by Bill Noel
Larry’s house, more accurately, his rental house since his house was the victim of a crazed arsonist last year, backed up to the still, mysterious marsh and was three blocks from Charles’s apartment. Charles kept the window down and yelled greetings to residents who were in their yards assessing the damage or just lounging against their paper boxes and sharing hurricane war stories with their neighbors. He wanted me to stop so he could talk to each one, but he knew Larry’s house was our focus.
Larry’s rental was average size by Folly Beach standards; that meant small. It was similar to mine—well-aged and had survived many storms, hurricanes, and eccentric renters. Other than a couple of cosmetic bumps and bruises, it looked intact. Charles, the ever-curious (nosy) friend, insisted we walk around it to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. Fortunately, we hadn’t.
Our next stop was Pewter Hardware, Larry’s pride and joy. Larry had owned the store for several years and didn’t know the origin of the name; even stranger, neither had the previous owner, who had called it his business for a couple of decades. Rather than investing in new signage and stationery, and confusing the residents, he stuck with the old name.
A small lot in front of the store was jammed with pickups, vans, and a beat-up, rusting Honda. We parked across from the store and stepped over a section of a privacy fence that had blown into the middle of the street. Of course, Charles wouldn’t let it lie; we had to drag the fence back to the yard where it had recently stood vertical.
Pewter Hardware was huge compared to Charles’s apartment, but for a retail business meeting the hardware needs of an island, it was miniscule. Its three aisles were wide enough for one medium-size person to maneuver; this morning the only space to turn around was in the lot. Brandon, Larry’s only full-time employee, stood at the door and was losing the battle to direct customers to the appropriate section. We didn’t need anything, so we told Brandon we were checking on Larry. He pointed toward the chest-high counter, with a cash register and two oil lanterns providing illumination. The top of Larry’s head was barely visible. Larry was, as my friend Bob Howard was prone to say, a “shrimp-squirt, vertically challenged sad sack.” To others, Larry was five feet one inch tall, weighed slightly over a hundred pounds in a winter coat, and was in his mid-fifties. Larry was also tough as the anvils he sold, extremely proud, and too stubborn to replace the high counter with one more proportioned to his low center of gravity.
A line of customers snaked around two aisles, their arms juggling blue tarps, lanterns, candles, buckets, and mops. Larry barely had time to wave, much less talk to us, so we waved back and left him to meet the clean-up needs of the islanders. We crossed the lot, and Charles helped two strangers lift five sheets of plywood over the tailgate of their truck.
“Nothing like buying closing-the-gate-after-the-horse-escaped plywood,” he mumbled to no one in particular.
Along with uprooting trees, ripping out sections of fence, and mangling my screen windows, Frank had sucked the clouds and rain off the island as it moved inland. The sun brought much-needed illumination and hope.
Charles had volunteered to ride home with me and try to repair the screens. We’d borrow my neighbor’s ladder—if it hadn’t blown off-island—and Charles would venture to the roof to see what needed to be done.
We turned left off Center Street onto Ashley Avenue, the home of Bert’s Market and the lesser-known location of my cottage. The street was blocked a couple of hundred yards past the house by two white Crown Victoria units from the Folly Beach Department of Public Safety—known as police cars to everyone else. I assumed the street was closed because of the downed power lines or debris.
My headache was about to reach earthquake proportions.
CHAPTER 3
“Whoa!” said Charles as I stopped in front of the house. “The black van behind the roadblock is from the coroner’s office.”
As luck—all bad—would have it, we were familiar with the vehicle you never wanted to see on your street. “We’re going to see what’s going on, right?”
“You bet,” said Charles, who was already out of the car and using his cane as a walking stick. He rushed toward the action. I followed.
Officer Allen Spencer met us as we approached the first police car.
“Good morning Chris, Charles,” said Spencer. “Your houses okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A little water; nothing bad.”
Spencer had been on the force for more than three years but still appeared about the age of box wine. Charles and I had way more encounters with him than anyone should. We had been in some tough situations over the years, but he had come to trust us; and, despite my concerns over changing his diapers, I respected his skills as a police officer.
Charles was right about the van, and now that we were closer, I saw three more police cars and two of the city’s fire engines. Several public servants were gathered around something in a vacant lot on the far side of the street.
“What’s going on?” asked Charles.
A good question, I thought. I had never heard of a coroner’s visit to a dead power line.
“We’ve got a 187,” Spencer replied.
“In English?” asked Charles.
“Murder,” said Spencer.
Hadn’t Frank imposed enough devastation on Folly Beach? “Who? What happened?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he said as he shooed a couple of curious neighbors walking their dogs. “We just got here. Chief Newman and Officer Robins are by the body.” He nodded in the direction of the gathering. “The coroner’s office had a run just off-island and came right over. The Sheriff’s Department has been called, but their detectives are busy with hurricane stuff. They won’t be here for a while.”
“Who?” I tried again.
“Robins said there wasn’t any ID. He didn’t recognize him.”
“Chris, Charles, over here.”
We turned from Spencer when Chief Brian Newman yelled for us. The chief was tall and trim, and stood with the confidence of a former military officer, which he was. He stood out among the group gathered around the body.
“Be my guest,” said Officer Spencer. He lifted the yellow crime scene tape for us to walk under and waved his hand toward the activity in the field.
Chief Newman and I had become friends. I had stumbled onto a few murders and had become a thorn in his side as well as an extremely lucky citizen who helped him catch some killers.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he said as we approached. “Any damage to your houses?”
There was something comforting about his concern in the midst of a horrific situation, reinforcing why I loved the fascinating island. We told him everything was okay and waited for his lead.
“You live close,” he said as he looked at me, and then turned to a covered mass about twenty feet from the road. “Maybe you can identify him. He doesn’t look familiar.”
My head felt like it had a bowling ball rolling around in it.
The three of us stepped around puddles in the waterlogged field and approached the body. “You know the drill,” said the chief. “Don’t touch anything; don’t get too close.”
Charles and I were intimately familiar with “the drill.”
Newman nodded to the middle-aged, bored-looking man from the coroner’s office, and the two of them lifted the lightweight tarp from the body.
I fought my instincts and looked.
The victim was in his late thirties or early forties. His hair was long and pulled in a ponytail by a rubber band. He had a three-day beard and was dressed in a mud-stained, white T-shirt covered with drying blood. I thought he had on dark blue shorts but couldn’t tell for sure; all my attention was focused on his upper torso. After all, how could I not focus on the colorfully striped, aluminum arrow protruding from his chest?
Charles gasped. �
��Holy Robin Hood,” he mumbled.
The body looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where. I shook my head no and swiped away a couple of flies from my face. Countless more swarmed closer to the body.
Charles had taken a couple of steps back and turned to the chief. “Les Patterson … that’s Lester Patterson.”
“Sure?” asked the chief.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go to the car,” said the chief. He nodded toward the unmarked, black Crown Vic. “It’ll be cooler, and we can get away from the flies.”
We didn’t argue.
“Okay, Charles,” said the chief as the air conditioner strained to blow as hard as it could. “What do you know about him?”
The chief and Charles were in the front seat, and I leaned forward from the back to hear over the air conditioner.
“I didn’t know Patterson that well,” started Charles. “I saw him in Bert’s; we talked a few times.”
“That’s where I’d seen him,” I said. “We never spoke.”
Charles wasn’t about to let me hog in on his story.
“He was a strange one,” he continued. “The few times we talked, he rambled on about flying saucers, the Loch Ness Monster, and how his apartment was haunted.”
“Know where he lived?” asked the chief. He was fiddling with the air conditioner knob to turn it down so we could hear better.
“The Edge,” said Charles.
“Where?” I asked.
“The weird boardinghouse on Arctic, ocean-side,” answered the chief before Charles could unload some trivia on me. “Old Mrs. Klein’s place.”
“Cindy Ash lives there,” added Charles.
“Oh,” I said, “that’s only two blocks from here. I didn’t know it had a name.”
“Okay, Charles, what else?” The chief clearly didn’t care what I knew about the boardinghouse.
“Like I said, Les was strange, but he wasn’t a washout.” Charles stared out the window toward the body and continued. “He worked for an air-conditioning and heating company on James Island—Coastal Heating and Air, I believe. I never saw him at Bert’s—day or night—when he wasn’t buying a twelve-pack of beer. HVAC must be seriously dehydrating work.”
“I’ll check with Officer Ash. She may know something,” said the chief. “Anything else?”
Charles rubbed his chin. “Well, not to speak unkindly of the dead, but you wouldn’t have a good chance of finding him sober on the weekends.”
“No longer a problem,” said the chief, showing a rare glimpse of gallows humor. “He must have handled it well. If he hadn’t, I would have made his acquaintance.”
The chief was distracted when a dark blue, unmarked Crown Vic pulled up next to his car. “It looks like the all-knowing killer-finders from Charleston have arrived.”
Two detectives exited the vehicle like they owned the world. I didn’t recognize them. The Folly Beach Department of Public Safety did what it could for law enforcement on the island, but murders were investigated by the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department. They were on the same side as the local police, but in the eyes of most local law enforcement officials, the side was wide and each was on the far opposite end.
“Thanks, guys,” said the chief, “I’ll tell our new arrivals what you said.” He opened the door and waved to the detectives. Charles and I slipped out the passenger side and headed to my house.
As we walked up the porch steps, Charles said, “You’re amazing. You’ve been here, what, three years, and you’ve already found a murdered developer, proved a suicide wasn’t, saved Larry’s life, and in the last ten hours brought us a hurricane—and now we’re involved in a Bambi non-look-alike up the street.”
I stopped and stared at Charles. “Involved in!”
He nodded.
“No way,” I said.
Charles grinned.
CHAPTER 4
I opened my eyes to the amber glow of the bedside clock flashing 12:00 and the sound of my stomach growling; power was restored sometime during the night. The short walk to Folly’s supermarket was inevitable.
The demise of Les Patterson and Hurricane Frank was the buzz at Bert’s Market. Customers ranged from neighbors I recognized to vacationers who would have stories to tell their grandchildren about how they lived through the “hurricane of the century.” Time will increase the intensity of the storm; and, technically, Frank was the first hurricane to hit Folly Beach this century, so they would be accurate. I hoped that would still be true for the next thirty years or so.
The outsiders were oblivious to the killing that had taken place within sight of where they were shopping, but the natives—especially those who had survived other hurricanes—were more interested in the murder. Word had spread that Charles and I had been in the presence of the police, so two of my neighbors, people who normally ignored my existence, were quick to pelt me with questions.
“Yes, it was Les Patterson,” I said.
“No, I don’t have any idea who killed him,” I said, with my patience still intact.
“Yes, he was killed by an arrow,” I mumbled.
“No, Charles was not arrested,” I said. My tone bordered on irritation.
Folks I had never seen before were gathering around. We were blocking others from doing their post-hurricane grocery shopping, and the milling crowd was loud enough to get the attention of Mari Jon, my favorite clerk. She had come from the storeroom in back. Mari Jon was five foot ten and could see over many of the customers. She was in her late twenties, beanpole-thin, and had such an endearing smile most people overlooked her beaked nose and acne-scarred face.
“Morning, Chris,” she said. She kept the smile on her face and nudged the others out of the way. “Can I help you find something?”
I knew that wasn’t her intent. I had been in Bert’s hundreds of times and could find most everything with my eyes closed. Mari Jon was extracting me from the center of attention. She made a production of helping me find three items located exactly where I knew they’d be and then slowly walked with me to the checkout counter.
“I knew Les since he moved here four years ago,” she said.
No surprise there. Mari Jon knew most of her customers, called them by name or nickname.
“He was a bit peculiar.” She smiled. “Was always talking about UFOs. His latest kick was that he kept hearing someone, or something, as he put it, digging in the sand around the Edge.”
“Did he see anyone … or anything?”
“Said no,” she whispered as she rang up my box of cereal, Milk Duds, and six-pack of Diet Pepsi. “He did say he could ‘feel them’ outside, whatever that meant.”
There were already five people and two dogs in line behind me, so I didn’t want to monopolize her. I thanked her and turned away from the counter.
“Chris,” she said before I was out of earshot, “Les was a nice guy; he didn’t deserve what happened.”
Who did? I wondered on my short walk home.
The phone was ringing as I juggled my groceries and key to unlock the door.
“Crossbow! Shot with a damned crossbow,” the voice of Bob Howard bellowed from the earpiece. “What the hell have you got yourself into now?”
“Hello” and “good morning” weren’t in Bob’s vocabulary. He’s a Realtor with Island Realty, or as he describes it, “the second largest of the three small realty firms on Folly Beach.” We became “odd couple” friends when he helped me find my house. He’s a year shy of his seventieth birthday, blustery, with facial hair too short to be a beard, too long to be neat. He has a huge heart if you can work your way through the blubber, profanity, and attitude.
“Crossbow,” I said. “Where’d you hear that?”
“None of your damned business,” he said.
I didn’t respond. My way of giving him a second chance to fess-up.
“Louise, if you must know.” He couldn’t stand silence.
Louise was Bob’s eighty-something-year-old aunt, who worked at Island Realty and spent most of her leisure hours listening to the police scanner. She had missed her calling to be either a cop or island busybody.
“Figures,” I said.
“I hear you were nosing around the crime scene—actually, meddling, according to my dear sweet aunt.”
I enlightened Bob about why Charles and I were asked to be at the scene. He responded with a gruff “hmm,” and then the phone went dead. “Good-bye” wasn’t in his vocabulary either.
CHAPTER 5
I was to meet Charles for lunch at the Lost Dog Café. My kitchen is the most underused room in the house, so the Dog was my adopted dining room. Between Bert’s Market and the Lost Dog Café, I don’t know which was the most recognized—and admired—business on the island. The Dog got my vote. First, because it served the best breakfast and lunch on Folly Beach. It didn’t serve the best supper because it closed after lunch. Second was because it employed Amber Lewis, the best waitress in South Carolina—and better yet, the lady I have dated for more than a year.
The Dog was in a one-story concrete block building six blocks from the house and catty-corner from Landrum Gallery. The building enjoyed an earlier life as a Laundromat and, according to rumors, a bingo parlor. The formerly bland structure sported a colorful front porch and a second outdoor seating area on the side that faced a small pocket-park and the town’s community center and library. A life-size, concrete dog statue welcomed guests at the door, and the rails around the patio were carved in the shape of dog bones. If there was doubt about the owner’s love of canines, they were dispelled when one stepped into the rustic, inviting restaurant. The cream-colored walls were covered with framed photos of dogs—big and small dogs of all races, colors, and moods; smiling, yawning, sleeping dogs … dogs, dogs, dogs. I’d often wondered why cat lovers didn’t run screaming from the restaurant.
