by Blaire Edens
“My father disappeared a year ago. The last place he was seen was walking into the swamp. A deputy who was cruising the area saw him putting on his backpack. After that, nothing. In order to settle his estate, I need to find evidence of his death or evidence to the contrary. Yesterday, I decided to check.”
Lucy wondered why he waited for so long but decided to save that question for later. Most families were pretty damn complicated and the last thing she needed was ten cubic yards of drama. She had plenty on her own.
She focused on the facts. “What did it sound like?”
“Deep. Sinister. Like something out of Jurassic Park.”
“You saw it?”
The line went quiet and he didn’t speak for several seconds. “Yes, and it scared me shitless. I know what I saw, and it wasn’t anything that I’ve ever seen before.”
“You’re familiar with the swamp?”
“My dad was a survivalist. We’ve been out there dozens of times over the years.”
“Tell me more about the encounter.” Maybe if she could get him to focus on the data, instead of the emotion, she’d get much better information. She’d seen dozens of doctored photos and drawings over the years in her cryptozoological magazines, but she wanted to hear this man’s description to see how closely it matched other, older, reports.
The man exhaled. “He was about seven feet tall, bipedal. Dark, muddy green in color. Three toes on each foot and three fingers on each hand, short powerful tail.”
“Definitely a reptile?”
“That’s the thing. It was covered in dark hair but had scales on its feet, hands and face.”
Bells began to go off in her head. While she whole-heartedly believed that there were creatures that had not yet been discovered and classified, she didn’t buy the idea of mammal/reptile hybrids. The genetic material was too different, too diverse, to make such a thing possible.
“You’re sure about the hair?”
“I’m not making any of this up.” His voice began to shake, and Lucy knew the fear was real. This was no crank call. The man was either telling the truth, or he was so disturbed that he believed his own hallucination.
“Were you on any medication at the time?”
“Of course not. “
“Alcohol?”
His voice strengthened. “I wouldn’t drink it while I was alone in Scape Ore Swamp.”
“Did he have a smell?”
“When he opened his mouth to roar, it smelled like rotten meat and singed hair. Overpowering.”
“Have you ever seen anything like it before?”
He hesitated before answering. “Never.”
“Did you get any photos?” She knew it was a longshot but she had to ask.
“No. I was too busy trying to stay alive.”
While she’d been talking to him, she’d been using Google maps. Scape Ore Swamp was near Bishopville, South Carolina, a town in the eastern half of the state. Depending on the traffic, she should be able to make it in three and a half hours. Four tops. “My fees are $500 a day plus travel expenses.”
“I’ll have the first five days in cash when you get here. Meet me at the Bloomsbury in Camden. My name is Spencer Watson. I’ll be waiting in the lounge.”
* * *
Spencer should have prepared himself for the possibility that the Lizard Man was real. He’d spend the last year denying any and every possibility that his father’s disappearance had anything to do with a cryptozoological creature and everything to do with a woman in Florida named Bette, a woman who kept popping up, time after time.
But now that he’d seen the towering, terrifying creature up close, he had his doubts that his father was soaking up the sun in Daytona Beach.
Maybe Pops hadn’t made it out of the swamp alive.
His heart clenched at the thought. Spencer hadn’t allowed himself to imagine a world without his dad. For the past twelve months, he’d believed that his father had only told his mother he was heading to the swamp for some quiet time. His father often went on similar trips and she hadn’t raised an eyebrow when he’d packed his truck with a pup tent, some dehydrated food rations and mosquito spray. She probably hadn’t even noticed how pissed off the old man was.
After thirty years of marriage, his wife was used to his quirks.
Spencer’s mother hadn’t worried until nearly a week had passed and when she’d called her son, he’d reassured her that everything was fine, that there was no reason to be alarmed. Pops knew Scape Ore Swamp like the back of his hand and Spencer was sure no harm had come to him.
He’d probably just needed a few days to blow off some steam after their epic argument.
Epic was the only word for it.
Spencer had been looking through his father’s desk for some documents he needed to close a real estate deal, and he’d found letters instead. From Bette in Daytona. An unwelcome blast from the past.
A name, a person, his father should’ve forgotten more than a decade earlier.
As soon as his father had walked into the office, Spencer gave it to him with both barrels. His father, caught unaware, had tried to explain himself, but Spencer wasn’t having it. Now he wished he had listened.
All these months later, he still hadn’t told his mother about the other woman. It was easier for her to believe that her father had died doing what he loved instead of breaking her heart again.
Old habits were hard to break.
After two full weeks had passed, his mother had called the Florence County Sheriff’s Department, and they combed the accessible parts of the swamp for any signs of Walter. They’d found nothing but his old beat up Nissan pickup parked near the road, the camping supplies gone.
A clever ruse, Spencer had thought. A way to hide that, after all these years, Walter had decided to go back to Bette, the woman who’d been a third wheel in his parents’ marriage for as long as he could remember. Fifteen years ago, when the old man had been busted, he’d promised to never cheat again.
Liar.
But now that he knew the Lizard Man was real, he wanted to investigate the possibility that his father had never come out of the swamp before he marched to Daytona Beach and started knocking on doors.
So, he’d called in an expert.
On the phone, Dr. Whittemore had sounded different than he’d imagined. Her voice was low and sultry, and peppered with the distinct accent of the Appalachian Mountains. It was damn sexy.
He’d found Carolina Cryptozoological online. Before the search, he’d had no idea businesses like hers existed. But after last night, he was damn glad it did.
The website was extremely professional, and she had real credentials, including a PhD in Anthropology. A native of North Carolina, she’d taught at a well-respected college before opening Carolina Crypto. A couple of photographs popped up on his Google Search, and he was surprised to see that she didn’t look anything like most of the academics he knew. Instead, she looked more like an athlete. With a sun-tanned, girl-next-door charm, he pegged her as someone who he’d want on his team if he were playing volleyball on the beach.
Not that he’d have any time to do that soon. He had to get his father’s estate settled. His mother was itching to sell the family home and move to the lake house but before she could do that, he had to figure out if his father was dead or alive.
It made him regret becoming an attorney and not for the first time.
Spencer took a sip of his coffee and winced. It was cold and bitter and he slid the cup to the center of the table. He looked out the window onto the grounds of the Bloomsbury. Even in the dog days of summer, the lawn was a brilliant green, and the flower beds were riots of color and texture.
He tried to concentrate on the beauty of the place but he couldn’t. The bright yellow daylight did nothing to dim the images of last night which ran through his head like the frames of an old 8 mm movie. He shook them away and checked his watch. It would be several hours until Dr. Whittemore arrived, so he decided to foc
us on what he did best: research.
By the time she walked into the hotel restaurant, he’d consumed two pots of black coffee and made seven pages of notes in the cheap one-subject spiral he’d picked up at the dollar store.
“Mr. Watson?”
Her voice was even more sultry in person, laced with the lyrical drawl he’d heard on the phone. He closed his laptop and rose.
She was tall, easily 5’9 or 5’10, with an athletic build. With her blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her blue eyes, which were the color of a pair of faded jeans, were bright and clear, and he was so glad he’d called her. She was even more attractive than she’d been in the photographs on her website. Dr. Whittemore looked like a woman who could handle things. Spencer breathed a sigh of relief.
“Spencer Watson,” he said, extending his hand to her. “Thanks for coming.” He pulled out a chair and gestured for her to have a seat.
“Call me Lucy.” She smiled and his heart rate ticked up just a tad. He quickly glanced at her ring finger and was relieved to see that it was bare.
“Only if you’ll call me Watson.”
“Then you call me Sherlock.” She laughed, revealing perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. “I have my deerstalker in the car.”
“Too warm for a trench?”
“I keep it in the trunk. In the mountains you never know.” After dropping her large tote bag into an empty seat, she sat across the table from him and leaned toward the center. “Tell me what you saw.”
She was direct and while that was usually a characteristic he admired, he didn’t know how to explain last night without revealing how much the story scared him. The last thing he wanted to do was look like a ’fraidy cat in front of this beautiful, capable woman. “I’ve been doing some research,” he said, sidestepping the question.
“What have you found?”
He slid the notebook across the table, and she flipped through it. “I’ve never seen handwriting quite this—”
“I’m a little bit of a stickler for neatness,” he said.
“I figured as much.”
A server stopped by the table. Lucy ordered a salad and an ice water. When it was delivered, she drained the water before she picked up her fork. “That’s better,” she said. “Now, let’s see what you’ve discovered.”
She took her time and read each page, flipping backward and forward, as she digested the information. Finally, she looked up at him. “Good work. Better than lots of my undergraduates.”
“So what do you think? Could the Lizard Man be real?”
She leaned back in her chair. “All this is unsubstantiated, folklore stuff, and while it’s important information, it’s not the same as a first-hand account. Until I know exactly what happened, I’m not sure how I can help.”
“I have to know if he killed my father.”
CHAPTER TWO
God, it was hot. South Carolina was warm enough to bake a cake in the shade.
But Spencer Watson was even hotter.
Although the fact that she hadn’t had sex since she’d left Alamance State several months ago might be clouding her judgement.
His eyes were the color of blue sea glass and just as clear. The light yellow Polo shirt, faded Duck Head shorts and Sperry Top Siders screamed two things: old Southern money and attorney. A hundred and eighty degrees from her type.
She preferred the shaggy ones, men who looked like they might have just come home from a tour as a lumberjack or an Amazon explorer. The ones with a little stubble and an authentic tan. Men like Jacob Scruggs, the anthropologist down the hall from her old office, the one she’d been having an affair with before the dean kicked her out on her ass.
Jacob still called, and she still answered but he was in a tricky position. If he was open about their relationship, it could affect his job and he couldn’t afford that. On the other hand, if she was right, and creatures like Lizard Man did exist, the department would be forced to apologize her, and she’d be legitimate again and free to carry on with Jacob.
Legitimate and well-fucked. The possibilities made her smile.
God, how she missed the days of being taken seriously. She was pretty sure the Lizard Man wasn’t going to be her ticket back to acceptance among her peers, but it might be good practice.
The man across the table from her would be much more likely to launch an expedition in Macy’s or Dillard’s, while holding a cut crystal glass of single malt scotch in one hand. He probably chose woman who encouraged him to wear seersucker and fox hunt. His girlfriends probably had everything monogrammed.
Not that her body was listening to her denials of attraction.
Quite the contrary. Instead she was staring at his lips and wondering what he’d taste like.
I’m so not here to fall in love. The plan is to make a little money and move on to other crypto creatures that might actually be real.
In Spencer, she had the proverbial fish on the hook, and she needed to be more concerned with earning the money to pay her office rent than with her attraction to a client. “Why is it so important to figure out with certainty if Lizard Man killed your father?”
“I’m an attorney. We ran a small firm together. I’m responsible for settling his estate, and my mother needs to sell the family home as soon as possible. There are two ways we can get that process started. One, we find evidence of my father’s death and present it to the court. The court declares him dead, and then everything is disbursed according to the terms of his will. Or, we can find him, still alive someplace, and initiate a divorce proceeding. In that case, they could split the proceeds.”
It was a pretty emotionless explanation for someone who didn’t know the fate of his father and still referred to his parents’ place as “the family home”.
“The two of you were close?”
He chewed on his bottom lip and exhaled loudly. “I thought we were.”
“What does that mean?”
“For a few months before he disappeared, he hadn’t been himself.”
“In what way?”
“He was scatter-brained, erratic.”
“Could it have been a medical issue?”
Spencer shook his head. “He was a health-nut, one of those few people who actually had regular checkups and bloodwork.”
“It wasn’t medication, then, either?”
“The only thing he took on a regular basis was aspirin.”
“Mistress?”
Spencer winced, and Lucy knew she’d hit upon something. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I found some letters in his office from a woman, but they’re not exactly love notes. It’s almost like they’re written in some code so that the true meaning is just beneath the surface of the words.”
“Like a simple letter substitution code?”
He shook his head. “The sentences make sense, but they don’t come together in any way that makes them into logical paragraphs.”
“Maybe whoever wrote the letters just isn’t a good writer.”
He shrugged. “It could very well be that.”
“Have you asked the pen pal if she’s seen him?”
Spencer shook his head. “Bette, with an ‘e’, Hollis. I thought it would be best to eliminate any local possibilities first. Anyway, she’s not exactly new.”
That doesn’t make sense. Dear old dad drops off the planet and you don’t bother to ask around or tour the swamp where he might have last been alive until a year later?
“Look, I’m not much for family drama. God knows I have plenty of my own, but Bette might be an important source of information for you.”
“I’d rather not talk to her if I have a choice. She’s all the way in Daytona Beach, Florida.”
“God, that must be at least five or six hours from here.” She should bridle her sarcasm, at least until he knew her well enough to appreciate its stinging charm, but she couldn’t help herself. “Wouldn’t it just be easier to drive down there and knock on her door?”
There was s
omething about the name that tickled her brain. Bette Hollis. Why did that sound so familiar and yet so wrong? Like a piece of music that’s just a little too sharp or a little too flat but still recognizable.
“No. It wouldn’t. There’s a lot of old wounds there, ones I’d rather not revisit.” Spencer’s deep voice tore her away from her thoughts. He brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead, slid the notebook back across the table and opened it. “This seems like the most credible report,” he said, pointing to a highlighted portion on the third page. “Why don’t we talk to him first?”
“Look, my business is brand new, and while I really need the work to make sure I don’t have to live with my mother for the rest of my miserable life, I don’t think you need me. I think you need a PI.”
“I already have one of those. I retain him for divorce cases.”
“So call him and find out if you father chose to disappear. There’s no law against walking out of your own life.”
Spencer shook his head. “I’d rather eliminate the Lizard Man first.”
“Your dollar, your rules.” Lucy remembered why she’d loved academia so much. Limited exposure to the public. “But when you hear hoof beats, you should usually look for a horse, not a zebra.” Denial was a powerful thing, and Spencer was up to his ears in it. “Wouldn’t you rather know?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “I would rather know that he died doing what he loved, pushing his limits as a survivalist, than to know that he chose to disappear and leave my mother for Bette.” His lip curled when he said the other woman’s name. He leaned over, took an envelope out of his briefcase and handed it to Lucy. “Feel free to count it. I’ve reserved you the Sarah Chestnut for you for two nights. That will give us the time to talk to some people before we head out into the swamp again.”
While she was tempted to check his math, something about this fancy dining room made her feel like counting her money would be tacky and gauche. After all, her room had a name instead of a number. “I trust you.” She tucked the money into her purse and looked across the table at him. “Look, I’m not a psychologist. Hell, the closest I’ve ever come to a shrink is watching Dr. Phil, but if your father did decide that he’d rather live in Florida with his lady-friend, you’re going to have to face it sometime. Might as well do it before you spend a ton of money chasing a lizard.”
