Along the rear of the building, the wood around the truck docks had rotted away. One of the roll-up doors had been pushed in. Two large pools of stagnant brown water took up the back corner of the property. With the Cooper River two blocks from this chemical plant, I understood why EPA signs were posted.
We drove I-26 West toward the Ashley River and my land inheritance. This place reminded me of one of the last missions I’d taken in Afghanistan. My company escorted an Army Corps of Engineers team to a wastewater treatment facility. With insurgents all around, we took a lot of gunfire but held our ground. Hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, we risked our lives for one big septic tank, and I wasn’t sure which side was crazier.
From the driver’s seat of my Jeep and under a curtain of bug spray, I took in the sight of Sumter Point. The sulfur smell of the marsh penetrated everything. I pulled out another cigar, and pressed the lighter.
Darcy swatted at a mosquito. “I say sell it.”
Two more bloodsuckers circled my feet, trying to find a break in the repellant.
The Jeep lighter popped out and I lit the stogie, my third of the day. Darcy didn’t mind this time once the mosquitoes vanished with the first whiff of cheap cigar. I blew out a cloud of the pollutant. “There has to be more to this than riverfront property.”
Darcy’s cell phone chimed. She said, “Patricia sent me a text. She’s got someone for you to meet.”
The Palmetto Pulse office was all business. Scarred desks furnished a large open room occupied by people working on laptops. Darcy greeted a few coworkers as she led me to an office in the back and rapped on the jamb of the open door.
“Come in,” Patricia said.
Shelby entered first and Darcy and I followed. Patricia’s personal office had nicer furniture than the outer room. She sat at a large antique mahogany desk I guessed was two-hundred years old. Unrestored, it had a perfectly aged patina of nicks and scratches. Patricia kept it gleaming. I would’ve bet big bucks the Tiffany lamp on its corner was also original.
Shelby walked around the desk and poked Patricia’s leg with his nose.
Patricia scratched behind his ears. “Hello there, sweetheart.”
“Hello, yourself,” I said.
“I was talking to your dog,” she said.
In one of the chairs facing Patricia sat a white-haired woman with a squat figure and big glasses. She turned slightly to get a look at us.
Darcy patted the woman on the shoulder. “Hello, Mrs. Calhoun.”
The woman’s face lit up. “Hello, dear. It’s so nice to see you.”
Darcy asked, “How did you get here? You didn’t drive yourself, again, did you?”
“Oh, heavens no. My driver is picking up a few things at the store for me. He’ll be along soon enough.”
“Mrs. Calhoun,” Patricia said, “this is Brack Pelton.”
The old woman reached and took my hand. “I’m so sorry to hear about your uncle.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “Did you know him?”
She let go of my hand. “I was telling Patricia here about the time my daughter and son-in-law brought the grandchildren to see me. We took them to the beach and afterwards went to your uncle’s pirate place. The kids loved it.”
I looked at Patricia and wondered what this had to do with anything.
“Mrs. Calhoun is on the Isle of Palms Town Council,” Patricia said. “She wanted to meet you and talk about what your plans were for Pirate’s Cove, since you’ve inherited it.”
The town council had been trying to get rid of the bar for years. It occurred to me the rich old bat sitting here was a little less than sincere. Probably not too sorry to hear about Uncle Reggie’s demise, either.
Darcy pulled a chair for herself from the conference room across the hall.
I took the seat next to Mrs. Calhoun. “Well, ma’am, I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
She nodded. “Oh, I understand, dear. I don’t mean to pry, but through the years the Isle of Palms has developed a good reputation. People who visit our island expect things a certain way. Our beaches are clean, and alcohol is not allowed on them. Our businesses have certain codes to be met. All these things have been put in place to make sure people want to keep coming back to our little paradise.”
“What can I do to help?” I hoped I sounded convincing.
“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “I want to make sure you know you have the town council’s support. Several people have come forward inquiring as to the future of your restaurant and I believe a generous offer will be delivered to your lawyer’s office before the end of the week.”
“And what would the members of the council deem a good future for the place?” I wanted to hear her say the answer I knew she was going to give.
Her face became one big grin and her eyes sparkled behind her Coke-bottle glasses. “Oh, it would be in good hands. The last phase of the shops and restaurants on Ocean Avenue would be complete.”
“What changes could make that a reality?”
She touched my arm again. “You are such a dear. We’d rebuild it to match the Charleston theme we’ve been using on the other shops and cafés and create a more family-friendly atmosphere.”
I rubbed my chin. “You’d have it torn down.”
“Oh yes. Especially that scary cigar-smoking skull flag.”
Patricia chimed in. “What would you call it?”
The old woman sat up in her chair and clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “We have several names in mind. Um, let’s see . . . Pelican Bay is one of them, and we’d put in those observation viewers so families could watch the birds in their natural habitat. Another is Dolphin Swimmer. We’d create a mini-museum and education center so kids could learn all about the ocean wildlife.”
Patricia’s tightened smirk softened at the edges.
I turned my attention to Mrs. Calhoun. “You guys have this all planned out, don’t you? It’s a good thing my uncle wants to be cremated because he’d turn over in his grave if I let any of that happen.”
Mrs. Calhoun’s high-spirited disposition dropped back to reality. “Now listen here, young man.”
“No. You listen. If the good members of the town council were so interested in educating the public to save our local wildlife, they never would have allowed all those hotels and shops to be built in the first place. You know how fragile the sand dunes are because you post signs everywhere to stop people from walking on them. Though I guess it’s okay to bulldoze them flat and pour concrete foundations there.”
Mrs. Calhoun abruptly stood up, gave Patricia a curt nod, and marched out of the room. Patricia, Darcy, and I stared at the doorway a few seconds.
Patricia broke the silence. “I think that is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.”
I said, “Dolphin Swimmer?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Patricia pushed away from her desk and stood. “Where have you two been?”
We described our trip to the Chemcon site.
Patricia said, “He never told me. In fact, I was thinking about last Saturday morning. He took me out in his boat.”
“His boat.” I’d forgotten he had one.
Patricia said, “We dropped crab pots in the I.C.W. just north of the Isle of Palms.”
“Paige said he complained about the price of crab. I never knew he fished for his own.”
“It was the first time I know of.”
“Can you show me where he dropped the pots?”
Patricia nodded and pointed at the pack of cigars sticking out of my pocket. “Don’t tell me you’re smoking those awful things. Are you paying homage or something?”
“Something like that.”
Darcy said, “They smell like the monkey cage at the zoo.”
Patricia left the room for a moment and returned with a wooden box. “Try these. I bought them for Reggie but he wouldn’t take them.”
I examined the box. “Cubans.”
“Y
es,” Patricia said. “He told me Castro was just another Ho Chi Minh.”
I called ahead and had the marina prep my uncle’s boat. Patricia, Darcy, Shelby, and I stopped at a convenience store with a sandwich shop and bought a cooler, ice, several bottles of water, and subs. The Isle of Palms Marina docked several hundred boats at any given time. The hundred-fifteen-horse Suzuki outboard on Uncle Reggie’s nineteen-foot Twin Vee fired up and I eased it around the other vessels. Patricia finished applying a layer of sunblock. She wore Jackie-O sunglasses and a straw hat. Both women looked good in their shorts and tank tops.
Still, I asked Darcy, “Where’s the bikini?”
She squeezed SPF 15 out of a bottle into her palm and said, “Thought I’d give you a break.”
I could feel embarrassment color my face and tried to mask it with a smile. Smooth, Brack, real smooth. The lanes around the marina were designated a no-wake zone, which meant no speeding. The slow pace gave me time to light one of the Cubans Patricia had given me. After a few drags, I said, “Not bad.” As if a few days of smoking cheap cigars made me an expert.
Once we hit the open water of the I.C.W., I pushed the throttle down and we sped off. Nothing in the world was like riding the water. I hadn’t been on it in a while and it felt good to be back. Salt spray peppered our faces. The women’s hair blew in the ocean wind. Uncle Reggie’s twin-hull cruiser smoothed the naturally rough water. We followed the channel north. The homes lining the waterway, much like the ones facing the Atlantic Ocean, went for seven figures. If my house were on a bigger lot, I might have had to pay more than the four-hundred-thousand I’d coughed up—a big chunk of Jo’s life insurance gone with one stroke of the pen.
My favorite Eagles song belted from the speakers when I turned on the FM radio in the instrument panel. I turned up the volume and tapped my bare feet on the fiberglass hull.
Boat traffic on the waterway was light. Darcy sat at the bow with Shelby while Patricia remained at the stern next to the cooler. Across the blue-green water the miniature fiddler crabs scrambled up the mud banks sideways. Pelicans and cranes perched on broken pilings jutting out of the water.
Over the wind’s noise, I yelled, “So where’s the spot you dropped the pots?”
“Ten more minutes up the channel,” Patricia shouted.
I slipped off my shirt and tightened the adjustment on my ball cap so it wouldn’t fly off. Darcy scratched Shelby’s ears and he licked her face. The heat of the sun baked my skin so I lathered up with sunscreen as I managed the wheel. After three years in the Middle East and six months at the beach here in Charleston, I didn’t need a lot of sun protection.
Patricia was right. It took us ten minutes. She pointed out a trio of buoys in a cove to our right. On each flew the flag Uncle Reggie had created for the Pirate’s Cove. I idled closer. Twenty feet away, I cut the motor and rotated the prop out of the water. It was low tide and I didn’t want to get bogged in the pluff mud where the water was shallow.
I was about to throw my cigar butt over the side when Darcy said, “I don’t think the fish like smoking any more than I do.”
“I knew there was a reason I brought you along,” I said, and put it in the ashtray.
Darcy smiled and helped Patricia drop the anchor. Uncle Reggie’s old deck shoes lay in one of the compartments under the seats. I slipped off flip-flops for the deck shoes to avoid cutting my feet on the oyster shells embedded in the mud, then jumped into the water. It was three-feet deep and I sank another couple of inches when my feet hit bottom. Shelby tried to come in with me but I stopped him. The water was too muddy and the current moved at a swift pace. He looked at me like I had just snatched a steak out of his mouth.
“I’ll make it up to you, boy.”
I could tell he wasn’t buying it as I turned and plodded toward the buoys. My feet squished and crunched like I was walking in cookie dough, with jagged shells instead of chocolate chips. The water level dropped below my waist as I got closer. The tops of the crab cages were barely submerged. I picked one up by the handles. Empty. The cage was a cylinder of wire mesh two-feet high with a diameter of a foot, attached to a square wooden base. I carried it to the boat. Darcy and Patricia grabbed the handles and hauled it on board.
“It’s empty,” Darcy said.
“Look at the bottom,” I said, holding onto the edge of the boat. The bottom section of the pot was at least four inches thick.
Patricia looked at me. “I didn’t notice it when we set these out.”
The three pots had the same false bottom and none had trapped any crabs. We worked for ten minutes trying to find an opening before I pulled up the anchor and used it as a hammer. Two good licks and the base of the first pot broke into pieces. Inside we found something wrapped in black plastic. I took out my Swiss Army knife and sliced through it.
“Hello!” said Darcy.
Patricia’s eyes were wide. “Money.”
The second pot held the same thing.
The third one came apart after three blows. The package it contained was wrapped in the same black plastic but was larger than the money bricks. Patricia opened it with my knife.
“Papers,” she said.
We sorted through them. They were pictures of old industrial sites. I recognized the names as those on the memory stick.
Patricia pointed to one. “I’m pretty sure this place is in Charleston.”
On a note stuck on one of the sheets, I saw a name, Ken Graves, and a phone number, written in my uncle’s handwriting. At the bottom of the note were three underlined initials: EPA.
“I guess we know who to call,” I said. “If we’re being watched, we can’t be seen hauling these things to the dock.”
“Uh, Brack?” Patricia said. “Look at this.”
She handed me a folded sheet of paper. I read my uncle’s handwriting.
Brack,
If you’re reading this, I’m surfin’ a mondo tube with both eyes open. I just hope it’s not on fire. In Nam, I flew with a buddy named Chauncey Connors. He looks like one of those Charleston High Society types and his office is on King Street. He’s got my will. Things are going down connected with Sumter Point and other properties. I made copies of what I could find out so far and I’ve put them here. It all revolves around Galston. Don’t trust him. With me gone, he’s going to offer you millions for Sumter Point. If you take his money, I’ll haunt you the rest of your life. You hear me? Use the money here for whatever you need. The bar will take care of itself as long as Paige is running the show. Just don’t screw it up. I love you but don’t mope around for me. You’ve already done enough of that. It’s time to get on with your life.
Reggie
PS:Tell Patricia I—tell her she was always the one.
Patricia read the last sentence and put her hand to her mouth. Her eyes welled with tears.
Darcy said, “Let me see that.” She read it and put her arm around Patricia’s shoulders.
My head swirled with thoughts of revenge. “We don’t have time for this right now,” I said. “Let’s go get the fat bastard.”
Darcy said, “Have a heart, Brack.”
Patricia leaned forward, her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking, and cried. Probably something I should have done when Jo died. I removed the buoys and put the busted pots underwater close to the shore, so other boats would not hit them. Darcy rewrapped the money and papers in plastic and hid it in the bottom of the cooler underneath the ice. We headed to the marina. On the way, Patricia kept wiping her eyes with a tissue. I didn’t ask because she would have said it was the salt water spray. Shelby licked her face and pawed at her hand.
In a large meeting room at the Palmetto Pulse, Patricia set up a conference phone. We had decided to speak with the EPA contact, but we didn’t want to spook him with press credentials. I was to do the talking while the women listened in and took notes. If they wanted me to ask a specific question, they were to write a note and hand it to me. As Darcy dialed the long distance
number, I held up one of the cigars.
Patricia pointed to a No Smoking sign.
A man answered. “Graves.”
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Graves, this is Brack Pelton. Reggie Sails was my uncle. I believe he had been in contact with you.”
“Yes,” he said. “I spoke with him a week ago. You said Reggie Sails ‘was’ your uncle? What does that mean?”
“He was killed Saturday night.”
Graves didn’t say anything.
I said, “Mr. Graves?”
“I’m here. Just a little surprised. I’m very sorry for your loss. What can I do for you?”
“Your name was found along with pictures of industrial sites. In fact, I think he might have called you about one in particular.”
“He did. I don’t have the name of the site in front of me. Do you have it?”
“Chemcon.” I gave him the address.
“Hold on,” Graves said.
The reception was sketchy but I thought I heard him typing on a keyboard.
He said, “Yes, that’s the one. Site was closed in 1985 and declared a Superfund site in ninety.”
“What’s a Superfund site?”
“They are the nation’s worst toxic waste sites.”
“Mr. Graves,” I said, measuring my words carefully, “is there any reason someone would be murdered because of one of these sites?”
“I never heard of that happening before, but it’s possible. The government supplies funds to help clean them up. But seventy percent of the cleanup cost is usually absorbed by the responsible polluters, if they can be located.”
I said, “How dangerous is the Chemcon site?”
More tapping followed before Graves spoke. “Okay, here it is. It’s listed as having furnace dust, sulfuric acid, phosphate, and other materials. Overall, pretty nasty stuff.”
“It’s near a neighborhood,” I said. “I’m guessing it isn’t the healthiest place in town.”
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