The Folly Beach Mystery Collection Volume II Read online

  Also by Bill Noel

  Folly Beach Mysteries

  Folly

  The Pier

  Washout

  The Edge

  The Marsh

  Ghosts

  Missing

  Final Cut

  First Light

  Boneyard Beach

  Silent Night

  Dead Center

  Discord

  The Folly Beach Mystery Collection

  Dark Horse

  Joy

  The Folly Beach Mystery Collection Volume II

  Bill Noel

  Discord

  Copyright © 2017 Bill Noel

  Dark Horse Copyright © 2018

  Joy Copyright © 2018 Bill Noel

  Folly Beach Mystery Collection Volume 2

  Copyright © 2018 by Bill Noel

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Front cover photo and design by Bill Noel

  Author photo by Susan Noel

  ISBN: 978-1-937979-43-0

  Enigma House Press

  Goshen, Kentucky 40026

  www.enigmahousepress.com

  Contents

  Discord

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Dark Horse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Joy

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  Discord

  Prologue

  Midnight had come and gone. The Top Ten Bar had been standing-room-only two hours earlier yet now was as quiet as a Baptist church on Tuesday morning. Rod, a tall, thin, thirty-something bartender, stood behind the distressed wooden bar wiping dry the last of the clean wine glasses; not difficult since most patrons were beer drinkers. The exhausted employee, who looked more like a history professor with his neatly-trimmed beard and glasses perched on his head, was forty feet from a couple of stragglers. Rod had pulled a double shift and the two customers were all that stood between his aching feet and heading to his girlfriend’s condo where he hoped to find sympathetic coos, and with luck, a foot massage and more.

  The female customer pushed an empty beer bottle aside and leaned against the table. “Think you can walk away after stomping on my dream?” She was seething and making no effort to hide it. “All your talk, your smiles, your empty promises. You’ve been lying through your freakin’ teeth. You’ve taken my money. Buddy, let me tell you one thing you’re not going to do.” She hesitated, glanced toward the bartender who was ignoring her outburst, and turned to her tablemate. “You ain’t going to get away with it.”

  The man shrugged. It wasn’t the worst reaction from the customer sitting on the other side of the table from the tirade, but it was close. He grinned and things hit rock bottom.

  The woman swept her arm across the table and the bottle tumbled to the cracked, beer-stained linoleum floor. The bottle exploded into hundreds of shards, and shattered not only the container but the eerie silence in the room. She shoved away from the table and stormed out of the bar.

  The bartender’s expression switched from boredom to irritation. The man who had been sitting across from the woman turned toward Rod, held his hands out. “I got it. I’ll clean it up.”

  You better, thought Rod. He glared at the man, glanced at the door where the companion had stomped out, and reached for the broom and dustpan. He mumbled a profanity and faked a smile as he handed the cleaning tools to the customer. “Thanks, Kevin. I’d appreciate it.”

  Kevin had been a regular at Top Ten Bar, located a few blocks away from Lower Broadway, Nashville’s epicenter of country bars and aspiring singers and songwriters, for the last year and had escorted a constant stream of young women to his evening “office.” After the first few months, the bartenders had stopped paying attention to the ladies with Kevin and swore they couldn’t recognize any of them even if the room had been lit by klieg lights. The inside joke among the staff had been that Kevin was either a talent scout in futile search for the next star, or a pimp plying his bevy of beauties with liquid encouragement before sending them out to enhance his coffers. Regardless, the less the bartenders knew about Kevin and his activities the better.

  There was something else Rod didn’t know about Kevin. This would be the last night he would be escorting anyone to the out-of-the-way Music City watering hole.

  Rod could spot a cop within a millisecond of one entering his workplace, a talent he’d acquired from standing behind bars for a third of his life. It didn’t take years of observation to tell him the two men walking his direction were on the payroll of the Metro Nashville Police Department. They w
eren’t in uniform, yet their poorly-fitting navy blazers with conspicuous firearm bulges made formal introductions unnecessary. They flashed their creds at him anyway. Troy Rogers was the younger of the two; Wayne Lawrence, the more seasoned detective.

  Detective Rogers unfolded an enlarged driver’s license photo and slid it across the bar. “Recognize him?”

  A dozen pre-happy-hour drinkers were spread throughout the warehouse-size room. They were more interested in their drinks than in the detectives.

  Rod removed his glasses and laid them on the bar. He squinted at the photo and at the detective. “Sure, it’s Kevin. Kevin Starr, at least that’s what’s on his credit card. What’d he do?”

  Detective Lawrence ignored the question. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Rod glanced around the room. No one needed his services nor were paying attention to what was going on with the detectives. “Couple of nights ago. Why?”

  Rogers took a notebook out of his jacket pocket. “What time?”

  “Didn’t see him come in. Had to be after eleven. I was busy. He sat over there.” Rod pointed to a table on the far side of the room.

  Rogers jotted a note and said, “He alone?”

  “No. Had a woman with him. What’s going on?”

  “Know who she was?” Rogers asked.

  Rod smiled. “Hell, I’m not Kevin’s secretary. He has a different woman every time he’s here. Couldn’t tell you one from another.”

  “So you don’t know who she was?”

  Ain’t it what I said? Rod thought. Instead, he said, “Nope.”

  “Describe her?”

  “I never got a good look. It was busy when they came in and Kevin came to me and got their beers. I was the only employee here. The damned waitress left sick an hour earlier leaving me with all this.” He waved his hand around the room.

  Rogers said, “Try anyway?”

  Rod looked at the table where the couple had been sitting. “Average height. Didn’t strike me as tall or short. Figure she was attractive because all of Kevin’s friends are lookers.” He shook his head. “She had her back to me. Sorry, that’s it.”

  Detective Lawrence said, “Don’t suppose she paid by credit card?”

  “Don’t you think I would have mentioned it? Besides, she didn’t pay.” Rod hesitated and grinned. “Not to me, that is.”

  “What’s that mean?” Lawrence asked.

  “Umm, nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Rod looked at Rogers and turned to Lawrence. “Don’t take this as gospel. Some of us thought Starr was a pimp. All those good-looking gals, you know.”

  “Any proof?” Lawrence said.

  “Just gossip.”

  Rogers asked, “What time did they leave?”

  “Twelve-thirty. Remember because they were the only folks here. Had to wait for them to go to lock up.”

  “Anyone else here that night who might recognize her?” Lawrence asked.

  “Maybe, except I don’t know who. I told you it was crowded when they got here. The waitress was gone. Don’t know if they talked to anyone. Place was dead when they left; dead until he must’ve said something to piss her off.”

  The detectives leaned forward. “Explain.”

  Rod looked around to see if any customers were listening. “They added fifteen minutes to my already long night when she knocked a bottle off the table. Sticky beer and glass everywhere. I made Kevin clean it up.”

  “Accident?”

  Rod grinned. “If flailing her arm around, knocking the bottle five feet from the table, and storming out of the room was an accident, sure.”

  Lawrence asked, “Know what she was angry about?”

  “Nah, but Kevin was nice about cleaning the mess up. He kept mumbling about the chick not having to break the bottle. Something like he was doing the best he could.”

  “Any idea what he meant?” Lawrence asked.

  Rod shook his head.

  Lawrence jotted another note.

  “Now your turn. What’s going on?”

  Detective Rogers glanced at his partner and turned to Rod. “We found the credit card receipt that showed he was in here two nights ago.”

  “So?”

  “We found it on his body. Mr. Starr was murdered sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning.”

  1

  I was in Cal’s Country Bar and Burgers a block off the literal and figurative center of my slice of heaven on Folly Beach, South Carolina. The lunch crowd, if you call four people a crowd, had settled their checks and headed to the beach. The bar’s owner and I were alone.

  Cal folded his trim, six-foot-three frame in the chair and scooted up to the table. “Heard from them lately?”

  The last four months, when anyone mentioned them, it was safe to assume they were referring to my best friend Charles Fowler and his girlfriend Heather Lee, the couple who had moved to Nashville so Heather could pursue her dream of becoming a country music star. Considering her singing voice, to put it gently, stank, the odds on her achieving the lofty goal were worse than me, a man in my sixties and allergic to exercise, running the hundred-meter hurdles in the Olympics.

  “Last week,” I said. “Charles called excited to tell me Heather made another appearance at open-mic night at the Bluebird.”

  “Got herself discovered yet?”

  Cal, who was in his seventies, would know a thing or two about being discovered. He had a national top-twenty country hit, “End of the Story,” that reached number one in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas. Unfortunately, he had reached his pinnacle of success in 1962 at the ripe old age of eighteen.

  “Don’t believe so.”

  Cal chuckled. “Suspect Michigan would’ve mentioned it if his gal had become famous.”

  Cal had a habit of calling people by their state of origin. Charles and I had come close to breaking him of it. He would occasionally backslide.

  I nodded.

  Cal continued, “Appearing at the Bluebird Cafe’s a big deal. Back in my day, there weren’t nearly as many places where someone could be discovered. Because they let Heather croon a tune there don’t mean much other than she can say she did.”

  “She knows it. She’s got her heart set on breaking into the music industry.”

  Cal pushed his ever-present, sweat-stained Stetson back on his head, looked at the front door where nobody entered, and back at me. “How many songs has she penned?”

  “Two that I know of. Why?”

  “How many times has she appeared at open-mic night at the Bird?”

  “Several.”

  “Has she appeared anywhere else in Nashville?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Open-mic night at the Bird is for songwriters, not singers.”

  “I know.”

  Cal looked toward the stage at the far end of the bar. “My ears have suffered from hearing Heather warble through her two penned ditties many nights up there.” Cal shook his head. “Now I’m no expert on the new-fangled country music. In my day, a songwriter hauled around a satchel with a hundred or more songs he, or sometimes a gal, had put to paper. Heather’s two aren’t much better than a dolphin could write and her singing’s not as good as those swimmin’ mammals can croon.”

  I knew how much Charles cared for Heather, and Lord knows, everyone who knew her understood how much she wanted to find fame and fortune standing behind a microphone. Cal was right. I started to tell him so when the door opened and I was surprised to see Preacher Burl Ives Costello peek his head in. He saw us and headed our way.

  Cal said, “Afternoon, Illinois.”

  “A pleasant afternoon to you, Brother Cal,” said the portly minister of First Light, Folly’s newest, and most unusual house of worship. “And to you too, Brother Chris.”

  First Light should be called a place of worship rather than a house since it conducted most of its services on the beach. When bad weather descended, or in the preacher’s words, the “Devil took to interfer
in’ with the work of the Lord,” the services were held in a storefront on Folly’s main street.

  Cal looked around the empty room. “Here to save someone? If you are, you’re stuck with Kentucky, umm, Mr. Landrum here, and me. Don’t see much hope for savin’ us.”

  Burl was quite familiar with the aging bar owner and me. We had been embroiled in a deadly situation a couple of years back that involved members of his congregation, or as he called them, his flock. Burl had been the prime suspect in the death of several people, and just as quickly had almost become the victim of the real murderer. Since then, First Light had increased in popularity and its flock had grown, especially among those who were looking for a nontraditional worship experience.