by Ray Flynt
“A second person in the house could explain the open pineapple juice carton in the refrigerator you told me that Amanda described. But,” Sharon drew out the word, “we’ve already established Dana wasn’t wearing any underwear. If there was a suicide pact, wouldn’t he and X have spent a little bit of time thinking about and planning for it? If he knew when he got up that morning he’d be carted out of the garage on a stretcher—doesn’t it make sense he would have put on clean underwear. Didn’t your mother always give you that advice?”
Sharon had punched a plausible hole in his scenario.
Sharon continued, “And what about the fact his mother had to call him a couple of times to make sure he was awake? Isn’t that an indication he didn’t have anything momentous planned for the day?”
“That’s a good point, Sharon. I wondered the same thing, but I’ve been reading about suicide. While sleeplessness is often a sign of depression, studies have confirmed that once a person makes the decision to end his life, they achieve an inner-calm. He’s often able to relax, including sleeping late during his final days.”
“Huh!” Sharon said it so loudly that Brad turned to look at her, and found her gazing blankly in the direction of the water.
“Everything okay?” Brad asked.
“Oh.” She seemed startled. “Yeah… I was just thinking.” When Brad continued to stare at her, she said, “Never mind.”
Brad guessed she’d been thinking about her father’s suicide. “Insomnia alone doesn’t prove anything, Sharon. But the important thing is that you’re coming to the same conclusion I have. A few minutes ago, you were conceding Dana’s death was a suicide. Now, you’re raising the same questions that make it difficult for me to rule out foul play.”
“When will you know for sure?” Sharon asked.
“When the facts all point to the same conclusion. At the moment, the locked car and the keys in the wrong pocket cast doubt on the suicide theory. I’d like to talk with a few more people.”
They spent a few minutes mapping out a game plan for the next day, all of which went to hell in a matter of hours.
“Brad!”
He heard his name being called. His mouth felt pasty as he grunted and pulled the blanket over his head.
“Brad, wake up.”
He realized Beth was calling for him, but she was in New York, wasn’t she? Then he remembered he was at her Daufuskie Island beach house.
“Wake up,” Beth repeated. “Sharon’s sick. I’ve heard her throwing up for the last few minutes.”
Fully awake now, Brad sat up on the edge of the bed. He groped for his watch. Then he heard it for himself, the sound of retching drifted down from the second floor.
Aware that Beth was already up and had begun getting dressed, Brad moved faster. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was shortly before 5 a.m. He reached for his robe.
“I’ll see if she needs any help,” he said, unaware if Beth, who had headed for their bathroom, even heard him.
Brad took the stairs to the second level two at a time. The door to Sharon’s room was closed, but the entry to the adjacent bedroom was open, which was where the sounds of her vomiting had come from.
He tapped on her door. “Sharon, it’s Brad. Are you alright?”
“I feel terrible,” she moaned.
“May I come in?”
He heard a soft, “Uh huh” and opened the door.
He found Sharon curled on the bed in the fetal position, wearing a pair of gingham pajamas. Brad felt her forehead with the palm of his hand. “You don’t seem to be running a fever. Where does it hurt?” he asked.
Holding her belly with both hands, Sharon groaned, “My stomach.”
Brad lightly applied pressure to various spots on her abdomen, asking if the pain increased with the application of the pressure.
She shook her head.
“There’s no localized soreness, but I think we’d better take you to the hospital.”
Sharon initially protested, but stopped as another spasm sent her running for the john. Brad saw her drop to her knees and heave what remained in her guts into the porcelain toilet. It had been years earlier at a few frat parties since he’d seen such a sight. He spotted Sharon’s cell phone on a bedside table and used it to call 9-1-1. He wasn’t sure about the water taxi schedule, but thought they could make the first departure of the day, and arranged for an ambulance to meet them at the Shelter Cove dock.
“Get dressed,” he called back to Sharon as he left the room. “I’ll ask Beth to help you, and then take us to the water taxi.”
Within ten minutes they were ready for the trip, deciding that the nearby Hilton Head Hospital would be the best option rather than a forty-five minute trip to Beaufort.
In the gray of a pre-dawn sky Beth dropped them off at the ferry landing, wishing Sharon good luck.
By 8:30 a.m., blood had been drawn and X-rays taken, and although nothing conclusive had been found, the ER doctor decided to admit Sharon for observation.
“I just had the strangest phone call,” Beth said with consternation in her voice when Brad called to describe his plan to catch the 9 a.m. water taxi, and asked her to meet him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Amanda Carothers called and asked for you. I didn’t say anything about you going to the hospital, but I told her that you were out and that I expected to hear from you later this morning. She sounded very tentative, and when I asked if I could take a message she said, ‘Maybe that would work.’ That was followed by an awkward silence before she said, ‘Yes. I’d like to leave a message. Tell him to stop investigating my son’s death’.”
Brad was dumbfounded.
Chapter Twelve
Things were not going as planned. Brad needed time to think and told Beth he would call her back in ten minutes.
Sharon’s presence was intended to help with the investigation, but now she was sidelined with a stomach ailment, just as a nervous client seemed ready to bail out on him. Brad had promised Beth that they’d visit the real estate office that morning to sign the paperwork for the purchase of the beach house. If Amanda had come to the realization that her son had committed suicide, just as he was beginning to believe her theory that Dana had been killed, Brad could live with that. But before abandoning her case he wanted to make sure she hadn’t been influenced to drop the case—perhaps by the real killer.
He called Beth and proposed a change of plans, asking her to take the water taxi to Hilton Head after which he would drop her at Diane’s office. Beth could spend the morning signing papers followed by a visit to a neighboring shopping village, while Brad visited with Amanda. He’d be back in time for a lunch date with just the two of them.
When he met Beth at the dock she was ebullient. She’d spoken that morning with her brothers and all of them, including the recalcitrant Daniel, were on-board with her plans to purchase their father’s vacation home.
After dropping Beth at the real estate office, Brad was enroute to Amanda’s home by 10:40 a.m.
In a morning filled with problems, not finding Ms. Carothers at home was one more annoyance. Brad was determined, however, to find out what had made her change her mind about the case. He recalled her mentioning her studio, and stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. As Amanda had explained, it was in a former blacksmith shop, which was two blocks off the main thoroughfare in Bluffton. As Brad pulled up to the shop he thought it looked like a dilapidated brick barn.
A vehicle-sized wooden door mounted on a steel track had been slid open sideways. Through it Brad saw tables of assorted shapes and sizes—fashioned from doors turned onto sawhorses, old kitchen tables, and rummage-sale vintage card tables. All of them were covered with plastic and bore ceramic sculptures in progressive stages of development. The dank odor of fresh clay blended with the smell of propane gas burning in the kiln at the far side of the room. At one side of the studio, a strapping young assistant removed a freshly fired piece from the kiln, and placed
it in a cardboard-filled pit in the floor. As the cardboard smoldered, gray smoke billowed up through the fire hood, and the noisy ventilator fan masked the sound of his entry. Amanda stood, facing away from Brad, engrossed in working with the clay on the table while her assistant shoveled dirt into the pit.
Amanda jumped when Brad appeared on the opposite side of her table.
“What’s going on?” he asked, using the deepest register of his voice.
She sucked in a breath. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know very well what I mean. I’d like an explanation for your phone message this morning.”
“I don’t have to explain anything,” she said, with unconvincing defiance in her voice.
The man who had just placed a ceramic wall piece in the kiln at the back of the studio moved protectively toward Amanda. Chest muscles under his grimy T-shirt bulged as prominently as his biceps and his neck was as broad as his face. He appeared to be in his late 20’s with build of an NFL linebacker.
“It’s all right, Peter,” Amanda shouted over the roar of the fan, and held up her hand. This stopped the man in his tracks, and he looked both angry and confused.
Brad didn’t know how much Peter knew, or what his relationship with Amanda was. He aimed a finger at her, saying, “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing. Less than forty-eight hours ago, you asked me—no, begged me—to investigate your son’s death. You claimed you didn’t believe it was suicide and the circumstances had been bothering you for more than four years. Now this morning you called and asked me to stop the investigation. I have a right to know why.”
Amanda turned away. She covered her mouth with the back of her clay-stained hand and inhaled gasps of air, before completely breaking down in rolling sobs. Brad helped her to a nearby bench. Noticing a coffee maker in the corner of the studio, he asked Peter to get her a cup.
The young man hesitated, seemingly slow to comprehend. Brad pointed toward the coffee and he got the message.
“I’m sorry Mr. Frame,” she said, recovering from her crying.
“It’s still okay to call me Brad,” he reassured her.
She nodded, grabbing a tissue from a box on her worktable to blow her nose lightly.
“Let me start over,” Brad said, “and give you the reasons for my concern. Two days ago I wasn’t very optimistic we would find anything other than suicide in your son’s death, but now I have serious doubts about the suicide theory.”
Amanda lifted her chin for the first time, expectantly gazing at him.
“Understand,” Brad explained, “I can’t say it’s murder for sure, because I don’t have any proof. But I have learned a few things in the past couple days which lead me to share your doubts about suicide.”
“I knew it,” she whispered to herself.
Peter returned with her coffee, served in a sturdy handcrafted mug that probably originated in the studio. The assistant stood protectively nearby as Brad allowed Amanda a few moments to drink and recover her composure.
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” Brad continued. “Proving murder is going to be something else again.”
“But if he didn’t kill himself, then someone must have murdered him?”
“One of the difficulties of probing a four-year-old murder case is that people’s recollections are fuzzy, except for the one person in the world likely to remember all the details—the murderer. If we start unlocking doors people thought were closed for good, there’s a chance we’ll see adverse reactions. By now the whole town is probably aware that a stranger’s been asking questions about Dana’s death.”
“Yes,” Amanda mumbled, lowering her head again.
“Then someone has spoken to you and suggested it would be unwise to continue an investigation?”
“It was Denton,” she said softly. “My son stopped in to see me last night. He’d been shopping at the Piggly Wiggly, and ran into Ted Loring.” Brad must have appeared puzzled, since she quickly added, “He’s a nephew of Harriet Loring who is being buried today from Summerfield’s. Ted told him that Homer said a man had been there asking questions about Dana’s death.”
“And Denton wanted to know what it was all about?”
“Yes.”
“You told him?”
“Of course.”
“And he said to call off the investigation?”
“Oh, it was worse.” Amanda stood and roamed about the studio waving her hands as she talked. “Denton has an awful temper. He was furious with me. How could I do something like that without consulting him? He said I was crazy and he ought to commit me. He ordered me to call off the investigation, or I’d never see him or my grandchildren—ever again.”
Amanda resumed her sobbing. Brad put his hand on her shoulder. If solving the death of one son meant losing the other, Amanda wasn’t prepared for those consequences.
Brad could identify with that. He thought about the investigation of his mother’s and sister’s deaths, and the uneasy moments when family members were questioned and had to be cleared of any involvement.
“Here are your alternatives,” Brad began. Amanda perked up, as if it was the first time she envisioned there might be a choice. “One. I continue with the case, wherever it might lead. Don’t worry about Denton, I’ll explain to him how it’s in his best interest for me to continue. But if I do proceed, I have to widen the circle of people who’ll know we’re conducting an investigation. I don’t have to cry murder—I’ll claim there’s insurance money at stake—but I need to talk to people who knew your son. I’ve brought my associate down here, and if you want me to proceed, it’s going to cost you $1,500 for expenses. As far as my fee is concerned,” Brad continued, glancing around the studio, “I get first pick from your next batch of rakus.”
Amanda blushed and waved her hand in the air signaling his request would not be a problem, and just as quickly worry lines furrowed her brow.
“You mentioned there was another choice,” she said.
Brad spoke firmly. “We’ll end our investigation where it is right now, just as we’re beginning to confirm your doubts that Dana committed suicide. It’s your choice.”
Amanda pressed her fingertips against her forehead. Four years of agony and a few days of hope registered in the way her hand trembled as she contemplated her choices.
The silence seemed to last an eternity.
Brad stood to leave. Turning to Amanda he said, “You know how to reach me when you’ve made up your mind.”
“No. Wait,” Amanda said. “I’ve decided.”
Chapter Thirteen
Amanda retrieved a checkbook from her purse and swiftly wrote a check for $1,500.
Brad tucked the check into his wallet then turned to Amanda’s assistant, who remained planted nearby.
“I’m Brad Frame,” he said, offering his hand.
The young man took Brad’s hand and vigorously pumped his arm. “I… I… am Peter Gibson.” Each syllable caught in his throat. “Miss…us Car…uh…tha’s ‘sis-tant”
“That’s very good, Peter,” Amanda said, like a teacher praising her pupil. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. He smiled broadly before returning to his duties at the kiln.
Turning to Brad, Amanda said, “Peter was born deaf. For years people thought he was also,” she seemed to search for the word, “slow. He’s from a poor family, and he was educationally deficient before he ever got into school. Of course they put him in special education classes, but unless someone’s pushing you at home…” Amanda threw up her hands. “Well, his family never pushed the school or him. They lived just up the road from me,” she gestured. “When he was a teenager he would come by the studio and make hand signals letting me know he wanted to work.”
“He became your project?” Brad asked.
Amanda blushed. “After my husband had his heart attack, I thought maybe Peter could lift the larger clay pieces. I taught him how to work with the clay and gave him a part-time job.” Amanda
moved to the opposite side of a nearby table and sat down. “The more I worked with him, the more I saw that he was a lot smarter than anyone had ever given him credit for. I talked with his parents and suggested that he have a complete mental and physical evaluation.”
Brad sensed where this was going. “They resisted?”
“At first,” Amanda nodded, “but I convinced them. Both of his ears were malformed on the exterior, and the ear canals were constricted. Doctors felt there was a chance to improve his hearing with an operation. Shortly before Dana died I helped raise money locally for Peter’s operation. The surgery was a partial success. It restored his hearing to about forty-percent of normal with the use of a hearing aid. Since then he’s been going to speech therapy class and has made remarkable progress. He never graduated from high school, but now he’s taking adult education classes. I’ve also been giving him art lessons, and he’s shown great promise.”
Brad stared in the direction of the kiln, observing as Peter carefully loaded the next ceramic piece and secured the kiln doors. “It’s miraculous what medical science can accomplish,” he said, at the same time thinking about its limitations, like his college classmate with the incurable brain tumor and Sharon’s friend Oliver who’d been blind from birth.
Turning his attention back to Mrs. Carothers, Brad said, “If I’m going to pursue the case, I’ll need more information about Dana.”
“What kind of information?” Amanda’s face was placid, with no trace of the inner turmoil he’d seen earlier.
“If your son didn’t commit suicide, then someone must have had a motive to kill him. Can you think of anything, anything at all? The Sheriff’s office told me that there weren’t any drugs in Dana’s system at the time of his death, but might he have been into drugs that would make him a target for murder?”
“He was clean,” she said, averting her eyes from Brad’s steady gaze. “There were no drugs. I’m certain of it.”
