“I can’t talk to them,” I said. “They’ll recognize me from the parkway.”
“Who cares? Now grow a pair and come on.”
21
When Dale and I entered the lobby, I saw the same couple I’d seen a few days earlier at the ranger station. The woman’s hair was now up in a tight ponytail, and the man wore a black knit cap with PUB embroidered on the front. They were both captivated by the phones in their hands and didn’t look up until Dale cleared his throat.
“I’m afraid we have still not located the keys,” Dale said in his official voice. “But I assure you we are diligently looking into it and I’m confident they will turn up. We will contact you as soon as we have them.”
The man frowned at Dale, then glanced over at me. I noticed a hint of recognition in his eyes.
“You look familiar,” he said.
When I didn’t respond, Dale put his hand on my shoulder.
“This is Davis Reed,” he said. “He is the gentleman who originally found the keys. He’s a private detective.”
I bit my lip and fought the urge to punch Dale in the gut.
“So is he going to find them again?” the man said.
I noticed Barbara staring at me from her chair behind the counter, so I threw her my best smile. Like Skeeter, she was not amused at my beam of sunshine.
“Yes, he is,” Dale said. “I was just speaking to him about it. We’ll have those keys back here in no time.”
The man lowered his brows, which sat just below the bottom of his knit cap.
“Where have I seen you before?” he said.
I gave him the same smile both Barbara and Skeeter had rebuffed.
“He’s the guy we met on the parkway,” the girl said. “We gave him a beer, remember?”
“The writer,” the man said.
The girl nodded. “Yeah, he’s writing a book about Cold Mountain.”
“I told him there’s already a book about that,” Barbara yelled from behind the counter.
Dale obviously thought this was a good time to make himself scarce. He pushed past me, nodded at the couple, then strolled out the front door without saying a word.
The man looked at me sharply, and I could see distrust in his eyes. I hoped he could see the same in mine.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Like the deputy told you, I’m a private detective.”
“Where are those keys?”
I didn’t respond. If he was looking for any more answers, he was going to have to give me some first.
“Where’s Lester Cordell?” I asked.
The man and woman exchanged glances, but neither answered my question. In the silence I felt my pressure gauge click up a few notches. I wanted to get the couple outside and away from the sheriff’s office—that way I could ask my questions with a bit more enthusiasm.
I pointed toward the door and said, “Why don’t we take a walk?”
The couple didn’t budge. After another exchange of glances, the man took a step toward me and whispered, “Who hired you?”
“Yoo-hoo,” Barbara called from her throne behind the counter. “Mr. Reed. Sheriff Byrd would like a word with you.”
I turned and gave Barbara another of my best grins. When I turned back, the couple were walking out the front door. I was headed in their direction when a hand grabbed my shoulder. It belonged to one of the deputies who’d scowled at me earlier.
“This way,” he said, pulling me back into the lion’s den.
* * *
Sheriff Byrd was sitting behind his desk, his chin cradled between interlocked fingers. His jowls seemed to be hanging lower than usual, and I wondered if he had to prop up his face to keep it from dripping off his skull.
Byrd pointed to a seat opposite his desk, and I sat down. I figured he’d been talking to his Charleston PD friend Emory and wanted to grill me more about the storage unit affair.
“Son, I’ve been sheriff of this county for over thirty years,” Byrd finally said.
Whew, I thought. We’re going to talk about Byrd’s favorite subject—himself.
“Now, we don’t have the same sorts of problems a big city has, but I’ve still seen my share of wickedness. Evil doesn’t constrain itself to the city. No sir. It can manifest in a person’s soul no matter where he lives. Do you know the first case that came across my desk after I was elected sheriff?”
“Someone set a dumpster on fire?”
Byrd scoffed. “A body was found in the woods up the river in Cruso. Actually not too far from the cabin you’re renting. A couple of boys hunting squirrels found it, half-hidden under a pile of leaves. Bullet hole in the back of the head. Put the fear of God in those boys, I’ll tell you that. They ran home and called it in, nervous as all get-out. It was my first week as sheriff and there I was, standing out in those damp woods staring at the first murder this county had seen in five years.”
Byrd looked out his office window as if he were pulling memories through the glass.
“The deceased’s name was Randy Pless, thirty-two years old. Now, do you think that boy ever thought he’d be lying dead in the woods up in Cruso? Shot through the head like a lame horse? All his years on this earth just leading to those woods and that pile of leaves?”
Byrd looked back at me, his eyes reaching toward me as if I might actually have answers to those questions.
“Did you catch who did it?” I asked, trying to get this story to a conclusion and me out of Byrd’s office.
“At the time we didn’t have a clue. Randy had never been in any trouble, and there was no clear motive for the murder. We interviewed everyone he associated with—family, friends, coworkers over at the mill. We must have talked to fifty different people, and not one of them could shed any light on why Randy was dead. But then I set up an interview with Randy’s boss, a man named Larry Inman. As soon as Larry sat across from me, I knew he was guilty, but he swore up and down he didn’t know what happened to Randy. ‘Liked the guy,’ he said. ‘Hard worker and a good Christian man.’ But I knew he was lying. You can call it instinct or gut; it doesn’t matter. I knew the truth as soon as I looked into his eyes.”
Byrd stared straight at me, or rather into me. I wondered what truth he thought he was seeing.
“Were you right?” I asked.
“Yessir, I was right. It took a while, but I finally got a confession out of him. Seems Larry thought there was something going on between his wife and Randy. Fooling around while he was at work and this and that. Larry said he’d confronted Randy about it but Randy swore there was nothing to it. But Larry’s wife egged him on; seemed she liked the idea of him being jealous. So she kept stirring the pot, and Larry kept boiling. Then one morning Larry decides to put an end to it, so he asks Randy to go up to Cruso with him to hunt ginseng. They’d been out in the woods for less than fifteen minutes when Larry put a bullet in the back of Randy’s skull. Larry piled some dead leaves over the body and went home and ate dinner. Evil. There’s not another word for it. And I saw it in his eyes before he ever spoke a word.”
I glanced at my watch, the universal symbol for Is this going to take much longer?
“My gut is telling me something about you, son. Something I’m not comfortable with.”
“I’m not a jealous husband. I’m just a writer.”
“Well, you don’t seem to be doing much of it. From what I hear, you’re spending your time looking for weeds in other people’s gardens.”
I didn’t know what Byrd was referring to. My interest in the keys? Or me asking around about the rumors of the missing gold? Or maybe Byrd’s friend Emory had told him Greg was being investigated for criminal activity and that I was probably involved somehow. And now here I was, “sniffing ’round the sheriff’s department,” as Dale had put it. Maybe Byrd thought I was looking for an opportunity to find some bad apples in his own crate.
“You know, Sheriff, after we broke guacamole together, I thought we were going to be friends.”
> Byrd leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “I am being your friend. I’m telling you, don’t waste your time chasing what’s not there. You just finish your book. Then head on back to the Lowcountry.”
So, like a high school principal, Byrd had called me into his office to give me a long-winded lecture. And like my own high school principal had been, he was wrong about me. Byrd thought I was evil, but I wasn’t even evil lite. I’d hurt some people in the past, both physically and emotionally, but I’d done the most damage to myself. I’d spent a long time circling the drain, and those I’d hurt had just gotten caught up in the swirl. I wasn’t trouble and I wasn’t looking for trouble. I was just trying to maintain a buzz, write a book, and give a guy back his keys.
“Are we done here, Sheriff?”
Byrd picked up a pen from his desk and studied it as if it were a crucial piece of evidence.
“That man who was in that storage unit with you—I hear he’s a sergeant with the Charleston PD.”
“That’s right,” I said. “He’s actually my brother-in-law.”
“According to my friend Jack, someone beat that man like a rented mule.”
I looked at my watch again.
“I suppose it was the same person who broke into that storage unit and shot you,” Byrd said.
“I don’t know, Sheriff. I told you I’m not a detective anymore.”
“On the other hand, that man could have been beaten before the shooting occurred. Doesn’t make sense to shoot one man, then beat another one; that is, unless you only have one bullet in your gun.”
Byrd’s gaze moved from the pen to me. I stared right back at him and wondered what he was thinking. If he could spot a liar, he was looking at one, but not a very good one.
“Well, I hear Internal Affairs is on it now,” I said. “That should tell you something about what happened down there.”
Byrd leaned back and frowned.
“Jack didn’t mention that.”
I cocked my head. Emory not knowing about the IA investigation surprised me, but I hoped Byrd didn’t notice.
“Although he did mention the name Perry Long,” Byrd continued.
“He’s an old friend of mine,” I said. “He’s in charge of the robbery investigation. You should talk to him if you want to know what’s going on.”
“Now, I find that very interesting, son. That a man would be put in charge of an investigation involving his good friend. Is that how they do things down in Charleston? Because up here we call that a conflict of interest.”
I shrugged and stayed silent.
Byrd stared at me for a long moment, then nodded as if we had come to an understanding. We both stood.
When I reached the doorway, Byrd said, “Good luck with your book, son. No offense, but I hope not to see you again.”
I turned and nodded.
“The feeling’s mutual, Sheriff.”
22
Since I was in town, I swung by the grocery store before heading back to the cabin. After I commandeered a shopping cart, I pulled out my phone and tapped the icon for my banking app. Checking my bank account was always a distressing exercise. Waiting for the balance to appear was like watching the window of a Magic 8 Ball and not knowing if the answer would be YES DEFINITELY or OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD.
When our parents died, Laura and I had both inherited $110,000. Our folks didn’t have much savings, but the home they’d raised us in was paid off, and it sold ten days after Laura listed it with a Charleston realtor. A month later I received a certified check. It was more money than I’d ever seen. That same day I drove to the Mercedes dealership in my ’88 Camry with the cracked windshield and intermittent air conditioning. A couple of hours later I parked my new $65,000 Mercedes SUV on King Street and walked into the Apple store. I dropped a couple of grand on a new laptop and then strolled down to M. Dumas & Sons and Billy Reid for a new wardrobe. It was the first time I’d had disposable income, and I was disposing of it as fast as I could.
I’d thought my inheritance would last forever, like water from the kitchen faucet, available any time I raised the handle. But now, according to my banking app, my balance was down to $2,500. That would have to last until I sold the book I’d not written or got a job. Both seemed unlikely.
I bypassed the produce aisle and filled my cart with the essentials: tortillas, black beans, shredded cheese, and frozen pizzas, comfort food for someone with constant queasiness. For a small-town grocery, the store’s beer selection was impressive, and I picked up multiple six-packs from breweries in Waynesville, Asheville, and Brevard. When I checked out, the bill came to a little over $100—eighty in beer and twenty in groceries.
* * *
I was sitting on the deck drinking and shivering when I heard a siren coming up the driveway. A few minutes later the sliding glass door opened and Dale appeared, holding a brown growler. Of course he was still in his uniform.
“What the hell are you doing sitting out here?” he said. “It’s cold as fuck.”
“What can I say. I love the view.”
“It’s dark, dickhead. Get your ass inside.”
* * *
Dale sat at the kitchen table while I drained the rest of my beer and took a fresh one out of the fridge. When I sat down, I pointed to the Dark Secret IPA logo on the side of Dale’s growler.
“I’m surprised you have any of that left,” I said. “I thought you’d drink it all the night we got it.”
“I did. This is a new one. Got three more at the house.”
“You went back to Long Branch? Were you looking for beer or for Daiquiri?”
“Both. I went after I left the courthouse. She wasn’t there; they said it was her day off.”
I imagined Daiquiri diving under the bar when she saw Dale walk in.
“But I did see Diana,” Dale said. “She asked about you. I told her you were a peckerhead.”
“You’re going to have to make up your mind. Is it dickhead or peckerhead? Because I keep getting confused.”
“I might throw in shitheel now and again to keep you guessin’.”
“What did she say?”
“She wanted to know if you got her email.”
While Dale sat across from me, swigging from his growler, I opened up the computer. An email from [email protected] was the at the top of the unread list.
Hey!
I’m free tomorrow night and I’d love to hear more about your book. I’ll bring guac & chips and some beer. Send me directions to your place. I’ll be there at 6:30.
Diana
I closed the laptop and sighed.
“So what did she say?” Dale asked.
“She wants to come over tomorrow night.”
“You know, she ain’t as sexy as I first thought. Them weird lines in her face are fucked up.”
“You mean her dimples?”
“Yeah, they look like little ass cracks in her cheeks.”
I sipped my beer and thought about the idea of Diana coming over. She was gorgeous, smart, and owned a brewery. It was like a genie granting me all three wishes at the same time. But what did I have to offer someone like her? Unless she’d rubbed a lamp and wished for an alcoholic, pill-popping, temperamental slacker, she was going to be disappointed. But I figured one date wouldn’t hurt, even though it would probably be our last as well as our first.
“So how’d you leave it with that couple at the sheriff’s department?” Dale said. “They give you more shit about them keys?”
“Yeah. Thanks for bailing on me, by the way. You made me look like an idiot.”
“You don’t need my help with that.”
Dale smiled and unsnapped the pocket on his uniform shirt. He wedged his beefy fingers into it and pulled out a small piece of paper.
“Jeff and Becky Ingram,” he said, reading from the paper.
“Who are they?”
“That couple that wants them keys so bad. I went outside and wrote down their license plate. I ran the tag
after you left.”
Dale was a lot of things: obese, ornery, opinionated, and occasionally pretty clever.
“That Jeff fucker’s been busted a few times. Same petty shit as Cordell.”
“What else did you find out?” I asked.
“Vehicle’s registered in both names. They live over in Banner Elk.”
“Where is that?”
“Couple hours north of here. Up near App State.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Appalachian State University. Did you know you can major in beer making there? I shit you not. You can get a degree in brewing beer. Wish they offered that shit when I was going to school.”
“You still would have failed.”
Dale shrugged; he knew I was right.
“What about Pucker Up Brewery?” I said. “Did you find anything about that? I searched online the day I first met them, but nothing came up.”
“I dug around the internet a little bit, but I didn’t see nothing. Hell, these hippies start making beer in their garage and suddenly think they’s running a brewery. They come up with a name and slap it on T-shirts and stickers and shit, but they ain’t making no more beer than me and you are.”
I closed Diana’s email and pulled up Facebook. I typed Jeff Ingram Banner Elk into the search field, and soon the young man I’d first met on the parkway was staring back at me. I clicked on his image, and his Facebook profile filled the screen. It showed nothing more than his name and his profile picture. His photos, friends, and posts were all private. I went through the same routine with Becky and got the same result.
“What made you get their tag number?” I asked. “You’ve given me nothing but shit about those keys since the day I found them. Why the sudden interest?”
“I don’t like their attitude. Especially that Jeff motherfucker, with them tight jeans and little hat. Come down here and act like we’re a bunch of backwards rednecks. I’d like to take that hat and shove it up his ass.”
“I’d pay money to see that.”
“Shit, I’d pay money to do it.”
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