Anne Frances walked past me and left the store without buying anything. I didn’t dare follow her. She’d surely notice me. I didn’t have much to show for the afternoon’s work, but at least I’d gotten a good look at her.
Colleen stared after her, but didn’t say a word, which was very un-Colleen.
What do you think? I asked Colleen.
“I can’t read her at all. Her head is all murky.”
That usually means someone is dark inside, right? Not a good person.
“Not necessarily. Not always. I’ve told you before. Not all minds are open to me,” said Colleen.
If you say so. But my memory of the folks Colleen couldn’t read was that most of them were up to no good. Before I could ask her if she’d prodded someone into hiring Rutledge & Ratcliffe, she disappeared into thin air.
Dammit, Colleen. Typical.
I browsed for a few more minutes, smiled and waved to Polly and her friend, and made my way back to my car. Mrs. Drayton’s Lexus was gone. I called Nate.
“Where are you?” I asked when he answered.
“Wentworth Street. Between Rutledge and Ashley.”
“Is Poppy home now?” I asked.
“Unless she climbed over the fence. I followed her here from the post office on East Bay after she finished her route. She’s been home about thirty minutes.”
“What’s she driving?” Charleston PD still had her car.
“A yellow beach cruiser with a basket on the front,” he said.
“I bet that was a fun tail.”
“Piece of cake. Between the carriage tour and the pedicab I got behind, we were moving at about the same pace. Anyway, it was only a mile and a half.”
“Does it seem strange to you that she can afford to live in Harleston Village on a postal carrier’s salary?” I asked.
“Studio over a garage? Maybe. Could be something that needs too much work to compete in the short-term rental market.”
“Eh—or maybe her landlady prefers one long-term tenant to an endless stream of folks coming for a couple nights. Even still…it seems like the rent would be steep.”
“Fair point,” said Nate.
“We should talk to her as soon as possible, get her unfiltered version of what happened.”
“Agreed. But it may be best if you do that by yourself. Your cover is already blown.”
“You want to listen in?” I asked.
“Naturally.”
FIVE
Poppy Oliver agreed to meet with me immediately at her apartment. I had the impression she would’ve told her story to anyone who would listen. Per her instructions, I parked in the street, opened the gate at the end of the brick driveway and walked to the back of the Butler home. The house was a grey, two-story affair with black shutters and white trim. Unless I missed my guess, it had been here close to two hundred years, though both the house and grounds were well-maintained.
A separate garage, likely originally the carriage house, sat at the end of the driveway, sheltered by an enormous live oak. An exterior set of stairs led to the apartment above the garage. Before I started the climb, I dialed Nate.
“Heading up,” I said when he answered. I minimized the call window, tapped the Voice Memo app, and started recording. I loved technology. Nate could listen while I recorded with a different app. I slid my iPhone into the exterior pocket of my cross-body bag upside down, so that the microphone faced up and was unobstructed.
As I climbed the stairs, I ran my hand along the railing. It was solid, as were the steps. From the small landing at the top, I scanned the backyard. Was Mrs. Butler watching from inside the house? I’d always thought living in an apartment above someone’s garage would be at the expense of one’s privacy.
I started to knock, but the door opened with my fist in midair.
“You.” Poppy’s eyes held surprise and an accusation. She had changed from her uniform into lightweight cotton lounge pants and a cropped t-shirt. Her cheeks were flushed, either from anger or from delivering mail all day in the August heat and humidity. She looked incredibly vulnerable, and once again, I had the urge to protect her.
“Hey, Poppy. I’m Liz Talbot.”
“You were with Detective Ravenel this morning at breakfast,” she said.
“Sonny and I are old friends. But that has no bearing on why I’m here. May I come in?”
She hesitated, gave me a doubtful look. “You’re a private investigator?”
“That’s right.”
“Who hired you?” She asked.
“I’ll explain everything, but I think we’ll be more comfortable if we could sit and talk.” I smiled warmly.
She drew a long, slow breath, stared at me from under her eyebrows, then huffed out a sigh that fluttered through her bangs. “Fine. Come in. As long as you understand I can’t pay you.” She stepped back and opened the door wider.
“You won’t be getting a bill from me, I promise.” I stepped inside.
Her apartment was a perfect little jewel box of a home, maybe 400 square feet total. The walls and cathedral ceiling were done in white painted shiplap siding. Two skylights let in light dappled by the leaves and branches of the tree above. Just inside the door was a galley kitchen with open shelves lined with yellow, blue, and green dishes. A bar with a dark wooden top and two stools separated the kitchen from the rest of the apartment.
A queen-size bed was centered on the far wall. It was covered in a down comforter, with a desert star patterned quilt with blues, yellows, greens, and pops of orange folded across the end. The bed was flanked on one side with an armoire, and on the other, an over-stuffed bookcase that reached to the top of the wall. Everything from classics to romance novels to thrillers filled the shelves.
At the foot of the bed, a light-washed denim sofa delineated the living area. A pair of leather armchairs sat on either side of the sofa. Along the far wall, a small flat screen TV hung above a wooden dresser.
“Have a seat,” Poppy gestured to the general area of the sofa. “But if he sent you thinking we’d get to talking girl-talk and I’d confess to you that I ran over Mr. Drayton, you and him are both gonna be disappointed.”
I perched on one of the chairs. “Sonny didn’t send me.”
She curled onto the end of the sofa nearest me and reached for a glass on the tea table. She jerked her hand back and jumped up. “I’m so sorry. Would you like something to drink? I mean, would you like some water? That’s really all I have, but it’s filtered and cold.”
“Thank you, that sounds lovely.” I hated for her to get back up. She must’ve been exhausted. But if we both had drinks in our hands, the vibe turned more social. She’d be less likely to hustle me out.
Poppy darted into the kitchen.
I kept up the small talk. My first objective was to make her trust me. “It’s a wonder you don’t get heatstroke walking around all day in this heat.”
“I’m used to it,” she said. “The people on my route are really nice, too. They bring me lemonade and, on really hot days, cool towels. They look out for me.” She set the glass down on a tea stand by my chair. “And I have no trouble getting my steps in.”
I thanked her and she returned to the sofa. When she had resettled, a large grey cat appeared and hopped up beside her.
“This is Ruffles,” she said. “Hey sweetie.” She stroked the cat and it laid down.
“She’s beautiful,” I said. “I’ve never seen a cat with crinkly fur like that.” The underside of her neck, chin, and a triangular section of her face around her nose were white.
“I think she’s a Selkirk Rex, at least partly,” said Poppy. “The breed has wavy hair. But I’m not really sure. Ruffles was a stray. Or maybe I was. Anyway, we found each other.” Poppy continued to stroke Ruffles, her gaze resting on the cat. “So, if Detective Ravenel didn’t send you, who
did?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” I winced, gave her a look filled with apology. “As with most of my cases, my client’s identity is confidential. But the important thing is that someone hired me to find out exactly what happened to Phillip Drayton.”
“So his brother hired you.” She continued petting the cat.
“I really can’t say. But if you didn’t hit Mr. Drayton with your car, me doing my job can only help you, right?”
“Well, I did not hit him.” She sighed. Her enthusiasm for telling her story seemed to have waned. “But you might find out some things your client would rather no one knew about. I’m not sure where that will leave me. But what the heck? What do you want to know?”
I sipped my water, then started with the least upsetting topic I needed to cover. “Do you know the people on your route well?”
“We don’t see each other socially or anything like that. But we look out for each other. It’s what people do,” she said.
“Like the water, the cold towels.” I nodded.
“Exactly. A couple of the ladies bake me cookies sometimes. One of them tried to fix me up with her grandson.” She blushed. Her eyes widened and she looked at the floor with a small smile. “And I…well, I let them know if I see anything out of the ordinary.”
“Sure. Like...?” I lifted a shoulder in a shrug of agreement, raised a palm.
She nodded. “Like if their neighbor’s package has been on the porch for a couple of days, or a repairman left the crawlspace door open, or someone unfamiliar is hanging around. Or if I see their cat a few houses down, I bring it home with the mail.”
“Seems like only the considerate thing to do.” I tried to keep her nodding.
“Exactly. Thank you. Who wouldn’t keep an eye out for their neighbors?”
“How well do you know Mrs. Drayton?” I asked.
“That poor woman.” Poppy shook her head. “She’s the sweetest thing. I see her nearly every day. She watches for me. Comes to the door for her mail. They have a mail slot, but I hardly ever use it. She nearly always offers me something to drink. Hot days, she has Gatorade in her hand. If it’s cold out? Coffee or hot chocolate.”
“Why did you call her ‘that poor woman?’”
Poppy bit her lip, hesitated. “I think she’s lonely, which is strange because she’s a really nice lady, and gorgeous—she could have a ton of friends. I usually get to her house between 12:30 and 1:00. She’s usually there. Most women in her shoes would be out to fancy lunches, or shopping, or at the spa. But it’s more than that.”
I waited for her to continue.
“You know how hot it’s been the last two weeks? Mid to high nineties. Close to one hundred degrees a couple of days. But Mrs. Drayton always has on long pants with long sleeve blouses and scarves. No matter how hot it gets. Somedays she comes to the door wearing sunglasses. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“It does seem a bit unusual.” Anne Frances Drayton had been wearing long sleeves and slacks when I saw her too, but the ensemble was white linen—hardly seasonally inappropriate.
“Yeah, well, more than once, her sleeve has slipped up when she handed me a drink, or her scarf gaped, and I could see the bruises.”
“What kind of bruises?” I asked.
“All kinds. Someone beats the daylights out of her. A couple of times it looked like someone tried to choke her,” said Poppy.
I reflected on that for a moment. “Has she ever said anything? Asked for help?”
“No, of course not. If she had asked for help, I could’ve called social services or the police. Once I asked her what happened to her arm. It was all black and blue. She said she’d fallen. Said she was clumsy—always tripping over something. Laughed this fake little laugh.” Poppy shook her head slowly, stared into space.
“Did you ever meet her husband?”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve seen him coming and going. He’s never spoken to me. He always seems busy, distracted.”
“Did you ever see them together?”
“No.”
“You told Sonny that he abused her,” I said.
She gave a huff of disgust. “Well, someone did. Who else would it be? If your wife had bruises like that and you knew you didn’t put them there, wouldn’t you find out what was going on? Put a stop to it?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “But no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors, do they?” In my line of work, I’d seen all manner of marital relationships. Domestic abuse was abhorrent—I’d seen it up close and had intervened on more than one occasion— but one of my guiding principles was never to judge consensual behavior between adults. And there’s the problem. In the absence of a complaint, you just never knew.
“Well, if you’d seen what I saw, you’d believe me.” Her expression had an air of defiance.
I switched gears. “Tell me about the night of the accident.”
Poppy’s eyes grew and her lip quivered. “It was horrible. Just the most terrifying thing that’s ever happened to me. Not that it happened to me. It clearly happened to him. But I was terrified. Terrified.”
“Take a deep breath and start with what you did after work that day,” I said. “Take your time.”
She nodded, inhaled slowly, then exhaled, her eyes fixed on mine as if I were a life preserver. “It rained so hard all day, that really slowed me down. I didn’t get home until after six. I came in, showered, put on dry clothes—I hadn’t planned on going back out in that mess. I read for a while. Then, a little after nine, I remembered I’d forgotten to pick up my prescription. I have asthma. I was just so wet and uncomfortable—all I could think about was getting home and into dry clothes. Anyway, I had to go back out to get my inhaler.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I use the CVS over at George Street and St. Philip. It’s on the College of Charleston campus—only half a mile from here. But there’s no drive-thru. I couldn’t find a place to park. I wanted to just pop in and out, but I ended up having to go into the parking garage. There’s one right next to the CVS on St. Philip. When I came out, there’d been a fender bender on St. Phillip, before you get to Wentworth. The street was blocked, so I turned left on Liberty and went over to King Street.”
“You did tell her to take her time.” Colleen perched on the dresser, in front of the TV.
I ignored her. She purely hated that.
“That’s when I remembered King Charles,” said Poppy.
“King Charles?”
“The Logans’ Pekingese. Mr. Logan had a heart incident Thursday morning. They don’t think it’s terribly serious, at least that’s what Mrs. Chapman said. She lives next door. But when the paramedics were wheeling Mr. Logan out, King Charles darted out the front door. He was a nervous wreck, poor thing. Mrs. Logan couldn’t find him, and she had to go in the ambulance with Mr. Logan. Mrs. Chapman was there, and she looked and looked for King Charles, but she’s had a bad summer cold, and it was raining so hard. She couldn’t just stand out in the rain and look all afternoon. I was out anyway, so I decided to go by there and see if I could find him.”
“Where do they live, the Logans and Mrs. Chapman?” I asked.
“On Lowndes Street, just off Lenwood. Two blocks from the Draytons,” said Poppy. “I should’ve gone on home. But I couldn’t stand to think of poor King Charles out all night in that weather. So I drove all the way down to the end of King. Normally, I would’ve turned on South Battery, but it just looked like it was under water. I was afraid to drive through there. By then, I was really scared, you know? And I knew Murray would be as bad or worse, but there was nothing else I could do. I turned right on Murrary and drove up to Lenwood.”
“When I turned onto Lenwood, in my headlights, there was Mr. Drayton in the street. I mean, I didn’t know it was Mr. Drayton then. I grabbed my phone out of my purse to
call 911, but the battery was dead. All I could think was someone was hurt and I needed to get help. So I jumped out of the car and ran over to him. He was unconscious—or worse—how would I know? His head was hurt. Bad. Really bad.”
Poppy fanned her eyes and blinked back tears. “There were no lights on at the Drayton house. None at the Hill house across Lenwood, either. Those were the two closest. I just wanted to get help, quick. So I checked his pockets for a cell phone. That’s what I was doing when Detective Ravenel arrived. All of a sudden, he was shouting at me to freeze and put my hands on my head. I couldn’t do both of those things at the same time. I just panicked. Then a police car pulled up and the EMTs arrived and looked after Mr. Drayton. I know I was babbling and didn’t make any sense at all. Detective Ravenel must think I’m unstable—that’s why he doesn’t believe me. But I was shook up. It’s not every day I run across dead people in the middle of the road.”
“It sounds like a nightmare,” I said.
“It felt like a nightmare,” said Poppy. “All I was trying to do is help a sick neighbor whose dog was missing. I swear, I didn’t hit Mr. Drayton.”
“I’m really sorry you had to go through that, Poppy,” I said. “Did you see any other cars in the area? Taillights maybe?”
“Only the ones parked along the street. No, I didn’t see a car down Lenwood. No taillights.”
“Can you remember what Mr. Drayton was wearing?”
“A blue golf shirt and khaki pants,” said Poppy. “Loafers.”
“No raincoat?” I asked.
“No.”
“Any sign of an umbrella?” I asked.
“No,” she shook her head. “I had my suspicions about him, but I would never wish that on anyone. I didn’t want to see him hurt. I just wanted him to stop beating up his wife.”
I thought about what Sonny had said, then paraphrased it. “Well, if he was doing that, he won’t be anymore.”
LOWCOUNTRY BOOKSHOP Page 5
