Blu Heat

by David Burnsworth

  Praise for the Brack Pelton Mystery Series

  “Burnsworth nails the voice of new Southern noir. This talented author will win you over with his engaging and multi-faceted hero, then keep you turning pages with his suspense.”

  – Hank Phillippi Ryan,

  Mary Higgins Clark Award-Winning Author of Say No More

  “Hop on board for a hard-edged debut that’s fully loaded with car chases (particularly Mustangs), war veterans, old grudges, and abundant greed. A choppy start belies a well-executed plotline enhanced by the atmospheric Palmetto State setting.”

  – Library Journal

  “This second case for Brack is marked by a challenging mystery, quirky characters, and nonstop action.”

  ― Kirkus Reviews

  “In Brack Pelton, Burnsworth introduces a jaded yet empathetic character I hope to visit again and again.”

  – Susan M. Boyer,

  Agatha Award-Winning Author of Lowcountry Book Club

  “Burnsworth is outstanding as he brings out the heat, the smells, the colors, and the history of Charleston during Pelton’s mission to bring the killer to justice.”

  – John Carenen,

  Author of A Far Gone Night

  “If you have always suspected there is more to Charleston than quaint Southern charm and ghost stories, then David Burnsworth’s noir series, featuring ex-soldier, tiki bar owner, and part time beach bum, Brack Pelton may just be the antidote to a surfeit of sweet tea.”

  – Michael Sears,

  Shamus Award-Winning Author of Black Fridays

  Books by David Burnsworth

  Books in the Blu Carraway Mystery Series

  BLU HEAT (Prequel Novella)

  IN IT FOR THE MONEY (#1)

  Books in the Brack Pelton Mystery Series

  SOUTHERN HEAT (#1)

  BURNING HEAT (#2)

  BIG CITY HEAT (#3)

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  Copyright

  BLU HEAT

  A Blu Carraway Mystery Novella

  Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

  First Edition | March 2017

  Henery Press, LLC

  www.henerypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, LLC, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2017 by David Burnsworth

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-185-9

  Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-63511-186-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To my wife, Patty

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have my agent, Jill Marr, and the president of Henery Press, Art Molinares, to thank for this novella. When in discussion about doing something new with Henery, Art suggested a bridge with my Brack Pelton series. Jill mentioned it to me and I thought, “That could be a lot of fun!” And so it was.

  In every way, my wife Patty caused this all to happen. You can thank her—I do. :)

  Rowe Carenen, the Book Concierge, keeps me organized. She arranges my book tours, manages my social media, and handles the majority of my promotion. Thanks, Rowe!

  Henery Press. What can I say about such a fine publisher that hasn’t already been said? My work has found a new home with you and I am better for it. Thank you so much for your energy, your professionalism, and your enthusiasm for mysteries!

  I hope you find Blu Heat as enjoyable to read as I did to write. And just so you know, going forward, Blu Carraway and Brack Pelton will always be linked. In this story lies the reason why.

  Chapter One

  Isle of Palms, South Carolina

  The crash of the surf pushed itself in between the beats of a forty-year-old Jimmy Buffet song streaming through the sound system of the Pirate’s Cove. Brack wiped down the old oak bar with Murphy’s oil soap, cleaning away invisible dirt. October had brought with it the end of the tourist season, although it would stay around eighty degrees for another weekend or two. No customers meant no messes to clean up, but Brack had developed a slight case of obsessive-compulsive disorder since Darcy and Mutt had moved away. Thus the need to reclean.

  The early fall ocean breeze blew steady through large doors open for just that reason, something Brack never got tired of. Paige, the bar’s manager, had taken the rest of the staff out for a harbor cruise, a gift for another great summer season. Brack hadn’t been up for the day trip, deciding at the last minute to man the fort while they were out playing.

  Alone with only his thoughts, he finished the last section of oak and was contemplating giving the wide ancient floor planks another coat of oil soap when a man walked in and took a seat at the bar. Aviator sunglasses, shoulder-length hair thin on top, Sam Elliot mustache. Brack pegged him at mid-forties.

  Isle of Palms, South Carolina, where the bar was located, had a lot of money. And Americans enjoyed hiding their wealth behind old blue jeans and pickup trucks. This guy could be rich. Or homeless.

  Brack walked over to him. “How’re ya doing?”

  “Gimme a Bud and a shot of Jack.” The man’s voice was gruff. “Can I smoke?”

  “Not in here, but if you want to set up on the back deck, you can smoke all you want.”

  The man nodded.

  It made Brack miss being able to smoke a cigar in his own bar. He got the drinks and set them in front of his customer.

  The man reached into his pocket, pulled out a wrinkled twenty, and said, “Keep it. If someone asks for Skip, tell ’em where I am.”

  Brack watched him scoop up both drinks and head outside, irritated that the distraction from his OCD had left the room. The wood tables called his name.

  Who was he kidding? If he didn’t keep busy, he’d think about Darcy. She’d moved away from him to be with another man, and that was too much to handle.

  And, because when it rained, it poured, the bar had lost Bonny, its macaw mascot and resident, just two weeks ago to old age. She’d started the business with Brack’s uncle in the seventies. And now she was gone, too.

  The front door opened again and this time two men walked in. One glance at their dead eyes told Brack they were not here for the fresh salt air. Hawaiian shirts and khaki shorts couldn’t hide the vibe of death they brought with them. Brack had been in enough bad spots before to know these were not tourists looking for daiquiris.

  Because Brack had vowed to always have weapons on hand, there were two pistols behind the bar, one at each end and a sawed-off shotgun in the middle. Unfortunately, he was smack dab in between two of the weapons.

  The two newcomers looked around the bar, and then they spotted the guy on the back deck.

  Brack inched to the closest corner.

  One set of dead eyes landed on him, a hand reaching behind to what had to be a gun.

  Their eyes locked. Brack’s hand was twelve inches away from his own pistol.

  Dead Eyes pulled his piece first and fired.

&
nbsp; Brack’s Marine training dropped him to the ground. The bullet whizzed overhead and a bottle of top-shelf vodka exploded. Glass showered down on him.

  More shots fired.

  Brack wrapped his hand around the Colt Python, his bar manager’s weapon of choice, and felt the thumps as rounds perforated the bar over his head and smacked into the wall cabinet that held all the booze. It seemed like there were more shots than thumps.

  He cocked the hammer back, took two deep breaths, and trained the sight around the corner of the bar. It settled on a shin creeping between the chairs and tables.

  The Python spit fire and noise and lead. The impact of the bullet blew a crater through the shin. It was as if all the air in the room got sucked through the hole and exited out the back in a cloud of red mist.

  A scream followed by two more shots and two more thumps took over all other sound.

  The figure owning the useless shin crashed to the ground. With a clear shot, Brack put two center-mass rounds in the man for good measure and then ducked behind the bar again.

  One on one now. Even odds. Except they weren’t even.

  Brack was pinned and he knew it.

  Two more thumps hit the bar, followed by the sound of the front door banging open and then closing with a whoosh of the air cylinder that pulled it back in.

  It could be a trap, the guy just waiting for Brack to fall for it, show himself, and be blasted to Timbuktu. He stayed put a few more seconds which felt like minutes.

  A faint siren wailed in the distance. The police station was only two blocks away. Brack hoped to God it was the chief.

  After a count of ten more seconds, the front door opened again.

  It was now or never.

  Brack sprang to his feet, Python in hand, sighted in the door, and didn’t fire.

  A man a few inches taller than himself held up his hands. Olive skin, short-cropped hair beginning to recede in the corners of his forehead, silver cross on a chain around his neck, black jeans, black T-shirt, Doc Martens, and sunglasses, he said, “Don’t shoot.”

  Chapter Two

  Blu Carraway held up his hands to show he wasn’t holding. The guy with the Colt Python looked like he was ready to blast him. The room had the acrid bite of gunpowder to it, as if a shootout had just taken place. Blu wanted to take in his surroundings, and more of the man in front of him, but all he could focus on was the gun. Several long moments of them standing there facing each other passed, the man with the hand cannon and Blu with nothing but empty hands.

  The man asked, “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Blu Carraway. I’m a private investigator. I’d be happy to show you my identification.”

  “Don’t make any sudden moves,” the man said.

  “How long you want to stand here like this?” In Blu’s mind it was a fair question. He couldn’t hold his hands up forever.

  It happened quite a bit in his business, but he never got used to it. Blu had no idea what was going on. All he knew was he was supposed to meet his old Army buddy, Skip, here at this particular time and this guy points a gun at him as soon as he walks in the door. This wasn’t a robbery. This was the aftermath of battle.

  Brack was annoyed. And not by the two men that had shot up his bar. It was the way the guy in black standing in the doorway with his hands raised had spoken to him. As if he was in the cross-hairs all the time.

  Ignoring the man’s question, Brack asked one of his own. “What are you doing here?”

  “Easy there,” came the same calm voice. “Why don’t we put the gun down before someone gets hurt?”

  That same annoyingly calm voice. Brack wanted to keep blasting—needed to keep blasting—to relieve all the pent-up tension caused by the shooters and their dead eyes, one set of which now stared blankly, and now really dead, from the floor. The one he’d taken down first with the shin shot, and then the two center mass holes for good measure. A .357 can do some damage.

  With a deep breath, the tension started to melt away. Aside from the nonchalant attitude, this guy didn’t appear to be a threat. Brack lowered the pistol. “Okay. Now, what are you doing here?”

  The man named Blu Carraway rotated the sunglasses to the top of his head. “What the hell happened here?”

  The police siren blared louder. Tires screeched outside from the street in front of the bar.

  Brack looked into the eyes of Carraway—they were killer’s eyes. Not dead like the shooters. But eyes like his own. Eyes that had seen death, caused death. Brack said, “Not sure what just happened. You see anyone leaving when you were coming in?”

  Blu looked around the room and answered the guy’s question. “No.”

  With the gun lowered, he relaxed enough to check out the surroundings. The bar was a few steps up from being a dive, although the new bullet holes certainly took it down a notch or two.

  Blu took in the barkeep. About ten years younger than him, a solid six-footer. Not a meat-head, but not small, either. And dark skin for a white guy, darker than Blu’s own half-Cuban hue. He wore his thick hair trimmed short, a t-shirt that said “Need More Cowbell,” frayed cargo shorts, and sandals.

  And he still held the gun.

  Paintings of pirates hung on the walls along with a trove of nautical paraphernalia, keeping with the whole shipwreck theme. All that was missing was the one-eyed barkeep with a parrot on his shoulder.

  Blu asked, “Anyone else here?”

  At once, Brack remembered the customer—what was his name...Skip? He made his way toward the back deck and felt more than saw Blu Carraway follow.

  The customer was still on the back deck, where he’d gone to drink his beer and Jack and to smoke. Unfortunately, they’d all be his last. He lay sprawled out on the floor, arms spread open, a smoke trail coming from the lit cigarette still between his fingers. His eyes were open wide as if in surprise, but there was no life left in them.

  Brack counted four holes in the man.

  Carraway said, “Damn.”

  “You know him?”

  Nodding, he said, “Yeah. His name is Skip. I was supposed to meet him here.”

  Two police officers rushed inside the front door, a couple more jogged up the back stairs from the beach.

  All had weapons trained on Brack. Probably because the Colt Python was still in his hand.

  And one of the officers was Waters.

  A week ago, Waters had been in the Pirate’s Cove, drunk, and tried to pick a fight because his girlfriend hit on Brack. Two of the other officers also currently training their Glocks on Brack had dragged Waters out of the bar. And they had since given Brack reason to suspect he wasn’t their favorite barkeep anymore.

  Waters said, “Drop it!”

  As slowly as he could, Brack slipped his finger outside of the trigger guard, and lowered the pistol to the floor.

  As soon as he did, the officers swarmed him. Before he knew it, he was on the ground, his hands behind his back and zip tied. Someone kicked the Python away from him.

  Brack looked over and saw the guy with the sunglasses getting the same treatment. This was especially harsh procedure, given that he knew most of the officers. Except that it was Waters and his buddies. Instead of complaining, Brack kept quiet, waiting for Chief Bates to arrive.

  Chapter Three

  Blu replayed the phone call from Skip through his mind while he and the guy formerly holding the Colt Python lay on the wood-planked floor of the pirate ship bar. He hadn’t seen Skip since Desert Storm. The call from him was strange enough. But in addition to wanting to reminisce, Skip said he had something he wanted to hire Blu for. Something about a house on Montagu Street. With money not exactly growing on the proverbial money trees—at least around Blu’s island home—he welcomed the work.

  What did Skip say? Something about busting something wide open? Whatever it was, Blu didn’
t particularly care as long as it wasn’t drug smuggling or murder and he got his daily rate plus expenses. But he wouldn’t be getting any payout from Skip now.

  He watched the barkeep. For someone who’d just dropped what looked like a contract killer and was now hog-tied, the kid was particularly composed.

  Blu had met men like him before—only calm in the storm. He’d fought with them in Kuwait and fought against them for clients. This guy hadn’t said a peep since the police arrived.

  A loud, commanding voice came from the doorway. “What the hell? Get Brack up off the floor of his bar and cut him loose, would ya, Waters? You know better than that.”

  Two officers lifted the barkeep beside Blu up and cut his hands free.

  The man rubbed his wrists. “Thanks, Chief.”

  Sizing up the chief—clean, pressed polo shirt with Isle of Palms Police Department patch over the right breast, pressed khaki slacks, and polished police-issue boots—Blu decided he looked honorable enough.

  The chief said, “Don’t thank me yet. Who’s this?” He pointed at Blu.

  “Not sure. He showed up after all the shooting stopped.”

  “Speaking of shooting,” the chief said, still to the barkeep, “why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  The man smiled. “What do you mean?”

  If he’d said that to Blu, he would have gotten in the man’s face for such a smart answer.