by Bill Noel
There was no way I was going back to sleep. The sun was still a couple of hours from appearing over the Atlantic, but I needed to get out of the house.
I took a shower, grabbed my Nikon and the one piece of camera equipment I hated, a tripod. It was heavy, awkward, nearly impossible to carry comfortably, but critical for low-light photos. Two hours before sunrise qualified.
Walking was not my favorite activity—truth be known, not in the top ten—but when I had my camera, it was tolerable. I walked the short distance to the Holiday Inn and was greeted by the front-desk clerk, Diane. She was in her mid-twenties and had worked the overnight shift ever since I’d been on Folly Beach. All I knew about her was that she had a crush on Officer Spencer and had the figure of a bowling pin. What she lacked in statuesque beauty, she made up for in personality and a warm, wide smile accentuated by an overbite. That was a welcome sight to any hotel guest arriving after a long, hard drive.
I got my complimentary coffee and walked around the corner to the desk.
“Did you know Pat Rowland?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Diane. Her hands moved away from the computer keyboard, and she leaned on the counter. “I think I saw her more than anyone here. She jogged every night around midnight. Sometimes she ran about this time in the morning, but not every day.” She hesitated and then shook her head. “Many guests ignore us at the desk—like we’re potted plants. Ms. Rowland spoke every time I saw her. She seemed real sweet.”
I leaned closer even though the lobby was empty. “She stayed here quite a while, didn’t she?”
“More than five months—five months and three days, to be exact. I looked it up for the police—some cranky old geezer from the Sheriff’s Department.”
I smiled and avoided asking at what age one became a geezer. “Sorry it wasn’t Officer Spencer. Any idea what she was doing here?”
Diane blushed. “Umm … no, she never talked about it. I’ve asked a couple of the other folks. They didn’t think she worked. She had the Do Not Disturb sign on her door a lot. They didn’t see her around the pool or at the beach. No idea what she did.”
“Why’d she move?”
“You’ve caught me on a no-idea morning.” Diane laughed. “She jogged the night before she left; didn’t say anything other than, ‘How are you?’ She seemed the same. I wasn’t here when she checked out.”
I leaned even closer to Diane. “Do me a favor, would you? Check around. If you learn anything else about her, give me a call.” I wrote down my cell number on the small Holiday Inn notepad on the counter.
“Sure,” said Diane. She tore off the sheet, neatly folded it, and then put it beside the keyboard.
I started to walk away, but Diane stopped me. “Mr. Landrum … Chris … she seemed real sweet … real sweet.”
I left the hotel with my camera strap slung over my right shoulder, the bulky tripod in my left hand and the coffee cup in my right. The hotel had an automatic door, so I didn’t have a balance challenge this early in the day.
I walked past a couple of early morning fishermen on the pier and climbed the steps to the elevated deck on the Atlantic end. The day was already heating up, but the breeze off the ocean made it tolerable; the rain had moved out to sea. The upper deck was empty, so I had my pick of spots to set the tripod. I had often taken photos from this vantage point looking directly back toward the shore. I was never able to get any gallery-quality images, but I enjoyed the view. Looking through the viewfinder, to the left the view of town was blocked by the Holiday Inn; a few of the room lights indicated early risers. The hotel’s parking lot was next, and then a four-story condo complex, the Charleston Oceanfront Villas, stared at me. Directly in front of me was the pier’s gift shop and restaurant, and to the right were four smaller condo buildings. Past these condos was the location that I hadn’t paid much attention to before; just another house—although a weird-looking one—but now the center of more attention than any one building should receive, the Edge.
I stared at the eclectically-constructed boardinghouse like I expected a neon light to come on giving the name of the killer. Unfortunately, the only illumination near the house was from a small streetlight that provided underwhelming illumination to the beach access path and small sand-covered parking area. I didn’t know all the residents, but was certain there were two empty rooms this morning. Pat Rowland and Lester Patterson had checked out. Arno Porchini was still a resident, but barely.
I looked over the side of the pier into the darkness of the Atlantic Ocean and smiled. I remembered that there were twenty-one species of shark in the area, another bit of trivia gleaned from my fount of trivia, Charles. When I turned back to the boardinghouse, I wondered how many species of killer were here—surely a crossbow killer would qualify as one, one more dangerous than the creatures swimming below. My smile faded.
CHAPTER 25
“Good morning, Chris.”
I recognized the voice but was surprised to see Detective Karen Lawson behind me. I had dropped the camera at the house and decided to drive rather than walk to the Dog. My moaning, bemoaning, and pondering the fate of my small part of the world delayed my arrival, so I couldn’t be choosy when I got there. Trucks of construction workers, the two city council members, a handful of dog-walkers, and three tables of early-bird vacationers beat me. I was seated on the front patio facing the building.
“Morning, detective; join me?” I assumed she was on duty since she was in her dark pantsuit. My first thought was that something had happened to her dad.
She nodded and smiled. It was a good sign. She patted a large collie that was patiently waiting for scraps at the next table. Karen then pulled out the chair opposite me at the small table.
“I was going over to the station to update the crew on their chief, but wanted to let you know first. I knew there was about a seventy-five-percent chance you’d be here.”
“Thanks. How is he?”
Amber opened the door to the patio and saw the detective. The patio was not usually Amber’s station, but she had finagled her way to being the outside waitress when she had seen I couldn’t find a seat inside. She was carrying two plates for another table and quickly deposited them. Her shoulders were pulled back, and she glanced—more accurately, stared—at Detective Lawson, then turned and headed inside.
Karen pretended not to notice, but she had seen Amber’s less-than-hospitable look.
“Oh, yeah, dad …” She smiled. “The docs say he should make it. They even had him up and walking a few steps last night.”
“Great.”
She reached across the small table and grabbed my hand. “I was so scared. Thanks for being there when he—we—needed you.”
I was touched by her sentiments. She looked down and saw that she was still gripping my hand and pulled hers back. Tears were rolling down her cheeks—tears of happiness, I felt.
Amber came through the door. She carried an empty, orange ceramic mug in her right hand and a coffee carafe in her left. She stopped at the table and slapped the mug on the table in front of Karen.
“How’s your dad, Detective?” she asked. She had a smile on her face, but it was her work-required look and not on the plus side of sincere.
Karen wiped her cheeks and then told her what she had shared with me. Amber filled her mug and sloshed coffee on the table. She didn’t refresh my half-empty mug. Karen told Amber that she didn’t want anything to eat and had to go. Amber asked her how much longer the chief would be in the hospital. She said a few more days, at least, and that he was extremely lucky to have pulled through. His excellent health was the difference. That still sounded funny, but I knew what she meant. She said that she should be going, but took another sip. She smiled.
“How are you getting along with your acting chief?”
I didn’t know about their working relationship so ch
ose the safe route. “Well, he has a much different approach than Chief Newman.”
Her smile morphed into a laugh. “Then I suspect you’ve had a run-in with Chief King. My colleagues are pondering nominating the sheriff for sainthood for cleaning up our department in one brilliant move—donating his biggest pain in the ass to the Folly Beach Department of Public Safety.”
I explained how the acting chief had threatened three of Folly’s most “upstanding, law-abiding” citizens—Charles, Larry, and yours truly—with incarceration for simply doing their civic duty.
“Upstanding, law-abiding, hmm,” she said between giggles. She then looked around the patio, leaned forward, and continued. Her smile was gone. “You didn’t hear it from me; but Clarence King isn’t just a bad apple, he’s rotten to the worm.”
“Why?” I asked. The dog and its owner were leaving the next table. Karen leaned over to pet it on its way out—the dog, not the owner.
She turned back to me. “I know of three sexual harassment charges against him; one of them’s from me. He’s heavy-handed and has been known to practice a few basic no-no’s when interrogating suspects; he would have been the perfect cop in the 1930s. I’d go on, but you get the picture.”
“Loud, clear, and in color,” I said.
Amber was heading back to the table. “Anything else, Detective?” she said but was looking at me the entire time.
“No, thanks,” said Karen. She began to stand. “I need to be going. I came over to tell the guys at the station about their boss.”
“I’m glad he’s doing better,” said Amber. Her smile was slightly less strained. “We miss the chief around here.”
We were all more than a little awkward with our byes. I stood, and Karen shook my hand and thanked me once again for being there for her dad. She nodded to Amber, who returned the nod.
I returned to my seat and asked Amber if I could get more coffee. She said, “Of course.”
An interesting morning, I thought.
CHAPTER 26
I watched Detective Lawson back her unmarked Crown Vic out of the Dog’s small parking area a couple of minutes before I saw Charles pedal his near-antique Schwinn bike up the street and into a narrow gap between two minivans. He swerved to miss a preschooler getting out of one of the vans. He gave the little girl a look like the-nerve-of-you-stepping-in-my-way, but quickly realized that he was the aggressor and lowered his head. I don’t know if her fear was from the steel and rubber bicycle bearing down on her, or the strange-looking, shaggy man wearing a U.S. Marines long-sleeve black T-shirt and carrying a potentially deadly cane. Her mother scooted her out of Charles’s way. He tipped his Tilley and apologized for his careless driving. The world was back to normal.
Charles saw me, walked around twenty or so customers milling around the front door waiting for a table, and made a beeline for the seat Karen Lawson had vacated. Her coffee mug was still on the table. He threw his hat on the third chair at the table and leaned his cane against the dog bone-shaped wooden railing.
“I see you have my coffee ready,” he said as he plopped down in the chair.
I raised my eyebrows and said, “No, and if you’d been five minutes earlier, the holder of that mug would have arrested you for assaulting a toddler and reckless biking.”
I reviewed the last half hour before Amber made her way back toward our table. Charles saw her coming.
“Morning, Amber,” he said. He then stood and put his hand on the back of the chair. “Mind if I have a seat? Chris said I wasn’t improving the appearance of your patio as was the previous occupant.”
She grinned and nodded for him to be seated.
Thanks, Charles. I kicked him under the table.
She looked at the troublemaker and said with a demure smile affixed on her face, “You’re a vast improvement, and always welcome on my patio.”
He turned to me and cocked his head to the right. “See.”
Amber took this opportunity to head inside to get Charles a fresh mug and breakfast.
“Other than trying to ruin my day,” I said, “what brings you here?”
“Sorry,” he said with about as much sincerity as a funeral home director saying “sorry for your loss” to a family paying for his livelihood. “The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much.”
“You can say that again,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t say it,” he said. “That was President William Howard Taft.” He paused, hopefully not waiting for applause. “Did you know she-crab soup was invented over in Charleston for Taft when he visited in 1909?”
I didn’t know it, didn’t care, and didn’t care what President Taft had to say about anything, but that never stopped my friend.
“Let’s try again,” I said. “What brings you here?”
One of the drawbacks of the front patio was that some of the tables were close to the front door and those waiting patiently, and some not so patiently, for a table. The experienced patio diners had learned to sit facing the opposite direction. It didn’t decrease the number of stares from those waiting and trying to goad the current occupants to leave, but at least we couldn’t see the visual daggers. Charles and I were now experienced diners and faced away from the starving masses.
“Simple,” he said. “I rode by the gallery and you weren’t there, and then I headed to your house; your car wasn’t there.” He paused and looked toward the ceiling fan. “So I stopped at Bert’s to ask if they knew where you were—they didn’t; not even Mari Jon, and she knows everything.”
“How many more stops before I get the answer?” I asked.
“Two; be patient.”
Amy, one of the other waitresses, brought us refills on the coffee and said that Amber was stuck inside and asked me to apologize to Charles—only Charles—for not being here to meet his needs. He thanked her loud enough for everyone on the patio to hear.
He turned to me and said, “And then I rode by the boardinghouse to see if you were playing detective without your partner, or if there was fresh crime-scene tape.”
I didn’t comment, which I knew irritated him.
“And then I said, heck with him, and was riding home when I saw you sitting here waiting to buy me breakfast.”
And he thought William Taft talked too much. “Next time,” I said, “just tell me you were riding by and saw me.”
“No fun,” he said and leaned back in the chair.
The table beside us was occupied by two middle-aged men and a dog the size of a Smart car. The dog had apparently come from the beach, and the smell of its wet hair overwhelmed the appetizing smell of a large plate of pancakes Amy had delivered to their table.
Charles leaned toward me and said, “Ah, ain’t the smells of the beach grand?”
He was teasing, but it was true.
He sat back again. “Why weren’t you at the gallery?”
“You know Mondays are slow,” I said.
“Probably because the door’s locked.”
We had had this conversation numerous times over the last year. To be honest, I was getting tired of debating it. “You know what I mean,” I said. My hand was balled up, and the words came out stronger than I had intended.
My reaction surprised him. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything. You know how I jabber.”
I felt bad. Charles was my best friend and would do anything for me. I didn’t need to take my frustrations about the failing gallery out on him.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I just can’t continue losing money and don’t know what to do.”
“What would we do if you closed it?”
If I had a good answer, I would have shut the doors long ago. I shrugged.
Charles had lost interest in the trials and tribulations of a small-town gallery owner and was looking toward
the street. He stood at the railing near his propped-up cane and waved. I turned to see what he had become so interested in.
Arno Porchini was crossing the street to the Dog. He looked worse than the last time I had seen him. His sling matched the color of the sandy berm beside the parking lot. Charles left the patio and met Arno before he could get to the others waiting for a table. The next thing I knew, Charles moved his hat off the vacant chair so Arno could sit without moving into the next table’s comfort zone.
Arno’s chest heaved, and he struggled to catch his breath. Charles called Amy over and asked for water and a second glass of ice.
“Thanks for the seat,” he said to Charles. “I thought I was doing better and decided to walk. Stupid me. My arm’s killing me.”
“At least you’re still with us,” said Charles. It was intended to cheer our guest.
Arno grimaced and said, “I guess.”
I asked if he needed to go back to the doctor or the hospital. He cursed and said the doctors told him it would hurt for a while and not to come back unless it got infected.
“Big help! Right?” he said. His anger was slightly muted by the pain. “They didn’t tell me how a one-armed carpenter was supposed to make a living that little while.”
“It doesn’t help, I know,” said Charles, “but you’re lucky to be alive.”
Amy returned with the water and extra ice. Arno downed the water in one gulp.
“Want something to eat?” asked Charles. “We’re buying.”
“Well,” said Arno, “if you put it that way, sure. Thanks.”