “So what do you have?”
“I was shook and not thinking straight when we talked in Chief LaMond’s car at Pottinger’s house. I realized later that I forgot to mention something that you should know.”
I gave him a summary of Larry’s involvement with Abe and how Abe had attempted to blackmail him. I also shared how Larry had asked me to talk with Abe to see if I could get him to back off his blackmail plot.
Adair listened without interrupting and while he had a pen in his hand, he hadn’t written anything. His face didn’t give anything away. Maybe it wasn’t going to be as bad as I had anticipated.
He started to speak and his facial features turned rigid. “Mr. Landrum, are you aware of what obstruction of justice means?”
“Vaguely.”
“I’m certain that if I arrested you this second, your attorney would be glad to give you the legal definition. I can assure you that there’s not a court in South Carolina that you wouldn’t be convicted based on the cockamamie story you just told me.” He sighed. “Do you expect me to believe that you were so shaken that you ‘forgot’ to tell me the reason you were there, and now several days later, it just popped into your head? How big a fool do you take me for? Wait, don’t answer that, it’d just add more charges to the increasing list of crimes you’ve committed.”
“Detective, I—”
He smacked his thigh with the notebook. “Silence. I’m not going to slap cuffs on you—now. But don’t think I won’t in the next five minutes unless. . .” He paused and glared at me.
If there had been a glass of water between us on the table, it would’ve turned to ice.
“Unless what?”
He took a deep breath, paused for what seemed like an eternity, and said. “I’m going to ask you to repeat your story, every detail, regardless how minuscule, and once you’re finished, I’ll decide what to do. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.”
He flipped open his notebook and readied his pen. “Begin.”
Detective Adair wasn’t kidding when he said every detail. For the next thirty minutes I shared everything from Larry’s first comments about Abe Pottinger coming to town to when I looked across the street from Abe’s house and saw the shooter walking away. And then throwing my two cents’ worth in on why I didn’t think it was Larry. Many details I shared multiple times.
“Does Chief LaMond know this?”
I hadn’t mentioned while I was telling and retelling the story that Cindy had been present during the discussion about me approaching Abe, so I regressed to telling the truth, simply not the whole truth.
“I don’t know how much Larry’s told her.”
He didn’t push me on it and his glare lessened, but ever so slightly. “Mr. Landrum, you know more about the people here than I do. If Larry didn’t shoot Pottinger, who did?”
“I wish I knew. Considering what Larry’s told me about Abe, it could be anyone from his sordid past.”
“Isn’t it unlikely that someone from out-of-state followed him?”
“Yes.”
“So who here?”
I’d already withheld information from Adair that might end up getting me thrown in jail. Should I tell him about my thoughts that Abe was pulling a con on members of the .5? Thinking about the composition of the group, I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to handle a rifle well enough to hit Abe from across the street.
