Ghosts

by Bill Noel

  ALSO BY BILL NOEL

  FOLLY

  THE PIER

  WASHOUT

  THE EDGE

  THE MARSH

  GHOSTS

  A FOLLY BEACH MYSTERY

  Bill Noel

  iUniverse, Inc.

  Bloomington

  A Folly Beach Mystery

  Copyright © 2012 Bill Noel

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  iUniverse Star

  an iUniverse, Inc. imprint

  iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  ISBN: 978-1-938908-10-1 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-938908-11-8 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914933

  Cover photo by the author.

  Author photo by Susan Noel.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  PROLOGUE

  At 4:35 p.m. on April 19, 1957, Clint Mussleman, an engineer on the Atlantic Coast Line’s passenger train that ran from New York to Miami, returned home from a grueling extended shift. Home to Clint was a small weather-beaten cottage on the barrier island of Folly Beach, South Carolina.

  Clint stood in the wooden Folly Pavilion, which overlooked the majestic Atlantic Ocean. The exhausted engineer wanted to get one last look at the ocean, the reason he had moved to the island, before heading home to the mundane chores that had accumulated in his absence. An hour later, he’d had his fix of the ocean breeze, which mixed with the smoke from his Camel cigarette, and he absentmindedly flipped his smoldering cigarette butt to the floor, where it landed on a sheet of discarded tissue paper in a corner of the well-known landmark. Clint took a deep breath, filled his lungs with the briny sea mist, and felt refreshed as he headed home to the dreaded chores. Moments later, the wadded paper provided enough kindling to burst into flames, which rapidly spread to the dried wooden supports of the large structure.

  Oblivious to anything but typical teenage thoughts, sixteen-year-old identical twins Charlotte and Cassandra Harmel leaned over the seaward side railing on the pavilion. Their conversation bounced from how they had muddled through another week of school, to their dreaded math class, to the next day’s road trip to visit their favorite aunt and uncle in Georgetown. Charlotte thought she smelled smoke and started to look around, but she was distracted when her sister excitedly pointed to a dolphin gracefully heading up the coast.

  Three blocks from the beach, Frank Fontana stumbled out of Perk’s, his favorite bar and poker-playing hangout. He began his quest to find a friend, or even a stranger, who would “lend” him a few dollars so he could continue his nightly round of barhopping and bumming drink money. Frank, a drunk by hobby and a bum by profession, was known by everyone who had spent more than a week on the small island. Worthless, irresponsible, and stumbling drunk were some of the kinder words bandied about to describe the shell of a man who had served his country with distinction in World War II.

  By 5:45 p.m., a stiff wind rushing in from the Atlantic had swept the flames horizontally from the corner where the wayward cigarette had landed. The wind-dried, aging supports and walls of the pavilion ignited as if they’d been soaked in kerosene.

  Charlotte and Cassandra were jolted from their animated conversation when the fire, thirty feet behind them, attacked the roof and burned through two support beams. A third of the roof tumbled to the floor. A ball of rolling flames consumed their escape route before they could reach it.

  Frank had successfully staggered to Center Street, the literal and figurative center of Folly Beach, and was weaving his way toward Kokomo’s Lounge, his second-favorite bar and bumming spot. Part of his addled brain heard raised voices coming from the nearby beach. The sun was on its daily glide to the horizon behind him, and a new ball of light invaded his bloodshot eyes from the direction of the pavilion. He squinted and said to himself, “What in hell?”

  He didn’t know how accurate he was.

  Folly’s small and disorganized fire department garnered all its equipment and personnel and descended on the pavilion, which was now consumed in flames that reached more than fifty feet to the sky. The pavilion and Frank’s destination, Kokomo’s Lounge, were engulfed in the raging inferno in front of clusters of locals who had gathered like bugs around a torch.

  Frank’s few healthy brain cells clicked in. His mind raced back to Normandy in the rural countryside of France and June 6, 1944, D-day, where he and more than 160,000 American and Allied troops had been thrust onto the beach in a torrent of German firepower. Frank had been luckier that day than thousands of his fellow soldiers. He’d survived—at least physically.

  Frank’s gait and focus grew stronger as he ran toward the pavilion. For reasons never understood, the drunk heard high-pitched screams coming from the hell on earth—screams no one else heard or admitted to hearing
.

  He yelled for the firefighters to aim their impotent stream of water at the entrance of the rapidly deteriorating building. He screamed for able-bodied men in the crowd to rush into the structure. He heard someone on the other side of the flames, but those near him only heard blathering—profanity-laced incoherent pleas from the town drunk.

  Frank shoved two firefighters to the ground before running toward the fire-engulfed pavilion. Spectators nearest Frank later recalled him cursing them for being “bloody cowards” as he sprinted into the black smoke-filled structure.

  By 8:15 p.m., the sun had disappeared behind the marsh side of Folly Beach. The pavilion and nearby buildings were reduced to a pile of smoldering, blackened rubble. Those in the crowd, which had swelled to more than five hundred at its peak, had wandered back to their separate lives, and the exhausted firefighters and police began to comb the charred ruins for the body of Frank Fontana, the drunk who had inexplicably stormed into the deadly flames.

  What the firefighters found shocked the tight-knit community. The scorched, lifeless bodies of Charlotte and Cassandra Harmel were trapped under a ceiling beam that had fallen during the early stages of the blaze.

  Something else troubled the good citizens of Folly Beach. Dozens of witnesses had seen Frank Fontana run into the burning building, yet the thorough search of the pavilion failed to turn up even the most minute trace of his body. What had happened to him? It was highly unlikely that the flames had turned him completely to ash. Surely some body parts would have been found. So if he’d gotten out, people asked, then why had he disappeared, vanished like a fog under the heat of the morning sun? Gradually, over time, most folks in Folly Beach stopped wondering and got on with their lives. But not everyone did.

  CHAPTER 1

  “I’ve got a job,” said Charles.

  Miracles occur when you least expect them, I thought. “Like with real hours, paycheck, W-2?”

  He tilted his head in my direction as if I’d lapsed into Mandarin. “Huh?” he articulately replied.

  I suspected the W-2 reference had thrown him. My best friend, Charles, hadn’t received a paycheck since Ronald Reagan had dozed through meetings in the White House and gas cost barely over a buck a gallon. Charles was the ripe old age of thirty-four at the time.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Off the books … no taxes?”

  “Of course.”

  Charles had held several “tax-free” part-time jobs during the last twenty-six years of his voluntary retirement—jobs that had included delivering packages for the surf shop; helping restaurateurs clean up after extra-busy days; and even, heaven forbid, manual labor, assisting contractors in building and rebuilding homes on the island. I knew he wanted me to ask what was different about his latest job. I wasn’t ready to give him that satisfaction.

  Charles and I were sitting at my favorite table in the Lost Dog Café, the best breakfast restaurant on Folly Beach. During the five years that I had lived on the small bohemian island a handful of miles from Charleston, I had eaten hundreds of morning meals at the Dog, many of them with my unlikely friend Charles. Along with hundreds of meals, I had heard Charles ask thousands of questions. He was a fact and rumor collector extraordinaire. My nosy genes paled by comparison, and it irritated him greatly when I failed to ask the obvious questions—but I wasn’t nearly as concerned about every who, what, why, where, and when of the world. Besides, I knew he was genetically wired to tell me what his alleged “job” was.

  It was approaching seven thirty, and the sun had reared its orange head minutes earlier. Christmas was a week away, and the sun was as late to rise as most of the full-time residents. Folly Beach was in hibernation. Folly was probable one of the best-kept secrets along the South Carolina coast. It didn’t get as much attention as its neighboring beaches on Isle of Palms, Sullivan’s Island, or Kiawah. However, in the last few years, vacationers who wanted a peaceful beach with a laid-back feel and proximity to Charleston, one of the most historic and beautiful cities in the country, had rediscovered it. The flocks of vacationers who swarmed—some would say overran—the half-mile-wide, six-mile-long island during the summer months were miles away, engulfed in their full-time jobs and school and only dreaming of their next vacation.

  Charles and I, occupying one of the three tables of diners, had received the full attention of Amelia, the server. She was one of the few current employees who had been working at the Dog when I moved to Folly after taking an early retirement from a large health-care company in my home state of Kentucky. She arrived with our breakfast burritos and interrupted Charles’s sketchy explanation of his new job.

  “I know you’re foaming at the mouth to hear about it,” said Charles a few moments later. “So here goes.”

  He had surely mistaken the shard of egg white on the corner of my mouth for foam, but he tended to get cranky when someone interrupted one of his stories with reality. “Umm,” I merely mumbled.

  “Cal’s hired me to use my detective skills to find out who’s been stealing from him.” Charles leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and smiled.

  I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for applause or was ecstatic about his burrito. I did what I usually do when I don’t have a clue what to say. “Umm,” I repeated.

  “Chris, come on. It’s a real job this time,” he continued. “Cal’s Country Bar and Burgers has a new bartender, who happens to be yours truly.” He pointed at his head and continued to smile.

  Cal’s was one of Folly’s popular watering holes, and up until a year ago, it had previously been called GB’s Bar. Its former owner had abandoned the successful business when he was forced to move off-island. The landlord, not wanting the daunting task of finding someone to lease the less-than-pristine building in the down economy, had approached my friend Calvin Ballew, a country music performer who had actually had one hit record, although it had topped the charts nearly fifty years ago, and had been a regular performer at GB’s. Cal had never managed anything—including himself—but the deal the landlord offered was too good to pass up.

  Charles had as many “detective skills” as Cal had bar-owner talents, which was slightly fewer than a chipmunk had for piloting a 747. Now I was smiling.

  I chewed on my burrito and on what Charles had said. “And what do you know about bartending?” I asked.

  “I’m glad you asked, my skeptical friend.” He nodded, his eyelids narrowed. “Last week I read Bartending for Dummies, and now I’m on the second chapter of Bartending 101: The Basics of Mixology.” He gave another brisk nod. “So there.”

  After a few years of observing Charles consume adult beverages, I could say with certainty that his mixological vocabulary would consist of five words: Light, Bud, red, white, and pink. The last three were only because wine was my drink of choice, and he occasionally ordered for me.

  At five feet eight, Charles was a couple of inches shorter than I, and he was twenty or so pounds lighter. He was sloppy, disheveled, outgoing, a voracious reader, and he viewed employment as the work of the devil. I prided myself on my appearance—neat and well groomed but not necessarily attractive, although I had been described as “relatively handsome” and even “cute” by a couple of biased observers. I had no interest in reading anything other than the headlines in the paper, and I was way on the reserved side of shy. Conversations with strangers didn’t come easily. We were about as opposite as two humans can be, but because of the quirky pull of Folly, we became quick friends. On the other hand, both our ages began with the number six, although Charles had only recently arrived at that milestone. I had been there three years. Oh, and we both loved photography.

  I inhaled and was rewarded with the soothing smell of coffee from a nearby table. “When do you begin your two new careers—neither of which you have a whit of experience for, I might add?”

  “As President G. W. Bush said, ‘I think we agree, the past is
over.’ That experience thing is overrated.” Charles carefully placed his fork on the plate, folded his arms in front of his chest, and stared at me.

  One trait of Charles’s was his tendency to quote US presidents. It was both endearing and irritating, often at the same time. I didn’t challenge the authenticity of the quotes, mainly because I didn’t care if they were accurate. He was such a consummate collector of all things trivial and often irrelevant, that the citations were most likely factual. But so what? The comforting smell of bacon whiffed through the air, and the muted conversation from the next table barely distracted me from assimilating the former president’s deeply profound statement.

  I’d heard what President Bush had allegedly said, but I didn’t recall Charles answering my question. “And when do you begin your new careers?” I repeated.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, tapping the table with his left hand. “But don’t worry—I’ll still be your sales manager.”

  Sales manager was a bit strong in describing Charles’s unpaid involvement in my emotionally rewarding money-pit business, Landrum Gallery. I had opened the photo gallery on Center Street, the home of 90 percent of the retail business on the island, and instead of throwing cash in the Atlantic, I threw it away on utilities, rent, taxes, insurance, and countless other expenses that put me deeper in the hole each month.

  After taking early retirement and moving to Folly, I had saved enough money from a couple of lucky real-estate investments and a buyout package from work to purchase a small cottage a couple of blocks from the beach and still make ends meet. I didn’t have a cushion of cash to lose thousands each year on the gallery, and I was ready to fold my expensive hobby when the most unlikely event occurred. Charles and I had each inherited five hundred thousand dollars from an aging widow named Margaret Klein. We had saved her life, and since she didn’t have any living relatives, she’d left her estate to us.