Lowcountry Bonfire

by Susan M. Boyer

  “Who says we had an argument?” He lifted his chin.

  I caught myself staring at the fatback again, raised my hand to cover my smile.

  “It doesn’t matter who told me about it. You had an argument. What was it about?”

  He examined the ceiling. “He said I was late too much. Lectured me about my work habits. My future. What did he know? He was a mechanic in a rinky-dink town.”

  I felt my eyebrow creep up, gave him a long look. Like most people in town, he’d had no idea who Zeke Lyerly was. Just like Zeke wanted.

  “No disrespect.” He waved a hand dismissively.

  “To Zeke, or our hometown?” I didn’t care for his attitude about either. Who was he to criticize, sitting there with fatback taped to his face?

  He flashed me a look filled with disdain, then looked away.

  “Why were you late?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t late much. Maybe five, ten minutes, that’s all. I worked hard for him when I got there. What’s the big deal, whether I’m there at seven thirty or 7:35?”

  “How did you react to this…lecture?”

  “It pissed me off, okay?”

  “You and he fought?”

  “No, we didn’t fight. He lectured me. I got pissed off. I told him he didn’t pay me enough for how hard I worked. He said if I was more contentious I might get a raise. We went back and forth a while.”

  I rolled my lips in and out, nodded. Zeke must’ve told him to be more conscientious. Good grief. “Sounds like a fight to me.”

  “It was a disagreement.”

  “When exactly did you have this disagreement?” I asked.

  “A week ago this past Wednesday, I think.”

  “Was that the end of it?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve been there fifteen minutes early every day since. Until you closed the place down, anyways.”

  I studied him, looking for any sign he wasn’t being truthful. It was hard to tell, what with his sullen act and all. And it was hard to take him seriously when he had raw pork on his head. My phone vibrated with an incoming text. I pulled my phone out of the side pocket of my purse.

  It was from Nate: Warrant delayed. Judge gone fishing.

  Hell’s bells. I didn’t think Price was a flight risk. But I was worried he’d think to ditch the rest of the strychnine before Blake could execute a search warrant. I couldn’t ask Glenda and Grant about the gopher killer until after it was officially found.

  “That’s good,” I said to Price. “Tammy Sue is going to need your help as soon as she reopens.”

  Behind me, Glenda’s voice floated into the room. “When do you suppose that will be?”

  “Maybe tomorrow.” I really had no idea, but that came right out of my mouth, nonetheless. “Tammy will call Price to let him know, I’m sure.”

  Glenda stepped into the room, looked pointedly at me. “Is there anything else?”

  It crossed my mind that maybe she should make her son see a dermatologist, but I didn’t offer my opinion on the matter.

  Price stood. He apparently sensed his mamma was sending me packing.

  I offered them my sunniest smile. “No, but thank you so much, Price, for your help. I think that coffee mug may be important. It’s real helpful to know Zeke had it Monday afternoon. I’m grateful to you.”

  Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. I said my goodbyes and headed out.

  From the Escape I called Blake. “You might want to get Clay Cooper to sit on the Elliott house until you can get a search warrant. Just in case Price gets antsy and decides to get rid of the gopher killer.”

  “Why can’t my outside investigators take care of that?”

  “Because Zeke’s memorial is Friday night, so date night got moved to tonight. We’re going into Charleston.”

  “Fine. I’ll talk to Clay. But that’ll cost me overtime.”

  “His rates are better than ours. I’d charge you overtime too.”

  He grumbled under his breath.

  “You kept the strychnine quiet, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. No one knows that’s likely what killed him except you, Nate, and me. And Warren Harper, of course.” He sighed. “And Mom and Dad. But they know better than to talk about that.”

  “And April. I told her. And the killer,” I said. “The killer knows.”

  “I’ll send Cooper over to watch him,” he said.

  But I still wasn’t sure Price was our guy.

  NINETEEN

  The storm the night before had brought the temperature down. It was comfortable enough to sit in the brick courtyard, which was my favorite spot at 82 Queen. Our table was tucked beside the pink garden wall, next to an old wrought iron gate. The lush green plantings made it feel private. White lights strung in the trees added to the romance. Nate held my chair, then took his seat.

  The waiter handed him the wine list, and each of us dinner and specialty drink menus. “Would you care for a cocktail?”

  “I’d like a Charleston Sparkler.” I was particularly fond of that concoction, which was made of Acai vodka, fresh lime juice, pomegranate simple syrup, and sparkling wine.

  “Woodford Reserve, two rocks,” said Nate.

  “Very good.” Our waiter disappeared.

  “Shall we decide on dinner before we continue our conversation?” asked Nate.

  “Sounds good. I adore the She Crab Soup. I’ll start with that.”

  “Hmm…” Nate studied his menu. “I’ll have the Brown Sugar Pork Belly with grilled polenta.”

  “That’s not a healthy choice.” I gave him a disapproving look.

  He grinned. “Perhaps we should tally the nutritional content of She Crab Soup.”

  “Okay, you have a point.” I returned to my menu. “I think I’ll have the Queen Street Chicken Bog for my entree.”

  “Excellent choice. I’ll have the ribeye. Do you want a salad?”

  “I’ll never be able to eat all that. I should have something green, but no. We need to have salads tomorrow.”

  “I doubt they’ll serve that at the memorial service. We’d better get our greens at lunch.”

  The waiter brought our cocktails and took our dinner order.

  “And we’d like a bottle of the Lyric Pinot Noir,” said Nate.

  All efficiency and unobtrusiveness, the waiter murmured in the affirmative and disappeared.

  “Price Elliott is a kid,” I said.

  “And kids much younger than he, unfortunately, have committed murder,” said Nate.

  I sighed. “I know. It’s just…honestly, I don’t think he cares enough about that job to kill over it. He’d likely’ve been quite happy to lose it. Nate. He had fatback taped to his head.” I started to giggle.

  “Come again?”

  “He’d taken packing tape and taped a chunk of fatback to the side of his face. He thinks it will bring a cyst to a head. Surely someone that unsophisticated didn’t kill a former CIA agent. Oh, wait. It was Zeke who taught him that fatback trick.”

  We both laughed.

  Nate seemed to mull that. “But there’s close to a hundred pounds of gopher bait under the Elliotts’ house. Strychnine is the active ingredient. As hard as that stuff is to get ahold of, that’s pretty damning evidence someone in that house poisoned Zeke. You don’t suspect Grant or Glenda, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “The only possible motive there would be that Zeke might’ve hurt Price’s feelings or some such thing, but neither Grant nor Glenda are that irrational.”

  “Then I think this case is solved,” said Nate.

  “Well…I haven’t told you about the guy from Georgia.”

  “Near where Tammy Sue is from?” Nate sipped his bourbon.

  “Not that Georgia.” I started with April’s condo and finished with figuring out th
e email trick.

  “Why is there a Georgian consulate in Charleston?” asked Nate.

  “I have no idea. But since you’ve found strychnine on the island, surely this case has a solution that doesn’t involve spies.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re so set against it being Price,” said Nate.

  I shrugged. “It’s just a feeling. You went through Skip and Margie’s garage with a fine-tooth comb?”

  “I did.”

  “Is there a shed…some other place Coy would have access to?” I asked.

  “Coy?”

  “Yes, Coy. If you’d found strychnine at Skip and Margie’s, I’d say we needed to take a harder look at Coy. He lives above their garage. He had two motives, and his alibi is a poor excuse.”

  “You know how much I hate to disappoint you. There’s storage next door at the marina, all right. But I went through that as well. No trace of strychnine.”

  “Well, damn.”

  “And I checked your cousin Spencer’s garage for good measure. And Humphrey Pearson’s place. He doesn’t have a garage, but there’s a shed out back. No gopher killer, but he has some healthy marijuana plants behind the shed.”

  “Maybe forget to mention that to Blake. There’s no sense getting Humphrey into trouble when we were trespassing to begin with.”

  “Agreed. It’s one thing to use the fruits of an illegal search to bring a murderer to justice. Quite another to hassle a grown man about his recreational habits.”

  The waiter brought our wine and made quick work of the presentation. As soon as he’d poured, someone brought our first course. I turned my attention to my soup. The first silky, creamy, savory sip was heavenly. I closed my eyes and nearly moaned with pleasure.

  I opened my eyes and ladled a second spoonful.

  Nate grinned at me. “That must be really good soup.”

  “You want a taste?” I asked.

  “No, thank you. Would you like to try mine?”

  “No, thanks. Maybe we should search a few more garages,” I said.

  “What, randomly?” His forehead creased.

  I winced. “No, of course not. Maybe. I don’t know. I just get a certain feeling when we’re on the right path. I don’t have that feeling yet.”

  “Have you seen Colleen today?” asked Nate.

  I shook my head. “Not since she popped in to harass us at Zeke’s house.”

  “I think she was more harassing your ex than us.”

  “He’s not my ex.”

  Nate raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, he is my ex, of course. But in the context of this case, he’s a contractor we had to call. Him being my ex is incidental.”

  “Fair enough. Nonetheless, we have seen her since then.”

  Right. The dream. I took a sip of wine. “I wonder if Colleen has been reprimanded,” I said. “I worry about her.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s quite industrious. And it is nice to have dinner alone.” He lifted his wine glass.

  “Indeed it is.” I smiled and touched my glass to his.

  Worry clouded his smoky blue eyes. “You had another nightmare last night.”

  I sipped my wine, then set down my glass. “I did.”

  “They’re becoming quite frequent. And they seem to frighten you profoundly.”

  I studied the label on the wine bottle. “They do.”

  “You mentioned they had to do with Colleen keeping the island population from growing. But you haven’t told me yet what happens that scares you so much you wake up trembling and screaming.”

  I drew a deep breath. “Colleen told me they are an impressionist version of things that might possibly happen, depending on the choices people—including you and me—make. I shouldn’t take them literally, she said.”

  “All right.” He waited.

  “In the dream, you and I have two children. The girl is named Emma Rae, after my Gram.” My eyes glistened. “We’re evacuating. There’s a super hurricane bearing down on the island. The ferry’s gone down, so we have to go to the marina. In the dream, we have a boat. A cabin cruiser. There are so many people trying to escape the storm. Too many people. It’s clear some are not going to make it. They’re swarming the boats—our boat too. Then a giant wave washes you away. The children and I are standing there screaming. There’s nothing we can do.”

  He sipped his wine. “Do you think this dream is a warning?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  He nodded. “Then perhaps we should heed it. If there’s a storm in the Atlantic, we leave town with days to spare. Problem solved.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” I said. “Colleen said the forecast models aren’t always that accurate.” I wasn’t even going to mention the earthquake/tsunami scenario Colleen had brought up the last time we’d talked about this. Nate might start to wonder if he’d married a nutcase.

  “So, what do we need to do?” asked Nate.

  I shrugged. “According to Colleen, all we can do is be prepared and be alert.”

  “Then why are you still worried?”

  A tear escaped. “Because I can’t imagine life without you.”

  TWENTY

  The next morning, Nate went by the police station to check in with Blake and to log Zeke’s phone and Price’s keys to the shop into evidence. Because I couldn’t warm up to the idea of either Price Elliott or Sergei the Georgian as a murder suspect, I took my second cup of coffee and a bag of Dove Dark Chocolate Promises into the office and stared at the case board. When it wouldn’t confess, I opened the file on my laptop and scanned my notes. Then I went back to the beginning.

  I pulled up the video I’d shot Tuesday morning, right after Pete Carter had taken a crowbar to the trunk of Zeke’s Mustang. Had the killer been among the crowd watching from neighboring yards? Who all was there but didn’t live in the immediate neighborhood? The people front and center were neighbors, folks whose names hadn’t otherwise come up in the course of the investigation so far. The clip was only twenty seconds long. I reached for a piece of chocolate and started it over.

  After I’d watched it a few times, I zoomed in. Frame by frame, I scanned the video. I froze the screen on a familiar bearded face among the crowd. Why would Humphrey Pearson be there? He didn’t live close enough that he would’ve heard Tammy Sue’s commotion and come to see what was going on. Word of Zeke’s death had not yet had a chance to spread at that point. I needed to talk to Humphrey.

  For good measure, I resolved to speak to everyone at the Robinsons’ bonfire who I hadn’t already spoken to. It’s not that I suspected any of them really. I was turning over rocks, hoping to find a snake under one of them.

  Where would I find Humphrey on a Friday morning? When he worked, he did carpentry and odd jobs for Michael Devlin, who I sincerely did not want to call again. Where was Michael working? Since he hadn’t been able to sell his spec house, he hadn’t started another new home on Stella Maris.

  I hopped in the Escape and started my search for Humphrey at his place. His grandfather had built the beachfront cottage in the early 1900s, way before the island had restrictions about building so close to the beach. It was specifically held back when a large chunk of Pearson land was sold to build Sea Farm, which bordered Humphrey’s property.

  The cottage was at the end of Pitt Street, where it dead-ended in the sand. Humphrey had meticulously maintained it over the years. Its white picket fence and white painted wood siding had a fresh coat of paint. It wasn’t in the same neighborhood as Mamma and Daddy’s house and the Lyerly home. But it wasn’t but a few blocks away either.

  I pulled into the dirt driveway and parked beside the well-loved Jeep Wrangler Humphrey had driven for as long as I could remember. I knocked on the door and waited, praying he would answer fully clothed. Humphrey’s wardrobe preference was none, but he gen
erally didn’t force that proclivity on the rest of us. Dropping in on him was risky.

  Without warning, the door opened. Humphrey had clearly walked to the door in bare feet, which explained why I didn’t hear him coming.

  “Liz.” His warm smile was guileless. Untamed blond hair hung to his shoulders in waves. In contrast, his beard and mustache were closely trimmed. A vibrant blue print sarong hung around his waist.

  “Hey, Humphrey. Sorry to come by unannounced. Do you have a few minutes to chat?”

  “Sure. Come on out by the pool.” He opened the door wide.

  As I stepped inside, my gaze fell to a set of pegs by the door. Along with several jackets and a spare sarong, there hung a Lyerly Automotive cap. Too bad it wasn’t a limited edition.

  A large living area with a kitchen at the left end formed the heart of the house. I followed Humphrey across the room and out the french doors to the brick patio.

  A wooden trellis to the left labored under mounds of bougainvillea. Mimosa trees and bright pink hibiscus shrubs ran along the right side of the patio. The pool in the center was crystal clear and inviting. While I admired it, Humphrey dropped his sarong and dove in.

  Instinctively, I covered my eyes.

  Humphrey surfaced, slicked his hair from his eyes and laughed. “It’s okay. You can’t see me under the water.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. You should jump in. The water’s nice.” His eyes twinkled. “You swim naked. In the ocean.”

  I took my hands off my eyes. “How do you know that?” He was right. All I could see was a flesh-colored blur below the waterline. Not that I was looking.

  “Everyone knows that. Except your mother. She prefers not to know.”

  “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.

  “I need to talk to you about Zeke.”

  “Zeke.” His expression fell, saddened. “What about him?”

  “You and he were friends, right?”

  “We were. From kindergarten. It hasn’t sunk in yet, you know?”