Boneyard Beach

by Bill Noel

  “Did you get their names?”

  “No need. Only got the name of the guy who booked the trip and paid with a credit card. He was the one who called today. Damned kid’s name’s Cleveland F. Whitstone.” Mel scowled at his coffee mug. “Have you ever heard a snootier name? F’s probably for Farnsworth.”

  I agreed.

  “If you’re not going to feed me any better and aren’t offering better liquoring, think you could get around to dispensing advice?”

  Mel wasn’t the type to ask for help, and I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but it was time to give it my best shot.

  “If I were in your Adidas, I’d go to the police and tell them the whole thing. It’d be best if they heard it from you than before hearing it from someone else. You don’t know what happened, but from what you said, there’s a good possibility something did. Something bad.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I’ll go with you to tell Chief LaMond.”

  Chief Cindy LaMond was the head of Folly Beach’s Department of Public Safety which included the island’s police and fire department. She was also a close friend.

  Mel leaned back in the chair. “I can damned well take care of it myself.” He folded his arms like, and that’s final!

  I was surprised by his reaction, but shouldn’t have been. Mel was self-sufficient, stubborn, and goal-directed.

  “Tell you what you can do,” he said after a pause. “I want to go back and see if there’s anything to be found.”

  Like a body, I thought.

  “Want to go?”

  Why not? Mel had never asked for anything and I’d always enjoyed rides through the marsh and its ever-changing look and personality. Besides, he had me curious.

  I gave him my best morning smile. “Sure, when?”

  “Now.”

  He stood and looked around the kitchen. “Any grub to go?”

  “Not after you inhaled the Cheetos.”

  “Then grab your gear and let’s haul ass.”

  Chapter Two

  Fifteen minutes after I had grabbed my camera and canvas Tilley hat we pulled up to the hand-painted, wooden sign nailed to a sawed-off telephone pole stanchion, announcing Folly View Marina, Private Property. The marina was less than a mile off-island and just past the Mariner’s Cay condo complex and marina. Folly View had been dubbed the working-man’s marina with its weather-worn dock and two dozen deep-water boat slips. Mel undid the rusty chain that blocked the entrance and pulled the growling V8 into the small, tire-rutted parking lot, slammed on the brakes, and skidded to a halt on the crushed shell, gravel, dirt, and weed-covered pavement. We would’ve made it sooner, but before leaving the island, Mel stopped at the Circle K combination gas station, convenience store, and Subway for three packs of Hostess Twinkies, two packs of Monster Size Slim Jims, and a six-pack of Budweiser.

  “Breakfast, the most important meal of the day,” Mel mumbled as he used his teeth to rip open the Slim Jims package as we crossed the lot and stepped on the floating dock. The smell of decaying fish thwarted my appetite.

  Nine-inch high, black letters reading MAD MEL’S MAGICAL MARSH MACHINE on the side of a Carolina Skiff left no doubt about which craft was Mel’s. Subtle was not a word I’d heard used to describe him. The boat was docked next to an older, smaller version of his skiff.

  Mel nodded to a man working on the neighboring boat’s engine. “Morning, Nemo.”

  “Back to you, Double M,” replied the thirty-something, chubby gentlemen about my height at five-foot ten, with a black, Charleston RiverDogs ball cap pulled down touching his ears. He turned from looking at us to the sky. “Don’t get wet out there.”

  A wall of black clouds had gathered in the west. Mel followed the other man’s gaze. “They’re heading inland. Ain’t coming our way.”

  Minutes later, Mel was navigating the narrow five-mile-long waterway that snaked its way through the marsh behind Folly Beach and opened onto Lighthouse Inlet, the body of water that separated Folly from Morris Island to the north. Mel took a right at the inlet; the iconic, and unfortunately deteriorating, Morris Island Lighthouse was surrounded by water on our left and the Boneyard Beach to the right.

  I leaned closer to Mel and yelled over the roar of the engine, “Who was that at the dock?”

  Mel turned his head in my direction and yelled, “What?”

  I repeated the question.

  “Goes by Captain Nemo,” Mel yelled. “Real name’s Nathan something. He’s a competitor. Runs a tiny-assed marsh tour and fishing business. All he does is work on his boat. It’s broken down more than it works. Nemo’s okay but doesn’t say much. Hang on!” Mel yelled over the roar of the boat’s huge Evinrude.

  Before I could grip the rail, Mel plowed the craft onto the beach. The bow jerked up as it skidded on shore. My Nikon was strapped around my neck which was the only thing that saved it from leaving the boat ahead of me. Instead, it clanked against the seat and my elbow hit the bulkhead.

  Mel heard the camera hit, looked back at me, and smiled. “Told you to hang on.”

  I looked at my camera; there wasn’t any apparent damage, and then glared at Mel. “How about more notice next time?”

  Two pelicans had been perched on a log half-in the water and watched our abrupt entrance to their serene environment. One looked at the other and they lumbered off to find a less human-infested resting spot.

  Mel ignored my question. “These are the coordinates where we hit land last night.” He pointed to his left. “Or it was a little more that way.”

  I didn’t see evidence that anything had been here within the past twenty-four hours. Mel said that it had been low tide so overnight’s incoming tide would have obliterated footprints. The beach was thirty yards wide and then patches of sea oats and various marsh weeds began taking over. There were a handful of dead oak trees rising from the sand that reminded me of a horror movie where zombie arms or some Hollywood monster rose out of the earth and grabbed the ankle of an unsuspecting teen. There were more of the twisted, bare, sun, wind, and salt-air bleached oaks closer to the vegetation line. Life had been suffocated out of the trees when the inlet had begun migrating inland over the last 150 years. Life-sustaining freshwater which fed the large trees’ roots was replaced by saltwater as the beachfront eroded. From appearances, we could have been on a deserted island. It took little imagination to see how the area had acquired its nickname.

  “You going to follow me or stare at those damned trees?” Mel screamed.

  He had walked about forty yards from where he had nearly hurled me out of the Magical Marsh Machine and reached down to pick up two empty beer cans.

  “I tried to get the twerps to police the area but it was as dark as the witch’s hat I told you about earlier,” Mel said as I mushed through the sand to where he was standing. “Let’s see if there’s more trash.” He turned and walked away from the water, hesitated, and turned toward me. “Holler if you find a dead body.”

  I said that he could count on it and I walked away from him but still toward the thickening vegetation. A rumble of thunder broke the silence and I glanced up. Ominous black clouds were rolling toward us and the short, windswept-shaped trees began to sway with the increasing wind. The distinct smell of rain filled the air.

  “Should we head back?” I yelled.

  Mel was twenty yards to my left and looking over the lip of a concrete foundation that was one of the remaining remnants of the Folly Beach Coast Guard LORAN station that inhabited the island’s north end until 1980. Graffiti artists had adopted the military adage that if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move, paint it. The military would have gone apoplectic at what was painted on their deserted foundations, but couldn’t argue that it’d lacked creativity. Mel didn’t find litter from last night’s escapade or a body within the foundation’s walls and walked to a narrow path that led to the edge of the marsh. He ignored my question; a talent that he had come close to perfecting.

  I kept glan
cing at the darkening sky and at Mel as he walked deeper into the area nearest the marsh. He was focused on something out of my line of sight. I was more focused on the increasing movement of the charcoal-black clouds and thunder that sounded like it was just on the other side of the dune; the clouds that Mel had proclaimed were going inland.

  “Damn!” Mel screamed.

  During my first week on Folly, I was within a two hundred yards of where I now stood. I had been minding my own business and photographing the sunrise behind the lighthouse when I heard a gunshot and moments later stumbled on the body of a seriously-dead Charleston developer. My dreams of a peaceful retirement were shattered and the next few weeks my life was turned upside down, not to mention that I was almost killed in the process.

  Thoughts of that morning washed over me as I rushed to Mel, a few yards away. Instead of a corpse, I found Mel hopping on one foot and swatting at an army of ants climbing up his leg, chewing flesh as they went. He had trampled on their colony.

  I swallowed a smile as he continued to curse and swat the small but painful insects. I also watched where I stepped.

  Mel had hopped back to the beach when the storm clouds unleashed a torrent of rain on Boneyard Beach, Mel, the Magical Marsh Machine, and the person who had asked Mel if we should head back.

  It took a couple of minutes to dislodge the boat from the rain-drenched sand and back into water deep enough for Mel to start the engine. He spewed a multitude of profanities that he had acquired from twenty years in the military as he navigated through the curvy stream on the return trip to the Folly View Marina. He had pulled his camouflaged fatigue cap down as far as he could on his head to help block the windswept, pelting rain from his eyes. I sat behind him and was glad that my Tilley provided much more protection from the elements. I couldn’t help but smile as he continued to elevate his left leg and smack real and imaginary ants.

  Other than profanely telling me not to drip on his precious seats, Mel said little on our return ride from the marina to my house. I asked if he had learned anything from the soaking trip to Boneyard Beach.

  “Two things,” he said as we crossed the new bridge to Folly twenty miles per hour over the posted limit. “Learned that we didn’t do a good job policing the area last night, and that the damned rain clouds didn’t go where they were supposed to.”

  I didn’t think missing two empty beer cans was a poor policing job, but did think Captain Nemo’s weather forecast was more accurate than Mel’s. I chose not to mention it to my chauffeur. What I did do was remind him to tell Chief LaMond about the call he had received and what he had remembered about the possibly ill-fated excursion.

  “I heard you the first time,” he barked.

  Chapter Three

  I had spent the majority of my working life in the human resources department of a large health care company in Kentucky. Many of the issues I dealt with were contentious, repetitive, and occasionally rewarding; but overall, the corporate environment with multiple layers of bureaucracy was, to put it kindly, tedious. Excitement, adventure, close friendships, and an overwhelming desire to get out of bed and go to the office each day were in short supply. On the other hand, it paid well, had regular hours, and if one didn’t mind a rigid, rules-driven environment, it was a pleasant place to work.

  And then along came retirement, Folly Beach, and Charles Fowler. Charles was two years my junior, twenty-five pounds lighter, two inches shorter, and had thirty years seniority over me on the quirky island and in retirement. He had moved to Folly from Detroit at the ripe young age of thirty-four and hadn’t held a steady job since.

  In addition to stumbling on a dead body my first week on Folly, I had met Charles, the man whom I would have bet my life savings on that I would never, yes, never, have become friends with. Thankfully, no one had offered me that bet. For reasons known only to the deities who rule the universe, Charles had become the closest thing I ever had to a brother, confidant, and close friend. Over the years, I had taught him photography; he had taught me how to goof off. I had taught him … well, I can’t think of anything else I had taught him; but he had given me countless lessons on not taking things seriously, how to see the good in everyone, regardless of their station in life or degree of obnoxiousness, and how to overcome my lifetime of rigidity.

  Charles and I had lived through encounters with murderers, threats and attempts on our lives, and be it through skill or pure luck, we had helped the police put a few evil folks behind bars and in one instance, helped send a murderer to hell.

  “So it’s final,” Charles said.

  I nodded.

  We were sitting in two rickety chairs in the small storeroom, break room, and all-purpose gathering area, behind the showroom at Landrum Gallery.

  “September first?” Charles said as he ran his hand through his thinning hair.

  “Yes.”

  “Three and a half months?” he said.

  One more nod.

  Charles leaned back in the chair and I stared at the large, blue, UTD on his long-sleeve T-shirt. He looked down at the shirt.

  “Like it?” he asked. “University of Texas at Dallas. They’re the comets; mascot’s called Temoc, that’s comet spelled backwards.”

  Charles owned as many T-shirts—most college and university logoed, and all long sleeved—as he did books and he had as many books as the Library of Congress. I had quit asking him about the shirts years ago, but that had never stopped him from offering tidbits about them.

  I lied. “Interesting.”

  “Positive?”

  I figured he wasn’t making sure that I thought his shirt was interesting and was verifying that the gallery would be closing in September. Charles was good at many things; at awkward transitions, he was exceptional.

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ve been over this many times and you know I can’t continue to lose money. It’s time.”

  “And we’re only going to open Saturday and Sunday until then?”

  We had also had this discussion more than once. Charles figured that if he said it enough times, I’d change my mind. When I opened the gallery seven years ago, he assumed the position of sales manager. I say assumed, because I had never asked him to work here nor had I paid him a dime for the work he’d done. He’d said he preferred it that way so he wouldn’t have to deal with the “Feds” which meant the Internal Revenue Service. A while back he promoted himself to executive sales manager. From what I was paying him, I was in no position to object.

  “Yes,” I said to the Saturday and Sunday question.

  He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Okay,” he whispered.

  I felt like a heel.

  My cell phone rang and yanked me out of my misery.

  “Morning, Cindy,” I said, after seeing Cindy LaMond on the screen.

  “Don’t think I agree,” Chief LaMond said. “I’m sitting in my car at the end of the road on the old Coast Guard property. Sweat’s running down my face, the danged sun’s in my eyes, my polished shoes are all mucked up with wet sand and my socks are speckled with sandspurs.” She took a deep breath. “And, oh yeah, I just got finished ogling a stinky corpse. And you want to be cheery?”

  This was not the way I wanted to be distracted from Charles’s distress over the gallery’s closing. I knew precisely where Cindy was. A locked gate at the end of East Ashley Avenue stopped public vehicles from accessing the former Coast Guard property, but police and fire officials could unlock it and proceed to the end of the paved road and the beach. She was also no more than three hundred yards from where Mel and I had stepped ashore yesterday.

  “A drowning?” I asked as calmly as I could muster.

  Charles looked up from the table and stared at the phone.

  “Let me think,” Cindy said. “Body’s fifty yards back from the high-tide line; it’s up a path from the beach to the marsh; in the middle of some straggly old trees. It’s half covered with a bunch of palmetto leaves; and, oh yeah, his head’s smashed in. Drowning,
don’t think so, but hey, I’m only the lowly police chief. COD will come from folks with a higher pay grade and medical-school learnin’.”

  “You said his head, so it’s a guy,” I said.

  Charles leaned close to the phone and struggled to hear Cindy’s side of the conversation.

  “Can’t slip anything by you,” she said.

  I tapped Speaker on the phone so Charles wouldn’t fall out of the chair listening.

  “How long’s he been there?” I asked. “Know who he is?”

  “The ME’s here now and thinks not more than a couple of days, but will have a better idea later. Don’t know who he is, no ID on the body.”

  “Age?” I asked and gave a silent prayer that he was an old man.

  “Early 20s. Listen, Chris, I’ve got to go. I knew you’d want to know since you’re such a Nosy Nellie.”

  “Quick question,” I said. “Has Mel Evans contacted you?”

  “No, why?”

  “Just wondering,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t believe me.

  I heard the muffled sounds of someone talking to Cindy. “On my way,” she said to the other voice.

  “Don’t forget the party tonight, Chris,” she said and was gone.

  I won’t, I thought, but it wasn’t the party I was thinking about.

  Chapter Four

  Reasons—excuses—to have parties on Folly Beach have been footloose and plentiful. St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, local events like the Sea and Sand Festival, Folly Gras, or special events like “I saw a dolphin, let’s celebrate,” or “Clint’s got a case of beer, party’s on,” can gather a crowd. So I wasn’t surprised when Cindy’s shorter-half, Larry, had called to invite me to a zero party. I didn’t ask what it meant, I’d asked when and where.

  Three days before the event I had run into Cindy at Mr. John’s Beach Store and she told me that the zero party was to celebrate two memorable birthdays that ended in zero and which fell within two weeks of each other: Cindy’s 50th and Larry’s 60th. They had decided to host the party since they figured no one else would appreciate the calendar-unique event as much as they would. I told her that it wasn’t true, but we both knew that she was right, and besides, she had the nicest yard for parties of anyone I knew.