Chesapeake Summer

by Jeanette Baker

  Blake nodded. “I heard. A geologist’s holed up at Bonnie’s B&B. He’s taking a long time to get started.”

  She set down a tall, sweating glass of herbal iced tea in front of him. “What’s holding him up?”

  Blake shrugged, trying to ignore the effect of smooth, gold skin against the bright turquoise of her sleeveless blouse. She moved gracefully, efficiently, layering his sandwich, cutting it in two, adding the pickles just the way he liked. He cleared his throat. “Who knows? It’s Bailey’s land, at least until escrow closes. He’s the one calling the shots.”

  Verna Lee slid the sandwich across the table and sat down across from him. He tried not to look too delighted.

  “I’m worried about the wetlands,” she said. “I don’t think people around here realize what’ll happen without them.”

  Blake sighed. He would never understand her loyalties. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing out there but alligators and mud. Affordable housing, on the other hand, would benefit the Cove. He changed the subject. “I hear Bailey’s made something of himself in New York.”

  “My niece Chloe was really taken with him four years ago when she was here for the first time. She’s back for the summer and her mama’s worried they’ll start something up.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  Verna Lee looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure. Even though he’s had amazing success with his painting, Bailey’s had a rough life. He’s been on his own for a long time. His mother, Lizzie Jones, wasn’t exactly Mother Teresa. I think Libba Jane wants something different for Chloe.”

  Blake grinned. “You mean she doesn’t want history to repeat itself. Seems to me I heard she ran off with an actor when she was about Chloe’s age.”

  “That’s ancient history. I’m sure we all have a few skeletons we’d rather not talk about.”

  “I don’t want to talk about skeletons, Verna Lee.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Sunday. I want to talk about us taking a drive to Chincoteague and ordering up a plate of blue crabs. How about it?”

  Verna Lee laughed. “In your dreams.”

  He finished his sandwich and washed it down with tea. “Well then, since you’re turning me down again, I guess I’ll be on my way.” Settling his hat on his head, he tipped the brim. “I’ll see you in church on Sunday.”

  Blake waited for a minute outside the café, narrowing his eyes against the shimmering heat waving up from the scorching macadam. The sun was at its peak. Shadowed doors and windows looked inky black against the stark white of stucco walls. Two men approached Perks from opposite directions. He recognized Russ Hennessey with his sorry-looking beagle lagging behind. The other man was a stranger, bareheaded, obviously some poor fool who didn’t understand the dangers of heatstroke.

  Blake nodded at the stranger. “You might want to consider wearing at least a baseball cap in this heat.”

  Surprisingly, the man stopped. “Are you the sheriff?”

  He held out his hand. “Blake Carlisle. What can I do for you?”

  Perfunctorily, the stranger shook his hand. “Dave Yardley. I’m one of the geologists hired by Weber Incorporated to inspect a parcel of land north of here belonging to Bailey Jones. We’ve hit a snag.”

  Blake waited, conscious that Russ had stopped to hear their conversation.

  “What kind of snag?”

  “A human body. At least it was. Now it’s mostly bones, but it’s human all right.”

  Blake stiffened.

  The man continued. “It looks like whoever it was has been there for a while. I thought you might want to know.”

  Blake pulled out his cell phone and punched in his deputy’s number. The connection was immediate. “This is Charlie One to Charlie Two,” he said. “Come back in to the station and cover all calls for the next couple of hours. I’m taking a drive out to Highway 39.” He waited for an affirmative reply before flipping his phone shut. Noting Dave Yardley’s flushed skin and the sweat streaming down his forehead, he spoke. “The police station’s at the end of the street. I suggest you get something cool to drink and meet me there in ten minutes. I’ll follow you out to the location.”

  Russ waited until the door to Verna Lee’s shop closed behind the geologist. “Well, I’ll be damned. What do you think that’s all about?”

  “I haven’t a clue, but I intend to find out. Bailey’s sale could take longer than he’d planned.” Blake grinned at Russ. “How’s business?”

  “Not bad. I’m taking a break. Verna Lee’s brownies are worth it, but don’t tell Libba Jane. She worries about my cholesterol.”

  “No problem.” Blake clapped him on the shoulder. “Say hello for me and get that dog out of the sun.”

  Russ picked up the dog and walked into the café. His sister-in-law handed the geologist an iced drink and stared pointedly at the dog, forcing her lips into a tight line.

  Russ waited until the man left the store. “I know what you’re thinking, Verna Lee.”

  She lost the battle with laughter. “No, you don’t. Bring that dog into the kitchen and I’ll give her a bowl of water. I can’t believe Libba lets you keep that mangy animal.”

  “She doesn’t. I keep her with me at the office.” He stroked the dog’s head. “Trixie, here, prefers air-conditioning.”

  “What can I get you?” she asked after settling the beagle with a bowl of cool water.

  “A beer, if you’ve got it.”

  “How about iced tea or lemonade?”

  He sighed. “Lemonade.”

  “So,” she said, sitting down beside him. “How’s the fishing business?”

  “Same as usual.” He frowned. “Did you hear about Bailey Jones?”

  “I heard he might be selling his land.” Her eyes flashed. “I’m against it, Russ. I can’t believe Bailey would do that to his mother’s legacy. It’s not that he needs the money.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I certainly do. He’s going to be a very wealthy young man if he keeps on the way he has. He doesn’t need to leave us with acres of pink condominiums. You should be worried, too. There’s a delicate web of life here in the Tidewater. Get your wife to explain it to you. We had a huge scare four years ago with all that nuclear waste in the water. What do you think draining the wetlands and bringing in foreign soil will do to the fisheries and oyster beds, not to mention produce, which directly affects me?”

  “What is it with the women in your family? You sound just like Libba.”

  “Damn right.”

  “It may not come to that any time soon.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”

  “Well, if what I just heard outside has any truth to it, Bailey’s land will remain untouched awhile longer.”

  She looked at him. “What did you say?”

  “That man who was just in here is one of Weber’s geologists. He claims he found a dead body in the swamp. He was telling Blake about it when I walked up. It’s probably just some old drifter.”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly.

  “Nothing ever came of speculation. Blake’ll figure things out and if it’s more than he can handle, he’ll call in the forensics team from Salisbury.” He stood. “Thanks for the lemonade. I’ll collect my dog and be on my way.”

  “Say hello to the girls.”

  “I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll send Chloe over with Gina Marie.”

  “You can keep Gina at home if it’s all the same to you.”

  “You’re a cruel woman, Verna Lee, and because I’m a good guy, I won’t tell your sister that you’re less than enthusiastic about your very own niece.”

  “I’m enthusiastic about one of them. The other terrifies me.”

  Eight

  Detective Wade Atkins, chief homicide detective of Wicomico County Sheriff’s Department, was no stranger to Marshy Hope Creek. He’d spent most of his formative years six miles out of the town limits in a two-room shack set low on a piece of
land optimistically called Darby’s Cove. The name evoked images of pleasure boats with white sails moored neatly in a harbor, bordered by charming restaurants and shops crowded with tourists. In reality it was a mosquito-infested glade, thick with alligators, toads and catfish all filled with enough radiation from the Pax River to make them inedible. Uncared-for front lawns boasted inoperable vehicles set high on blocks. The view from broken screens led to other faded shacks and mobile homes.

  As soon as he was legally able, Wade hitched a ride on a big rig filled with sweet potatoes and made his way west where a stint in the army and the GI Bill earned him a place at California State University, Long Beach. From there he was accepted at the police academy.

  Wade figured he was about as far away from his roots and Marshy Hope Creek as a man could be. Growing up, he and his brothers, the Atkins boys, “river rats” or “white trash,” depending on who was doing the describing, weren’t big on community service. In fact, you might say they were more of a high-risk factor than anything else. Clem and Howard, the two oldest, spent more nights at the juvenile detention center in Salisbury than they did at home, and it was a known fact that the First Baptist Church took up a collection to buy Mace cans for their elderly, single ladies, just in case they should happen on one or, God forbid, both of the Atkinses’ distinctive white-blond heads while walking down the street.

  Wade, however, was different, not in appearance but in temperament. Like the others, he was towheaded with a mass of freckles, so many of them they all ran together, giving his face an attractive tanned look, paired with steely blue eyes, a jutting chin and a wide linebacker’s body. But he was missing the mean streak that every male Atkins, from one generation to the next, never failed to inherit. In fact, Wade managed to clear four years of high school without a single knuckle-bruising scuffle. He was also, according to his teachers, fairly intelligent, with a kind of practical common sense that completely bypassed the rest of his clan. It made some people wonder if Carrie Eileen Atkins had been messing with the postman nine months before Wade was born. But then they looked at old Morris, at the steely blue eyes and that thatch of white hair shared by all his boys, especially Wade, and knew it wasn’t so.

  Wade didn’t subscribe to the notion that he was born different. He attributed his path to a mild case of scarlet fever and subsequent bed rest. Carrie Atkins was beside herself trying to keep an active twelve-year-old boy cool and immobile in a house the size of a cracker box. She began by buying comic books. But when it became clear that each ten-cent copy was devoured in twenty minutes, she did what no Atkins had ever done before. She applied for a library card.

  At first, Owena Harper, the librarian, was reluctant to allow it. In her experience the folks living on the wrong side of Marshy Hope Creek did not treat books with the proper respect. But when she heard the card was for Wade, she relented. He’d chopped wood for her the last two winters. She paid him fifty cents an hour and he showed up faithfully when he said he would and worked until the job was done. Owena allowed that he deserved a library card, him being sick and all.

  That was Wade’s introduction to a world outside his own. He read Tom Sawyer, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Works of Hans Christian Andersen and many more. For the next six years he was never without a book in hand. Heroes appealed to him. He wanted to be like them.

  That was thirty-five years and a lifetime ago, before he’d worked himself up from undercover vice to homicide detective. Now he wore a suit and tie and although his hours weren’t regular, the pay was better. He figured he would have lived out his life in Santa Monica, California, quite happily, except that his wife, Susan, died five years before. After that, his workdays were bearable but his free time wasn’t. All the old haunts, Diedrich coffee to start the day, a midmorning jog on the boardwalk, dinner at Gladstone’s, were miserable without Sarah. So, he came home, not to Darby’s Cove or Marshy Hope Creek, but to Salisbury and the Wicomico County Sheriff’s Department, both different enough from the white sand beaches of the West to ward off memories.

  The call came in at noon, an unusual time for reporting a homicide. Most were called in at night. Sheriff Blake Carlisle from Marshy Hope Creek was requesting a full crime-scene forensics team. Because Wade had high hopes of wrapping this one up in time to go straight home after his shift, he drove his own car.

  Soon, he found himself on the back roads of his boyhood, his senses reeling from the brackish smell of the Chesapeake shallows, marsh grass, nesting birds, the contrast of golden sunlight and black shadow, the frustratingly slow pace of a pickup weighted down with tomatoes on a two-lane road. He’d skirted the area countless times, but he’d never been back, not since the death of his mother when he was a teenager.

  Highway 39 was a narrow strip of road bisecting miles of marshland and pine forests. A single patrol car with blinking lights and yards of yellow tape signaled the location of the crime scene. Wade pulled the emergency brake, swallowed a goodly portion of his sixteen-ounce water bottle, grabbed his clipboard from the back seat, stepped into his boots, laced them up and hiked out to the tape border. He flashed his badge at the young police officer manning the log, stepped over the tape and, keeping toward the edge, maneuvered his way to the placards, the site of the crime and the officer in charge. “What does it look like?” he asked.

  “The coroner’s on his way,” replied Sheriff Carlisle. “See for yourself.”

  Wade walked around the site, checking it out from every angle. “Hair and clothing looks good enough for lab samples,” he said to the sheriff following close behind. “There’s a close-contact entry wound in the head. Who called this in?”

  “A geologist from Weber Incorporated.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Back at the bed and breakfast.”

  Wade jotted down notes on his clipboard. “Get him back here,” he said in a clipped voice. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he squatted down for a better look at the wound, picked up a fragment of clothing lying next to the body and sealed it in a plastic bag. “This bog is nearly as good as a mummy’s tomb. The body’s got flesh, hair and a full skull.”

  Jim Marshall, the coroner, arrived mopping his brow, his bulldog face pulled down by heavy jowls and an extra fifty pounds. “Hot enough for you, Wade?”

  “I’ve seen hotter,” Wade replied, unwilling to be distracted. “There’s no blood anywhere but on the victim. Whoever this is was shot somewhere else and dumped.”

  Marshall nodded his head. “Terry Gilmore is on her way. She’s our new forensic anthropologist.” He looked around. “Has the photographer been here yet?”

  Carlisle exchanged a look with Wade. “He’s coming from Salisbury. He could have hitched a ride with you if anybody had thought of it.”

  Wade laughed. “You don’t want to work us too hard, now, do you, Blake?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How old do you think these bones are?” asked Wade.

  “It’s hard to say.” Marshall scribbled something on his own clipboard. “I’ll do a field test after the photographer is through and then we’ll send everything to the crime lab. It may be that Terry Gilmore can be more specific but, either way, I’ll fax you the details as soon as I know.”

  Wade nodded. “Carlisle,” he asked. “Did you get a statement from the geologist?”

  Blake handed it over.

  Wade skimmed it quickly and handed it back. “How big is your office?” he asked.

  “Big enough for one at a time.”

  “That’s too bad because there’ll be quite a few of us there until I’m satisfied we haven’t missed anything.”

  “I figured.” Blake glanced at his watch. “If we get back in time, I’ll have my deputy make a food run. With any luck, Verna Lee might be willing to throw in some of her potato salad with the sandwiches.”

  “I knew a Verna Lee in high school.” Wade stroked his jaw. “Verna Lee Washington. Pretty black
girl with a knock-’em-dead body.”

  “That would be her, except now she’s Verna Lee Fontaine.”

  Wade frowned at something in the distance. “I wouldn’t have figured her for a shopkeeper. She was smarter than the rest of us put together and not afraid to let everybody know it.”

  “She came back from San Francisco about fifteen years ago and started up her business. It’s a health food store, and a little bit of everything else. Verna Lee’s a success story.”

  “Most people don’t come back to places like Marshy Hope Creek once they’ve had a taste of the big city.”

  Blake shrugged. “Verna Lee and her grandmother, Drusilla, don’t have any other family. That’s reason enough, I guess.”

  Wade acknowledged that it was. His attention was diverted by the photographer who had just arrived on the scene. “What took you so long?” he asked bluntly.

  “I’m backup for Ken Mitchell. I was in a movie theater.”

  “Watch where you’re stepping,” Wade warned him. “We need close-ups of the head wound, a full figure shot, any evidence we find and an orientation photo. Do you know what you’re doing?”

  The photographer, a young man with a black goatee and hoops in his ears, nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “This isn’t exactly new territory.”

  “Good.” Wade pulled out his dark glasses and settled into his watch-and-wait mode until the forensic anthropologist showed her face.

  Fifteen minutes later she was in the field, a tall woman in her forties, dressed in what looked like hospital scrubs and tennis shoes. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt beside the body. Wade walked over to introduce himself.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute, Detective,” she said tersely.

  Wade backed away. He appreciated efficiency when he saw it in action.

  Jim Marshall approached him. “We’ve got a few other cases on the schedule. Is this one a high priority?”

  “What have you got?”

  “One domestic homicide. Victim was strangled with a necktie.” Marshall looked up at the sky. “We’ve got a three-year-old girl with a head injury and broken limbs. Looks like she was thrown down the stairs.”