by Bill Noel
The evening was cool for May so I walked six blocks to the LaMonds’s home on East Indian Avenue. Cindy and Larry moved into the attractive, elevated, house five years ago when they got married. Behind it was their private, narrow wooden walkway that traversed a section of the marsh and ended at the Folly River. The house would have cost much more than the local hardware store owner and a public servant could afford but Larry had inherited the property from Randolph Hall, who had owned Pewter Hardware until he left it to Larry fourteen years ago. If Hall had lived anywhere other than on Folly, he would have been considered eccentric. In addition to owning the hardware store, Hall had inherited a fortune, had no living relatives and left the store and house to Larry and the balance of his estate to area animal shelters. Larry had tried to turn down the more-than-generous inheritance, but Hall had crafted his will so Larry couldn’t disclaim the store, nor could he sell it for ten years. Larry had hidden it well, but he was embarrassed by the windfall and felt that he hadn’t deserved it.
I heard voices coming from behind the house and walked around to the backyard instead of going to the front door. Several people were gathered on the large, crushed-shell patio. White smoke poured out of a high-end, stainless-steel gas grill at the far corner of the yard. Larry waved smoke out of his face and was swinging around tongs that were as long as his arm. He wore an apron with Hell if I know if it’s done! in red script on the front. Larry was five-foot-one in elevator sneakers and had often been asked if he’d been a jockey. He hated horses and had learned over the years to smile and say no, rather than spew insults. The apron ended at his white socks. He looked flustered but by holding the tongs showed that he knew more about cooking than I did. I wasn’t inclined to offer assistance.
Cindy leaned against the wooden rail on the pier and was talking to Brandon, Larry’s only full-time employee, and to a tall, trim couple I didn’t know. Cindy saw me at the corner of the house and waved me over. I shook Brandon’s hand and Cindy introduced me to her next-door-neighbors, the Muenstermans. I suspected that they had passed the zero milestones that the party was celebrating.
“I see Larry has things under control,” I said with a grin.
Cindy laughed. “I gave him one rule before he started the grill. It had to be at least twenty feet from the house. I didn’t want my fire department showing up.”
“New grill?”
She looked at the smoke billowing from the appliance. “It’s debut, special order. He got a humongous discount because he buys a bunch of cheaper models from the company. In my government world, it’s called a bribe. In addition to bellowing boss smoke signals, that one’s supposed to do everything including getting cable TV and all thirty-seven ESPN channels.” She shook her head.
“Hope it can cook burgers,” I said.
Cindy continued to watch the smoke. “It’s no accident that I have Woody’s Pizza on speed dial.”
Brandon excused himself and left to help Larry, and the Muenstermans drifted toward the bar.
“Where’s Karen?” Cindy asked.
Karen Lawson was a detective in the Charleston County Sheriff’s office and the woman I’d been dating for four years. She was also the daughter of Folly’s former police chief and current mayor, Brian Newman, a fact that occasionally made my life interesting.
“She left this morning for a two-week training session in Charlotte. Something about making her a better detective.”
“I doubt that’s possible. She’s already the best the sheriff has.”
Cindy’s Folly Beach Department of Public Safety provided police services for the town but the county sheriff’s office investigated the more serious crimes on the island. Karen had handled all the major crimes on Folly until about two years ago, when politics and petty disputes raised their ugly heads and in his infinite stupidity, the sheriff decided she shouldn’t work cases where her father was chief and now mayor.
“Speaking of detectives,” I said, “know more about the body?”
“Not . . .” she looked over my shoulder toward the corner of the house and interrupted herself. “Holy crapola, he came.”
I turned, followed her gaze, and echoed, “Holy crapola!”
“Come with me,” Cindy said as she pushed herself away from the wooden railing.
“What’s he doing here?”
“In a moment of monumental foolhardiness, I invited him,” Cindy said and smiled in the direction of her newest arrival, Brad Burton, and his wife, Hazel.
Brad had retired from the sheriff’s office six months ago and moved to Folly. In what must have had the irony-gods giggling, the Burtons became my next door neighbors. I had had one brief conversation with Brad since they moved, but had never spoken to Hazel. She had spent most of her time preparing their house in Charleston to be sold. During Burton’s last few years as a detective, our paths had crossed several times, none positive. He had been Detective Lawson’s partner and investigated the murder that I had stumbled across eight years ago. He pegged me as the murderer and had never forgotten that he was wrong. I had stuck my nose in his business on few occasions since and he had treated me with distain. From my perspective, he had been a terrible detective; he was lazy, rude, and all-around incompetent. To reach the rank that he had achieved, he had to be better than I’d speculated, but it seemed that the closer he’d come to retirement, the closer he had come to worthless.
Cindy reached to shake his hand. “Welcome Detect … Brad.”
“Thanks for the invitation, Chief,” he said as he shook her hand. “Meet my wife, Hazel.”
“Nice to meet you, Hazel. Please call me Cindy.”
I stood a few feet behind Cindy and watched her exude more charm, smiles, and slobber than I had ever seen from her. I got a sugar high from watching.
Brad noticed me standing behind Cindy and offered a weak smile. Hazel walked over. “Hi, Chris, I’m Hazel. I’ve seen you in the yard but haven’t had a chance to talk. Brad’s told me a lot about you.”
I followed Cindy’s lead and smiled. “I bet he has.”
We spent a few seconds talking about the weather before Cindy pointed the Burton’s toward the bar and told them to help themselves.
Cindy took my elbow. “Let’s check on Chef Emeril LaLarry. Looks like a forest fire over there.” She led me toward the grill. “Honest, I only invited Burton because he was new here and had been a cop.”
A cop who had no use for the Folly Beach force, I thought.
“Who would’ve thought he would come?” Cindy continued before we reached the grill and Larry who waved smoke out of his face and coughed.
“How can you tell when these little buggers are done?” Larry asked as Cindy joined him in waving the smoke away.
I hadn’t realized how prophetic his apron was.
Cindy took the mitt from the alleged chef and lifted the top of the oversized grill. More smoke bellowed out and twenty-five former beef patties appeared through the smoke. They were about thirty seconds from cremation. I’d seen juicier charcoal briquettes.
“Dear,” Cindy said, and gritted her teeth, “I believe these were done five months ago.” She turned the grill off and turned to me. “What’d I tell you about Woody’s?”
Larry shook his head. “The freakin’ sales rep didn’t tell me that this thing’d get hot enough to start a nuclear reaction.”
Larry and Cindy conferred and she called Woody’s to order half-dozen pizzas and then announced that the smoke-signal exhibition was over and that everyone should grab another drink and that food would arrive shortly.
I left the hosts discussing how the grilling had gone astray and walked over to Cal Ballew, a former country music “star” who owned one of Folly’s more popular bars, officially titled Cal’s Country Bar and Burgers. He had an uncanny resemblance to Hank Williams Sr., wore a sweat-stained Stetson that had travelled thousands of miles with the six-foot three inch crooner, during his forty-plus years touring bars, nightclubs, and anywhere else that would allow him t
o perform. His lone hit record was on the charts in 1962. In the spirit of Folly-fashion, Cal’s Stetson was complimented by a faded-black golf shirt, shamrock-green short shorts, and cowboy boots. I counted Cal as a good friend.
“Where’s your guitar?” I asked as he dangled his arm over my shoulder.
Cal was known to start singing country classics wherever two or more people were gathered.
“Arthritis in my strummin’ fingers. Old age is travelling by jet; used to come by train. Way too fast, way too fast. I moseyed past another big zero birthday last year.”
“Seven?”
He nodded and bowed.
Cal leaned closer and asked if the latest arrival was Detective Burton. I told him yes and that it was now Brad Burton. Cal said thank God and looked toward the river. “What do you know about the body they found?”
I cringed and told him not much.
That would change for the worse.
Charles, usually the first to arrive at an event and thirty minutes before the announced time, appeared next. He looked around and spotted me and was at my side before I could wave him over.
“What’d you learn about the murder?” he asked.
Words like hello and hi were nearly extinct on the barrier island and I had begun to feel disoriented whenever I heard a conversation starting with one of them. It had been weeks since I had experienced that feeling.
“Nothing you don’t know.”
He waved a homemade, wooden cane around the yard; a cane with no apparent purpose other than to be his constant companion. “You’re telling me that you’ve been right here in the chief’s yard and haven’t cornered her with a passel of questions?”
Somewhere in Charles’s vivid, and often disconcerting, imagination, he believed he was a private detective, more accurately, the owner, president, and sole full-time employee of CDA—Charles’s Detective Agency. What’s more frightening, he thought that I was a part-time employee of his imaginary business.
I took a sip of wine and shook my head while in the back of it I was conflicted by what Mel had told me. I knew if I shared it with Charles, he would have us going off half-cocked and in warp speed trying to solve a murder that was none of our business. I also knew that if Charles learned that I knew something related to the death of the young man, I would need an emotional suit of armor to deflect his wrath. The party was becoming less festive.
“Come on.” Charles headed toward Cindy and waved for me to follow.
Cindy was talking to Dude who had arrived while Charles was complaining that I wasn’t doing my job and leaving valuable information about the murder on the table. Dude, an expert on all things celestial, both astronomy and astrology, was telling Cindy about her astrological sign and what fate had in store for her. I didn’t hear all of her response, but it sounded like she didn’t give an “ass’s ass” unless it involved losing thirty pounds.
Dude’s head moved like a bobble-head doll. “Nope, Chieftress.”
Charles squeezed between the aging hippie and in her mind the thirty pound overweight police chief. “Don’t mean to interrupt.”
“Did too,” Dude said. “Me be jawin’ with Chieftress. You be steppin’ on my words.” He folded his arms over his glow-in-the-dark florescent tie-dyed T-shirt. “Word book say that be meaning of interruption.”
Charles looked at Dude. “Sorry, you’re right.” He then turned to Cindy who had stepped back to see the outcome of Dude versus Charles. “Chris wanted me to ask what you know about the murder.”
I looked at Charles out of the corner of my eye and shrugged in Cindy’s direction.
The chief rolled her eyes. “Listen good, Charles. This is all I’m going to say.” She hesitated and waited for him to acknowledge her statement. He gave a slight nod. “The ME says that the victim was killed between seven p.m. and midnight the night before he was found. Death caused by BFT, blunt-force trauma, weapon unknown. The end.” She smiled. “Now, party hardy.”
Charles tapped the cane on the patio. “Who was he?”
Cindy took a sip of the beer that she had been liberally consuming. “What itty-bitty part of the end did you not grast—grasp?”
“Me got it,” Dude said even though he wasn’t the intended recipient of Cindy’s question.
Cindy held out her hand, palm out, in Dude’s direction. “See?”
“Yeah, so who was he?” Charles asked, unfazed by Cindy’s comment.
“Okay Charles, you win,” the chief said. “Here’s the skinny. If you tell anyone, I’ll deny saying it.” Charles leaned closer to Cindy. “I have absolutely, positively no idea who he was. There, you dragged it out of me.” She took another swig of beer.
Dude turned from Cindy to Charles and then back to Cindy. “Enough dead-speak. Where be MM?”
Cindy got a puzzled look on her face. “MM?”
“Mad Mel, Mel Evans,” I said and was pleased since it was one of the few times that I could translate for Dude. I was usually the recipient of Dude-speak translations.
“Oh,” Cindy said. “Guess he’s not here because I didn’t invite him. Why?”
Dude said, “Gregorian calendar say he be member of zero club. We be partying for zero honorees.”
I looked at him with new respect. First because he knew what the Gregorian calendar was and second because it was one of the longest statements I’d heard him make.
“We don’t know Mr. Evans that well and didn’t know about his birthday,” Cindy said. “Sorry. How old is he?”
“MM be the big 780 full moons last week,” the surf shop owner said.
I glanced at Charles who said, “Sixty.”
“Oh,” Cindy said. “If we’d known we would have invited him. Again, sorry.”
“Chieftress forgiven,” Dude said. “Put MM B-day on calendar on wall to invite to next zero party.”
“Good idea,” Cindy said.
It was a good answer since Cindy hadn’t been around Dude as much as Charles and I had so she didn’t know if he was serious, and I doubted that she had a Gregorian calendar on her wall that went out another decade, 130 full moons to Dude.
The aging hippie seemed pleased that he had accomplished his mission, excused himself, and headed across the patio to Larry who was looking toward the road, probably waiting for pizzas.
Cindy watched Dude go and shook her head, a common reaction to my surfing buddy.
“I’m bar bound, want to amble with me?” she asked. Instead of waiting for an answer, she put her arms around Charles and me and led us to the bar.
“Cindy,” Charles said and took a beer out of a tin garbage pail filled with ice and cans of Budweiser, Bud Light, and Coors. “Didn’t Brian Newman turn 70 this year?”
She took a gulp of Bud Light and looked at Charles. “That would be a big yes siree.”
Charles looked around the patio. “Couldn’t he make it?”
“Don’t know. He be in the same group as Mel: uninvited.”
“Why?” Charles asked before I could.
“I didn’t invite anyone I work with. I couldn’t see an upside of having any of them around in the unlikely, highly unlikely, event that I have some sort of out-of-body experience and do something stupid tonight. Catch my drift?”
Charles raised his can of Budweiser in the air; I did the same with my white wine; and Cindy followed with her Bud Light. We toasted her wise decision.
With fresh drinks in hand, the Eagles singing “One of These Nights” from the outdoor speakers, the zero party in full swing, minus Mel and Brian, and with the increasing anticipation of food arriving, it was turning out to be a good night.
That was until Cindy said, “Speaking of Mel, why did you want to know if he’d talked to me?”
Charles’s head jerked in my direction. “Yeah, why?”
I ignored him and said to Cindy, “Nothing. He said he wanted to talk to you and I wondered if he had.
“Nope,” she said and looked at Larry who was paying the pizza delivery man.
<
br /> Charles tapped his cane on my foot and glared at me. He knew there was more to my question; after all, he was a faux-detective.
I whispered, “Later.”
He stabbed the cane into my foot as the sounds of the Rolling Stones mumbling “Brown Sugar” filled the air. “Count on it.”
Arrival of the pizzas made Charles forget Mel and why I wanted to know if he had talked to the chief. Cal, Cindy, Larry, Charles, and I had gathered around one of the never-used, expensive patio tables that Larry had conned another vendor out of so we could feast on hockey-puck, cremated hamburger replacement pizzas. Good fortune, and a lack of chairs at our table, had sent Brad and Hazel Burton to the other table to break pizza bread with Brandon, the Muenstermans, and Dude. I’d be surprised if that combination wouldn’t inspire the Muenstermans to put their house on the market.
“Prince, or his name de jour, was singing “Purple Rain,” a slight breeze was keeping the temperature comfortable, and Woody’s pizza was ten times better than whatever Larry could have produced from the grill.
“Ya’ll hear about the .5 club?” Cal asked after we’d refreshed our drinks.
“The what club?” Larry asked and then sipped his martini.
I thought it was an excellent question.
“Point 5,” Cal said as if it was self-explanatory. “You know, point like a dot and five like the number on the other side of four and shy of six.”
“So what the chicken turd does it mean?” Cindy asked.
She crudely spoke for all of us.
Cal leaned back in the chair and tilted his Stetson up and away from his eyes. “Walkin’ group.”
I was beginning to think that he was taking anti-verbosity lessons from Dude.
“What about it?” I asked.
“You know old man Carr, don’t you?” Cal asked.
“Chester Carr?” I said.