Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) (39 page)

Seabrook’s brows shrugged, head tipping to the side. “Assuming you aren’t the burglar, assailant, or murderer? Nothing. But don’t think people around here haven’t suspected you, the new unknown resident with a questionable past.”

Son of a bitch
. “Again, you protect who you know and blame those you don’t. While you’re trusting all these people you know, someone out there laughs at how you’re barking at shadows.”

He didn’t raise his voice, but his demeanor stiffened more, accepting her challenge. “You’re a cheap firecracker, unreliable with the potential to pop off at any moment. If you still possessed your old cop sense, you’d recognize why you’re a person of interest.”

Forensics had found no prints in Papa’s place, no prints on her broken mementoes from Papa’s house. There’d be no prints on the spent brass except hers, since the shooter had no need to load it. “Talk to Pauley,” she said, groping for a comeback. “Ask where he’s been for the last hour. I still say he had the most motive to kill Papa Beach, so why not Raysor?”

Seabrook frowned questionably. “He doesn’t even know Raysor, Callie.”

“Why does he need to know him? He only wanted to make a point with my gun.”

The chance these crimes were connected flashed neon in her mind. Just like with her gun, all the facts weren’t necessarily clues to the crimes. Some seemed too convenient, too attached to her, too opportune. And when details seemed too obvious, maybe they weren’t clues. They were distractions for the likes of Mike Seabrook and Don Raysor.

And Pauley’s hatred for her seemed way too over the top.

“Please, just ask Pauley those few questions.” She held out her hands. “And feel free to dust me for gun residue. Dust my car. Go get my hamper and test those clothes, too.”

She wished she’d installed the motion sensors before now. They would have shown the time she came in her house. “Wait!” she said and snapped her fingers. “I recorded myself on my cams. And once I show you proof that I was here when someone shot Raysor,
please
watch Maxwell’s cam recording while I’ve got you. They do have a nanny cam. Quit screwing around with me. We’ve got to arrest Peters before he disappears.”

Seabrook leaned toward her, finally attentive. “Just show me the recording.”

“Come over here.” She ran to her laptop. “Tell me what you see.”

“A young couple getting it on,” he said, after a long minute of sitting in front of the screen.

“Keep watching,” she said from behind him.

He groaned seconds later as Peters mixed his mimosa. “I hate this. Does it show him hitting Maxwell?”

“Keep watching,” Callie repeated.

The mystery man appeared. “Wait, who’s that?” Seabrook asked.

“I have no idea. Not enough of clear view to identify. However, we definitely know Peters is the thief. I could get him to confess to every one of the other burglaries.”

“Callie?” came a familiar voice from the door.

Both of them turned. Dickens held Peters back in the entryway. “I need to know how much you want to spend on those motion sensors,” the handyman said. “The hardware store has three different kinds.”

SEABROOK CONFIRMED Callie’s cam evidence that she had been home when Raysor was shot. But he still told her to not leave Edisto. Hearing such an order from an officer’s mouth other than her own gave her a new perspective on being a civilian.

After an hour sitting idle, unable to study the recording since Seabrook confiscated it as evidence, Callie put in a call to the station, craving an update, halfway expecting Seabrook to blow her off.

“How’s it going?” she asked, stunned when the receptionist patched her to Seabrook.

Peters’ exclamations of dismay echoed in the background, his frantic yelling completely out of the character she’d come to know. “I did not hurt anybody. I did not shoot anybody. You people know me.” Over and over, as if he were afraid that being quiet would be his undoing.

Seabrook had banned her involvement with Peters’ arrest. A wise decision, she had to admit. Plus, it was dusk, and with a shooter loose, she preferred to be indoors, blinds drawn to the fiery sunset across the marsh that she found way too visible from her back window. She’d already called Jeb to come home.

“Well?” she asked. “Have you learned anything?” As she spoke, she studied Pauley’s house from her kitchen window. She should have installed a sensor pointing toward his place.

“Not sure I ought to be talking to you,” Seabrook said.

Pauley drove up in his drive. She jerked back from view. “Don’t tell anybody, then. Pick my brain, please. I might be able to help. What did he say?”

“He confessed to the break-ins.”

Damn
. She’d caught the man flat-footed in Sophie’s house. Peters might’ve been hunting a drink, but most likely he’d found her neighbor’s house too easy to pass up for a second effort with her doors unlocked.  “How the hell did he find Sophie’s NFL ring in the litterbox?” she asked.

“Kicked the litterbox in his hunt for a souvenir,” he said. “She probably discovered it missing in cleaning up the mess.”

Then she had to ask the obvious, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. “What about Papa Beach?”

“He swears he didn’t kill Henry Beechum. Nor did he assault Maxwell.”

Callie retrieved the map from her back pocket and snared a new notepad from a drawer. Seabrook had confiscated her recorder and notes. “We need to nail down Pauley’s activities for every day since this mess started, too, you know.”

“One guy at a time, Callie. By the way, Peters lawyered up.”

She pushed away the map and let her eyes rest on the trees turning into shadows outside her window. “And he’s still rambling on like that?” She turned on more lights in the room.

“He’s not that bright, Callie. The attorney’s meeting us in Walterboro since we don’t have jail cells here. We’re heading over there now.”

“He hated Papa Beach,” she said. “That’s why he broke into residents’ homes. All the guy did was thumb his nose at people who hadn’t given him their business. He was enjoying their conveniences and stealing tokens. Almost harmless, if you think about it.”

“How do you figure that?”

“It came to me after talking to Mrs. Hanson. Then I confirmed it with the Maxwells.” She reread her scribbled notes jotted around the
X
s on her map. “Peters only broke into houses where Papa Beach did work. Papa didn’t do the jobs for payment, so his reach was no more than the people on his street. Anything else was too much bother because of his age and having to haul heavy tools. He wouldn’t deal with the rental houses either, since the real estate management companies kept their own contractors. I think Papa’s death triggered Peter’s crime spree, unless he killed Papa to get rid of his competition.” But that still didn’t ring true. “I can’t believe that, though.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Seabrook said.

“Papa cost Peters some business. It’s that simple. If the break-ins weren’t felonies, they’d be comical. Did he say anything about the coins?”

“Yeah,” Seabrook said, “but not sure how much truth is in it. Said he found the collection in a trash pile on Jungle Shores Road. Says he’s never been in Beechum’s house.”

“Who throws away coins? And where’s the rest of the collection? His truck?”

“Yes. Give or take a few he spent. He knew enough not to throw too many of them around, apparently.” He spoke to someone in the background. “Callie, I’ve got to go.”

“Wait, what did he say about my place?” she asked.

“You were a good guy, Callie. He liked you.”

She mildly smiled at the irony. “Because with Papa dead, I hired him to do work for me.” And fed him a steak.

She’d been right suspecting that the crimes on Edisto involved two criminals. Her smile gave way to the disturbing image of another man roaming the beach with no qualms about inflicting harm and no worries about getting caught.

“Do you think the nanny cam footage helps him against the assault charge?” she asked.

“Depends on the spin a defense attorney puts on it. They’ll probably throw it all at him and see what sticks. There’s still the possibility of an accomplice. Time stamps might sort all that out, plus the second guy doesn’t quite physically fit Peters.”

“Well,” she said. “We can take Raysor off the list.”

“Never had him on it.”

She still harbored distrust for Raysor and a light, residual concern about Seabrook. He was too quick to doubt her, too slow to believe her, and too similar to Raysor in having the opportunity to run a burglary ring from behind his badge.

But she hated feeling that way. Somebody other than Peters was guilty, and the not knowing was making her suspect the world.

“I’m eager to see if things settle down,” Seabrook said. “Even if Peters had a partner, removing half the team might be enough to dismantle it.” He hesitated a moment. “Call me if you feel the need to . . . if you need anything.”

Callie hung up, pleased at getting Seabrook to talk to her. He no longer kept her at arm’s length. Good for him. Her attitude about him, however, held him at a comfortable distance. She was quite convinced his so-called street surveillance was no more than a study of her, a suspicion. She was the new person on the block and not one of the regulars, the folks he was so proud of making excuses for . . . like Peters.

She hoped Seabrook was right about one thing, though. Hopefully the crime spree was handicapped with Peters out of commission. But if Peters admired Callie and didn’t target her with flickering lamps, window notes, and broken chicken figurines, then who did? What had she done to rate such attention?

Regardless what Jeb wanted, Chelsea Morning might go up for sale sooner than New Year’s Day. No one had bothered them for the year they’d lived in Middleton. Even the Russians had stopped their threats in Boston.

This harassment had started in Edisto.

Jeb arrived home around nine thirty, showered, and planted himself on the sofa with a remote. By the time Callie came out in her nightgown and robe, he was engrossed in an online game.

“Jeb,” she said.

“Shhh,” he said, glued to the screen. “In a minute. I unlocked the secret level.”

His innocence moved her to wait. They weren’t going anywhere tonight. So she moved to the enclosed screened porch to wind down, to let the surf’s distant, lazy churning soothe her to the point she could nod off. It felt later than ten. So much was happening.

Callie shook her head to nobody there. And why would he need a partner? He was a loner by nature with the expertise to enter homes without assistance. Peters didn’t seem the murderous type, especially now that she’d gotten to know him.

Now that she’d gotten to know him
. Hell, she sounded like Seabrook.

A light came on at Pauley’s place, and he glanced out one window, then another. He was as paranoid as she was. Or he was watching for her, calculating his next move.

The Maxwells probably slept poorly, worried about their video. Callie wanted to knock on their door and tell them Peters was in custody, but doing so might make them lower their defenses. An invisible partner waiting in the wings would love that.

“I see you,” yelled her neighbor. “Sitting over there in the dark. Probably waiting for me to go to sleep so you can sneak in.”

The man was daft. “Pauley, I don’t care about your house. I simply want to enjoy mine.”

“Then why are you surveying me?”

It’s surveilling, stupid
. “I’m seated on my porch. It happens to face your house.”

“You have other porches.”

“Leave me alone, Pauley.”

“I’ll be watching you. Come in here, and I might shoot.”

He’d shoot his own foot off first. She wrapped her robe around her. Pauley seemed somewhat of a chump, endowed with the gray matter of a duck. Yet he possessed a shifty enough edge to worry her. While her detective senses had dulled of late, she still gave them a smidge of credit, and right now they told her not to lose her guard around him.

Or maybe her alert status was stuck on red. She just didn’t know anymore.

Finally Callie went to clean the kitchen before she headed to bed. In the phone call, Seabrook said they planned to charge Peters, topping the pile with home invasion on Papa Beach, a more egregious crime than burglary, but not nearly as grievous as murder. A heavy load. She tried to cast aside the sympathy she felt for him.

Sun-kissed from his day in the sun, Jeb put his own dishes in the sink and joined her on the porch. “Who were you talking to?”

“Our stupid neighbor. Still paranoid about people stealing his stuff.”

“He’s not dangerous, is he?”

Callie wasn’t so sure. “I think he’s all right, but steer clear of him.”

“Then I’m going to bed,” he said. “Today’s job on the boat wore me out.”

She was exhausted, too. The inside cams posed vigilant. Maybe she would sleep better tonight, but she wanted Jeb to sleep easier, too. “They arrested Peters today.”

He froze. “Don’t tell me.”

She nodded.

The boy’s eyes widened, the whites a contrast to his tan. “
He’s
the one who broke into the houses? The same man who ate dinner with us and told
me
how to live
my
life?”

“Appears so.”

“He’s a murderer?” Jeb exclaimed, his voice rising an octave.

Callie shrugged. “He admits to the burglaries, but not the murder or the attack on Steve Maxwell. But they’re booking him with all of it, nonetheless.”