“Perhaps not,” said Nate. “That may be the quickest way to suss out what’s going on with them, but they’re not going to talk to you about another client.”
“No, they won’t,” I said. “We need serious leverage. Let’s sleep on that. Hey, did you check on Anne Frances?”
“During the ferry ride. She left the funeral home at eight fifteen and went straight home.” We had apps on our phones that followed the tracker in real time and made a record of everywhere it went.
“Will you cover the funeral?” I asked. “The interment is trickier—could be only family. Maybe watch from a distance? Jacynthe went to the bookstore today around 11:15. She asked Sofia to stop by there tomorrow. I don’t know when she’ll show up, but I want to see what she does.”
“You are a stubborn wench,” said Nate. “I grant you that whatever these women are up to, it’s intriguing. But I state again, for the record, we have not established a connection between their shenanigans for a good cause and our deceased man-about-town.”
I shrugged, gave him a grin. “I gotta go with my gut.”
“As you wish.”
“My second three favorite words.”
“But tomorrow evening, since you so graciously accepted his invitation, we need to go to Daniel Drayton’s for a drink.” Nate shook his head. “That’s risky, Slugger. If he figures out we’re not who we claim to be, no tellin’ how he’ll react. We don’t know yet that he didn’t have a motive to kill his brother.”
“Speaking of which…the curvaceous redhead at the funeral home?” I asked.
“Yeah. You find out anything from her?”
“Her name is Mallory Lucas. She alluded to suspicions but didn’t tell me what they were. But, after she left me in the ladies’ room, I saw her in the hall with Daniel. They were comforting each other in a very cuddly manner. I need to dig into her background with the Draytons. But what I want to know from Daniel Drayton is why he suspects Anne Frances. Surely he’ll tell two old college friends all about it.”
Nate drained his glass. “I’ll clear this up. Get yourself ready for bed. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”
I stood and kissed him on the back of the neck before heading upstairs. He knew my nighttime routine took ten times longer than his.
That night I had the dream again—the one where a Category 5 hurricane is closing in on Stella Maris. The ferry has sunk, and Nate and I are rushing to escape by boat with two children when a giant wave washes him overboard.
I woke up in tears and reached out for Nate. He was breathing steadily beside me, oblivious. I was glad I hadn’t woken him, as I often did. From his bed in a corner of the room, Rhett, who was wide awake, gave me a worried look.
Colleen faded in, sat on the corner of the bed.
Rhett made a soft noise, raised his head in greeting. His tongue hung out in a sloppy grin.
Colleen rubbed my leg. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “You’re safe and so is Nate. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
TWELVE
The next morning, I skipped my run. I had work to do before heading into Charleston. I made a strong pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, kissed Nate, and ruffled Rhett’s fur as they went out the door. Rhett snuffled his disapproval.
I settled in at the computer and started a profile for Jacynthe Grimes. She was a widow, age 48, with three grown children and a three-bedroom ranch on Sheridan Road in West Ashley. She had no criminal record, however, when her husband was alive, she’d gotten a protective order against him. That explained why she wanted to help victims of abuse. She’d been one herself.
I found her on Facebook—one more person who should really tighten her security settings. Most people had no idea what all strangers could find out about them on social media. She was an ER nurse at Medical University of South Carolina and sang in the choir at her church. Her posts were mostly church activities, inspirational memes, and photos of her two grandbabies. I searched her friends list but found no one connected to our case. Jacynthe Grimes appeared to be a good-hearted, sweet-natured grandmother who loved her church.
Mallory Lucas—the curvy redhead last seen in the arms of Daniel Drayton—was next on my agenda. She was a native Charlestonian who’d attended Porter Gaud with the Draytons, one year behind Daniel. She’d studied Art History at Furman and was currently employed by the Gibbes Museum of Art. She had no criminal background or civil complaints. Her top-floor condo at One Vendue Range had set her back close to two million dollars. Mallory had never been married.
Her Facebook profile was filled with pictures of her having a good time at this event or that. She attended lots of parties. Both Drayton brothers appeared in photos with her, some group shots, some just the three of them, and a few of her with one or the other of them. None of them indicated a romance, but everyone’s body language certainly suggested they were all plenty comfortable with one another.
The thing I couldn’t get out of my mind was Mallory saying that she shouldn’t have come to the visitation. She’d known Phillip Drayton most of her life. The only reason she’d say such a thing was a guilty conscience. The question was, what was she feeling guilty about? Was it an unrequited love, an affair, or something much worse?
Next, I pulled up the photo of the Porsche’s license plate, opened a subscription database, and queried the tag number. Interesting. The car was registered to SCS, LLC. I opened another database and searched for the company. Sofia Catalina Sanchez. The brunette with interesting highlights driving the Porsche.
Ms. Sanchez, age 50, unlike most everyone else in this case, had a colorful history. A native of Colombia, she’d arrived in Charleston with her maternal grandmother in 1981, when she was sixteen. Her background had holes. I couldn’t tell where her parents were now or in 1981, but her father was Colombian. Sofia apparently had dual citizenship because her mother was a US citizen.
She’d attended public schools. I couldn’t find any evidence she’d gone to college. She’d been arrested a few times for lewd behavior and once for assaulting a gentleman with a stiletto. Her story was that he refused to pay her for a personal dance in the private room of the strip club where she worked. She’d also been sued for alienation of affection by a wife who claimed her husband expected her to dance like Sofia. The arrest records were all 25 or more years old.
Sofia married Hugh Conrad in 1999, and I could find no record of a divorce. But there was no mention of him in any of her data aside from the marriage license. I did a quick search for him. Apparently, he lived a quiet life these days. Neither of them seemed to have social media accounts, or if they did, they were under pseudonyms.
I dug into real property records. Through SCS, LLC, Sofia owned close to a hundred acres and a home worth five million dollars on Ashley River Road—paid cash for it in 2000. I pulled up a map. Good grief, it was just past Middleton Plantation. Where had a former stripper—I assumed she’d changed professions—come by that kind of money? If Hugh Conrad was her sugar daddy, wouldn’t his name be on the property as well?
Like the widow Drayton, it appeared Sofia Sanchez had done well for herself in Act Two.
It was nearly seven o’clock and I needed to be in Charleston by the time the bookshop opened. I set Sofia aside and turned my attention to the blonde who kept turning up. First, I ran the Honda’s tag. The car belonged to Robert Williams. The address was on Darlington Avenue in Charleston. That was in Wagener Terrace, a neighborhood between the Ashley River and Rutledge Avenue, north of Hampton Park, popular with families and young professionals. That hadn’t been Robert driving the Honda.
A quick check showed that he was married to Emma Claire Baker Williams. I googled her and found her corporate profile on the Ridgetech website. She was a software developer. Her Facebook profile hadn’t been updated in months, but other people tagged her in posts. She and Robert had two children, a boy and a girl. I gleaned from some of the p
osts and comments that Robert had a serious illness. Emma had a short list of Facebook friends, none of them were pertinent to our case in a way I’d uncovered thus far.
Unsure if or how any of these women were connected to Phillip Drayton’s death, to be thorough, I printed their photos and added them to the case board. I’d dig into them all further as soon as I had a chance.
I grabbed a quick shower, dressed, and packed a few surveillance essentials—a small cooler with bottled water, Cheerwine, and a turkey sandwich, Dove Dark Chocolate Promises, mixed nuts, and pretzels. Then I grabbed a dress, a pair of matching sandals, and the brunette wig, so I wouldn’t have to come home to change before we went to Daniel Drayton’s house. These days, everything else I might need–Clorox wipes, Lysol spray, extra hand sanitizer, garbage bags, a change of clothes, various hats, sunglasses, et cetera, plus all my toys, everything from my camera to eavesdropping equipment–was stored in the back of one of our cars.
I picked up the cooler and my garment bag and stopped by my office where Nate, dressed in a suit for the funeral, studied the updates I’d made to our case board.
“You heading out?” asked Nate.
“Yeah. What are you going to do after the graveside service? You coming home until time to head over to Drayton’s?”
“Nah. No sense in that. Think I’ll check in with Sonny. Maybe check on Poppy. Wanna grab dinner before? I’d rather not eat at ten o’clock again tonight.”
“Sounds good. Poogan’s Porch? I was craving their mac and cheese just yesterday.”
“Six thirty? That should give us time to eat a leisurely dinner and still arrive at Drayton’s by eight-ish.”
“Perfect.”
There’s a single parking meter on the west side of Concord Street between the Customs House and Buxton Books, which sits on the corner. At 9:25 in the morning, I had no trouble scoring the spot. For my purposes that day, it was perfect. Since I was essentially lying in wait rather than following anyone, there wasn’t a need for me to hide. I fed the meter with my handy City of Charleston Smart Card and went inside the bookshop. I wanted a copy of The Ghosts of Charleston for myself, see what all the fuss was about.
No other customers were in the store and I’d never seen the young woman working the register that morning, whose name tag claimed she was Christine. Nevertheless, I paid with cash and took my book back out to the car. I flipped open the book and skimmed the table of contents. Being familiar with spirits in general, and the ones that haunted Charleston in particular, I smiled in recognition at some of the tales recounted in the book. Perhaps we’d see Zoe Saint Amand that very evening at Poogan’s Porch.
I set the book aside. The thing about surveillance is you really can’t read or otherwise entertain yourself, or you might miss the thing you’re waiting to see. I decided to skip getting out the Nikon camera. As close as I was to the bookstore, my iPhone would serve my purposes well.
Surveillance time was, however, good for pondering. I needed to connect the dots between our merry band of altruists and Anne Frances Drayton. And then what? Say she had been in touch with them? I didn’t think for a moment that two grandmas and an ex-stripper had run Phillip Drayton over. There was zero evidence they were violent. Well, aside from the stiletto incident.
On the other hand, two of them were widows, one a documented victim of abuse, and the third—where was Hugh Conrad? I pulled out my iPad, held the screen so that the top of it was lined up with the door to the bookstore, and searched harder for Sofia Sanchez’s husband. Originally from Nashville, Conrad had moved to Charleston in the nineties and been quite successful in real estate development. He was thirteen years older than Sofia. There was no record of his death, but no record of him living for the last fifteen years either.
From the time I got back to the car until eleven fifteen, fourteen women—four pairs and two groups of three—went in and out of the bookshop. I snapped photos of each, but they all seemed carefree, and they all came out with bags indicating they’d purchased something.
At eleven thirty, a couple rounded the corner from Cumberland. She looked to be in her early to mid-thirties, he was maybe a little older. They held hands, but he had a sour look on his face. She was talking, looking up at him. I took their picture. He leaned down, said something in her ear. There was a threat on his face. She paled. He opened the door for her and they walked inside the bookstore. I climbed out of the car and followed them.
She browsed the display to the left inside the door. He hovered. I crossed the room, stood on the far side of the oblong table, and pretended interest in a thriller. She moved to her right, past the double window to the bookshelf in the corner. He was close on her heels. Something was off about him. It was clear he had no interest in reading. But it was more than that. It was like he was guarding her, but neither I nor Christine were threatening in the slightest.
After a moment, she moved on to the display of The Ghosts of Charleston. She picked up a copy and flipped through the pages. A bookmark fell out and landed on the table in front of her. She picked it up, slipped it back inside the book, and returned it to the middle of the display.
“You finding anything?” The man’s voice was impatient.
“Can I have this one?” She picked up a copy of The Ghosts of Charleston, this one from the end of the row of books.
“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get it and get out of here.”
She took the book to the cash wrap desk and the man handed Christine a credit card.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” she asked.
The woman smiled. “Yes, thank you.”
Christine rang her sale and handed her a bag with her book. “I hope you enjoy that.”
“Thanks.” The woman smiled tightly.
The man put an arm around her waist and hurried her out of the store.
“He was intense,” said Christine when the door closed behind them.
I raised my eyebrows in an expression that said, Boy Howdy.
I crossed the room to the display of The Ghosts of Charleston and picked up the book that the woman had replaced in the middle of the display. “I was thinking I might like another copy of this, for a friend.”
“We sell a lot of those as gifts. Locals buy them for visiting friends. A few of them are in here every week. Everyone loves a good ghost story.”
I opened the book to the bookmarked page. It was between page sixty and page sixty-one. I’d half expected an SOS note to fall out, but there was just the bookmark. “Come to think of it, she may already have it. I’ll have to check.”
“Well, you can be sure we’ll always have that one in stock.” Christine smiled.
“Precisely what I was thinking.” I put the book back exactly where the woman had left it, said goodbye to Christine, and returned to my car.
It was 11:30, and breakfast that morning had been skimpy—a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter. I pulled out my turkey sandwich and a Cheerwine. Had the young woman in the bookshop left a message for Sofia to find? On page sixty of the ghost book, there was a photo of the white Charleston single house at 76 Meeting Street, which now served as the rectory for St. Michael’s Church. The same St. Michael’s Church where Phillip Drayton’s funeral was now underway.
The house hadn’t always been the church’s rectory. The church purchased it in the early 1940s. Before that, the house had been, according to local legend, well and truly haunted. Apparently, the Episcopalians had chased off the ghosts. But what had it to do with our case? Or was that simply a random page where the young woman had stuck the bookmark?
I finished the sandwich and munched on some pretzels. Then, for the next two hours, I continued searching for a more current record of Hugh Conrad, to no avail. At 1:45, a limousine pulled to the curb in a no parking zone across the street from the bookstore. A very large, solid looking man with close-cropped brow
n hair and dark sunglasses got out of the passenger side and opened the backdoor. Sofia Sanchez emerged.
The burly guy closed the car door, scanned the area. She said something to him, then looked both ways and crossed the street. He waited by the back car door but continued to survey his surroundings. No doubt he was hired security, and he had made note of me. The driver, who I could not see through the tinted window, could also see me.
Sofia entered the bookshop and returned five minutes later with a bag. Her stalwart companion opened the car door and she slid inside. A moment later, the limo pulled away from the curb. I started the car. Shit, shit, shit. I’d have to make a U-turn to follow them. The security team would make me in less than a New York minute.
In my rearview mirror, I watched as the limo made a left on North Market. Were they headed over to 76 Meeting Street now? The hearse would’ve been parked on Meeting Street in front of the church, in the turn lane, the family cars behind it. That could’ve stretched all the way back to St. Michael’s Alley, which separated the house from the graveyard, but they’d surely left by now. It was nearly two o’clock. I pulled forward and made a right on Cumberland. Maybe the light would catch them at North Market and East Bay.
As I stopped at the corner of Cumberland and East Bay, I craned my neck right. I rolled forward, looking. There. They made a left on East Bay. I continued on Cumberland, crossing in front of them, then made a left on State. For the moment, I was riding parallel to them, one block over. If they were headed back to Sofia’s home on Ashley River Road, they’d turn right on Broad Street and take that until it turned into Lockwood, then cross over the Ashley River Bridge.
If they were headed to 76 Meeting Street, they would make a scant half-block detour along the way. I zipped ahead on State Street, crossed Queen, and made a right on Broad. There was far more tourist traffic on East Bay, which would slow the limo down. They should still be behind me. I turned left on Church, then made a right and rolled slowly down St. Michael’s Alley. Fortunately, no one pulled in behind me. I crept down the narrow lane, barely wide enough for my car. To my right, a narrow sidewalk’s width away, were the front doors to historic houses. On my left, small patches of grass and parking courts offered a bit of a buffer to the homes beyond.
LOWCOUNTRY BOOKSHOP Page 12
