by Bill Noel
“Mr. Landrum, want a dog treat?” he said with a wide smile exposing crooked front teeth.
Bert’s kept a supply of treats, normally reserved for canines. For some reason, Ty offers me one most every time he sees me in the store. For the record, I’ve never accepted one.
“Ty, thanks for the offer, but I’ll decline.”
“Your loss. What brings you in? Coffee, cinnamon roll, candy bar?”
He knew me well.
“Actually, came to see you.”
“That’s a first. What about?”
“The fire.”
Ty turned to an employee stocking a shelf behind him. “Roger, could you take over a few minutes? I need to find something for Mr. Landrum.”
He did and Ty motioned me to follow him to the back of the store near the restroom.
“Mr. Landrum, since you mentioned fire, then said you came to see me, I assume you know I live, lived, in the building that went up in smoke.”
“I heard someone named Ty lived there. I hoped it wasn’t you, but thought I’d ask. Guess my hoping didn’t make it not true.”
He nodded. “I’ve been working since eleven this morning. I wanted to see the Christmas parade, but that wasn’t to be. A fire engine and two police cars zoomed past, so I went outside where I saw smoke.” He looked toward the door to the office, before whispering, “I sneaked out for fifteen minutes; ran up the street to see what was going on.” He shook his head. “My building was one big bonfire. Everything in it had to be burnt to a crisp.” He stopped and stared at the floor.
“I’m so sorry. What’d you do then?”
“What else could I do? I hightailed it back here. Figured I’d need every penny I could make. Mr. Landrum, I ain’t got clothes other than what you see. Didn’t have much furniture, but what I had is gone, gone.”
“I hate to hear it.”
“Got lucky though.”
“How?”
“Lost.”
“Lost what?”
“Lost, that’s my cat. He’s safe.”
That led to more questions than I could ask in the limited time Ty had before he needed to get back to work.
“Ty, was Lost outside when the fire started?”
“No, was in my car. On cool days like today, I bring him to work. I leave him in the car. When I get breaks, I go out to talk to him. He doesn’t get mad at me, or yell because I’m not checking someone out fast enough.”
“I’m glad, umm, Lost is safe. Any idea what started the fire?”
“Not really. I was afraid to ask, but I think the building was probably a fire trap. It was old, sort of run down. The wiring wasn’t too good.”
“Where are you going to live now that your apartment’s gone?”
“For a while, I can live in my car. I’ve done it before. It’s not much, a twenty-year-old Miata. Heck, it’s only two years younger than me. It’s mighty squinchy to sleep in, but I’ve managed.” He looked toward the front of the store. “I’d better get to work. Can’t afford to lose this job since I don’t have anywhere to stay that ain’t on wheels.”
I repeated I was sorry about his apartment.
“Don’t worry, me and Lost will be okay.”
Chapter Six
The phone jarred me awake. The clock revealed it was seven-fifteen but felt earlier since I had a hard time getting to sleep, having managed to drift off around three. Thoughts about the fire and how lucky the residents had been by not being home dominated those awake hours. Charles’s name popped up on the screen.
“Good morning, Charles. Isn’t it a little early to—”
“Why aren’t you here?” he interrupted.
I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. “Where is here? Why would I be there, wherever it is?”
“The Dog. Duh.”
“Now I know where, how about why?”
“Figured you’d want to know what I learned after you sashayed off with Cindy’s sis and her youngin’.”
After more than a decade of conversations with Charles, talks bordering on Dudespeak, the safest, possibly only response was to say, “I’m on my way.”
“Thought so,” Charles said before hanging up.
The Lost Dog Cafe was Folly’s go-to location for three things: great breakfasts, excellent lunches, and rumors. As I’ve mentioned, my culinary skills coexist with nonexistent. If I want a meal that’s not wrapped in aluminum foil or plastic wrap from Bert’s, the Dog is my prime destination. I could almost walk to the colorful restaurant in my sleep. Today, I may be doing that since I was wiping sleep from my eyes as I headed to meet Charles. Fortunately, mild weather was hanging around. Sunday mornings were busy times for the restaurant located less than a block off Center Street. Two couples waited at the door for a table. Another couple leaned on the low railing decorated with a string of Christmas lights. I was glad Charles had commandeered a table. While it was unseasonably mild, it was too cool for dining on the two patios.
“About time you got here,” said Amber Lewis, one of the restaurant’s longest-term employees. She was one of the first people I met when I arrived on Folly. “Charles has been pestering me so much about when you would arrive, I thought I was going to have to go to your house to drag you out of bed.”
The fifty-year-old server and I dated during my early years on Folly, then morphed into a close friendship. Along with her smile and talent for making customers feel at ease, Amber was one of the island’s top sharers of rumors.
“Amber, I didn’t know I was coming until Charles disturbed my sleep a half-hour ago.”
“I know. He said he couldn’t fathom why you weren’t here when he showed up the second we opened.”
Charles was at a table near the back of the restaurant watching my interaction with Amber. He glanced at his wrist where normal people wore a watch. Charles, anything but normal, didn’t own one. The wrist glance was his way of saying I was late. He was wearing a navy-blue long-sleeve T-shirt with Wheaton in orange on the front.
“What took you so long?”
“Good morning, Charles. Nice day, isn’t it?”
Amber delivered a steaming-hot mug of coffee before Charles could continue chiding me for being late, which, of course, I wasn’t. She asked if I wanted yogurt for breakfast, her effort to get me to eat healthier. I said French toast, my effort to resist her healthy suggestion. She smiled, feigned shock at the selection I chose for breakfast ninety percent or more of the time, then left to place my order.
Charles said, “Want to know about my shirt?”
My friend had a larger selection of T-shirts than all the T-shirt stores on Folly combined. I stopped asking about them years ago. That didn’t stop him from sharing more than I wanted to know.
“No.”
“Wheaton College, it’s in Illinois. Know what it’s got?”
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
“No.”
“One of the oldest and largest Christmas festivals in the good old US of A.”
“Is that why you wanted me to meet you?”
“Nope. That was a bonus, something to brighten your holiday spirit.”
Charles took a bite of bacon, one of the few bites left on his plate, reinforcing he’d been here a while, then said, “Ready for the reason I called this meeting?”
I didn’t even know it was a meeting. “Absolutely.”
“While you were strolling through the streets of Folly with the police chief’s lovely sister and her son, I was plying my well-honed detective skills at the site of the former, six-unit apartment building.”
“I’m certain the Chief was thrilled with your help.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you this early in the day.”
Neither does trivia about Wheaton College, I thought.
I shrugged. “What’d you learn?”
“That’s more like it. The main thing I learned was who lived there.” He took another bite, then nodded like he’d discovered Colonel Sanders’s fried chicken secret ingredients.
“Plan on sharing who?”
“Sure, once I finish enjoying knowing something you don’t know.”
Amber arrived with my breakfast allowing Charles to enjoy his knowledge a moment longer.
I poured syrup on my French toast while Charles finished gloating and started naming the residents.
“First, Janice Raque, the lady you accused of killing the bookie.”
Charles and I met Janice months earlier when she became a prime suspect in the murder of a bookie whose body Charles and I unfortunately discovered. We also managed to catch the killer letting Janice off the hook. At the time, she was married, then her husband left her for a younger woman. After the divorce, she was forced to move out of her condo, but I didn’t know where she’d landed.
“How’d you learn she lived there?”
“Outstanding detective work.”
I stared at him.
“Okay, I was standing behind the police line when Janice tapped me on the arm, pointed to where the second floor used to be, and said, ‘Oh my God, that was my apartment.”
I grinned. “Wow, that’s outstanding detective work.”
“Sarcasm still doesn’t suit you.”
I smiled. “Who else?”
“Someone else you know. Would you believe Neil Wilson?”
I’d met Neil about the same time I’d become acquainted with Janice. In fact, he was another suspect in the bookie’s murder. Neil’s in his late forties, a former college football player, and built like someone I wouldn’t want to argue with. He split his work career between being a bouncer in a bar in downtown Charleston, and part-time cook on Folly at Cal’s Country Bar and Burgers.
“Neil and Janice in the same building. Weird.”
“Neil lived there long before the bookie was killed, Janice moved in because it was the only place she could afford.”
“I suppose you used your outstanding detective talents to learn he lived there.”
“You’re catching on. In fact, I used the age-old detective technique of developing an informant.”
“Which means?”
“Listen closely, you can learn something from this. Ready?”
I nodded.
“I said, ‘Janice, who else lived in the building?’”
I laughed, skipped the sarcasm, and jumped right to, “Who else?”
“That’s where my skills deserted me.”
I shared what I’d learned from Ty. I didn’t attribute my knowledge to any detective skills.
Charles said, “Then, there was one other apartment, the one on the far side of the second floor. No one I talked to knew who rented it. Janice didn’t know her name, but said it was a young, black woman. Janice is nearly sixty, so to her, young could be anyone between twenty and fifty. Janice didn’t know much about the mystery woman. She saw her leaving the apartment a few times. Drives a black Dodge Ram pickup truck.”
“Good job, Charles.”
“You being sarcastic again?”
“Not this time. That’s a lot more than Cindy knew when I called to tell her Rose and Luke were at her house.”
“What’d she tell you?”
“Not much. She speculated the fire started in the vacant apartment in the middle of the first floor. She was fairly certain it was arson.”
“A guy with the Charleston Fire Marshall Division was pulling in as I was leaving.”
“Cindy called them.”
“Speaking of Cindy, tell me about her sister.”
I shared some of what I’d learned about Rose during the walk to Cindy’s house. Charles, being Charles, asked me approximately seven thousand questions ranging from what Rose taught, not just what classes but how many students were in each class, why she got a divorce, what her ex-husband did for a living, ending with did she and Luke have pets when they were in Tennessee.
I was never happier to see anyone more than when Amber returned to refill our mugs. She poured coffee, then said, “Guys, where’re the residents of the building going to live? Christmas is around the corner. Imagine how horrible it is for them.”
I knew the answer for one of the tenants, but only one.
Chapter Seven
I left Charles at the Dog where he stopped to talk with a couple waiting for a table. They had a young border collie making it impossible for Charles to pass without talking to the canine, interrogating the couple about the enthusiastic pup’s name, where the couple was from, and I don’t know what else, since I told him I’d see him later then left him with the couple who I suspected were there for breakfast rather than an inquisition.
It was still warm for December, so I walked to the apartment building, more accurately, to what was left of the building. The smell of burnt debris assailed my nose a block before I got to the site. Part of the rear of the building and the right side were the only remnants of the structure standing. The roof, front wall, plus most of the left side of the building had collapsed and were barely recognizable in the rubble. Puddles of water from the firefighters’ efforts had settled in low-lying sections of the ruins. Few items were identifiable. When the second floor burned through, refrigerators and stoves landed close to the ones in the first-floor units. Burned wood or steel frames were all that was left of the furniture. Glassware was shattered from the heat or from falling from the second floor. One item caught my attention. Inside what had been Rose and Luke’s apartment, there was a blackened Christmas tree stand. The tree I pictured decked out with lights and ornaments, had been cremated.
It was hard to comprehend how five households were turned to worthless remnants in minutes. It may’ve been my imagination, but I thought I smelled gasoline, possibly the accelerant used to spread the fire making it impossible to save much. It was a sad sight to see anytime, but this close to Christmas, it was heartbreaking.
I was so focused on the devastation I didn’t notice a black Dodge Ram pickup parked in the far corner of the deserted lot. The windows were tinted, but from the angle of the sun, I saw the outline of someone in the driver’s seat. I remembered what Janice Raque told Charles about the building’s still-unnamed resident, and what Cindy had said about a Dodge Ram being in the lot during the fire.
As I moved away from the rubble, the truck’s door opened. An African-American female stepped out and smiled. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, thin, roughly five-foot-three, with a short afro, and wearing a dark-gray sweatshirt and black jeans. She hesitated before taking a couple of steps in my direction.
“Hi, I’m Chris Landrum.” I pointed at the pile of burnt wood. “You lived there?”
Her smile turned to a look of surprise. “How’d you know?”
“I wasn’t certain, but someone told me one of the residents drove a truck like yours.”
“Oh.” She stepped closer and held out her hand. “I’m Noelle Ward. Lived on the second floor.”
“I’m terribly sorry about your apartment.”
She shook her head. “Not nearly as sorry as I am. Do you live around here?”
“Near Bert’s. Live here long?”
“Year next month.”
“Did you lose everything?”
She nodded. “What you see is what I have left.”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
She turned to stare at what was left of the building, slowly shook her head, then barely above a whisper said, “Can’t say I wasn’t warned.”
I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. “Sorry, what?”
“It’s not important. Did you hear if everyone is safe?”
Not important wasn’t my impression, but I didn’t push.
“Yes, no one was in the building when it started. Where were you during the fire?”
“Researching something I’m writing. I was walking along the beach, almost made it to the west end of the island. I didn’t know about the fire until late yesterday when I got back. Quite a shock, but glad no one was hurt.”
“What are you writing?”
She sm
iled. “A novel.”
No one’s ever said that to me. “Your first?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it about?”
“Really want to know?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a murder mystery, set on a small imaginary island in Georgia. I picture it a place like Folly. That’s why I moved here. I wanted to get my toes wet living and hanging around somewhere like where my novel takes place. You a reader?”
I smiled. “Afraid not. The newspaper is the extent of my reading material. I do have a friend who claims to have read every mystery novel written since Gutenberg.”
She laughed. “A man after my own heart.”
The more Noelle talked about her book, the more she relaxed, the more her voice, soft-spoken until now, became filled with confidence.
“If you’ve been around here a year, I’m surprised you haven’t met him. His name’s Charles Fowler.”
She leaned on her truck’s fender. “Don’t recall the name, but I may have seen him. I’m terrible with names. He works on Folly?”
“He’s retired. Occasionally, he helps some of the restaurants clean in the busy season. He also delivers local packages for the surf shop. Delivers them on his bike.”
“Sounds like Mr. Fowler could be a character in my book.”
“There’s no doubt he’s a character. If you’re still around and he’s with me, I’ll introduce him. What are your plans now?”
“No idea. I spent last night in my truck.”
“Sorry.”
She smiled. “Don’t be, the space in that big ole’ Dodge is larger than the apartment I lived in while attending college. I still want to live over here. It’s helping with my plot. You don’t know of any little apartments for rent, do you? Don’t want it to be too nice. My protagonist lives in a place I describe as a dump. That’s the kind of apartment I’m looking for.”
“Off the top of my head, I don’t. If you don’t mind giving me your number, I’ll let you know if I hear of something.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Will you be okay until you find a new place?”