Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  Connie was still young, but she had an acute sense of the encroachment of time. She thought they should be playing more -- going to medical conferences in the islands, or something. Rick wasn’t as much fun as he used to be, and while Connie wasn’t ready to give up the financial security he represented, she was starting to think she needed financial independence. She had lived as well as her means allowed, and sometimes beyond that. She had no debt, but she was starting to wish for freedom from Rick so she could go on having fun. Let him be a stick-in-the-mud success if he wanted. She especially felt this way when Rick treated her poorly, as he had last night. After all, where would he be without her color sense?

  Donald had just finished cleaning Lizzie’s van this morning when he had found the box of books by the driver's seat. He had asked her why she had so many copies of the same book, and she told him a little about the book and how it had made Savannah a major tourist stop. She explained that a lot of her customers had seen the movie based on the book, and that they came to Savannah to see some of the sights first hand. She had added that most of them hadn’t read the book, and that she was able to sell it to them when they got excited about being here, where it had all really happened.

  Donald thought to himself that Lizzie was probably as smart as Luther, in her own way. He reasoned that he should stick with her for a while. He could learn a lot about free enterprise from her. Lizzie had given Donald a copy of the book, along with a plastic foam cup of coffee and some ham biscuits. Donald ambled over to Johnson Square, where he found himself a shady park bench. He drank coffee and munched biscuits and opened "The Book."

  Donald thought it strange that a book like this had been written at all, let alone that it had become a runaway success. He could see that some of the odd characters that peopled the book made interesting reading, but they were mostly like the folks he had been around all his life. He couldn’t figure why they would interest someone who didn’t know them. He went down to the sandwich shop on Broughton Street and bought a tomato and onion sandwich for lunch. After he ate, he took a nap on his park bench. When he woke up, he delved into the book again, determined to get to the root of its popularity.

  As dusk fell, Donald put the book into his backpack and looked around at the square. This was one of his favorite times of day. The evening was cooling off nicely. Since it was too dark to read, Donald walked over to the little store on the corner and bought a quart bottle of malt liquor. The clerk obligingly folded a paper bag carefully around the bottle, so Donald could drink from it without revealing the contents. Donald had been doing this for a long time, but he still thought it was a quirk of the city that he could drink in a public place openly as long as the label on the bottle didn’t show. He went back to his bench and started to get mellow as he thought about "The Book" some more.

  Day 2, Late afternoon

  Rick wondered where Connie had been today. She hadn’t shown up at the clinic, and her secretary hadn’t heard from her. Rick had tried calling her a number of times, but had consistently gotten a busy signal on her home phone and voice mail on her cell phone. He had scolded Connie before about getting another phone line, or call waiting, so he could always reach her. He had a prospective new patient coming in at 4 o’clock, and he thought Connie’s part of the sales pitch was critical. She really believed that foolishness about colors, or at least she made it seem that way.

  The 4 o’clock appointment was one Mary Lou Willoughby, the trophy wife of one of Rick’s neighbors. Neighbors, that was a joke. The development was so big, and the people so snobbish, that none of them really knew each other.

  Mary Lou’s husband was retired from a business he had founded that made blankets for furniture moving companies to pad furniture. Rick was amazed at all the dumb ways people could make fortunes. Frank Willoughby had apparently done all right for himself. He had all the toys – three-million-dollar house with indoor / outdoor pool, a 150-foot motor yacht, assorted fine cars, and Mary Lou.

  Mary Lou was a stunning 24-year-old blonde who had been a cheerleader for a football team Frank had owned somewhere along the way. He had sold the team after a losing season, but he kept Mary Lou. All the younger guys who golfed with Rick speculated that Mary Lou would hasten the 80-year-old Frank’s demise, one way or another.

  The beep of the intercom on his desk interrupted Rick’s thoughts, and his secretary’s syrupy voice drawled Mary Lou’s arrival. Rick asked Frances to show Mrs. Willoughby into his office. He really wanted her as a patient, because once word got around, all the old bags would be drawn to the clinic like flies to honey, in the futile hope that they could look like Mary Lou. Rick stood behind his desk as the door opened, and Frances made the introductions. Frances backed out smoothly, closing the door as she went. If only her voice didn’t make Rick’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, she would be a perfect secretary.

  "Please have a seat, Mrs. Willoughby," Rick uttered in his most professional tone. "How may I help you?"

  "Call me Mary Lou; I hate being called Mrs. Willoughby. It makes me sound as old as that geezer’s last wife." Mary Lou settled into one of Rick’s patient’s chairs, slowly crossing one perfectly formed leg over the other. This caused her impossibly short skirt to ride up higher than Rick could stand to watch. Although distracted, he noticed in a purely professional way that she was not wearing, nor did she need, stockings. No cellulite there. Just as he realized the legs were somewhat intimidating, he looked up to see her expression of amusement as she watched him enjoying the show. He felt like a child caught stealing candy.

  "Doctor, I don’t think I’m fat, well maybe just a little plump in some places, but not fat, but I don’t want to gain any weight at all and I think Frank may think I’m fat, you know Frank from the club, sure you do, haven’t you played golf with him, maybe?" she spouted, breathlessly.

  Rick was relieved when she stopped talking. The rhythm of her speech set his teeth on edge. He wondered if she was on speed, or some other stimulant, the way she jabbered. She not only spoke without pausing for breath, but she kept slithering forward in the chair, making the skirt climb even higher. Rick forgot about Connie’s absence. Somehow, he didn’t think Mary Lou would be interested in Connie’s analysis of her complexion.

  Sam "Shrimp Boat" Alfano stared at the computer screen for a little while before he closed the spreadsheet file and shut down the machine. His old man was probably spinning in his grave over in Bonaventure Cemetery; he had never been happy with Sam’s penchant for smuggling drugs with the family fleet. Sam couldn’t understand old Pete’s point of view. His father had made the family’s fortune bringing in Scotch from the Bahamas during the prohibition; he had shrimped his way down the coast into the Florida Keys and then rode the Gulf Stream north. After a nighttime pause in Bimini to take on a little liquid cargo, he would point the bow for the St. Mary’s River entrance and take an easy ride with the stream.

  That was before the Navy had built the submarine base at King’s Bay, so there really hadn’t been much going on along Georgia’s barrier islands in those days. A few rich Yankees had owned several of the islands back then, so they weren’t crowded with visitors. Sam could remember shrimping the sounds down that way in the ‘50s with his father. They would go out, just the two of them, on Julia’s Pride, the old man’s first 50-foot trawler, and spend days without seeing a soul. Likely as not, they would fill the hold with shrimp, too. You couldn’t do either one of those things, nowadays.

  The shrimp were mostly gone and the islands had become crowded resorts, at least the islands that hadn’t become national parks of some kind. Even if the shrimp were running, the Game and Fish people made you put holes in your nets so no turtles got trapped. Turtle exclusion devices, or TEDs, they were called. Pete would have really been steamed up over that. He had always thought the turtles were a tasty little bonus.

  Sam didn’t care much about the shrimping one way or the other, except it was getting so bad it was hard to make it look like he had enou
gh legitimate business to keep his boats running. He didn’t know what he would use as an excuse if the shrimp gave out completely. He needed shrimp boats moving up and down the coast and in and out of the inlets -- the more, the better. More boats provided more cover for his smuggling business.

  After prohibition ended, old Pete Alfano had kept his hand in, running cigars from Castro's Cuba and people from wherever it would pay. He didn’t mind the occasional shipment of marijuana, but he drew the line at hard drugs. Once old Pete had finally died, Sam and his cousins had decided it was too easy to get caught with marijuana. Besides, it was too bulky. Cocaine was much more lucrative, and easier to conceal. Sam had moved away from the boats, himself. He dealt mainly with the money, which required that he run a number of quasi-legitimate businesses so he could launder his smuggling income. He had gotten so good at money laundering that he even did it as a service to other crooks, for a fee, of course.

  The nursing home had worked well as a front for money laundering for a while, because it employed lots of low-paid people, some of whom didn’t even have to exist. Regulation and certification requirements for the help eventually made it tough for Sam to keep it going, though. When Medicare and Medicaid tightened up, it was hard to make the legitimate part of the nursing home operation break even. Sam was not willing to lose money, so he had been in the process of closing the home when Rick Leatherby came into his life. Rick’s scam had seemed perfect. It was a moneymaker, once the facility was established. It employed the same kind of low-paid staff, and better yet, it was unregulated. There weren’t even any nosy insurance companies involved.

  Day 2, Early evening

  Dave Bannon thought the custom of having the guests at the Waving Girl in for wine and cheese in the late afternoon was a nice touch on the part of the innkeeper. It was consistent with the tradition of unhurried hospitality that he remembered from the Savannah of his youth. The city had been different then. While it had been cosmopolitan, it had also had the air of a small town.

  When he had been a cadet at Benedictine Military School, they had marched in a parade up Bull Street to Forsythe Park every afternoon for an hour of close-order drill. Traffic had stopped and commerce along their route paused as everyone came out to watch the parade. That was difficult to envision in Savannah’s current incarnation, and not just because the school had moved into the suburbs.

  He remembered serving tea in his dress uniform at a United Daughters of the Confederacy function, and wondered if the UDC had survived. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans had certainly evolved into something ugly. Gathering in the parlor at the B and B in the afternoon did evoke a sense of that more genteel period in the city. Dave recognized that it couldn’t survive, though, when the three folks from Cleveland walked in wearing their tourist attire. Elmer was even wearing his "Yankees" baseball cap –- in the parlor, no less.

  Dave asked them politely if they had enjoyed their tour. Mabel proceeded to tell him more than he wanted to know about it. He did tune in when she mentioned the name Lizzie Jones Carter, but almost lost his concentration again when Mabel said, "She knows a lot about that movie, too."

  "Which movie would that be?" Dave had asked reflexively, even as he had realized there could be only one movie that would fit the context.

  Surely enough, Mabel had told him all about it. She had been obviously proud to reveal that Elmer owned "The Book." Following along at this point, Dave had understood without asking that this could only be one book. He had started listening carefully again when Mabel had mentioned that Lizzie had grown up here and asked if Dave knew her. He had to ask for her maiden name before he was sure, but then he had acknowledged that indeed he had known her most of his life. Mabel had seemed to enjoy this a great deal.

  "She told us she went to St. Vincent’s Academy. That's a girls’ school, where some famous rebel’s daughter went, but not at the same time," Maggie had blurted, just to get into the conversation.

  "Jefferson Davis’s daughter, Winnie," Dave had offered. "But I think she was a class or two ahead of Lizzie." Dave had been thankful when Mabel, Maggie, and Elmer had to leave to get ready for their ghost walk. He had graciously accepted their apologies that they couldn’t stay longer to talk, and had walked them to the door. Now that he was alone for the evening, Dave took his remaining half-glass of red wine to the little telephone desk in the corner of the parlor and sat down. After he had enjoyed his own company long enough to recover from the conversation with the people from Cleveland, he opened the telephone directory. He promptly found a listing for E.J. Carter, and dialed the number.

  Lizzie had just gotten home, having taken the van in for an oil change after dropping off the people from Cleveland at the Waving Girl. The phone was ringing. Her first impulse was to let it go to the answering machine. She was beat after working all day to entertain those three, but it was her personal line, not the tour company number. She gritted her teeth and picked up the phone.

  "Hello, Lizzie?" said a pleasant, male voice.

  "Yes," she said, somewhat tentatively. Lizzie was happily widowed and didn’t encourage male callers.

  "It’s Dave Bannon, from 8th grade. Hope this isn’t a bad time, but I heard about you from some folks I just met, and thought I'd give you a call."

  It took Lizzie a couple of beats to make sense out of this, and then she was genuinely pleased. She and Dave had grown up in the same circle of friends. She wanted to know where he had been for the last thirty years, and what he was doing in town.

  "I just got home from an exhausting day, showing three Yankees from Cleveland around. You know I run a tour business?" she explained.

  "Yes, I found you because of that bunch from Cleveland. I only spent a few minutes with them. Can't imagine a whole day," Dave said.

  "It's a living. Some groups are way better than others, though," Lizzie responded.

  "Look, I know you must be beat. Let's have breakfast in the morning and catch up on our lives."

  "Great idea," she said. "Meet me at Harry's on Skidaway just south of Victory Drive about eight o'clock. Nobody goes there but folks like us. It's too greasy-looking for the Yankees."

  Delia Johnson was perspiring in her 18th-century servant’s garb: the humid air of the early evening was oppressive. She couldn’t believe the colonists had dressed like this on purpose. The Yamacraw Indians clearly had a better understanding of what attire was appropriate for the climate, in her opinion. Of course, no one wanted her opinion. They just wanted her young, fresh-scrubbed face and her polished tidewater accent.

  What a way to pay for college -- leading ghost walks around downtown Savannah’s historic district. It wasn’t so bad during the cool part of the year, and some of the off-season tourists even tipped her. Unlike some of her co-workers, Delia tried hard to stay in character. Oddly, that made tips a little less likely, but it made the job more interesting, especially for someone with theatrical aspirations.

  As dusk settled into the hidden corners of the square, Delia lit her candle lantern with a disposable lighter. She hoped no one noticed the anachronism. She also hoped none of the tourists gathering around her noticed the guy slouched on the bench off to her right. She worried he might be a homeless person looking for a handout. That could sometimes be a distraction and spoil the mood.

  The sharp edges of his day were well-padded by the malt liquor when Donald noticed Delia standing over by the monument. She looked sort of strange to him, wearing a long skirt and some kind of cloth over her shoulders. Donald remembered seeing pictures of ladies dressed like that at the first Thanksgiving in his history book from grade school. He wondered if she was a pilgrim and what she was doing here.

  As he kept a furtive eye on her, not wanting to attract her attention, she took out one of those throwaway cigarette lighters and lit the lantern she was holding. It was one of the boxy-looking glass ones, with a candle inside, wholly in keeping with her pilgrim suit, to Donald’s way of thinking. He did wonder about the lighter, though. He d
idn’t remember if pilgrims smoked cigarettes. He didn’t think so; they were some kind of holy rollers, as best he could recollect.

  The lantern didn’t give off much light in the deepening gloom of the square, but it did call attention to the girl. She held it near her head, and the flickering light from the candle was beginning to cast eerie shadows on her face. Donald noticed a group of people gathering in front of her. He could tell they were tourists from the way they were dressed. It was odd, Donald thought, that none of them spoke to her. They just stood, talking among themselves, and looked at her like she was a statue.

  It was fully dark now, and a simultaneous hush fell over the little group standing around the pilgrim girl. The people all looked at her expectantly as she raised the lantern so its light fell more fully on her face.

  "Good evening, folks. I’m Delia Johnson, and I have three more years to work as an indentured servant to Mistress Owens. That’s her big, fine mansion right across the street. I’m fortunate to have been chosen by the Trustees of the colony to come to Georgia. I was starving in London after my mother died in debtors’ prison. Mistress Owens has kindly given me the evening free so that I can be your spirit guide on tonight’s ghost walk. How many of you have been on a ghost walk before?"

  About a third of the people raised their hands. Delia asked how many of the people believed in ghosts. Again, about a third of the group raised hands. She asked how many had actually experienced some form of ghostly encounter. This time no hands went up.

  Donald thought it was interesting that a third of the people had tried this before and had failed to see a ghost. They were trying it again, like maybe they needed more practice. Yep. They were strange, all right.