“That’s true.” Poppy’s voice was small.
“Did you see anyone else at all in the area?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. It seemed like I was the only person in the city. Alone with Mr. Drayton. Well. Until the police arrived.”
“What do you think happened to him?” I asked.
“It could’ve been an accident, I guess. But it also could be that someone knew he abused his wife. Someone besides me. Maybe they were defending Mrs. Drayton. Someone should look into that. But all I know is I didn’t hit him with my car.”
“So, you never called 911?” I asked.
“No, I told you. My phone battery was dead. That happens every day lately. A charge doesn’t last me all day anymore.”
I sat quietly for a moment, to see if she had anything else to add. Presently, I said, “You have a lovely apartment. I love the way you’ve decorated it. A crisp white background with pops of color.”
“Aww, thank you. Some folks would think it’s pretty small, I guess. But it’s plenty of room for Ruffles and me.”
“I have a friend who was looking for something similar—a carriage house apartment—on the peninsula.” Of course, this was fiction. “She never did find anything she could afford. You were lucky.”
“Yeah, I was. Mrs. Butler’s been really good to me. My mom passed away a few years ago. I had to sell her house to pay the medical bills. There wasn’t anything left. Mrs. Butler offered this apartment to me. The rent is really reasonable. I know she could get more for it. But she likes having someone here that she trusts.”
Was Mrs. Butler Eli and Fraser’s client? “So you’ve known her a long time?”
“Not really,” said Poppy. “She goes to church—Grace Church, it’s right down the street—with a few of the ladies on my route. They knew she had an apartment available and introduced us.” I was familiar with Grace Church—had attended services there a few times. It was the cathedral for the Episcopal Church in South Carolina, the diocese which St. Francis, the church I was raised in, was a part of.
“The folks on your route really do take care of you,” I said.
“Yes, they do. Which is why I want to take care of them.”
“Have you spoken to Mrs. Drayton since the accident?” I asked.
A crease settled between Poppy’s eyes. “No. She didn’t come to the door yesterday or today. I’m not surprised, by any means. Bless her heart, she just lost her husband. And she must’ve loved him, even if he treated her badly, or why would she have stayed married to him?”
“That’s an excellent question,” I said. The woman whose eyes I’d looked into earlier at the bookshop didn’t strike me as the type to suffer abuse or a loveless marriage. I looked at Colleen.
“Hey, don’t ask me,” she said. “I told you I couldn’t read her. Poppy, on the other hand, is an open book. She’s telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
The question most on my mind was why Anne Frances Drayton was inscrutable to my paranormal friend. That, and who had ultimately hired Nate and me. Whoever our client was, he or she knew things we didn’t. The very idea of having an anonymous client worked my nerves. Colleen. She had to know.
As quickly as that thought formed, Colleen was gone.
SIX
Sunday morning arrived on air as thick as Mamma’s gravy. Nate, Rhett—our golden retriever—and I ran our usual five miles on the beach, but none of us did it with our usual enthusiasm. At five in the morning, it was already eighty-three degrees.
I filled Rhett’s bowl with kibble, freshened his water, and hit the shower. I abbreviated my morning routine as much as possible. Grace Church offered services at 8:00, 9:00, and 11:00 a.m., with Sunday school at 10:10. We had no idea what time Mrs. Butler would leave for church. I dried my hair, slid into a blue sheath dress and a pair of sandals, and applied minimal makeup—just a swipe of mascara and some lip gloss.
“Hey pretty lady.” Nate stood at the bathroom door, a grin on his face. “That must be your personal best time.”
“You’re looking particularly fine yourself.” In a light grey suit with a starched white shirt, my husband was a temptation.
“I confess I’m having some very un-churchy thoughts just now,” he said.
“Hmm…hold those thoughts for later. We need to get moving.”
“Spoilsport.”
That was the second time in as many days I’d been called that, and it didn’t sit well.
We barely made the 7:00 a.m. ferry from Stella Maris to Isle of Palms. Nate parked the Explorer on deck, and we made our way up the steps to the second level lounge, which was air conditioned. It was far too hot to stay in the car or ride up top in the sun. The ferry had a full load that morning, and everyone was riding inside. We knew most of them and they were all feeling social. We smiled and said good morning but extricated ourselves from conversations related to topics ranging from how Mamma and Daddy were holding up since Merry was running off to get married in the jungle, to who was going to fill Michael Devlin’s seat on the town council since he’d put the Devlin place up for sale and left town.
I was advancing straight towards an empty corner when Charlie Jacobs put his hand on my arm. “Liz. Where have you been keeping yourself, girl? I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age.”
My family had a soft spot for Charlie. He’d given my brother, Blake, his first job out of college, mentored him. Charlie had been the Stella Maris chief of police for decades before retiring ten years ago. Blake had been promoted and had held the job ever since.
I turned towards Charlie and smiled. “It’s been a while.” I might have avoided Charlie once or twice in the aftermath of a recent case in which his grandson had become entangled.
“I hated to hear about Kinky.” He shook his head.
“Kinky? What happened to Kinky?” My daddy’s potbellied pig was the source of so much controversy in my parents’ house, my first thought was that Mamma had called Animal Control to come pick him up.
“You haven’t heard?” asked Charlie. “Him and Chumley got into a ruckus yesterday and Chumley backed him up into that big hole. Poor little pig fell in and broke his leg. I was in the vet’s office when your daddy brought him in. Had to put him in a cast.” Chumley was my daddy’s high-maintenance basset hound.
“Wait—hole? What big hole are you talking about, Charlie?” I squinted at him.
He squinted back at me, like maybe I had developed a sudden onset intellectual disability. “In the backyard.”
“Mamma and Daddy’s backyard?”
“Of course. You can’t put in a swimming pool without digging a big hole. The backhoe’s been in the yard all week. Your daddy had been keeping Chumley and Kinky both in the house but—”
Oh, dear Heaven. “Excuse me, Charlie. I need to make a phone call.” I huddled in the corner, my back to the room.
Mamma answered on the second ring.
“Mamma, what in the world is going on over there? I heard from Charlie Jacobs y’all were putting in a swimming pool.”
“Why, E-liz-a-beth, you make it sound positively scandalous. I assure you, it’s a perfectly respectable pool—” She huffed, muttered something, which was odd. Mamma was not prone to muttering. She typically said what was on her mind quite plainly. “I’m getting ready for church. Are you coming for lunch?”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“Well then, you can see for yourself,” she said.
“But you never mentioned putting in a pool…”
“We were unaware that we needed your approval for home improvements.”
“Of course you don’t need my approval. It’s just—”
“E-liz-a-beth Su-zanne Ta-lbot, I will not be late to church because my daughter has nothing better to do than interrogate her mother this morning. Unless you have called to
tell me that you’ve decided to adopt one or—and this is unequivocally my personal preference—all five of your father’s pets, and are on your way right this very minute to pick them up, I have to go. God has his work cut out for him this morning.”
“Wait—five pets?”
“Oh, that’s riiight.” Mamma’s voice sounded chillingly pleasant. “You haven’t met the latest addition to your father’s menagerie. He brought Larry, Roger, and Moe home on Tuesday.”
“Larry—”
“Pygmy Goats. He keeps calling them his goat herd. He can’t stop saying the words. Goat herd.” It came out as a strangled whisper.
She hung up.
That song from The Sound of Music commenced playing in my head—the one about the lonely goatherd. I wondered vaguely if Daddy had taken up yodeling.
“Slugger? Everything all right?” Nate rested a hand between my shoulders.
I grabbed his arm. He was solid, stable, and sane. “I think my daddy has finally lost his mind.”
“No surprise there. He’s been misplacing it for years.” He teased me with a grin.
I shot him a serious look.
“Come on now,” he said. “Lots of folks have swimming pools put in. I wish we had one. Lot safer than you swimming in the ocean while it’s still dark out.”
“No—he’s brought home pygmy goats. Three of them.” I rubbed my temple. What in this world had possessed him?
Nate flashed me a look that said Give me a break. “Now you know that’s nothing more than his latest stunt to get your mamma all riled up. That is his favorite sport.”
“I’m hoping you’re right, but they’ve been there since Tuesday.”
“How did we not hear about this sooner?” he asked.
“All I can think of is Mamma’s snapped.”
“Nah…” Nate shook his head. “She may snap him before this is over.”
Times like these, I wished I was better at compartmentalizing. I needed to focus on my case. I took a deep breath. “We’re going over there for lunch. There’s nothing I can do until then.”
Nate rubbed my shoulders. “There’s my girl. You know, once we finish this case, we could go to Greenville for a few days. Check on the condo. Maybe see what’s going on at the Peace Center.”
I nodded, took another deep breath. Then I settled into a chair, pulled my laptop out of my tote, activated the hotspot on my phone, and commenced preliminary research on Mrs. Butler. Nate sat across from me with his back to the room and we both hunched over the computer, communicating with our body language that we were working. Everyone who knew us knew exactly what we did for a living. Not only were they undeterred, they were intrigued.
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd.
Nate fended them off while I dug and looked up to smile occasionally. When we were back in the car, I shared what I’d found.
“Aida Rose Amory Butler is seventy-eight years old. Widowed since 1998. No record of a remarriage. Her house has been in the Amory family for one hundred years. Built in 1835 by the George family, by the way. There’s no mortgage recorded. As far as I can tell, she’s in a solid financial position. Two children, neither of them live locally. Four grandchildren.”
“You find a picture of her?” Nate asked.
“Yeah—I couldn’t find her on Facebook. Sometimes women of her generation like to keep up with the kids and the grandkids that way. I did find a photo on her DAR chapter website.”
“Good,” said Nate. “Might come in handy. If she’s headed to the eight a.m. service, she’ll be in the pew by the time we get to her house.”
Poppy had said that some of the ladies on her route went to church with Mrs. Butler. These same ladies had arranged for Poppy to rent her unusually affordable apartment. Nate and I wanted to know who our client was, and Mrs. Aida Butler’s church friends seemed like maybe they were good candidates. We wanted to find out who they were. This required us to see who Mrs. Butler chatted with before and after services.
“We can’t just go straight to the church—what if she attends the eleven o’clock service? Or just goes to Sunday school? Plus, there’s no way to know whether she’ll walk or drive. If she drives, where she parks will determine what door she goes in.” Like most of the downtown churches, Grace didn’t have a large dedicated parking lot. They had arrangements with Memminger Elementary School and College of Charleston for adjacent parking, but many parishioners parked in Wentworth Garage. A lucky few street-parked in metered spots in the adjacent blocks. But Mrs. Butler lived a mere four blocks down Wentworth.
“Grandmothers are tricky to tail,” said Nate.
Lay-ee-odl lay-ee-odl lay-hee-hoo.
“Why don’t you drop me off at the church?” I said. “Then you go wait near her house. Text me if you see her, I’ll do the same.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
At ten minutes ‘til eight, Nate pulled to a stop at the corner of Glebe and Wentworth and I climbed out of the Explorer. If Mrs. Butler were here, she’d be settling in for the service that was about to start. I turned down the cut slate sidewalk on Wentworth that ran in front of the church.
The sanctuary was Neo-Gothic and was consecrated in 1848. Built from stucco over brick, it looked like sand-colored limestone. It had survived the War Between the States, the great earthquake of 1886, and countless hurricanes. Over the years, a parish house was added and then enlarged.
Today the compound was an imposing, U-shaped structure. The section closest to Glebe Street held Hanahan Hall, a large room for social gatherings, with another large meeting room and a chapel upstairs. This wing was connected to the original church building by another row of classrooms, choir rooms, and meeting rooms, along the back side of the U.
The Garden of Remembrance occupied the center of the complex. It consisted of a courtyard with a fountain and a columbarium, a tower lined by niches for the ashes of church members, with a ring of ten bells in the center behind frosted glass doors. A covered walkway connected the main church building with the parallel section of the parish house and bordered the front side of the courtyard.
Loud was the voice of the lonely goatherd.
I squeezed my eyes shut for five seconds.
It was a lovely church. The most striking things about it were the massive, arched, stained glass windows. I paused on the walkway to admire the great entrance window above the door. As I approached the entryway, a greeter smiled warmly, wished me a good morning, and handed me a program. I crossed the marble-floored narthex and proceeded down the center aisle of the nave between twin rows of dark wood pews with red cushions. The crowd was small this morning, perhaps owing to the time of year. I walked slowly, scanning the backs of heads for a gently teased, ash-blonde bob.
A single possible match sat alone on the right, a third of the way back from the front of the church. I genuflected as I entered the pew. The woman looked up and smiled as I took my seat. It wasn’t Mrs. Butler. I returned her smile, then discreetly scanned the pews I could without craning my neck. No sign of her.
I studied my program, then took a Book of Common Prayer from the shelf on the back of the pew in front of me and opened it. Without attracting attention, there was nothing to do now but enjoy the service. I tried to clear my mind and glanced down as I went to kneel. Exquisite needlepoint covered individual kneelers—they were like small stools. Mine was an image of a stained glass window on a gold background. Someone, likely a group of church volunteers, had invested untold hours in that project.
Lay-ee-odl lay-ee-odl ooo.
I knelt, closed my eyes, and prayed for my sanity and that of my entire family.
As parishioners filed out after the 8:00 a.m. Holy Eucharist, I contemplated my next move. No text so far from Nate. Had Mrs. Butler left before he arrived at her house, perhaps to meet a friend for breakfast before church? I slipped into a spot in the back rig
ht corner to get a better view of folks coming in for the nine o’clock service.
At three minutes ‘til nine, there’d been no sign of Mrs. Butler. I slipped out the back and made my way across the covered walkway to the classroom wing. Like every other Episcopal Church I’d ever attended, Grace had a coffee hour on Sunday mornings. According to the website, theirs was before Sunday school. I could use a hit of caffeine.
The first floor of the building adjacent to the church consisted of a large social hall where folks were beginning to gather. I waded into the cluster of conversation clutches, making my way to the coffee table sitting cater-cornered on the far side of the room. Resisting the pastries, I poured myself a cup of coffee and stirred in sugar and half-and-half. I sipped and drifted towards a large window overlooking Glebe Street.
An amalgamation of happy chatter, gossip, and good-natured debate filled the room. I scanned each group, looking for Aida Butler.
My watch vibrated with a text from Nate: She’s headed your way on foot.
No doubt she was coming for coffee and social hour before Sunday school. Perfect. This was what I’d come to see. She was headed up Wentworth. There was an entrance to Hanahan Hall directly off of Wentworth. I moved to a spot closer to the door.
“Good morning, how are you?” The woman who appeared at my side wore wire-framed glasses and a warm smile. It had only been a matter of time before someone made me feel welcome.
“I’m doing well.” I returned her smile. “I wonder, could you point me in the direction of the ladies’ room?”
“Certainly, it’s right over there.” She pointed towards the Wentworth Street entrance.
I placed a hand on her arm. “Thank you so much.” I stepped towards the ladies’ room. I took my time reapplying lipstick, et cetera, giving Aida plenty of time to get to the fellowship hall. When I reemerged, I made a round through the room, scanning faces.
There, by a window on the left, I spotted her with a silver-haired woman of roughly the same age. Their heads were a little closer together, their conversation more subdued than the others in the room. I slowed my pace and walked by, rummaging in my bag for nothing in particular, but watching from the corner of my eye.
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