Blu Heat

by David Burnsworth

Brack said, “How’s my favorite aunt?”

  Patricia also ignored Brack. Normally these women doted over him to the point he had to escape just to get some space. Today, he was invisible. His aunt stood, walked around her massive antique banker’s desk, and offered her hand to Carraway.

  Carraway couldn’t take it because Miss Dell still held onto his.

  Patricia gave her receptionist a look that fell somewhere around “He’s mine.”

  At first, Miss Dell glared back, one lioness guarding her kill from another. Then, the receptionist let go of Carraway’s hand, put hers to her mouth, and gave a naïve chuckle. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave you all to your meeting.” She backed away, eyes still glued on Carraway, and bumped her right butt cheek into the doorway. With another chuckle, she gave Carraway a wave and left the room.

  Carraway turned his attention from the doorway to Brack’s aunt and took her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Patricia kept in shape by swimming laps at the local YMCA pool. Today she wore a nice crème silk blouse and gray skirt. She let her hair slowly go grey, but her eyes were still a bright blue. Holding on to Carraway’s hand, she said, “Likewise. Is my nephew treating you well?”

  Brack said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She let go of Carraway’s hand and finally turned to Brack. “Nothing, dear. Just making sure you’re keeping your manners. Mr. Carraway has helped some very important people here on the peninsula and deserves our respect.”

  Carraway said, “Thanks, but I was just doing what they paid me to do.”

  “Still,” she said, “bringing Jennifer Kincaid back to her parents was such a wonderful thing. I’m honored you’re in my office.” She stopped what Brack perceived as blathering and said, “Where are my manners? Please have a seat.”

  Two chairs faced her desk. She made her way back to her captain’s chair.

  Brack and Carraway took the guest chairs.

  She said, “Tell me, Mr. Carraway—”

  Carraway interrupted her, “Please call me Blu.”

  “Okay,” Patricia said.

  Brack thought he glimpsed a slight coloring in her cheeks. Did she just blush?

  She continued, “Tell me, Blu, would you be willing to let me interview you for a TV segment?”

  The detail in that question that stuck out most for Brack was that she offered to do the interview herself. As far as he knew, she had never been in front of her own cameras in the newsroom. Aside from answering questions in the business forums she attended that had been filmed, she avoided the attention.

  Carraway said, “Well, um...”

  Brack said, “Come on, Aunt Patricia. We’re not here for that.”

  Carraway handed her a business card. “Why don’t you call me and we can set something up? I would appreciate the publicity.”

  Patricia took the card and looked at it, running her fingers across the text like one would a piece of silk. “Great!” She turned to her nephew. “I’m sorry, dear. I haven’t forgotten that someone tried to shoot you again.”

  Brack said, “Thank you.”

  “So,” she said, “what do you want to know?”

  “What you know about the shooters,” Brack said.

  Patricia picked up a notepad from her desk. “Abner and Rudyard Hollander. They don’t appear in any of our records.”

  “But…” Brack said.

  “But,” she said, “I contacted a few of my special sources, ones that only speak off the record.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down,” Brack said.

  “The sources aren’t the story, nephew. The shooters are.”

  Brack caught more than a hint of correction in her tone.

  She continued, “What they are saying is that these two have been suspected of some high-profile murders. But up to this point, no one has been able to stop them.”

  Carraway said, “Did you find out how they were contacted?”

  She smiled. “You’re going to like this, Brack. What did Paige force you to do to help promote your bar?”

  Brack thought about it for a moment. “Social media?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Brack said. “You mean to tell me these guys have a page and people message them about jobs?”

  Patricia smiled. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

  Carraway said, “Can we see who their clients are from this page?”

  “Not without having the right email address and password,” Patricia said.

  Miss Dell came back in the room with a tray holding a carafe, three white cups and saucers, a small white pitcher, and various sweeteners. She set the tray on Patricia’s desk. “Mr. Carraway, how would you like your coffee?”

  The first thing Brack thought of was that no one had asked for coffee.

  Carraway said, “Cream and sugar.”

  Miss Dell purred, “Mm-hmm.” She made up his coffee and handed it to him, her eyes locked on his.

  Patricia said, “I’d like one with cream only, please.”

  Without taking her eyes off Carraway, Miss Dell slid the tray toward her boss as if suggesting she help herself. “What y’all talkin’ about?”

  Brack thought a catfight was about to ensue. His aunt looked ready to draw blood, but he guessed Miss Dell was more than a formidable opponent. To try and defuse the situation, he said, “Social media. My bar manager, Paige, handles the page for the bar. You use it much, Miss Dell?”

  She took her eyes off Carraway and looked at Brack. “My granddaughter showed me how. I get on there some, but she do like Paige do for you. She put pictures on there and he’p me keep in touch with my other grandchil’ren.”

  Carraway said, “I wonder if the Hollander brothers had someone managing their site. They didn’t strike me as tech-savvy.”

  Patricia said, “That is a good question, Blu. If not, access to the account died with them.”

  Brack said, “Paige showed me how to send a message to someone. Why don’t we try that?”

  He felt everyone looking at him like as if he had four heads.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “We didn’t kill Abner. I’ll bet whoever runs the page would like to know that. And also that they might be a target.”

  Patricia said, “I’ll see if I can find their page.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After they finished their coffees, Blu followed Pelton out. To be honest, that Miss Dell scared him a little bit. A woman like that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and he could tell she so wanted him to say “yes.”

  Patricia, on the other hand, would have been more his speed if their ages had been a bit closer. Smooth and sophisticated, he would have chased her to the moon. She had a good grasp of what was going on in Charleston and would be a good source. No wonder Pelton knew so much.

  Blu saw a lot of himself in the kid. Boiled down, they both were what he referred to in his Ranger days as the “boots on the ground.” Army intelligence thought they ruled the world, but the real intel came from the soldiers on location—the grunts, as Pelton called it.

  He and Pelton were the grunts. And Pelton had as much of a taste for it as he did, maybe a bit more. The way he took on both killers in his bar. The way he drew down on Blu when he walked into the mess.

  From what Blu had gleaned from his research, and what Gladys had told him, Pelton did not back down from anything. He would take it all the way, a lot like Blu’s absent business partner, Crome. Crome would take it all the way, but right now he’d taken it out of Charleston and was on a two-year bender in only God knew where.

  Pelton started the truck, but left it idling in park. He said, “I’ve got to make another phone call.”

  Blu listened while Pelton talked to someone named Brother Thomas, telling him they were on their way to meet him. W
hen Pelton hung up, Blu said, “Brother Thomas sounds like the pastor Billie is always talking about.”

  “He told me she sings in his church.”

  “How do you know him?”

  Pelton put the truck in drive and exited the lot. “My uncle knew him. When he was murdered, Brother Thomas and I became friends. He helped me find the killer.”

  “Billie says he’s a good man. Does a lot for the community.”

  “She’s right.”

  Something bothered Blu. He said, “Does the pastor have some information?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Pelton smiled and looked over at Blu. “It means he’s not going to have anything definitive.”

  “That clears it up.”

  “It will.”

  After a few minutes, they pulled into the crumbled lot in front of a church with a tall white steeple. The sign out front said Church of Redemption.

  Pelton parked in a spot next to a fairly new Volvo and got out of the truck. A large black man in a black suit and minister’s collar stood in front of the entrance doors to the church. More like he took up most of the space in front of them, like an NFL defensive linebacker protecting the quarterback.

  Blu got out of the truck.

  Brother Thomas said, “Good to see you, Brother Brack. This the man Billie told me about?”

  Pelton nodded.

  Blu shook the pastor’s hand. “Any friend of Billie’s is a friend of mine.”

  Pelton said, “Be careful. The good brother here is always looking for more volunteers.”

  Blu made a point of looking around. “You sure have a fine church here, Brother.”

  “Thank you for saying so, mm-hmm.”

  Pelton said. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Of course you do, Brother Brack,” the pastor said. “You missed the last service. I can give you a recap if you want. It was on prayer.”

  Pelton said, “I keep telling you to film your sermons. Paige will help you upload them.”

  “And I appreciate the suggestion. The fine people what can’t physically make it out their house would appreciate it, too. But I wanna see your face more than just when you got a problem, which turn out to be a whole lot more often than would seem, what the word? Plaus-i-ble. That’s it.”

  Pelton explained the situation, from the shootout in his bar to Abner keeling over dead, and then asked, “What should we be doing?”

  The pastor said, “What you mean?”

  “You know me,” the kid said. “I’ll go in blasting.”

  “True that.”

  “So what’s the right play here?”

  Blu couldn’t figure out if the kid was asking for advice or permission.

  The pastor looked at the younger man, almost as if with the eyes of a father. “I think you’re already in over your head. Patricia tol’ me you didn’t start this ball rollin’, but you ain’t got to go out and chase every one that come by.”

  Pelton said, “Are you suggesting I sit this one out?”

  The pastor said, “That ain’t my role, Brother Brack. You come here askin’ me for advice, but you don’t wanna hear what your own conscience tellin’ you.”

  “What if it’s telling me to go in blasting?”

  “Conscience and desire are not the same thing, Brother Brack. No sir.”

  Blu’s first thought: this pastor was a dangerous man. People got caught off guard by his unassuming presence—the fat black man dressed sort of like a priest and speaking with uneducated words—until he dropped a twenty-pound sledgehammer like that on their heads.

  His second thought was another affirmation on how similar he and Pelton were.

  “Speaking of volunteerin’,” Brother Thomas said. “You gentlemen busy this evenin’?”

  Pelton said, “I knew it.”

  Back in the pickup, driving nowhere in particular, Pelton asked the question Blu realized they should have been chasing all along. “So why did they kill Skip?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.” Blu made another call to Gladys. Using the police report of the shooting at Pelton’s bar, he read off Skip’s full name, James Skip Romeo. “I need an address and anything else you can get.”

  She called back thirty minutes later with everything she could dig up. Apparently Skip had lost his driver’s license over too many DUIs.

  Blu relayed the information to Pelton, who said, “The chief said they impounded one of those liquor-cycle mopeds that the drunks with too many DUIs ride because they can’t legally drive anything else two doors down from my bar. It was unregistered. I’ll bet it was Skip’s.”

  Pelton called Chief Bates and told him what they thought as he drove. If nothing else, it answered the question of how Skip got there.

  Skip’s apartment was in Mount Pleasant and that’s where they headed. While there weren’t really any bad parts of the town, Skip had managed to find a cheap efficiency apartment behind a dingy strip mall.

  Pelton parked at an open spot in front of a unit with faded brown paint and sagging shudders. Surprisingly, there wasn’t any police tape sealing the door.

  Blu said, “I’ll find the super to get the key.”

  Pelton took out a small black case from the center console in the truck. “Or I could just pick the lock.”

  Before Blu could form an answer that explained the negative aspects of breaking and entering, the kid had the door open.

  He waved a hand for Blu to enter.

  The smell of cigarettes and stale beer escaped the place, but the AC must have been on frigid. The system’s compressor rattled and hummed in the background.

  Blu considered all the reasons not to enter in this manner, and then ignored them and did just that. Inside, the smell didn’t get any better, but at least the place didn’t have the odor of death. He said, “Hello?”

  There was no response.

  Pelton drew his revolver.

  Blu drew the Beretta, and they proceeded room by room, clearing the place just like the government had taught them. It took all of ten seconds, as there were only four rooms, including the bathroom.

  They put their guns away and began to search through Skip’s belongings, talking as they went.

  “Who was this guy that someone would want to kill him?” Pelton asked as he opened the closet door.

  Blu checked the kitchen freezer. “Had you seen him in your bar before they shot him?”

  “No. The guy didn’t even know he couldn’t smoke inside. So I’m betting he hadn’t been there before. Or at least since the smoking ban. How long had he been in town?”

  Blu said, “My DMV source says he registered for a South Carolina identification card three months ago. His record shows he lost his license two years ago in Florida.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  Blu said, “Skip was always a schemer. Back in the day, he was one of my problem children. But he wasn’t afraid to fight.”

  Pelton smiled.

  “What?”

  “A Ranger not afraid to fight.”

  Blu looked over at him. “You’re really asking for a beating, aren’t you, jarhead?”

  “Wouldn’t be my first,” Pelton said.

  He frowned. “I’ll bet not.”

  They tore the place apart. Aside from the odor, it wasn’t in bad shape—squared away in a somewhat haphazard military fashion. By the time they finished, they knew quite a bit about Skip.

  That he liked magazines and DVDs with naked Asian women.

  That he had a large baggie of cannabis and a bong.

  That he drank a lot of cheap beer.

  That he smoked Winstons.

  That he didn’t have a day job.

  And that he had a calendar with a few dates starred ev
ery month.

  It was that last part that piqued their interest.

  Pelton said he’d see if his aunt had any information about the marked dates.

  Later that day, they crashed at Blu’s island paradise home. At least the kid did. Blu had to do his daily chores. The horses had grown accustomed to the water and feed he provided, the spoiled brats.

  When Blu had finished taking care of the animals and was relaxing on his porch with a glass of water, his phone rang in his pocket. He looked at the number, saw the Charleston area code, and answered.

  “Mr. Carraway? This is Patricia Voyels.”

  Pelton’s aunt.

  He said, “Hello, and remember, you can call me Blu.”

  “And you can call me Patricia.”

  “Okay, Patricia, what can I do for you?”

  “I’d like you to tell my nephew to check his phone as it’s going straight to voicemail.”

  He looked through the window at the kid passed out on the couch. “Will do.”

  “And,” she said, “when you two get the chance, swing by my office. We think we’ve found the Hollander brothers’ social media page.”

  Blu went inside and flicked the sleeping Pelton on the ear.

  The kid jolted awake and took a swing but missed, almost falling off the couch in the process.

  Blu spoke into the phone, “We’re on our way,” and ended the call.

  In a half-whiny, half-sleepy voice, Pelton said, “What was that for?”

  “Time to get up. We gotta roll.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The kid really knew how to drive, even in his big pickup. Blu’s research had turned up the kid’s racing record. He’d been on his way to the big leagues—NASCAR Cup Series. And then he stopped.

  Race-car driver to bar owner by way of the Marine Corps in Afghanistan. The world was a crazy place.

  They made it to the news office in forty minutes. When they walked in, Blu expected Miss Dell to be waiting for him with nothing on but a teddy and a smile. Either he was lucky and she had gone home, or she was waiting in the back room with Patricia.