Sage of Innocence

by Melissa F. Miller

  "Pretty responsible for a spendthrift."

  I nodded. I'd had the same reaction. "I agree. And as for what I'd do with two hundred thousand dollars, that's easy. I'd put it toward the balloon payment that's coming due on my parents' business."

  He cocked his head. "This sounds like a story. And we have a long drive. Start talking, girl."

  Here goes, I thought. "Once upon a time, there were three sisters named Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme--"

  "For real?"

  "For real. And before you ask, yes, there's a Parsley, too. He's a cat."

  Roman coughed to hide his chuckle. "Cool."

  "Yeah, sure. So, our parents were basically hippies. They bought this ramshackle farm near the shore up in New Jersey and turned it into a 'green' resort before being green was hip. Like, they rinsed out plastic baggies and hung them on the clothesline to reuse them. Anyway, they homeschooled us, made homemade yogurt, and, you know, just sort of marched to the beat of their own drum. Friends of theirs used to come and stay with us to recharge, and, eventually, my mom and dad opened up a little bed and breakfast for likeminded patchouli wearers looking for a retreat by the water. Somewhere along the line, organic food, yoga, and recycling became popular in mass culture and, suddenly, they were running an actual business catering to the eco-resort crowd."

  "That's a thing?"

  I nodded. "They were doing really well for a while." I kept my eyes focused on the greenery outside. Large oaks, heavy with silvery Spanish moss, lined the road.

  "But?"

  "But I guess they expanded too fast or something. I don't know the details. All I know is they borrowed a lot of money that they couldn't pay back. So, they left."

  He turned onto a gravel road and we started bouncing in our seats as the Volkswagen bumped alongside an inlet. He eyed me. "They just ... left?"

  "Pretty much. Anyway, my sisters and I took over the business."

  "And the debt, huh?"

  "Right."

  "How did you end up an accountant--I mean with your upbringing?"

  The truth was I grew up feeling like a circus freak. I craved normalcy. And nothing seemed more reassuringly solid to me than becoming a government accountant. But this wasn't a therapy session. So I simply said, "I like numbers."

  Roman searched my face for a long moment, but he let my glib answer go unchallenged.

  I realized that I'd scrunched up my shoulders into a tight knot while I'd been talking. I wriggled against the seat to loosen the tension I was holding in my muscles and told myself to put the looming balloon payment out of mind.

  Chapter 10

  Roman drove to the heart of Frogmore's small commercial district, pointing out shops and attractions along the way. Judged through the window of a moving car, the town seemed not unlike the other little coastal towns I'd encountered in South Carolina. Cute, white clapboard structures, a mixture of nostalgic stores and diners that fed both the physical and emotional needs of visitors and residents alike and upscale, shabby chic boutiques and high-end restaurants that catered to the moneyed families who vacationed in the south year after year. It was pretty, and no doubt, hospitable, but I had to wonder whether the two-hour round-trip drive was warranted. I could review a lot of bank statements in two hours.

  Roman interrupted his tour guide spiel and jabbed a finger to the west end of the island. "The money's all on that end. New developments, golf courses--it's not all that different from Hilton Head. But the heart of this place is just on the other side of town."

  His declaration seemed to take him by surprise. He bobbed his head, clamped his mouth shut, and hit the gas.

  We passed through the town and turned onto a narrow road.

  "You ever hear of Penn Center?"

  I searched my memory. "Something to do with Martin Luther King, Jr.?"

  "That's right. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference used the center as a retreat and meeting space. The center started out as the Penn School, the first school in the country established to teach the children of freed slaves. Then it became a community center. Now it's a national historic landmark--all fifty acres of it--meant to preserve the culture of Gullah people."

  "Is that where we're going?"

  He shook his head. "No. You should visit the museum and walk around the grounds sometime, but no, that's not where we're headed."

  And that's all he said.

  After a while, we passed a historic marker commemorating something called the Chapel of Ease. I peered through a copse of giant oaks and glimpsed the charred ruins of what must have been the chapel.

  "That's worth seeing, too," Roman said. "It's a great example of the whatever that style of architecture is. And you can take some great pictures. But that's not where we're going, either."

  "So, do you want to tell me where we're going or should I just start assuming you're driving me to an empty field to kill me and leave my body for the crows?"

  He flashed me a grin. "Don't worry. There aren't any crows out here. It'd be seagulls picking at your corpse."

  I couldn't suppress a giggle.

  We turned off the highway, such as it was, and followed a one-lane road that cut a diagonal path through farmland and led toward the water's edge. Just past a pair of trees that held a rope hammock, Roman turned off the road and parked on the shoulder.

  "This is it," he announced as he cut the engine and removed the keys.

  I looked around. We were parked in the middle of a field that appeared to have gone fallow years earlier.

  "Um ..."

  "You'll see. Come on." He hopped out of the car and I followed suit.

  He was vibrating with energy. He reached for my hand and pulled me through the high grass.

  "What is this place?"

  "It used to be a farm. My great-uncle's place. He grew vegetables--corn, some tomatoes--to sell to the local restaurants. His kids weren't interested in taking it over. They sold off most of the land and bought a shrimping boat. But this patch, from here to that old barn down to the right, is still in the family."

  I strained to see the barn he pointed at. I could just make out a faded building, listing to its left.

  "What's in there?" I asked as I stumbled over the uneven ground.

  "Oopsie-daisy." He grabbed my elbow and righted me. "In the barn? I don't know, probably old farm equipment and mice. Maybe some spiders." He made a creepy-crawly motion with his fingers.

  "Smart ass. So this is what you wanted me to see?"

  "Sort of." He dropped my hand and strode purposefully toward a patch of land that appeared to have been mowed recently--or at least more recently than the rest. He looked down at the ground, turned in a slow circle, and then gestured for me to join him.

  I crossed the field and stood beside him.

  "This is what I wanted you to see." He kicked at a hole in the ground with the toe of his sneaker.

  I crouched to examine the hole. At first, I'd assumed a gopher or rabbit or some sort of burrowing animal had made it, but that wasn't the case. It was too small, too perfectly round. I peered down into it and saw what looked like a piece of white PVC pipe. "Is this a golf hole?"

  "Yep. We're on the second green." His face was unreadable.

  "You made yourself a golf course?"

  "Practice greens, technically. And just four. But, yeah."

  I surveyed the field. "This is where you learned to play?"

  Another nod. "I bought a set of old wooden clubs at a flea market when I was nine. Paid a dollar and a quarter for them. They were way too long, too heavy, too everything, but I saw them and had to have them." He smiled at the memory.

  I found myself smiling, too. "I bet you were a cute little golfer."

  He rolled his eyes. "I was a dork. A quiet, lonely kid. My mom made me this dumb white golf cap like the golfers on television wore and I wore it everywhere. But I spent hours out here. Every day after school. Weekends. Vacations. I'd ride my bike out here and play these four holes over and over again."r />
  "You must really love to play."

  "I do. I did then, too, for sure, but in some ways it was a coping mechanism. And when I was ready to play for real, I saved up my birthday money and bought myself a round at the public course in Lands' End on the other end of the island. The course superintendent was really nice. He gave me an official rule book so I could learn the etiquette and rules and let me hang around. I helped groom the greens and clean the range balls and stuff."

  Then he paused for a moment and his face clouded. When he spoke again, his voice was tight, hoarse. "Eventually, a couple guys invited me to play a round with them at the Seashore Golf Club. I was so excited I couldn't sleep the night before. I memorized that rule book, polished my clubs until they gleamed--and when we got there, I was a spectacle. People were driving their carts from every direction to see the poor, black, bastard kid with the ancient clubs. Everyone was too well bred to point and laugh, so they snickered and murmured into their cocktails. That's what it's like to grow up in Frogmore and have the nerve to think you belong anywhere but among the Gullah Geechee." He finished and kicked at the ground furiously.

  I froze. I didn't know what to say. What I wanted to say was I knew all about being a spectacle. Hence, my alter ego as Girl Accountant. But feeling awkward as a teenaged girl because your mom made your skirt out of hemp and being ridiculed in the deep South for the color of your skin, well, those weren't the same. So I said nothing.

  What I did, though, was lace together my fingers behind his head and pull his lips down to mine in a long, urgent kiss. I guess it took a moment for the shock to wear off, but, once it had, he definitely was kissing me back.

  * * *

  After Roman brought me back to the island and dropped me at Marilee's house with a halting goodbye kiss/hug/pat on the back, I managed to stop obsessing over the moment we'd shared and lost myself in rows and columns of digits. By the time Marilee returned, my brain was fried and sums were spinning around in my mind like an out-of-control carnival ride.

  So, when she popped her head into the office and said, "Would you join me for a glass of wine?" I nearly tripped myself in my eagerness to do so.

  "Love to," I chirped. Then I remembered she was in mourning and immediately regretted my cheerful tone.

  We settled into the gold and blue fabric-covered rockers on her veranda, each with a glass in hand.

  "It's pretty out here," I remarked. The Spears--or, more likely, Coastal Landscapers, LLC to whom Fred wrote a sizable monthly check--had created a lush retreat in their outdoor space, complete with blooming magnolias, elegant Spanish moss hanging low in a canopy, and a koi pond.

  "Thank you. I think so, too. This is probably my favorite part of the house. And it was always my favorite part of the day with Fred. We'd sit out here and share a pre-dinner drink. I know he had his flaws. Lord, I know. But he was a good conversationalist." She stared out over the lawn with a faraway look in her eye.

  I sipped my drink and tried to imagine how she must feel. It seemed that theirs had been a complicated relationship, but the woman had lost her husband in a gruesome fashion.

  "Did your meetings go well?" I asked after a moment's pause.

  She nodded. "As well as could be expected. What about your efforts? Is there anything more you need from me?"

  I wasn't quite ready to broach the subject of the cash deposits, but I did want to find out if there were any other accounts. "I'm still getting my arms around your finances, but I want to be sure that the statements in the boxes are the entire universe of accounts. You and Fred just had the two joint accounts at the Island Bank? No other savings or investment accounts?"

  "No, just those two." She rocked back in her chair. "But that brings up a question. I'm about to receive a large amount of money. I don't want it to get tied up in probate or what have you. Should I deposit it in our joint account or open a new account in my name? Or put it in a CD or something?"

  Ugh. Probate. That was an ugly mess, governed by state law, completely outside my area of expertise.

  "You should probably ask your financial guy, but my gut reaction is that you should definitely segregate the funds." Then my curiosity got the better of me. "It's not the proceeds from life insurance, is it? Because my understanding is that it'll take a while for your insurer to pay that out."

  She shook her head. "No, it's not the insurance policy." After a sip of wine, she gave a short laugh. "Actually, it's a movie option payment."

  "A movie?"

  "If you can believe it. Oh, several years ago--this was just after Fred won his last title--some producer wanted to make a movie about him."

  "About Fred?" I repeated. I felt like an idiot, echoing everything she said, but none of it was making sense the first time I heard it.

  "Right. The win was viewed as something of a comeback. Fred had been diagnosed with cancer and beat it. He won the Seagrass Cup two weeks after he completed chemotherapy. And, of course, he was in his late forties. So, not exactly a spring chicken. Anyway, it was the kind of inspirational sports story that people tend to like. This producer flew out from California to try to convince Fred to let him make a movie of his life. But Fred said no."

  "He said no?" Again with the echo.

  It didn't seem to faze Marilee though.

  "He didn't want someone digging around in his past, dredging up old girlfriends and whatnot. No matter how many times Linda--she's Fred's agent--assured him that the movie would portray him in a positive light, he refused. I think in part, he was embarrassed by the cancer, which sounds crazy, I know. But he didn't like to talk about it. Whatever his reasons, no matter how much money the producer dangled in front of him, he wanted nothing to do with it. And the more Fred refused, the more that producer seemed to want to tell his story. The offer kept getting bigger and bigger."

  "Huh." I had to admit that Fred's reaction didn't square with my impression of him, but then I also had to admit I was judging a dead man based on almost no personal knowledge about him.

  "And you'll recall we were having financial ... challenges. At one point, about two years ago, when the offer was for half a million dollars, his agent and I basically held an intervention. I begged him to take it." She shook her head at the memory. "He wouldn't hear of it. Not long after, though, our money troubles seemed to ease up and he declared the subject closed."

  After he started making his cash deposits.

  "But now?" I promoted.

  "Well, after Fred's murder, the producer reached out to Linda again." Marilee drained her glass and placed it on the small table that sat between our chairs. "They've offered mid-seven figures, Sage, to tell his story. At first, I demurred. I know he wouldn't have wanted it. But Linda negotiated creative control for me. I'll be able to ensure they tell a story that puts Fred in a positive light. And maybe his legacy won't be getting his head bashed in as he exited a toilet stall. Maybe it'll be that he was a fighter who never gave up." Tears glistened in her eyes.

  I was quiet for a moment, listening to the birds sing a twilight song to the fading sun. Then I said, "How will the movie handle his murder?" I completely understood Marilee's reasons for wanting the movie to go forward, but I also was pretty sure it would destroy what was left of Chip's reputation.

  She turned to me and held my gaze with hers. "I'm not going to let them smear Chip. I’ve talked to Linda about this. She knows how I feel."

  "Fred's agent--do you mean Linda Zaharee?"

  "Yes. Do you know her?"

  "Her agency represents Chip, too."

  She sat up a little bit straighter at that news. "How interesting. I didn't realize that. But in retrospect, I'm sure she represents most of the golfers who live here. She belongs to the club, after all. Well, that's great--she'll have a vested interest in making sure the movie doesn't hurt Chip. Don't you think?"

  "Mmm-hmm," I agreed absently as I wondered whether there was some conflict of interest on the agent's part. I glanced up and saw the last orange streaks of light dis
appearing from the sky and stood.

  "Thanks for the drink, but I should get going if I don't want to walk home in the dark."

  "Would you like a lift?"

  "No, I'll be fine. Thanks anyway."

  She leaned forward and caught my wrist, holding it lightly. "No, it's I who should thank you. You can't imagine what a relief it is to have your help."

  I smiled at her. "Happy to do it. I can come back tomorrow and finish up most of it."

  "That would be lovely."

  She released my hand and I started to walk toward the stairs that led down to the backyard.

  "Oh," she said, "something just occurred to me."

  I turned back.

  "We don't have any other bank accounts, but Fred did keep a safe deposit box at the bank. I wonder if there's anything in there that might be helpful--stock certificates or the like?"

  "It's certainly worth looking into. Although I guess it'll have to wait until next week when the bank's open."

  She gave me a half-smile and answered with the breezy self-confidence that seemed to come so naturally to the wealthy denizens of the island. "Oh, I'm sure I can find someone to let us in tomorrow after church."

  "Great." I waved goodbye and headed down the stairs.

  Chapter 11

  I used the short walk home to check my voicemail messages. I had one from each of my sisters and one from Muffy. I decided to return Muffy's call first. After all, she was still my boss--at least for the time being.

  "Oh, Sage, your timing is perfect," she said by way of answer.

  "Great."

  "We're waiting for our table to be ready to sit down to dinner. The kids want to say hi to you. Hang on.”

  I listened to a few seconds of muffled voices, rustling clothes, and what could only have been Muffy's iPhone banging against a bench or wall or something, Skylar's squeaky little voice sounded in my ear.

  "Sage! Guess where we're having dinner?"

  Judging by her excitement, I figured it had to be a mid-range chain that would appeal to the kids but probably had their parents rolling their eyes. "Hmm, Señor Cactus?"