“Then help me. I’ve been chasing my own tail looking for this guy. And all I keep hearing is that he’s been seen around your shop. Someone saw him last night climbing the back steps up toward your apartment.”
“He’s not staying at my apartment,” I said in a rush. “Honest. I’m not hiding him from you. I would never do that.”
“But you know who is.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“It’s Harley?” he said sounding like he couldn’t quite believe it himself. He then slammed his hand against the counter and cursed. “He’s a lawyer. He should know better.”
“I didn’t say anything about Harley. Why would you even think he’d do something like that?”
“Because I believed you when you told me Big Dog is not at your apartment.” He turned on his heel and marched toward the door.
“Wait!” I yelled.
He didn’t stop. The bell over the door clanged like a warning chime as he left the shop.
My first thought was to rush after Gibbons, but he wouldn’t shirk responsibility simply because I’d asked him to. Besides, I didn’t trust Big Dog. Despite everything he’d told us about Sammy and the stolen money and his protestations of innocence, niggling doubts sparked and danced in my head whenever I thought about him and his reasons for wanting to talk to Joe Davies.
The coroner had ruled that Joe had died from blunt force trauma to the head. The police had concluded that flying debris from the hurricane had killed him. But my instincts were telling me that he was murdered. If Joe had helped Sammy rob the bank, Big Dog had a powerful motive to kill him. Because of those two men, Bug Dog had spent years of his life in jail.
Gibbons is on his way up, I texted to Harley. Sorry.
No problem. Big Dog didn’t return last night. I’m worried, Harley texted back. Let’s review all we know. I’ll come down after Gibbons leaves.
I took a sip of my coffee while wishing I was upstairs providing Harley with whatever emotional support I could. Fletcher came running in from the back door. His deer hunter hat was tilting at such a precarious angle it looked like it might slip off at any moment. And there were twigs and leaves stuck here and there to his jeans and his Chocolate Box T-shirt. Mud was smeared across his cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked, more than a little alarmed.
He nodded.
“What are you doing here? You’re not scheduled to work today.” Since we were short on inventory, and the inventory that we did have on hand had been awfully expensive, I’d asked Fletcher if he would mind taking this week off and possibly the next. He’d readily agreed. I’d wondered about that at the time. As a rule, he didn’t agree to anything I suggested so easily. “What’s going on?”
He breathed hard for a long time. He clearly was trying to calm himself enough so he could talk without having his stutter get in the way. “I need you to come with me,” he sang.
“I can’t leave.” Gibbons was with Harley. I couldn’t go anywhere until I knew what was happening between them. And besides which, Bertie was upstairs with the Baker sisters. They were going through Bertie’s clothes. The hurricane had destroyed most of Trixie and Barbie’s wardrobes, and they were both about the same size as Bertie. Later in the afternoon, if the shop still had chocolates to sell, Bertie and I had planned to switch positions. Bertie would work at the shop while I took Trixie and Barbie to Charleston to shop on King Street for new outfits.
Fletcher tugged even harder on my arm. “Y-y-y-ou…” He glanced at the door.
“Why do I have to come?” I demanded.
He grunted then glanced at the door again.
“If it’s so dire and such an emergency, you need to call Hank or Gibbons or EMS or the fire department. Gibbons is upstairs talking to Harley. You could ask him to come down.” And take the heat off Harley for a bit. “I can’t just run off and leave the shop unattended. And I’m not a detective. Neither are you.”
“C-c-come.” He closed his eyes, cleared his throat several times, and then heaved a deep breath. “You must,” he pronounced with knife-edged precision. “I can’t call the police. I’m already in over my head.”
~~
Stella barked.
I’d brought my little papillon along with me as I followed Fletcher down a thorny trail at the Southern end of the island. I hadn’t planned to take her with us, but when I’d gone upstairs to ask Bertie if she could take over at the shop, I’d found Stella sitting on the sofa between Trixie and Barbie. The two women had taken a break from sorting through and trying on Bertie’s clothes to watch an episode of Law and Order. They were snacking on pretzels filled with peanut butter while giving Stella nearly as many as they were eating. Poor Stella was already looking rounder in the middle since the two sisters had come to live with us. I had to get my tiny dog out and give her some exercise before her belly started to drag on the ground.
When I had tried to put the leash on her, she’d growled. Comfortable sofa? Steady stream of snacks? Or outside in the humidity tromping through the mud and briars? I understood her reluctance.
I hated leaving Harley alone with Gibbons.
Fletcher drove to where the island road ended and a county park capped off the island’s Southern tip. He parked along the side of the road near Bubba’s house.
Before leaving the car, I texted Harley, telling him where I was, who I was with, and that something was wrong.
He didn’t text back right away. That worried me.
Before I could send Harley another text, Fletcher hurried me out of the car and down a narrow swampy trail. Thick clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around our faces and buzzed in our ears. The trail seemed to curl back on itself several times.
“We-we’re nearly there,” Fletcher promised, not for the first time.
“Are you sure we’re not lost?” I asked him. A thorny bush scratched my leg, leaving a bleeding gash.
“N-nearly there,” he repeated.
We had to climb over downed trees and jump over puddles so large they supported sea life. Just as I was beginning to give up hope that we’d ever escape this confounding trail, we emerged from the canopy of palmetto, pine, and live oak trees where the land met the marsh. While I’d thought we were going around and around in circles, I could now see that we’d in fact traveled a fair distance down the island. Where we were standing, I could see Camellia’s southern tip.
But it wasn’t the geography that caught my attention, it was the sight of Delilah Fenton. She was dressed in an outfit someone might wear on safari through the African plains, complete with pith hat with mosquito netting draped down around her face. Fletcher and Delilah made quite a pair with their silly hats. But then I swatted a mosquito biting the tip of my nose and wished I had her hat.
It wasn’t her choice of headgear that puzzled me, though. Or the fact that we’d found her, here, at the end of a ridiculously twisty marsh trail. It was the fact that she was kneeling next to a man who was lying face down in the marsh’s tall spartina grass and pluff mud.
Fletcher cleared his throat.
Delilah jerked her head in our direction, her eyes jumpy and as frightened as a startled rabbit’s. Was she trying to figure out the best way to run away?
“What happened here?” I asked while Stella, bless her, sat glued to my side, not even barking. This was my pup’s second encounter with a dead body in as many weeks. Her tiny body trembling as she remained pressed against my leg.
“I found him like this,” Delilah said.
“And why didn’t you call the police?” I reached into my pocket to do that right away.
“We can’t!” She lunged at me to grab the phone. “We can’t tell anyone!”
I held my phone out of reach. “Why not?” The two of them had told me, for heaven’s sake. Something I wished they hadn’t.
I could just imagine how Gibbons was going to fuss and cuss when he found out about how many people had walked around his crime scene before he got out here. Was the body in the marsh
Big Dog’s? Harley had said his friend was missing. It was probably him, which only made things worse. “We can’t just leave him in the marsh.”
Stella barked as if she disagreed. She jumped up and tugged on the leash, urging me to go back the way we’d come.
“I…” Delilah held up her hands and looked over at Fletcher.
“S-s-she tampered with the murder victim,” Fletcher said.
“Hold up now.” This kept getting better and better. “How did we go from finding a dead body in the marsh to tampering with evidence?”
Stella tugged at the leash even harder. I was starting to agree with her. This wasn’t a place I wanted to be. If not for Fletcher’s look of complete horror, I might have let Stella take the lead and run away with her.
“S-she h-handled the m-murder weapon.” He pointed to a large pipe smeared with blood on one end that had been tossed into the bushes growing on high ground.
“If you picked up the murder weapon, why did you throw it so far away from the body?” I asked Delilah.
“I didn’t throw it. Fletch did. I could have never thrown it that far. It’s too heavy.”
I turned to Fletcher. “You handled the murder weapon as well? Are you crazy? Have you learned nothing from all of those mystery novels you read?” He’d read dozens and dozens in the past few months as research.
“I-I-I p-p-panicked.” By the way his upper lip was quivering he was clearly still in a full-blown state of panic.
“So, let me get this straight. Both of you have handled the murder weapon, and that’s why you don’t want to report the murder to the police. Is that correct?” I asked.
Fletcher gave a tight nod.
Delilah glowered.
“Not wanting to call the police doesn’t make a lick of sense,” I said. “You tell Byrd or Gibbons or both of them. They might be upset that you messed up their crime scene, but they’ll understand. It’s not like you have a motive to kill some random guy you just happened upon when walking in the marsh.” Even as I said it, a sick feeling twisted and gurgled in my stomach. “Oh, my goodness. This isn’t a random guy you found. And you weren’t just taking a stroll in the marsh. You were here for a reason.”
“T-t-tell her,” Fletcher ordered. Despite the stammer, he sounded quite forceful.
“It’s Sammy Duncan,” she wailed.
I didn’t know if I should feel relieved or horrified. “You mean the guy you didn’t know?”
“I…” Again, she looked over to Fletcher.
“She knew him,” he said.
“I see.” There was very little I loathed more than being lied to. My desire to help them cooled even more.
Honestly, I was feeling quite put out. On the short car ride to the end of the island, I had tried to get Fletcher to explain what was going on. But he’d stammered. Stella had barked. And I’d given up, figuring I’d find out soon enough. Now, however, I wished I’d insisted he had prepared me that we were on our way to see a dead body and that the dead body was the same Sammy I’d been hoping to find…alive…and willing to talk about why he’d come to the island in search of Joe.
If I’d known the truth, I wouldn’t have joined them out here, helping them muck up a crime scene, while knowing that Delilah had lied to me. Instead, I would have insisted he called the police and had them join him on this hike through Camellia Beach’s thick maritime forest.
“We’re calling the police,” I said. I started to bring up the screen for my phone’s quick dial list.
“Wait!” Delilah cried. “There’s more. I touched the body. I…” She held up a piece of paper. “I took this from his pocket.”
“Were you here when this happened?” I knew Fletcher was young and delusional about his detective skills, but I couldn’t believe he could be this sloppy.
Fletcher looked down at his feet. “I-I w-w-wasn’t here.”
At least there was that.
“I called him after I found Sammy,” Delilah explained.
“Did you kill him?” I asked her.
“No!” She lunged at me again. Before I could react, her wet, muddy hands were on my shoulders and she started shaking me. “No! I followed him. I had to. He had the map.”
Stella, bless her, did what Stella does best. She jumped up and bit Delilah on the knee.
Delilah shrieked and released me. “Did your dog just bite me?”
“Probably. She’s protective, so I suggest you don’t attack me again.” I attempted to brush the mud off my shoulders. The pretty turquoise and purple batik sundress Althea had given me for my birthday looked stained beyond repair. “Please—and without grabbing me and making me think you go around assaulting people, and maybe even killing them—tell me why you followed Sammy. And what you think is on that map?”
Did I expect her to tell me the truth? Not really. Still, I wanted to hear what she had to say. But before I let her answer, I picked my phone off the ground and pushed the quick dial button for Detective Gibbons. As bad luck would have it, it went to voice mail. I left him a message that there was trouble down on the Southern end of the beach and that he needed to call me ASAP. I then pushed the quick dial button for Camellia Beach’s police department and reported that there’d been a murder and gave the location.
It was a sad commentary on my life that I had not one, but two police departments in my short quick dial list.
“Okay, now talk,” I said to Delilah. “Was Sammy alive when you found him?”
“No! How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t kill him.”
“She didn’t,” Fletcher answered.
“How do you know?” I asked him without tearing my gaze away from someone who could be a real danger in front of me.
“She called me in a panic, and I believe her,” he sang.
“That’s not good enough for me. A person could panic after killing in a fit of rage.” I then asked Delilah, “So, you found him. Was he lying in the mud on his stomach like that?”
I still hadn’t taken a good look at the body, and I really didn’t want to.
“No.” She cleared her throat. “I rolled him over when I was checking his pockets. Since he was in the water, I was worried that the map would get ruined.”
“And what was so important about this map?” I asked.
She tightened her lips. At first, I thought she wasn’t going to tell me. “It was John’s map,” she grudgingly admitted.
It took me a moment to realize she was talking about Joe.
“Is it a treasure map?” I asked.
Delilah tucked the paper into a pocket. “They’re all after it. But they don’t deserve it.”
“Who is after it?” I asked.
“Who isn’t looking for it?” she said and gestured around us.
“Blackbeard’s treasure?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she barked a sharp laugh.
At the same time, sirens wailed.
Her eyes widened. “You can’t tell anyone about the map,” she said in a harsh whisper. “No one can know I have it.”
“No, I’m not doing that,” I said. “I’m going to tell Byrd and Gibbons everything I know.”
“Then get out of my way.” She shoved me. I managed to catch myself before falling into the marsh next to Sammy. She ran down the path toward the approaching police officers, I presumed.
“W-w-w-hat d-d-d-did you do that f-f-for?” Fletcher stammered. “Y-you scared her off.”
“I’m doing what is right because this is a murder investigation. Two murder investigations. And the only thing I know about this woman is that she lied to me when she told me that her husband didn’t know Sammy. I’m not going to cover for her when, for all we know, she killed her husband and then killed Sammy to get that map she just ran off with. Is it a treasure map to Blackbeard’s gold or to a stash of stolen money?” I asked him.
He shrugged. His lips quivered. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was lying to me as well. I hated to think he might be.
A few minutes later, several uniformed officers plus Marion Olrich with one of her assistants stepped out of the woods. The ghost hunter Brett Handleson followed them. He remained at the edge of the forest while the police rushed over to the body in the marsh.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded of Brett.
“I heard the call go out on the police scanner and thought I should follow along and check it out. You know, in case the Gray Lady has struck again.”
They’d taken the same path as Delilah had run down. But when I asked if anyone had seen her, no one had, which was odd. As far I knew, that was the only path from the marsh back to the road.
Where did she go? Joe’s widow had disappeared.
“Like a ghost,” Brett whispered.
Chapter 20
“Delilah is a ghost,” I mused.
“What’s that?” Brett asked.
“Delilah is the Gray Lady.” I don’t know why I hadn’t realized it earlier. That was why she’d looked familiar the first time we met. It was because I had seen her before.
“Charity Penn,” the county detective interrupted us. He walked over to where I was standing at the edge of the marsh. After jotting my name into his notebook, he introduced himself as Detective Jerome Prioleau. It was the same kind of notebook Frank Gibbons used. But that was where the similarity to the two men ended.
Unlike Gibbons with his hands-on approach, Prioleau had declined to go near the body. Instead, he’d let the crime scene techs take charge. He was much younger and thinner than Gibbons. He had a hungry look in his eyes that unnerved me. “Interesting that I’d find you near a murdered man who—”
“I called it in,” I pointed out.
“Hmmm,” he said without emotion as he wrote some more in his notebook. He then flipped back through its pages while silently reading his notes. “You were also the one who discovered Joe Davies’ body?”
“My dog found him,” I corrected. “I think she’d followed the smell.”
“Interesting.” Prioleau flipped through his notebook one more time before adding more notes to it. “You seem to be on hand whenever someone is murdered in this town.”
“Where is Gibbons?” Gibbons knew me well enough that he wouldn’t be treating me like a suspect.
Bonbon With the Wind Page 16
