Southern Heat

by David Burnsworth

  A couple I recognized as regulars stopped me and I thanked them for coming. When they moved on, I turned back to Darcy. “Yet you came anyway.”

  She flashed perfect teeth. “I told her you’d like me.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Why’s that?”

  “I’m likable.”

  The similarities between this woman and my wife were many, from the blond curls pinned up to keep her neck cool in the summer to the relentless attitude. I said, “So where is your boss, anyway?”

  Darcy motioned to the bar with one perfectly manicured hand.

  Patricia Voyels had taken the stool next to the shrine and sipped a drink from a pink plastic cup. We must have run out of glasses already.

  A few inches shorter than me, Patricia had stylish gray hair and a nice shape for a woman in her early sixties. Uncle Reggie had told me she hit the gym five nights a week. The lines in the skin around her eyes had grown deeper since the last time I’d seen her. She looked unhappy, but kept her emotions in check. She always kept her emotions in check.

  Shelby, the traitor, ran and put his front paws on Patricia’s lap in greeting. She scratched him underneath the bandana with the Pirate’s Cove flag I’d tied around his neck and looked up at me. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Patricia and Darcy followed Shelby and me past the entrance to the kitchen, Paige came out the swinging double doors. I stopped her and said I’d be in the office if she needed me.

  Paige whispered, “What’s Patricia doing here?”

  “Not sure,” I whispered back. “I’ll let you know.”

  Shelby led us to the ten-by-twelve back room, Uncle Reggie’s home away from home. The desk where Paige had been reviewing receipts earlier today was the first thing seen from the door. Neat stacks of paperwork told me she had spent time organizing things. Uncle Reggie would have left one big mess.

  Patricia and Darcy sat on a couch taking up the other side of the room. After closing the door, I turned the desk chair to face them and sat. Shelby jumped on the couch between the women.

  “All right, Patricia,” I said. “Who’s Ray?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said Ray shot him. Who is Ray?”

  Patricia’s eyes went to an old bookshelf in the corner, its shelves sagging from the weight of the Patrick O’Brian and Mickey Spillane novels crammed on them. She arranged her features to give the impression that she was thinking hard. “I’m sure I don’t know any Ray. At least not any who would shoot Reggie.”

  I scratched the stubble under my chin. “The police will be coming by to ask so if I were you I’d have a list ready for them.”

  In addition to the TV station, Patricia owned the Palmetto Pulse, one of Charleston’s daily newspapers. Both the station and the paper were big enough to make a tidy profit but small enough not to be considered too seriously. Thanks to hordes of unnamed sources, Patricia, the daughter of one of Charleston’s exclusive Huguenot families, had the dirt on everyone in town. I wished Uncle Reggie had taken her for everything she was worth during the divorce, but he didn’t. Couldn’t, was more like it. He’d still loved her. I had to remember that.

  Patricia said, “I’m not the one who’s got to worry about being a suspect.”

  Before I could get a word out, Darcy said, “Okay. Truce.”

  Patricia said, “Did Reggie say anything to you about what he was involved in?”

  I exhaled a long breath. “I was going to ask you the same thing. I hadn’t seen him around in a week. My hunch is he was spending time with you again.”

  If Patricia sensed frustration in my voice, she let it pass. “He was, but he didn’t tell me much. He came over at night and was gone by morning.”

  “The police are saying he was killed in a robbery attempt,” Darcy said. “They couldn’t find his wallet or I.D.”

  Patricia and I spoke in unison. “He didn’t carry a wallet.”

  I asked Darcy, “Did the police find his necklace?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’ll check it out. If he didn’t carry a wallet, what did he carry?”

  Patricia said, “He had a money clip and a small pouch for change.”

  Monday morning, I woke after four hours of sleep on the couch in my uncle’s office. Combined with no sleep the night before, I felt rough. Shelby nudged my arm, cocked an ear sideways, and opened his mouth, showing me his smile. He gave me a loud bark, kick-starting the hangover bulldozers in my head. They began to plow deep ruts, like giving me a lobotomy without anesthesia.

  I rolled over and tried to catch a few more minutes of sleep, but the worn-out couch reeked of cigar smoke and felt as comfortable as cheap toilet paper. After staring at a large canvas sheet pinned to the ceiling with my uncle’s interpretation of the Jolly Roger, I got up and let Shelby out.

  The Pirate’s Cove should have been trashed considering how many people had shown up, how much business we’d done, and how much alcohol we drank. But Paige had the staff stay late and help clean up. We filled the dumpster out back and had a truckload of plastic and glass in bags and boxes ready for recycling. Shelby and I reached my car. I spread his towel out on the rear seat and let him in before opening the driver’s side door. An envelope stuck beneath the windshield wiper. The letter inside said:

  Your uncle and I were working on something and it got him killed. I could be next. Meet me at Folly Pier today, 10 AM. I’ll wait at the ocean end. Come alone. If I see anyone else, I will leave.

  It was unsigned. I checked my watch. Five after nine. I had enough time to drop Shelby off at the bungalow, take a quick shower, and still make it to the pier at ten.

  Folly was the runt of the nearby beaches. It faced the Atlantic from the south side of Charleston where the upper class hadn’t yet come in with their stiff codes and big bank accounts. I parked and scanned the area. Nothing appeared out of place. Phish-Heads and surfers wandered the sidewalks. I got out of my car. The heat and humidity hit me like a warm, wet sponge. At a crosswalk, a black Chrysler with dark-tinted windows stopped and let me cross. Five Harleys idling nearby drowned out the sound of the surf.

  By the time I made it up the steps to the wooden deck that extended a thousand feet out into the ocean, my clothes were soaked with sweat. At one of the shops, I bought the latest copy of the Palmetto Pulse because my uncle’s picture was on the front page. The article was written by Ms. Darcy Wells, herself. I folded the paper and stuck it under my arm. Three black men fished over the railing, tackle boxes and catch coolers at their feet. An old couple sat on a bench watching the tide and holding hands. I walked the distance to the small pavilion at the end of the pier. Tourists were in full bloom, most of them wearing clothing with Charleston or local bars they had visited written across their chests. A lot of ball caps and wicker hats and bright bags.

  Someone said, “Excuse me.”

  I turned and saw a man half a foot shorter than me wearing a white Charleston ball cap and a T-shirt with the logo of the biggest tourist trap in the city, the one the locals avoided. He looked to be a few years younger than me, maybe thirty.

  I said, “Yeah?”

  “My wife’s shopping in one of the stores,” he said. “I was wondering if you could take my picture. The sun’s reflection on the water is perfect. By the time she gets out here, it may be too late.”

  “Um,” I said. “Sure.”

  He came closer and handed me the camera.

  I asked, “Where y’all from?”

  “Right here,” he said in a low voice. “I left the note on your car. Thanks for coming.”

  I stared at him a few seconds. Under the ball cap I saw a face partially hidden by glasses with clip-on sunshades.

  “This will do,” he said, louder, resting a hand on the railing. Behind him was the ocean. “Go ahead, take the picture.”

  I raised the camera and centered the man in the viewing window. He was sweating. I snapped the shutter.
/>   “Good,” he said. “Take a few more.”

  I did as he asked.

  “Thanks,” he said. When he approached me, he knocked the newspaper out from under my arm.

  “Sorry.” He bent down and picked it up, handing me the paper and another envelope, smaller than the one he left on my windshield. “Thanks for taking the pictures. I think I just spotted my wife.” In a lower voice, he added, “Don’t follow me.”

  I watched him walk up the pier and lost him in the crowd at the shops. After I returned to the car and started it to get the AC going, I looked at the envelope. It had a phone number written on it with instructions to call at five PM. Inside I found a jump drive. I placed the envelope and jump drive in the Mustang’s glove box and headed downtown.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Uncle Reggie did not live in the twenty-first century. Paige had threatened to quit if he didn’t buy a laptop for her to run the business. Last night at the Cove, I used her Apple to find Mutt’s Bar, the place noted on my uncle’s calendar for a week ago. The bar wasn’t listed in any phone book. My Internet search came up with one hit in the city, but not because Mutt’s had a listing anywhere. Someone had gotten stabbed on the sidewalk in front of the place last month.

  The East Bay exit off Highway Seventeen looped through Charleston’s depressed area. Across from a dilapidated brown building with a neon-lit beer advertisement in the window, I found a parking spot. The outside temperature according to the gauge in my car showed one hundred, so I checked out the scene from the driver’s seat with the AC blowing hard.

  Formosan termites had decorated the outer face of the structure with their elaborate tunnels, like veins, entwined in what was left of the wood. The neon flickered against years of soot caked on the window. Next to it hung a rusty screen door. I’d been in places like this before, but not without an automatic weapon.

  The hands on my watch pointed to noon. I got out of my car with the newspaper I’d bought at the pier and pressed the alarm remote. It acknowledged me with a quick blow of the horn.

  The street was a different world. Black kids played on the cracked and broken sidewalks. Clothes hung on lines strung across the front porches of shotgun homes, most of which leaned to one side or the other. Daylight, I truly believed, was the one thing keeping me from becoming a missing person file. This same scene twelve hours later would be bad news.

  Sour bar-wash and stale cigarette smoke permeated the air escaping through the rusty screen door. I grabbed the handle and pressed the old latch. The door’s corroded springs squealed like Ned Beatty in Deliverance as I pulled it open. While my eyes adjusted to the dark room, I heard B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” blaring from somewhere. A bar stretching the width of the room came into focus. Several men sat on mismatched stools, elbows riding the worn wood of the bar. A window unit protruding from the wall failed to condition what passed for air. A ribbon tied to the vent on the front of it fluttered in the tepid breeze. My eyes spotted an old Wurlitzer jukebox straight out of the fifties, its neon lights fighting to shine through decades of grime. I walked past two men posturing at a pool table with ripped green felt. At the bar, I eased out a stool two spots down from the other guys and sat.

  The barkeep held a dirty towel. “You lookin’ for directions?”

  I gave him my best smile. “This Mutt’s place?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then I don’t need directions. How about a Coke?” I placed both hands on the bar and nodded at the men seated next to me. “How you guys doing?”

  Their manners weren’t available, apparently. Much like my Coke. The bartender hadn’t moved.

  He put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “What you want, Opie?”

  His boxed afro and lamb-chop sideburns were a few decades off but I didn’t feel like offering any styling tips. He was taller than me, and I counted six others in the room who most likely wouldn’t end up on my side if a fight broke out.

  “I’m looking for Mutt,” I said. “And a Coke.” I pulled folded bills from my front pocket, peeled away a five, and set it on the bar.

  The bartender blew out a stream of smoke in my direction. “Just ’cause Lincoln freed the slaves don’t mean he’s that popular here.”

  “Huh?” I was genuinely puzzled.

  He pointed to the face of the bill.

  I felt a bunch of eyes on me so I held up a twenty.

  “Jackson’s more like it,” he said.

  I dropped it on the five and the bartender scooped up both bills. He went to a rusty cooler, reached in through the ice, and pulled out my drink. With an opener tied to a long leather strap around his neck, he popped the top and placed the bottle in front of me.

  I said, “You Mutt?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Jackson.” I wasn’t about to give him anything.

  He wiped the bar with his grungy towel. “Mutt’s on break. What can I help you wit?”

  A Muddy Waters tune started and the bartender straightened up, cocked his head, and snapped his fingers. “How!” He forgot about wiping the bar and danced around.

  I sat there watching him groove.

  Chuckles came from somewhere in the room. The tension in the air felt like a hot landing zone, and I was unarmed. I opened the paper and pointed to the picture of my uncle. It was a good one Patricia must have taken a few years ago. His hair was tied back in a ponytail, his beard neatly trimmed, and the black patch covered his left eye.

  The bartender stopped moving, picked it up, and looked at it for a long time. His dark face lightened a few shades.

  He said, “What about it?”

  I didn’t know what to say next.

  He laid the paper on the bar. “I asked you a question, boy.”

  A voice came from behind me. “You want us to take this cracker out back, Mutt?”

  Sweat dripped down my back from the heat.

  Mutt took a long drag from his Kool as if to ponder the offer and exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Naw.”

  I realized my hands had the Coke bottle in a white-knuckled death grip.

  The creaking of the screen door broke the tension.

  A big voice boomed, “Everything okay up in here?”

  The bartender looked past me to the doorway and nodded. “Brother.”

  After a moment, a man pulled out the stool beside me and sat. “Got any root beer, Mutt?” His minister’s collar complimented a black suit hanging on a large frame. He was dark-skinned like the others and didn’t seem uncomfortable being in a bar. A large belly strained the buttons of a black shirt and hid his belt buckle. His gray-speckled hair and mustache were neatly trimmed.

  He turned toward me. “How you doing?”

  “It’s been one of those days,” I said.

  The bartender went to the cooler while the minister picked up the newspaper from the bar and looked at it. His eyes turned to me and he held out his hand. “Reverend Thomas Brown. People around here call me Brother Thomas. It mean Brother-in-Christ, mm-hmm.”

  I tried to match his meaty hold. “Brack Pelton.”

  Mutt sat the bottle of root beer in front of Brother Thomas and leaned on the bar. “This is all nice and cozy-like. I just got a few questions for the white boy, here.”

  Brother Thomas held up a hand. “No disrespect, Mutt, but I’d like to give Brother Brack a tour of our community.” He looked at me. “How about it?”

  What could I say to an offer like that? No thanks, I’d rather stay here and take my chances? “I’d appreciate it.”

  We pushed our stools back from the bar, took our soft drinks, and turned toward the exit. One of the patrons, a bald man with a gray beard, held the door open when we approached.

  “Thank you, Clovis,” Brother Thomas said. “I sure hope to see you in church next Sunday.”

  The man grinned. “I’ll sure try, Brother. I’ll sure try.” Clovis’s stained shirt had a “City Garage” patch over the pocket. Once Brother Thomas and I reached t
he sidewalk, Clovis waved at us with a cigarette and eased the squealing door closed.

  Down the block, Brother Thomas stopped and turned to me.

  “What you did back there was either brave or stupid. I can’t tell which.”

  I forced a smile.

  “I seen you drive by,” he said. “The whole street seen you. A white man like you parks his nice new car up in here and walks into that bar? Oh, Lord.”

  He walked. I kept up.

  His mouth formed a grin and he shook his head. “Heh-heh. It’ll keep that bunch back there busy talkin’ for a while, mm-hmm.”

  I looked at the leaning houses we passed wondering if a pattern accounted for their off-centeredness. “You knew the man on the front page of the paper, didn’t you?”

  “I did. He was a good man.”

  “He was my uncle and I wanna know why Mutt’s Bar was written in his calendar.”

  “I guess you’ll have to ask Mutt,” Brother Thomas said.

  “You know my uncle was murdered, right?”

  He nodded.

  I said, “Anything you can tell me about him?”

  “Not much you don’t already know yourself.”

  “I’m having a hard time seeing a connection. My uncle owned a rundown bar on the Isle of Palms and sold overpriced drinks and shrimp cocktails to tourists. As far as I knew, he didn’t attend church and wasn’t the volunteering type. The only thing he enjoyed doing was wreaking havoc with the town council.”

  Brother Thomas gave me an “mm-hmm,” but nothing else.

  After a few moments of silence, I said, “I guess I’m wasting your time, Brother Thomas. I’m sorry to have bothered you and your community. Please extend my apologies to Mutt and everyone else.”

  I held out my hand.

  The large preacher took it. “No bother. Come any time. Church service is at ten every Sunday morning. Sometimes Wednesday nights, too.”

  I carried a Swiss Army knife that had every tool imaginable including a small pen. With it, I wrote my cell number on the back of an old receipt and handed it to Brother Thomas. “If you think of anything I can add to the obituary, please give me a call.”