On Folly Beach

by Karen White

  Wetting her finger, Lulu began turning each page. She’d made it only to page twenty before she found Peter’s handwriting. When she’d first found the writing inside one of the books, she’d wondered why he’d made it so different from the handwriting he used in signing her Nancy Drew book for her, but she understood it all now.

  Smoothing down the page, she read what Peter had written: Finally, darling! Tonight. 7:00. I’ll be waiting. Lulu rested her head against the door and closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly so the tears wouldn’t come out, but they did anyway. She didn’t want Maggie or the baby or anybody to get hurt. But she couldn’t let Peter leave with Maggie, either—and while Peter had been talking to her, she realized that it was because of so much more than just Maggie or Lulu. It was because of Jim and Amy’s father and Mrs. McDonald’s son. It was because it mattered that they had died.

  A large gust of wind slammed against the store, and the bell over the door jangled. Lulu shut the book and rested her forehead on top of it, clenching her eyes as she tried to think. She remembered the time at the beach when she’d been pushed under by a large wave, the water holding her under until Maggie grabbed her and pulled her up. And the whole time she’d been trying to find the air, she’d been amazed at how heavy something like water could be. She felt that way now, how all the thoughts in her head could weigh so much.

  By the time the next gust shook the store, she’d decided that the only thing she knew she could do would be to tell Maggie everything, no matter how much she didn’t want to. Maggie would know what to do, who to tell. And she’d stay here on Folly, with Lulu and baby Johnny, and everything would be all right.

  Grabbing the keys, Lulu left the store through the front door, her hands shaking so badly that she could hardly fit the key into the lock. She ran all the way home, not even noticing the heat or the way her sweat made her clothes stick to her body or how scared she should be of the black shelf cloud that sat on the horizon like a blanket, ready to roll over all of Folly Beach.

  Lulu ran into the house, calling Maggie’s name and hoping she’d be back from the beauty parlor by now. She took the stairs two at a time and flung open the bedroom door, then stopped, not quite understanding what she saw. Cat, wearing a bright yellow robe over her slip, sat in the middle of Maggie’s bed with Lulu’s treasure box from the chifforobe turned upside down and all of Lulu’s favorite things spread over the bedclothes. The rolled note that Peter had meant for Maggie lay open on her lap as Cat read it. The window was closed, making the room even hotter than it was outside. Little drops of sweat stuck to Cat’s upper lip and nose, and her hair over her left ear was twisted with a little rag strip to curl it since they’d given up all their bobby pins to the war effort.

  Cat looked up at Lulu but didn’t move, almost as if she’d been expecting her. “You’ve been very busy, haven’t you?”

  Lulu frowned, not wanting to give anything away. “That’s my stuff. You had no right to go snooping.”

  Cat pretended she didn’t hear Lulu. Instead she reached down and picked up Peter’s note. “Where did you get this?” She slid off the bed and took a step forward, then shook the note in Lulu’s face. “Where?”

  Lulu began to cry. She needed to find Maggie, to tell her about Peter, but now Cat was here messing up everything. “That’s mine,” she wailed, not caring that she sounded like a baby.

  Cat grabbed Lulu’s arm and shook her hard, making the girl bite her tongue. “Where did you get this?”

  “Peter!” she screamed. “Peter gave it to me to give to Maggie.” She hadn’t meant to tell Cat that. There was no reason to. Cat couldn’t help her because she already knew about Peter and hadn’t said anything to anybody. But Cat let go of Lulu’s arm and stepped back, allowing Lulu to move out of reach.

  Cat nodded, her face matching the white paint on the walls. In a calmer voice, she asked, “When? When did he give this to you?”

  Lulu remembered exactly. Like any good detective, she had an excellent memory. “The day you ruined your fur coat on the beach. Peter came to talk with Maggie, but she didn’t want to talk to him. So he gave me the note to put in the bottle tree for her to find. But I didn’t.”

  “The bottle tree?”

  Lulu looked down at her scuffed shoes and realized that it didn’t matter anymore. “Yes.” She didn’t say anything else because she didn’t want Maggie to get in trouble. Lulu figured she’d let Cat try to put the pieces together herself.

  Cat sat down on the edge of the bed. “They’ve been passing notes to each other for a long time, haven’t they?”

  Lulu looked away, not wanting to lie to Cat’s face. The room seemed to grow hotter as sweat dripped from her forehead into her eyes, making them sting. She glanced over at the window, wishing the wind outside would push it open and blow at her face. Even Cat seemed wilted, like a flower without water.

  “Oh, Lulu, what are we going to do?”

  Lulu looked at Cat with alarm at her use of the word “we.”

  Cat rubbed the back of her wrist against her forehead. “We have to stop them from seeing each other.” She glanced up at Lulu. “Oh, don’t look at me that way. It’s not to hurt Maggie. I’ve already done plenty of that. It’s to help her. And us. He’s already ruined my life—although I can’t say he did it all on his own. But we can’t let him ruin hers.”

  Cat stood suddenly and walked across the room to the window; then she pulled up the latch and pushed on the glass. The window stayed closed. “Damn. I can’t stand this heat one moment longer.”

  She slapped the window with the flat of her hand before turning to Lulu again. “You and I both know that Peter can’t stay here much longer. They’re looking for him now.”

  Lulu started to cry again. “Cat, they’re leaving tonight. Peter came and got Maggie’s suitcases at the store, and they’re meeting tonight at seven o’clock.”

  Cat looked angry for a moment and turned her face away. Her voice was quiet when she spoke again. “Maggie has no idea who he really is, and it would destroy her to know the truth. But it would be too late then. She’d be ruined and she couldn’t come back home. And that would kill her. You know that, right?”

  Lulu nodded, her knees feeling weak as she realized that she didn’t have to fight alone, that somehow she and Cat were on the same side. “So what should we do?”

  “I don’t know.” Cat slapped her hand against the glass again. “It’s almost too hot to think.” Cat began walking around the room, talking to herself. “Peter has to leave tonight, so all we need to do is find a way to make sure that Maggie doesn’t go with him—and that she doesn’t try to find him.” She stopped in the middle of the room between the beds, her hands on her hips and her gaze focused on the box of stationery in which Lulu kept all of her bottle-tree orders and spying notes. Cat’s eyebrows rose as she grabbed the box and the pencil sitting next to it. Without saying anything else, she sat down on the bed and began to scribble something on one of the blue sheets of paper. Lulu didn’t say anything even though it was rude to borrow a piece of paper without asking for permission.

  Cat folded the paper in thirds, then pinched the creases closed over and over again before handing it to Lulu. “This is a suicide note. No, don’t worry. I’m not going to kill myself. But we need Maggie to think that I am. Here, take it.” She wiggled it in front of Lulu until she took it.

  “Give this to Maggie, and tell her that you found it on my bed. If Maggie believes that I’ll kill myself if Peter leaves me, she’ll stay. He’ll leave, and her heart will get hurt—but not as badly as if she ran away with him and learned the truth then.”

  “But what will happen when you don’t kill yourself ?”

  “It doesn’t matter—just as long as she thinks I’m going to do it. We need to keep the truth from Maggie, whatever it costs. Do you understand?”

  Lulu nodded, and embarrassed herself by crying again. But this time it was just because she was so happy that she didn’t have to do any of thi
s alone.

  “I’ll go to a friend’s house in Charleston to make it look good. All you have to do is show Maggie the note when she gets home.”

  “Okay.” Lulu swallowed and quickly wiped the tears from her face, hoping Cat hadn’t seen them. She’d never seen Cat like this, standing up for somebody else, although she wasn’t completely sure that Cat wasn’t taking care of herself, too.

  “If we’re lucky, he’ll just disappear because he can’t afford to wait. And then it will be just the three of us again. And Johnny.”

  Frowning, Lulu said, “But that would mean that he doesn’t care about you.”

  Cat pulled back her shoulders, and she didn’t look so wilted anymore. “He never did, at least not in the way that he cares about Maggie. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Maggie never finds out the truth about Peter. If he leaves without her, she’ll never know.” She placed her hand on Lulu’s head, the first time Lulu remembered her touching her on purpose. “You’re a smart girl, Lulu. I trust you to do this. For Maggie.”

  Cat walked quickly back to the window. “I can’t stand this heat anymore. I know a storm’s coming, but I’ve got to open this window.” She jumped up on the ledge as Lulu had seen her do a million times; then she put a hand on the window and the other on the lever. Lifting a hip, she pushed against the window until it gave way. But this time, maybe because of the wind, Cat leaned too far outside as the window snapped back against the house and Cat was suddenly left with nothing to hold on to.

  She seemed to hover for a moment as her hands circled in the air, looking for something to grab on to, her green eyes looking at Lulu as if she was about to ask a question. Lulu started to take a step forward, but before she could even move, Cat disappeared from the window.

  Lulu screamed and raced to the ledge to look out, wind and sand pelting her face and making it hard to see. When she finally managed to open her eyes, she wished that she hadn’t. Cat lay on the ground below, so still and beautiful that she looked like one of the mannequins at Berlin’s. For a moment, Lulu had the small hope that Cat might be sleeping because of how pretty she looked lying on her side in the grass as the wind blew her gold hair around her face. But when the hair lifted, Lulu could see the wide-open eyes that saw nothing, and the small line of blood that spilled from the corner of her mouth.

  The rain began to spit softly, dotting the dirt and darkening Cat’s yellow robe with circles that looked like fingerprints. Lulu began to shake, unable to move back out of the window as she stared down at Cat’s body. When she felt she might throw up, she ducked back inside and slid down the wall, not caring that the rain came in through the window, wetting her, the curtains, and the floor.

  Her gaze fell on the copy of Gulliver’s Travels that Peter had given her, which she’d left on the dresser when she’d entered the bedroom. She stared at it for a long time as the sky got darker and darker. She was on her own again, and Cat was dead. But she still needed to save Maggie, and baby Johnny, and herself. There was nobody else to do it.

  She turned her face up to the rain, letting it wash back the tears, and began to think as hard as she could. She remembered what Cat had said: how the most important thing was to not have Maggie find out the truth about Peter, and how they needed to make sure Peter left tonight without Maggie. And she needed to figure it out soon because Maggie was on her way home.

  Lulu rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw stars, trying to think what Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes would do. When the idea came to her, it scared her at first, made her think that she couldn’t do it. But then she remembered how much she loved and needed Maggie, and how she needed to do this for her.

  Trying not to think of what lay outside in the backyard, Lulu slowly stood and moved toward the bed. Picking up the book, she opened it and stuck Cat’s letter into the middle of the book and hid it under her bed. Then she picked up all of her treasures and put them carefully back into the box and stuck it back in the chifforobe so no evidence was left behind. But she left the window open, afraid to get near it again, because she needed Maggie to find it that way.

  Johnny began to fuss in his crib, and Lulu went to him and picked him up and soothed him, wondering if he was crying because he knew his mama was dead. She waited for him to settle down, then placed him back in his crib. She didn’t want to leave him alone, but she couldn’t bring him with her, and Maggie would be back soon.

  She touched his soft cheek and whispered, “Don’t worry, Johnny. Everything’s going to be all right.” He began crying again but Lulu tried not to hear and instead raced down the steps and out the front door, hoping she wasn’t too late.

  CHAPTER 28

  FOLLY BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA

  October 2009

  Emmy heard the footsteps in her sleep again, awakening when she dreamed they’d stopped by the foot of the bed as if waiting for her. Sitting up, she listened to the soft patter of rain that had continued into the night, and breathed in deeply, hoping to smell Ben. Instead she felt the darkness around her and a gentle tingling in her spine. And all around her, she sensed him there, waiting.

  The battery light from her laptop glowed a bright green from the small desk she’d brought into the bedroom, even though she was pretty sure she’d turned the laptop off the previous night. She’d been going over all of the messages she’d entered into the database, trying to put them in a logical order. She’d gotten frustrated by the whole exercise, finally stopping when she realized that the order wasn’t as important as the meaning, and that the meaning was perfectly clear: Peter and Maggie had loved each other and had planned to go away together. From what Emmy understood so far, something had interrupted their plans. Emmy found herself left with too many questions. What had happened to Peter? And to Cat? They’d have to find a death certificate to see her cause of death, and if it listed suicide. Why had Maggie married somebody else? And Lulu—what role could she have played in any of it?

  Slowly, Emmy got out of bed and moved to the desk, opening up her laptop as she sat. Without turning on the light, she clicked on the Safari button on the toolbar, watching the monitor flicker blue as her fingers hovered over the keyboard. The clock in the right-hand corner of her computer registered three twenty-four a.m., but she was wide-awake now. She pointed the cursor on her browser and hesitated only a moment before typing in the name Peter Nowak. Pausing only for a moment, she hit the enter key.

  The name appeared several times in soccer-related articles and other miscellaneous listings, but after searching three pages Emmy gave up trying to find something of relevance to her own search.

  Not yet ready to give up, Emmy began typing in miscellaneous names and events that might trigger something. She used Cat’s name and Robert’s, even Maggie’s and John’s, turning up nothing pertinent. Then she began doing searches about Folly Beach and its history. Her eyes burned from the brightness of the monitor in the darkened room, but she wasn’t ready to give up. She knew there was something she was missing—something right in front of her if she only knew where to look.

  And then she remembered her conversation with her mother and what Paige had told her about the Atlantic House restaurant. Small static shocks erupted on the back of Emmy’s neck as she typed in the name and then began scrolling down the listings, many of them referencing a book about the island’s history written by a local writer. Emmy made a mental note to get a copy for herself, then kept scrolling down the list.

  She was about ready to accept defeat when a short entry caught her attention. Former site of Atlantic House restaurant linked to Duquesne spy ring. Thirty-three Nazi spies captured. . . . It then listed a URL, and Emmy eagerly clicked on it, unaware that she was holding her breath until she let it out.

  It appeared to be the introduction of an article on the official FBI site about historical cases. Emmy eagerly read about the thirty-three spies who were living and working in the United States prior to Pearl Harbor whose purpose was to glean information about Ame
rican life and the best ways to sabotage American infrastructure.

  She scanned the article for mention of the Atlantic House restaurant or of Folly Beach and found nothing. But at the end of the article was a link that read Read the full story. Dubious now about finding anything relevant, she clicked on it with a promise to herself that she’d go back to bed as soon as she’d finished glancing at the site.

  The page was similar to the first with a graphic of the American flag at the top and a listing of FBI links on the left margin. But this page contained a list of names of all the spies cited in the Duquesne spy ring, and each name was a link. She began to halfheartedly scan the names and was about to close her browser when her gaze fell to the bottom of the list, where the final name, separated by several spaces from the rest, was one single name: Peter Wilhelm Koehler. PWK. She could almost feel the embroidery on the dirty handkerchief between her fingertips.

  With a shaking finger, she clicked on the link and stared at the picture of the man staring back at her. She didn’t need to go check the photograph on her wall to make sure. One look at the odd, light-colored eyes told her she was looking at the same man.

  She scanned the article, finding the words Atlantic House Restaurant in the final paragraph. Quickly skipping to it, she read it twice.

  Peter Koehler, a Berlin native with family in Iowa, was the only spy not apprehended. He disappeared in 1943 from South Carolina, where he’d been placed as a traveling salesman near Charleston. He was suspected in the death of a courier carrying pertinent naval intelligence from Charleston to Virginia Beach, Virginia. Had the information been turned over to the Germans, the war could very well have had a different ending. Luckily for the United States and her allies, the papers were never found, and Koehler disappeared shortly afterward. His whereabouts remain a mystery today.