Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  Delia went on with her routine, explaining that while she couldn’t guarantee they would see ghosts tonight, the odds were good. Savannah had a long tradition of ghosts and haunted houses that went back to the earliest days of the city. She told them the Yamacraw Indians had lived there for hundreds of years before the English settlers had come. She said wherever people had lived, and loved, and fought, and died, you would find manifestations of their spirits.

  Some of the early settlers had reported seeing a handsome young Indian warrior in full regalia in the very square where they stood. He appeared sometimes when the moon was full. Delia claimed to have seen him herself, one night when Mistress Owens had sent her on an errand. He would suddenly appear, standing quietly, looking with a solemn gaze at anyone who came by. He never moved or said anything. When the colonists had asked the Indians who he was and why he stood there, the Indians explained that he was the spirit of a warrior long dead, and that he was looking for someone. It had been going on for generations, and no one knew why he came to that particular spot.

  Delia said, "Spiritualists think a ghost is the manifestation of the spirit of a dead person who felt that, at the moment of death, there was something extremely important that he or she needed to do before leaving. People who die at peace with themselves don’t come back to haunt the living. That’s one of the reasons why ghosts can be frightening, I think."

  Donald was listening with rapt attention. He thought this was good stuff. He had never spent much time thinking about ghosts, but what Delia said made sense to him. He decided to tag along on the tour, just staying within earshot of Delia, to see what else he might learn.

  Delia moved her little flock down toward the river, keeping up a steady stream of ghost stories as she walked. Most of them had to do with the old houses along the way, and people who had lived in them and died unhappy. They kept hanging around, trying to resolve whatever had made them unhappy. That didn’t add up for Donald -- it had a twisted logic to his way of thinking. He didn’t see why they would hang around somewhere that made them unhappy when ghosts could go anywhere they wanted.

  As the tour reached River Street and the people stumbled down the cobblestone ramp from Bay Street on the east end, Donald’s attention was caught by Delia’s story again. She was talking about a pirate named Black Caesar.

  Black Caesar had a brief reign of terror along the Georgia coast in the 1700s, according to Delia. He was a fearsome character who had escaped the bonds of slavery and set about making a living by stealing from the planters who had oppressed his people.

  Donald thought this rang of poetic justice and so did the tourists. Delia explained that the ghost of Black Caesar had been appearing on River Street for over 200 years. He would swoop down the wrought iron stairs just to their left, his cutlass drawn and its sheath clanging rhythmically along the railing of the stairs as he ran. His clothes were soaked in blood and his headscarf was in flames. He would scream, "Deliver up your goods or your life, you white devils!" as he brandished his cutlass. Apparently, he had died on these very stairs in the midst of a raid, failing to make it back to his sloop in the river before he expired.

  Donald was captivated by this story. He had never heard of Black Caesar, which was not surprising, Delia’s boss having made up the story out of whole cloth just a few months ago. The romance and the setting both had strong appeal for Donald. He sat, thinking, on the wrought iron stairs where Black Caesar had died. Delia led her group along the cobblestones to the statue of Florence Martus, the Waving Girl, and began to tell the Waving Girl's story.

  Donald's thoughts were off and running. He thought he had surely been born too late. The swashbuckling life of a pirate should have been his. He could have worn cool clothes and carried a sword, and he wouldn’t have had to wash Lizzie’s van to get money for beer. He could just swoop down the stairs and take money from tourists, the way Black Caesar’s ghost was trying to do. Donald reasoned that even if the tourists handed over money, the ghost couldn’t do anything with it. It would be wasted. The longer he sat there thinking about the ghost and the tourists, the more appealing the whole thing became. He could be Black Caesar, just like the girl, Delia, could be the old dead lady’s maid, and the tourists would give him money, sort of like tips for helping them see the ghost.

  Day 2, Later in the evening

  Joe Denardo was enjoying an ice-cold beer in Kathy’s living room while Kathy and their mother worked away in the kitchen. He wondered briefly what they were cooking tonight. It sure did smell good, but then everything Anna Denardo cooked smelled good, if you liked the smell of garlic frying in olive oil.

  The dinners had become a weekly routine since Kathy’s divorce. She had resurrected her former close relationship with the family. She needed emotional support after she and Ken split up, but mostly she liked her mother and her brother a lot, and had missed them while she had been married. They were a close family, the Denardos and their cousins.

  Typical of old Savannah families, they had been here for so long that their almost pure Italian heritage didn’t mean much, except when it came to the kitchen. Ken Owens and his family hadn’t been able to grasp that. Owens was an old Savannah name, but Ken’s family wasn’t related to those Owenses.

  Coming from up north, they had attached some meaning to ethnic origin that the Denardos couldn’t understand. They seemed to think the Denardos were Italian, rather than American. At times, they had been offensive. Of course, like most well brought up people in the South, the Denardos had never let the Owenses know that they thought the Owenses were fools. Joe was thankful that was ancient history now.

  Joe had his sister back and she seemed no worse for wear for having been married to that ignorant Yankee bastard. Kathy and Anna got Joe’s attention when they put supper on the table. As Joe took his seat, he looked over at the two women and marveled that his mother and his sister looked so close in age, and both looked very young, compared to how he felt. His mother asked Joe what exciting cases he was working on now, and he recited the meager facts in the hit and run death of Lenora Washington.

  "Her grandmother used to iron for us when you were little, Joe," Anna said. "They were good people. Lou worked hard, and her husband, Zeke, drove an old truck with vegetable bins in the back. He'd creep through our neighborhood, calling out, 'Vegi-tahbles, nice, fresh vegi-tahbles.'"

  "He used to sell stalks of sugar cane for a nickel," Joe remembered aloud. "We'd all buy a stalk and peel it with our pocket knives. Man, you could get a serious sugar high, chewing that stuff. Remember, Kathy?"

  "That's why you both have rotten teeth," Anna said. "Wonder why Lou's daughter turned out to be so wild, anyhow?"

  "No telling," said Kathy, "But what's going to become of Lou without Lenora to look after her? She's so old to be left alone like that."

  Joe bemoaned the dearth of evidence in the case, explaining that there was no indication of who might have hit Lenora. He had people assigned to the task of canvassing the neighborhood, but held faint hope that they would find anyone who could add to the little they knew. Joe found the topic depressing, and he asked Kathy about the real estate business, hoping to change the subject.

  Kathy told the tale of yet another couple from New Jersey about to move to The Marshe Landes.

  "They liked some of the other places I showed them, but they couldn’t get past the notion that living in a gated community was the way to go," she said.

  "Keeps the riffraff like us out," Joe quipped. "They'll be surrounded by nice smart people from up north who pronounce every letter in each word, and talk through their noses."

  Kathy laughed at that, and said, "The woman today wanted to know if I was from Canada. Apparently the Canadians mispronounce 'house' and 'outside' the same way we do in Savannah."

  "Probably not any good schools up there either," Joe said. "All the competent teachers gotta be in New Jersey."

  "Now children, be nice," Anna said. "It's a good thing we have warm winters down here. O
therwise, they might move somewhere else. Then what would you two do for entertainment?"

  Mary Lou was examining the bruise on her left hip in her vanity mirror as she got dressed to go out to dinner with her husband. Getting it on with Rick Leatherby in his Porsche had been such a distraction that she had not noticed the gearshift lever embedded in her left buttock until they were done. Now she imagined she could make out "R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5" embossed in her alabaster flesh. She wondered briefly if she would have to explain it to Frank. It could be a problem. She could concoct some story about parking on a busy street and climbing over the console so she didn’t have to exit into the traffic lanes, but she was almost sure all their cars had automatic transmissions. If he took a close look, that story might not hold up, but she could think of something. They would probably be out late tonight, anyway. With any luck, Frank would get sloshed and just go to sleep.

  She wondered if Rick would be at the dinner. It was a fundraiser for The Marsh Dwellers for a Better Environment, and she knew Sarah Leatherby was really active. Sarah was the one who had suggested that they could put old bleach bottles anchored with bricks out in the creeks and rivers so the algae would have somewhere to reproduce besides the crab trap markers. One of the other whack jobs had said she thought the bricks might have lead in them, since they were so heavy, and that would be bad for the environment. Mary Lou had been wondering if they shouldn’t just book a few rooms at the local Holiday Inn for the algae to use for reproductive purposes, but she kept the thought to herself.

  It would be fun to see Rick at the dinner, though. Maybe he would let her drive the Porsche and she could try for a bruise on her right hip. Symmetry was important to a beautiful body. Rick had told her that he thought he could help her with her weight problem. That was such a comfort. Besides, he was cute.

  Now that Connie had the whole day behind her, she was pretty straight; she would stay sober and go to bed early tonight. Tomorrow, she would go into the clinic and make peace with Rick. They needed each other, in spite of her growing irritation with him. Besides, she really didn’t want to go back to California. This was such a pretty place, and the diet clinic was a good deal. It didn’t hurt anybody. It made people feel good about themselves, because it made them feel in control of their lives. If they felt good about themselves, they wouldn’t need two Fatburgers and Supergiant fries for lunch, so they really might lose weight.

  Connie and the dietician were having a blast seeing how many different colors they could find occurring naturally in food. They were debating the use of dyes. The dietician thought it would be all right if they were FDA certified for food coloring. Connie felt strongly that the dye would have to be organic in order to remain in harmony with their overall holistic approach to health and wellness. Rick, ever practical, pointed out that they could only get away with using dye in foods that were so exotic the patients would never see them anywhere else. Chartreuse carrots, for example, might engender suspicion in their more perceptive patients.

  Day 3, Morning

  Donald was walking down Barnard Street toward Lizzie’s when Amos the Goat Man called his name from an alley. Amos had been an old man when Donald was little. At least, Donald remembered it that way, but Amos didn’t look much older now than he had back then. In those days, Amos had a little wagon. It had been all painted up pretty and it was pulled by a billy-goat. Amos had a herd of five or six scruffy goats that followed him and his wagon, and he walked around picking up odd bits of scrap that he thought he could use or sell.

  Sometime while Donald was away from Savannah, the Social Workers had caught Amos. The SPCA had taken his goats away while the Social Workers held him captive in the loony bin, for observation, they had said. Donald reckoned that they had finally decided it would be more interesting to observe Amos in the wild than in captivity. When they turned him loose, nobody could find the goats or the wagon, so Amos was homeless now.

  He worked sometimes at tent revivals, where he sat up on the stage and acted drunk, making lascivious remarks to or about the women in the audience. The preacher would explain that Amos was a prime example of how the evils of drink could degrade a fine, upstanding citizen. He would tell them a tall tale of how Amos had been a banker and a deacon in his church before Demon Rum corrupted him. Amos didn’t drink; he never had, but he looked the part. He agreed with the preacher about drinking, so he kept quiet for the sake of the mission of convincing the audience that liquor was evil.

  Amos was in need of a match this morning. He had a little Sterno stove that he kept in the wrecked grocery cart that had replaced his billy-goat wagon, and he wanted to light it so he could make his morning coffee. Donald obliged him, but declined his offer of a cup of coffee.

  As Donald went on his way, he thought the man who wrote "The Book" would have put Amos in there if he had seen that pretty little wagon, but not with a bent-up old shopping cart. Donald could see that the difference between Amos being an eccentric and just being homeless was that little wagon.

  When Donald got to Lizzie’s, she was waiting for him with one of her neighbor ladies. After making introductions, Lizzie said, "Help yourself to the coffee in the kitchen, Donald. Mary's driving me out to meet somebody for breakfast. The money for the van is on the kitchen table. If you finish before I get back, lock up for me, okay?"

  "Yes'm, I sure will. Thank you Miss Lizzie. You have a nice breakfast. Nice meetin' you, Miss Mary." Donald felt ten feet tall. Lizzie had paid him in advance, and she trusted him to be in charge of her house. She was one fine lady. He’d make extra sure everything was right before she got back.

  When Lizzie walked into Harry’s, it took her just a minute to spot Dave Bannon. He was one of the few men sitting alone, and he was the only one who appeared to be waiting for someone. She recognized him as the vaguely familiar face at the Waving Girl from yesterday morning. He saw her as she was making her way through the haze of cigarette smoke and vaporized bacon grease and stood up to greet her. Still the gentleman he used to be, Lizzie thought, as she gave him a friendly hug. He held her chair while she got settled.

  "Welcome home," Lizzie said. "I thought you looked familiar when I saw you talking with the people from Cleveland yesterday on the porch at the B and B."

  "I didn't see you in the van," Dave said, "But I heard all about you from Mabel and Elmer. Can't believe you sold him that book. Did you hook him up with the Literacy Volunteers?"

  "Why, Dave, you don't know for sure that he can't read, and besides, it’s got pictures," she quipped. "Don't you make fun of my clients. I couldn't make a living without 'em. So what have you been doing since high school, anyhow?"

  "Well, after college, I never really came back here, other than an occasional visit with my folks before they died. I went on to grad school, and then got wrapped up in climbing the corporate ladder in several different places. I was doing well, career-wise, anyhow, when my marriage melted down, and that kind of made me stop and think about what I wanted out of life. After that, I focused on maintaining a good relationship with my two children. I finally scraped together enough money so once they were out of school, I could quit and go sailing full time. So here I am," he wrapped up. "Been sailing for two years, and I’m starting to think I need to do something else for a while. Maybe I'll move back here and see if I can find something to do."

  "Your old flame sells real estate here now," Lizzie teased.

  "Which one?" he asked, playing along with bouncing eyebrows and a mock-lascivious grin.

  "Kathy Owens – used to be Denardo," Lizzie told him.

  They agreed that after breakfast, while Dave drove Lizzie back downtown in his rental car, she would call Kathy about showing Dave some houses around town. Dave wanted to know all about Lizzie’s life since high school as well, and that kept them occupied for the rest of the drive until they pulled up in front of her house.

  "You know, when my husband and I bought this house 25 years ago, it was dirt cheap. Everybody thought we were nuts to live downtow
n. Now, it's worth more than the whole of downtown was then. You better buy something quickly, before the folks from up north run the prices up even more," she remarked.

  "Planning to sell and get rich?" Dave asked.

  "Only if I find a Yankee with a cashier’s check," she joked.

  As Dave parked in front of her house, Lizzie was finishing her cell phone conversation with Kathy. They agreed that Kathy would pick Dave up after lunch and show him a sampling of Savannah area real estate. Dave shut off the car and walked around to open Lizzie’s door. Lizzie led the way to a side gate that opened into her back yard, where they found Donald finishing up the van. Lizzie noticed he was polishing the windows with newspaper. What a find this guy was, she thought.

  "Great job, Donald," she said, as he glanced around. "It was my lucky day when you tried to hustle me. This is Dave Bannon, a guy I went to school with when we were little."

  "Hey, Donald, nice to meet you," Dave said, sticking out his hand. As Donald shook his hand, recognition flashed in his eyes.

  "Dave, you the guy found that girl run over in the square, ain’t it so?" Donald asked.

  "Yeah, but how do you know?" Dave knew his name had not made any of the news reports.

  "Saw you come down the stairs and look at her. I’s in the square, little sloshed. Went home before I figured out what happened. Didn’t see nothin’ else, though. Don’t know nothin’ about it." Donald didn’t want to get involved, because then his mother would find out he had been drinking in the square, and he would never hear the end of it.

  "Goin’ now, Miss Lizzie. See you in the mornin’. 'Bye, Dave. Nice meetin’ you," said Donald as he hurried out the back gate.

  "Funny guy," Dave remarked.