1 Lowcountry Boil (13 page)

Deanna parked close to the building, turned off the engine, and removed her keys from the switch. “Shoot,” she said. “I forgot to roll up the windows.” She put the key back in the ignition.

That’s when we heard loud angry voices from the back room of the hardware store.

Colleen transported herself to the outside of the car and crouched beside it. She motioned for me to follow.

“Deanna, stay here.” I opened the passenger door, slid out, and closed the door silently. “Let me see what’s going on.” I knelt behind Colleen.

Deanna opened her door. “I’m not staying here by myself. What if they come out?” She mimicked me getting out of the car quietly and huddled behind me.

I sighed. I didn’t like this a little bit, but there was no time to argue. Like ducklings, the three of us waddled in a row up the back steps. I turned the knob carefully and opened the door just wide enough to slip into the hallway.

The door to the office was closed halfway. Colleen propped herself in the open doorway and watched the action while Deanna and I peeked through the crack between the door and the jamb, her head over mine. She couldn’t have recognized the blonde man in the expensive-looking business suit who was shouting at her husband, but I surely did.

“Look,” said Scott. “I told you to wrap this up before the end of the month. Time is money.”

“And like
I
told
you
, everything is under control, with the possible exception of your wife. An unpleasant surprise, her turning up here, wouldn’t you say?”

“You just handle your end. I’ll take care of Elizabeth.”

My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
Of all the nerve.
I glanced at Colleen. She made a zip-it gesture.

“Well, you’d better,” Adam said. “Because it’s not just her vote on town council we have to worry about. She’s mouthy. Every person we’ve convinced to go along with our ‘good cause,’ she’ll unconvince. You can either persuade Liz this is for the greater good or persuade her to go back where she came from.

“Or,” Adam continued, “we can do what I wanted to begin with, and take care of Frank Talbot. Get him on board, and Liz won’t fight us. Or put somebody more cooperative in his seat.”

Scott raised his hand. “We’ve been over this. I know Frank Talbot. The man is the most stubborn mule on the planet. You won’t blackmail him—I don’t care what you come up with. And if you try to kill him, even if you succeed without getting yourself shot—which I seriously doubt—it would never come off as an accident. Let me worry about Liz. You just deliver the other votes by the next meeting, or I will make other arrangements. Understood?” There was an unmistakable threat in Scott’s voice.

“Yeah,” Adam sneered. “I understand. And I’m real scared. You think I couldn’t find a hundred other guys who’d want a piece of this?”

“Perhaps,” Scott said. “Perhaps not. Let us not forget whose brainchild Stella Maris Resort
is.
And as you pointed out, my wife has thrown an interesting new light on things, has she not? I believe you need me as much as I need you.”

Adam seemed to consider this. “Hey, we’ve got enough to worry about without fighting between ourselves.” He grinned and reached out to place a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Let’s just get this thing done, and we’ll both be rich.”

Scott didn’t return the smile. He stared at the hand on his shoulder until Adam removed it. “I’ll be in touch.”

Like a scared rabbit, Deanna bolted into the ladies room, and I followed. I closed the door silently behind us. After a moment, the back door opened and closed. Thinking they had both left, I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I heard Adam’s voice from the next room. The walls were thin, and even with the door shut, we could hear him clearly.

“It’s me. When are you going to do it? …Say
what
? …No. My wife doesn’t know a damn thing. …Why would she call you? …
Dammit to hell.
….No, she’d never put that together. …I’m not paying you another cent. You got twenty-five up front and you’ll get the other half when it’s done and I need it done yesterday. …I don’t want to know the details. Just get it done.” He slammed down the phone.

We heard what sounded like Adam rummaging through papers on the desk. A minute later, we heard the sounds of the safe combination being keyed in. After what seemed like an eternity, the front door chimed opened, then shut. Adam went out the way he came in, thank heaven. If he’d seen the Mazda in the back lot, he’d have known Deanna was there.

Deanna and I sank to the floor in the dark and sat there, too numb to move. After a moment, I reached up and flipped on the light.

“What in this world is he up to?” she whispered.

“Don’t tell.” Colleen was sitting cross-legged in the utility sink.

For a moment, I forgot myself. “Tell what?” I wasn’t sure yet what I knew.

Deanna’s face scrunched. “Huh?”

“No telling what he’s up to,” I said.

“Whatever it is, he’s in way over his head. Shady characters. Underhanded deals.” Deanna stood and opened the door. She was trembling, in a trance-like state.

Fragments of the conversation we’d overheard were spinning through my head. I slipped past Deanna, crossed the hall, and went into the office. I stepped behind the desk and found a pen and piece of paper. Deanna walked into the office and sat down in the visitors’ chair. I pressed the speaker button on the phone, then the redial key. I jotted down the phone number on the telephone display.

After one ring, the same snarly voice we’d heard that morning came over the line. “Now what?”

I disconnected the phone.

Deanna recoiled from it. “Oh dear heavens. Who did I speak with this morning, and what has Adam hired him to do?”

She rubbed her arms.

“What’s the combination to the safe?”

“Eleven, twenty-three, two.” Her voice shook. “Our first date was November twenty-third, nineteen ninety-two.”

I stepped over to the wall safe, entered the combination, and opened the door. Inside, on top of the cash drawers and the ledger books, sat five stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I picked one up and fanned through it. “Here’s the other twenty-five Adam just promised the exterminator. Not twenty-five dollars, not twenty-five hundred dollars, but twenty-five
thousand
dollars.”

“
For what?
” Deanna choked out a whisper.

“Adam is paying our friend the exterminator fifty thousand dollars to exterminate something—some
one
.”

Deanna shuddered. She shook her head. “No, this is ridiculous. There’s some other explanation. There has to be. There’s no way I’m married to a murderer.”

Colleen stood beside her sister, arm protectively around her shoulders. “Don’t push her,” she said.

Deanna’s eyes were wild. She looked at me for answers. I looked at Colleen and raised my palms. What did she want me to do here?

Abruptly, Deanna threw herself into homemaker gear. “It’s getting late. I’ve got to get home before Adam wonders where I am. We’ve got church tonight.”

She stood, pushed in front of me, and scooped up the money and crammed it in her oversized purse. “I’ll hang on to this until we figure out what to do with it.”

I clutched my head in an effort to grip reality. The Deanna Devlin I knew would never stuff her purse full of hit-man-payoff money. “Deanna?”

Colleen looked worried, but she didn’t offer suggestions.

“Come on,” Deanna said. “I’ll be late for church.”

We left through the back door. Deanna locked the deadbolt behind us.

SEVENTEEN

I strode toward the police station at a fast clip. As I pulled out my phone, my head oscillated like a fan, checking every direction for Scott or Adam.

Nate answered on the second ring. “Hey there.”

“Nate…” I slammed into the reality of what I was about to say and stumbled.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… Oh, God.”

“Liz. What’s wrong?”

“Scott.”

“What about Scott?” Nate’s tone reflected how irrelevant he considered Scott to anything current in our lives. Scott was his brother, but they’d never been close. Scott was my ex-husband, but I’d erased him from my life.

“He’s here.”

“In Stella Maris?”

“Yep.” I had my wits about me now. No time to sugarcoat what I was about to tell my best friend. “And it looks like he and Adam Devlin are in bed together on some scheme to build a resort here.”

“Interesting.”

“Nate, I think they had Gram killed.”

Silence.

“Nate?”

“Yeah.” More silence. “What makes you think that?” Nate knew what Scott was. But murder was surely beyond what he’d ever thought his brother capable of.

“I just overheard them talking. They’re about to have someone else killed, and they are none too happy I’m here.”

“I’m on the next flight to Charleston. I’ll call you when I know what time I land.”

“Aren’t you in Vegas?”

“Yeah. So is Camilla Vardry. I’ve got to stop by the hotel and pick up my bag. Then I’ll head to the airport. I’m going to hang up and call the airline. Have you told Blake?”

“On my way to do that right now.”

“Stick close to him. And stay away from Scott.”

“Hell’s bells. You and I have worked together for years. I expected better from you. I’m going to do my job, Nate.”

Silence. Then, “I’m on my way.”

I’d no sooner sat down in front of Blake’s desk to tell him what just happened at the hardware store, when Nell appeared in his office doorway looking like she knew something he didn’t. She usually did.

“Chief, Elvis is out front,” she said. “He’s been trying to get ahold of you all day.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Send him in.”

“Blake—” I grabbed the chair arms to keep from lunging at him.

He sighed. “I’m tired and ready to go home. But if I don’t talk to Elvis, he’ll just ride that bike of his over to Mom and Dad’s during dinner or out to the houseboat later on. Let me get this over with. Then we’ll talk.”

I was ready to throttle him, and might have, but in came Elvis. I hadn’t seen him in at least eight years, but he looked exactly the same as I remembered. I’d swear he was wearing the same baseball cap. And he had the same unmistakable childlike quality about him.

“Hey, Chief Blake. Hey, Miss Elizabeth.” John and Alma had instilled manners in Elvis from an early age, but he struggled with discerning different etiquette for different social situations. Although he was only two years younger than I was, he used the same formal manners with me as he did with Mamma.

“Busy day, huh?” Elvis didn’t sit in one of the office chairs. He roamed the room, looking at pictures, the calendar, Blake’s framed degree from the University of South Carolina, case notes on the dry erase board, and the view from the window as he spoke.

“It’s been a real hummer,” Blake said. “What’s up, Elvis?”

“Miss Grace says I should tell you about The Phantom. I was going to anyway, but she made me promise.”

Blake muttered something that sounded like
not Grace for the love of Pete
, and then spoke more clearly. “She wanted you to tell me about the what?”

“The Phantom.”

“Elvis, I don’t believe in phantoms. Or a lot of things Grace believes in, for that matter.”

Elvis stopped wandering around the room and looked at him ominously. “Well, I saw him, Chief, three times this week already. Twice yesterday and once today. And a bunch of times before then.” He lowered his voice and leaned towards Blake’s desk. “And there was that one time? He was at the
graveyard
.”

“What does this phantom took like?”

“I think he’s old. He looks kinda shriveled up and dried out. He wears regular pants and a shirt. He’s got a cool baseball cap with a red flag on it. I looked it up—it’s a scuba diving flag.”

“Okay,” Blake said.

“But I know he’s a phantom cause he disappears before I can get close enough to get a good look. He walks around in the shadows, so’s people he’s studying can’t see him. So far he’s been studying Adam Devlin. And you, Miss Elizabeth. I seen this phantom watching Miss Emma’s house. He maybe studies other folks, too, but I ain’t seen him.”

The back of my neck tingled. “When did you see him at Gram’s house, Elvis?”

“He’s been following Liz?” Elvis had Blake’s attention now, too.

“Yeah, he was in front of Miss Emma’s house watching Miss Elizabeth, but her dog scared him away. That’s a real pretty dog.”

“When?” I asked.

“When was this?” Blake spoke at the same time.

“Monday afternoon, right after she got there. I tried to stay with him, but he gave me the slip.”

That had been Elvis whizzing by on his bike while Rhett barked his head off at the end of the driveway. Was the man I’d seen Elvis’s phantom?

Elvis said, “He went into the hardware store just a little bit ago. But when I followed him in, he wasn’t there.”

“The hardware store?” I sat up straight.

“Yep.” Elvis nodded enthusiastically.

“Moves pretty fast for a guy so shriveled up,” Blake said. “Elvis, are you sure this isn’t Coy Watson, maybe, or Dan Gregory out exercising? Doc Harper has everybody on this island walking. And they both go in and out of the hardware store a couple times a week?”

“Chief Blake, I been patrolling this island my whole life. There ain’t many people live here that I don’t know. And it for sure wasn’t Coy Watson, nor Dan Gregory, neither. It’s a phantom, I tell you, a
phantom.
”
Nothing upset Elvis more than people not taking him seriously.

Blake leaned forward. “Okay, okay. I tell you what. I’ll keep an eye out for anybody who looks suspicious, and you call me next time you see this guy, so I can get a look at him, all right?”

“Okay.” Elvis started towards the door, then stopped. “But you be careful, Chief. ’Cause he
is
a phantom.”

“I’ll be careful. Hey, what was he doing when you saw him at the graveyard? Are you sure this was the same guy?”

“Oh, it was him all right.” Elvis nodded. “He was praying.”

“Praying? Where was he exactly?”

“Up on that little hill by the big old oak tree. The one that got its picture in the magazine? You know, right by where Miss Emma is restin’. Bye now.” Having told us everything he knew about The Phantom, Elvis had fulfilled his duty and was out the door.

Blake stared after him. “I don’t know who Elvis’s phantom is, but anyone who was praying at Gram’s grave is more likely friend than foe, and almost certainly someone we know.”

“Someone
she
knew. I wonder if Elvis’s phantom looks anything like the picture in the locket.”

“Maybe I’ll have him take a look.” He shook his head. “Elvis is sounding more like Grace all the time. Not everything that happens on this island is some sort of supernatural mystery.”

If he only knew.

I filled him in on what had happened in the hardware store—well, most of it. I left out the Colleen parts, which maybe made things sound slightly off. About halfway into the story, he reached into his bottom desk drawer and got out his old baseball glove and a battered baseball—one he knocked over a fence when he was eighteen. Whenever Blake was deep in thought, he tossed the baseball into the air and caught it, over and over, in some sort of rhythmic mind massage.

“What possessed you to get in the car with Deanna to begin with?” he asked.

“Will you focus on the big picture here? Scott and Adam are conspiring to kill somebody and get me off this island. They want control of the town council so they can build some kind of resort. One of them killed Gram for her land.”

Blake consulted the ceiling for a moment. The ball went up…down. Up…down. “Do you think Scott somehow knew you’d inherit? Maybe planned a reconciliation so he could get his hands on Gram’s land?”

“No, they were not happy I showed up.”

“You own the land whether you live here or not.”

“True.”

“And how else would they get the land with Gram dead? You remarry Scott, and if you don’t agree to his plans for the land, he could arrange an accident.” Blake’s eyes were hard with suspicion. “Then he’d inherit.”

This hadn’t occurred to me. Scott’s involvement was still new, and I hadn’t had time to noodle it over.  Six months into our marriage, I knew Scott had character issues. But I hadn’t figured him for a murderer. Now that the idea was settling in, I shuddered. “So you agree? One of them killed Gram?”

“Liz, I have no doubt Scott would kill anyone who stood between him and a pile of money. Or hire someone to do it, anyway. And Adam? Sure, I can see that. But unfortunately, there is zero evidence linking them to Gram’s murder. None.”

“Do you honestly think it’s a coincidence they are conspiring to kill town council members to get this resort approved and Gram gets killed?” I came up out of my chair.

“Of course not. But the only evidence we have that Adam—not Scott—is
planning
to kill someone—and we don’t know who—is one end of a telephone conversation you overheard while trespassing. Given the animosity you—and I—have for Scott, I’m gonna need a little more than that to arrest them.”