She stuck her handful of fingernails across the table by way of introduction. “I’m Valerie Shoal. Lionel Shoal’s wife. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”
“Yes, ma’am, I have.”
She nodded, pleased. “I think Lionel needs some legal advice, and I hear you’re a good one to ask, that you’re knowledgeable about environmental laws and all that.” She waved her pale pink nails around.
I hesitated. Lionel Shoal didn’t act like somebody I’d want as a client, but how picky could I be right now? I hadn’t always liked the clients I’d defended in my past life. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to him, at which time either of us could decide it wouldn’t work. Besides, I was more than a little curious.
“If your husband has questions, he can just call me. I don’t have any cards.” I patted my jacket pocket as if I thought a card had appeared there, even though I hadn’t had any printed yet. “But—”
“He refuses to do that. I need you to come with me to see him.”
“Miz Shoal, I really can’t—”
“I’m sure you know all about the explosion at Golden Cove. That’s my husband’s development. They can’t figure out what happened, and since they can’t find anyone else to blame, they’re looking at him. All kinds of people are climbing over each other, investigating that explosion. I’m afraid he’s in big trouble and isn’t smart enough to know it.”
“Miz Shoal, I’m not at all sure your husband will want to talk with me. The last time—”
“Nonsense. I hear you’re the only one in town for this.” She leaned across the table, insistent. “I’ve got a lot riding on the success of this project. In a way, it’s my development, too. I’ve got money in this, and I don’t want to get screwed over just because he’s too cheap to get himself a lawyer.”
Framed by fake eyelashes, her eyes were steely and no-nonsense. She glanced at my empty soup bowl. “Can you come now? I’ll pay you for your time.”
My first paying client of the week. Today was what, Tuesday?
“Miz Shoal, I’ll talk to your husband, at your request, but only if you’re the one paying the bill.”
“You’ll be paid.” She drew up in a huff.
“No, ma’am. I’m not worried about being paid, but I can’t appear to be soliciting your husband’s business. I’m not allowed to do that.”
She looked puzzled—and still a little huffy. “Do you want a check now?”
“I’ll be happy to send you a bill—”
“Let’s go, then. He’s at home right now. With his office blown to bits, he’s underfoot at the house. I’ll take you.”
I insisted on walking back to the office to get my car. I didn’t want to be stranded somewhere. She circled the block and parked her Mercedes sedan in front of my office, waiting on me to pull out and follow her.
The Shoals had bought—or rented—a house at the lake, about ten miles from Dacus. My house hunting hadn’t taken me in that direction; I figured it was out of my price range, and I don’t play golf, tennis, or bridge, or hang out at nineteenth holes.
Valerie Shoal parked in the circular drive in front of a rambling stone and glass giant that sat alone on a promontory overlooking the lake. Must be a lot of steps down to the boat landing from here, though neither of the Shoals struck me as water skiers or bass fishing enthusiasts.
I walked up to her car as she stuck first one slender stiletto heel, then another, out her car door.
“He’s home,” she said, indicating the dusty black Cadillac SUV in the drive. “You can talk some sense into him.” She clicked across the slate sidewalk ahead of me and unlocked the castle-sized front door.
The view swept from the entry hall out the wall of windows and across the lake to the distant hills. Maybe I needed to expand my house-hunting range. And my budget. With a rich developer for a client, a place like this might become an option.
“Lionel! Lionel, are you home, honey? I’ve brought somebody to meet you.” She stood in the foyer, listening. “He’s down in the TV room. Men. Where else? Come on.”
She clattered across the slate foyer to a descending stairway. “Come on, come on. This way.”
I’d let her find him. I didn’t want to surprise him in his lair. Last time I’d seen Lionel Shoal up close, he’d been almost purple-faced, grabbing my arm and ordering the lot of us off his property.
“Lionel! I brought someone who knows about environmental stuff.” Her voice grew a bit fainter, but not less shrill. “You need to talk to her. Lionel, for god’s sake, answer me. I know you can hear me fine. That deaf act—”
Her scream set a decibel record.
I froze, startled for a split second before I rushed down the stairs.
She stood in a doorway, screaming. I didn’t need to walk over to the chocolate-brown suede sofa to know Lionel Shoal didn’t need my help. Or anybody else’s.
The smell of vomit was overpowering. Shoal, his lips pulled back into a fright-mask grimace, was rigid, his back arched like he was trying to levitate off the supersize sofa.
Valerie kept screaming and screaming. After a moment, I turned her by the shoulders and shook her. Her head bobbled. I thought I would have to slap her, but then she quit, settling instead into a persistent but less earsplitting keen.
I led her into the hallway, hoping she’d calm down absent the sight—and the smell.
“Can you call the police?” I asked.
She kept up a low mewing sound.
“Where’s the phone?” I shook her arm, more gently this time. That hit her off button, but she still didn’t answer. With my arm around her waist, I led her upstairs to the panoramic view of the lake. She and the stilettos were too tall for me to steer easily.
I sat her on another bigger-than-life sofa and got her to lie down. With no cozy afghan or throw in sight, I covered her up with my jacket and went in search of a phone.
Any phone was probably artfully disguised as a knickknack or hidden in some remote-controlled recess. Finally, I found the kitchen. A wall phone, in plain sight, thank goodness.
I called the direct number for the sheriff’s office, reported a dead body, and suggested that Sheriff Peters would want to come in person, along with an ambulance. Bypassing 911 might keep the announcement off the scanners and away from the Ghouly Boys, those ambulance followers who have nothing better to do than show up at car accidents, crime scenes—and explosions. I ignored my own recent entry—and Melvin’s—into Ghouly Boy-dom.
Valerie was still on the sofa, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, immobile but breathing, judging from the rise and fall of her ample chest underneath my jacket. Was she going into shock? I needed to find her something a little warmer.
I went back downstairs, where all the bedrooms seemed to be. I also had to admit to a specific curiosity, something that hadn’t fully registered when I first saw it. I’d already been to the door, so one more visit wouldn’t further contaminate the scene.
In Shoal’s den, heavy red velvet drapes hid the windows overlooking the lake. The billboard-sized television, with the sound turned low, hosted news-channel talking heads. A quick glance at the carpet confirmed what I thought I’d seen but hadn’t really understood.
Chocolate candies dotted the floor beside the sofa. Some had escaped their ruffled brown papers and rolled across the deep blue carpet. Without stepping through the doorway for a closer look, I could see what looked like the corner of a red candy box under the edge of the sofa. A greeting card illustrated with a bright bouquet of flowers lay on the end table close to the doorway: Congratulations. Otherwise, the room was bare of decoration. A miniature movie theater, set up for nothing but watching the large TV.
His grin, like an animal baring its teeth. I wanted to put something over his face, out of respect. Too late to get that out of my head, though.
The same vomit smell, the same contortions Rudy had described at the Knights’ house. What in heaven’s name? Seeing it a second time didn’t make it any less horrifying.
Was it tetanus? Meningitis? Was some deadly contagion spreading across Dacus? Had L.J. thought to call the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta? That was probably the medical examiner’s prerogative. Could it have been poison? That seemed melodramatic. More likely a seizure, maybe a drug reaction. What would make someone suffer like that?
In a guest room down the hall, I pulled the puffy down comforter off one of the twin beds. Back upstairs, as I tucked it around Valerie, she blinked her eyes.
“Can I get you something?”
She blinked slowly. “In my purse.”
She’d left her purse on the entry table. The cloisonné pill box was easy to find and held only one kind of pill. I got her some water, then I sat in a chair nearby and waited.
The cavalry took its time arriving. I watched afternoon shadows deepening the hollows on the hills across the lake and tried to think of anything other than what lay downstairs.
14
Tuesday Afternoon
I went outside to greet the emergency medical techs—an unbelievably overweight fellow and a red-headed pixie woman named El—as they climbed out of their truck.
He huffed as he lifted a giant kit from the side storage on the truck and asked, “Where are they?”
“Only one needs your attention,” I said as I held the front door open for them.
I expected them to tell me to blow it out my civilian, watch-too-much-TV ear with a roll of their eyes and a full-scale rush into the crime scene to try to save Lionel Shoal. They didn’t. While her partner lumbered up the long flight of front steps, El ran ahead, down the stairs and, just as quickly, was back.
“No need to mess up that scene,” she said to her partner as he labored through the front door. El crossed the slate floor to the sofa and bent to assess Valerie Shoal, still huddled under the comforter. Valerie started crying as soon as El spoke to her.
The male tech, who didn’t have a name badge sewn on his shirt, radioed someone. El ripped the Velcro fastener on the blood pressure cuff and lifted Valerie’s arm. I waited by the front door for the cops, counting the minutes until I could escape.
I didn’t know either of the first sheriff’s deputies to arrive. A squint-eyed deputy—his gold name badge said T. MYERS—had to see for himself what was down-stairs. He hustled back upstairs and dispatched the younger officer to ring the front of the house with crime scene tape.
“We’ll handle this one as a suspicious death until someone tells us otherwise,” he pronounced. He looked a little green around the gills, but he went out-side, pulled a video camera from the trunk of his car, and began narrating as he walked back into the house, leaving me to play maitre d’ at the front door.
The next car to arrive was driven by Sheriff L.J. Peters herself. I descended the broad front steps to meet her. She took her time getting out of the car—checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror? Doubtful. As always, when she emerged, she reflexively checked the implements hanging from her belt.
“Well. If it idn’t A’vry Andrews. I mighta known.”
L.J. sauntered around the front of her car, her hand resting on the butt of her gun like a Wild West gun-slinger sizing up a dusty street.
“L.J.” I said. I’d started to call her Lucinda Jane, for old times’ sake, but that’s what had always prompted her to pound me in grade school.
“How’d you end up here?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Mrs. Shoal ran into me at lunch, asked if I’d come talk to her husband.”
“About?”
“A legal matter.”
L.J. snorted. “I just bet he had a legal matter. He’s got feds crawling up his ass and out his nose. I bet he’s got a legal matter.”
When I didn’t respond, she asked, “So? Then what?”
“I followed her out here and we found him. Dead.”
“That’s convenient, how she managed to find you so you could he’p her find the body.”
I wasn’t going to let on to L.J., but that had crossed my mind. “Come on, Sheriff. She didn’t expect to find him. She’s genuinely in shock.”
“So what happened? A heart attack or something? He commit suicide?”
I shook my head, trying to choose my words carefully. I didn’t want to let slip anything that hinted I knew what the scene at Suse Knight’s house had looked like—anything that would get Rudy Mellin in trouble or make him stop talking to me. I simply told her what we’d found downstairs.
L.J.’s eyebrows shot up as soon as I described the rictus grin, but she didn’t say anything. She recognized the similarities. She reached to lift the yellow tape that now blocked the entrance to the front steps. I wondered where all these deputies had learned about running the two-stage perimeters I’d seen them use first at the explosion and now here. Camden County must be coughing up some money for training.
“Excuse me, Sheriff.” The deputy who’d run the tape and now stood guard at the edge of the broad, sweeping staircase, grabbed the tape so L.J. couldn’t lift it high enough to step under. “I’m sorry, but Officer Myers hasn’t finished the preliminary video inside—”
L. J.’s expression seared the words shut in his mouth. “I’m the sheriff.”
“Yes, sir—ma’am. But—”
“But what?” L.J. barked.
The poor kid was just trying to do what he’d been taught: protect the scene, even from your superior officers and the politicians who set your salary raise pool. Now he was learning what only experience can teach: who’s the boss.
L.J. ducked under and let the yellow tape drop back into place behind her.
“Sheriff,” I said, “is it okay if I go now? I didn’t touch anything but the door knob and the phone. If they need prints or a statement or anything, you know where to find me.” I’d been fingerprinted when I applied to sit for the bar exam, so I assumed my prints were still on file. It was easier to be helpful.
We locked eyes a moment, then she shrugged.
“Give the dep’ty here a statement.” Dep’ty dripped with sarcasm. “I do know where to find you.”
The rookie deputy looked disapproving of my reprieve, but he pulled out his notepad and took down my answers to his questions: where had I gone inside, what had I touched. He wrote everything. Slowly. I kept my answers short. He soon ran out of questions, much to his frustration.
I gave him my phone number and my office address. “Near the courthouse on Main Street, down the street from all the other lawyers,” I said to reassure him that I was easy to find.
I left, grateful to be gone. I couldn’t quite get the smell of vomit out of my nostrils or that tortured grin from my mind. I felt guilty leaving Valerie alone, but she had gone to sleep, snoring softly, before L.J. arrived. Sitting around felt like a death watch. I’d let L.J. do what she gets paid to do, and Valerie knew how to reach me if she needed me.
Numb from the adrenaline and the raw emotion, I didn’t want to take the direct route home. I turned onto the road that wound around the lake. I would just drive. As had become my habit, I studied the houses and tried the neighborhood on for size. The lake had been flooded thirty or so years ago by the power company, to cool its nuclear reactors. For a time, T-shirts pro-claiming I’M FROM CAMDEN COUNTY, I GLOW IN THE DARK were all the rage. At the time, according to Dad, locals couldn’t believe any idiot would pay $1,500 for a lot on a red-mud-banked lake when good farmland was going for a couple of hundred dollars for a full acre. Now the lots were worth hundreds of times the investment, and the houses with their multipeaked roofs and massive expanses of glass were still inconceivable to most of the locals.
The lake development had attracted snowbirds, retirees from up north who nested much to themselves, with occasional forays to Dacus grocery stores and to the Clarion’s letters-to-the-editor page.
Locals could afford to come here and fish, though the cost of a six-person motorboat was a major expense for many of them. Most who skimmed the deep blue water in speedboats had no idea they flew over watery graves and the onc
e-great capital of the Cherokee Indians. I’d grown up knowing about the controversy sparked by damming the Keowee River, but I was too young to have known the deep green valley buried under the water. I’d known nothing but this lake and only stories of the families, including ancestors of mine, who’d settled and farmed the valley for generations. No sense of nostalgia tugged at me as I drove past the houses, and nothing here felt like a possibility of home for me.
The road back to the main highway was curvy and empty of traffic, so I hit the accelerator. Speed would blow carbon out of my carburetor and maybe the numbness from my brain.
A deputy’s car, running too far over the centerline, met me in a curve. Both of us jerked our steering wheels sharply right, and I kept moving, not giving him a glance.
In my rearview mirror, I saw him do a one-eighty in the road and come up behind me fast, his blue lights flashing.
What was happening around here these days? All these road patrols. For Pete’s sake. I pulled to a stop on the first side road and fished for my driver’s license.
To my surprise, Rudy Mellin climbed out and marched to my window.
Both hands on my car roof, he leaned down to face me. “What’d I tell you ‘bout slowing it down?”
I smiled, I hoped winsomely. “Sorry.”
“Let me see your license.”
I handed it to him, very politely. He carried it back to his car.
I waited a beat, then crawled out and strolled back to his patrol car. Should I beg? Show some dignity? Punch him? I swallowed the bit of irrational anger I felt.
“Come on, Rudy. You aren’t really going to give me a ticket.”
Rudy had his head bowed, studying the screen on his little on-board computer. After too long, he tilted his head up, eyeing me from under the broad brim of his hat. “Checking your priors, Miz Andrews.”
I wasn’t going to humor him by begging—or tick him off by pointing out he had been driving over the white line.
He handed my license back to me. “And having a good laugh at your license photo.”
I didn’t rise to the bait. “Headed to the Shoal house?” Not even worrying about my insurance premiums had distracted me from the images I’d been trying to outrun.
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