The Marsh Read online

  She frowned when she got about five feet from Charles. With a straight face, she said, “He was out cattin’ around last night.” She shook her head in disgust.

  I hadn’t told Charles about Joe’s pedigree and could tell he didn’t know what to say. I stood behind him, smiled, and gave Karen a thumbs-up. She shook her head like she was near the end of the line with Joe’s shenanigans. If I didn’t sell another thing today, this moment was worth all the trouble.

  The couple from Sullivan’s Island had left a hundred bucks lighter and with two photos. Karen, Charles, and I were alone in the booth. Apparently she felt guilty about teasing Charles—unnecessary, since he had made a crusade out of insulting and teasing friends and foe alike—and told him about her feline. The booth filled before she completed her story about Joe and how he got his name. I had learned over the years that customers arrived in waves. Without any danger of rip currents, I welcomed all visitors to the booth, regardless of how they arrived.

  Karen started twice to tell us something but was interrupted by questions from customers. A rock-and-roll band from James Island began a sound check at the bandstand. In seconds, we wouldn’t be able to hear anything. Charles said he would take care of the booth if Karen and I wanted to walk and talk. She said, “Thanks” before I weighed in on the offer.

  A recently updated, narrow pier started at the park, spanned part of the marsh, and ended overhanging the Folly River. I guided Karen toward the pier and slowly walked with her to the end of the seven-hundred-foot-long, wood structure. She had something on her mind, so I didn’t compound the situation with words. Several walkers were on the pier, but by the time we arrived at the covered end that overlooked the river, we were alone.

  Karen leaned against the rail, made a couple of benign comments about the weather and the large number of boats on the river. And then, her reason for coming. “One of our detectives called last night,” she said. “Long was murdered.”

  I wasn’t surprised, but it still turned my stomach sour. “How?”

  “Gunshot,” she said. “No slug in the body, but no doubt about the cause.”

  “Leads?”

  “Zilch,” she said. “Doubt they’ll …”

  Her next words were drowned out by the roar of a speedboat as it zipped down the river—too fast and too close to shore. Insanity season at the beach had begun.

  I asked her to repeat the last part.

  “I doubt they’ll find anything useful. The body was near the narrow channel out by Secessionville. The doc said he wouldn’t be able to pin time of death closer than a two-day window. The body was found on Memorial Day and had been there at least three days and up to five; high tide had come and gone at least six times, could be as many as ten. Our guys couldn’t even tell if the body was killed or dumped where it was found or washed there from somewhere else.” She paused and followed the path of a sailboat that was gracefully passing. “To be honest, I’m sort of glad someone else has this one.” She tapped me on the arm. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Hear what?” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said and tapped my arm again. “I need to head out. I promised to take Dad to lunch in Charleston.”

  The rock band was going full tilt when we got back to the tent. I didn’t recognize any of the music, but that wasn’t the case for the group of early-teens who stood in front of the screeching musicians and mouthed the words. I didn’t want to immediately be tagged as an old geezer, so I didn’t put my hands over my ears.

  Karen waved bye to Charles and leaned over to me. “I’m not going to tell you not to get involved; I know it won’t do any good. Just be careful.” She gave me another arm tap and walked away.

  Excellent advice, I thought. And what’s with the arm taps?

  I returned to the tent to find Charles deep in conversation with Marlene Ryle, the receptionist at Aker and Long. Their heads were inches apart so they could hear each other. Her white linen slacks and a light-blue top contrasted with her professional garb she had worn each time I was in the law office. Her shih tzu was cradled in her arms. She and Charles were laughing, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying because the lead singer was screaming something about either Danny Glover or a fanny lover.

  Two huge speakers with “Cosmo Rentals” stenciled on each side suddenly turned silent, proof that there was a god and that he did work in strange and mysterious ways. The Goth-attired lead vocalist and the geeky-looking teenager working the sound board looked at each other, and then at the cables snaked between the board and the amps, and then toward the sky, and then back at each other. My guess was that neither of them was an electrical engineer.

  The unexpected, and welcomed, silence gave me a chance to interject myself into Charles and Marlene’s conversation. I made the obligatory comment about her “adorable” canine and then listened as Charles filled me in on what I’d missed. Marlene had told him that even though she was one of the signers on the firm’s checkbook, neither Sean nor Tony needed the second signature. She seldom had access to the checkbook; Tony hoarded it and was the numbers person. This was consistent with what Sean had told us.

  “Anything bothering Tony?” asked Charles.

  Marlene set her dog, whose name I’d already forgotten, on the ground and wiped a couple of hairs off her blue top.

  “Well, fellows,” she began, “I don’t like to speak unkindly about the dead, but …” She hesitated.

  Charles wasn’t about to let her stop. He picked up the dog, gave it a hug, and told her how precious it was, and said, “It’s okay. We won’t tell anyone.”

  “These are just rumors and feelings, you understand,” she said as she looked around to see if anyone was near.

  A few words of profanity came from the bandstand—a good sign, I thought. The peaceful silence would continue. The Goth-attired lead singer leaned on the metal sculpture of a frog playing a guitar that guarded the shelter. I realized that I was feeling my age when I thought the frog statue looked more human than the young vocalist.

  Marlene continued, “I think Tony may have had a wee bit of a drug problem.”

  “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “I have a young cousin who’s been in and out of rehab for years, lives out near the plantations. We used to be close … until—until he got so paranoid he didn’t trust anyone. He’d steal and pawn anything that wasn’t screwed down.” She stopped and wiped a tear from her left eye. “He was all nervous-like. Tony’s behavior the last year reminded me of him. I said there wasn’t anything specific; a gut reaction.”

  Charles set the dog down. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “God, I feel terrible telling this,” she said. “I think his wife was going to leave him.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m not certain she was,” said Marlene. “The last couple of weeks she called the office three times I know about. He usually talked to her with his door open, but the last few times he closed it before having me put the call through. The walls in our offices are not the best construction. Normal conversation is okay, but if someone talks loud, you can hear it in the reception area. Tony was cussing and pounding his desk as soon as the conversation started with Connie—that’s his wife, you know.”

  “Are you sure it was about her leaving him?” I asked.

  Marlene grinned. “Pretty sure it wasn’t over getting bananas at the Pig on his way home.”

  She pulled her shoulders back; she was beginning to like the attention. Charles’s way with dogs worked wonders.

  She continued, “Seriously, I heard him say something about money, her attorney, ‘you’ll regret it,’ and ‘just try!’” She shook her head. “No, I didn’t hear him say she was leaving, but that was the impression I got, you know. After two of the calls, he slammed down the phone, yanked the door open, and ran down the
stairs without saying anything to me.”

  “Did Sean hear any of this?” asked Charles.

  “No,” she quickly said and then looked toward the top of the tent. “No—I’m pretty sure he didn’t. He was out a lot. I don’t even think he saw Tony.”

  Two elderly couples had walked into the tent. They appeared to be together and started asking about the location of several of the photos, oblivious to our conversation with Marlene. She wasn’t about to continue with the growing crowd and said she’d talk to us later. We had no choice but to let her leave. Charles would have followed her out and continued the interrogation, but the chance of taking money from customers held him at bay.

  Around one o’clock p.m., the clearing sky and sun began to win the tug-of-war against clouds and rain. The crowd wasn’t as heavy as it had been earlier, but there was still a steady flow of visitors to the booth. Charles was much more comfortable talking to prospective buyers than I was, so I walked around and looked at the other booths. I had met one of the two other photographers at the exhibit, and we spent a few minutes talking about the plethora of photo opportunities around Charleston and the Lowcountry. We both bemoaned how difficult it was to sell enough photography to make a living. He said he was planning to publish a photo book of Folly Beach. I wished him well and continued my walk.

  “You just missed William Hansel,” said Charles when I returned to the booth. I waved my Tilley in front of my face to get some air movement. Perspiration covered my body.

  William was my neighbor when I rented a house during my first extended stay on Folly Beach four years ago. He was a tenured professor of hospitality and tourism at the College of Charleston. On the surface, nothing sounded unusual about that, but in the spirit of Folly, he broke the mold at that point. William was African American, was a strong Republican, had never worked in his field of expertise, and would rather live on an island with an extremely small minority population than in Charleston. He would still be my neighbor if a killer hadn’t decided that I was a threat and burned my house down—with me inside. Fortunately, that was ancient history, although I would occasionally awake in the night imagining the smell of burning wood from that horrific night.

  I handed Charles a hot dog and Diet Pepsi that I had picked up during my tour of the show. “Is he going to come back?” I said.

  Charles took a bite about the size of half the hot dog and then mumbled, “No. Said he had to get somewhere; I didn’t catch where.” A sip of the Pepsi was next. I waited patiently. “He did say you were overdue for a visit.”

  He was right. I hadn’t talked to William since Christmas.

  Storm clouds gathered in the west; thunderheads rolled closer by the minute. The rock band had given up on restoring electricity to its thunderous performance. All there under age sixteen were disappointed; all with eardrums over forty, relieved. The temperature must have been ninety, and the humidity soared. Most visitors had abandoned their cover-ups by mid-afternoon and pranced around in bikinis, swim trunks hanging below the knee, and worst of all, men in Speedos. I would rather have watched a chorus line of alligators amble by. Summer had arrived early on Folly Beach.

  Power to the bandstand still hadn’t been restored, but it didn’t stop Country Cal from beginning his half-hour set of country classics. With nearly fifty years of singing for a living, he had seen it all—from the stratospheric heights of the Grand Ole Opry to standing on hay bales crooning for crowds numbering in single digits. Thirty minutes without a live mike would be a snap.

  The first chords of “I Never Go Around Mirrors” were coming from his beat-up guitar when Marlene edged back into the tent, shih tzu in hand.

  Charles immediately took the dog and kissed it on the nose; Marlene beamed. “Tony have problems with any clients?” asked the budding detective and canine-kisser.

  “Come on, Charles,” she said as she looked around the tent. “You know I shouldn’t tell you this.”

  I saw that as a good sign, since she had started that way earlier and then talked and talked.

  “It’s okay,” said Charles—whatever that meant.

  Marlene continued to look around and saw that no one else could hear. “You have to understand,” she said, “we don’t do criminal law; mostly boring stuff like wills, estate planning, real estate closings, business incorporations, occasionally a divorce. Every once in a while, Tony got involved with clients he never brought to the office. I think it’s, as they say, ‘family’ business …”

  “Like Mafia?” interrupted Charles.

  Marlene’s eyes darted around the tent once again. “You didn’t hear that from me,” she said. “Anyway, he keeps—kept—whatever it was separate from anything in the office. To be honest, I have no idea if anyone was mad at him about that work.”

  “Was Sean involved?” I asked.

  Marlene waved her right hand in front of her head, palm facing me. “No way,” she said. “He wouldn’t touch that if he were flat broke. In fact—oh God, I shouldn’t be telling you this—I know he and Tony had more than one, let’s say, heated discussion about some of Tony’s clients. They’ve been at each other more and more lately; not out-and-out arguments but sharp words, nasty looks, slammed doors.” She hesitated and looked down. “Please don’t tell Sean I said anything. I’ve been with him, well, with both of them, but mainly Sean, five years. I love the job.”

  “He won’t hear it from us,” said Charles. A promise I wasn’t sure he would be able to keep.

  “One other thing, and then I need to go,” she said. “When you asked about problem clients, it made me think of Mr. Elder, Conroy Elder.” She looked at Charles and then me, and said nothing.

  “What about him?” asked Charles, who was uncomfortable with Marlene’s pause.

  “It may be nothing,” she said and continued to move her gaze from Charles to me and back. “A couple of weeks, or maybe it was three, before the holiday, Mr. Elder stormed into the office and demanded to see Tony, demanded to see him right now! Fortunately for Mr. Elder—not for Tony—it was one of the rare times when Tony was there. He was meeting with a client about a will. Tony heard Mr. Elder yelling and cut his meeting short and hurried the client out the door. Confused the heck out of the client, I think.” Marlene shook her head. “Thought we were going to have a scene right then and there.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, Mr. Elder stormed into Tony’s office and waited for Tony to follow … I thought Tony should have hightailed it down the stairs and out of Dodge, but he followed Elder and closed his door.”

  I thought I knew the answer after having heard Marlene’s comment about the walls but still asked. “Did you hear what it was about?”

  “Aside from a lot of profanity, all I could gather was that Mr. Elder accused Tony of screwing him out of a huge payoff. Something about Tony brokered the deal where Elder sold half of a business to his partner. Mr. Elder thought that Tony had gone behind his back and negotiated with the partner to where Mr. Elder sold his half for less than he should have. I didn’t get all the details, but I thought Mr. Elder said he got ripped off for several million dollars.”

  “What business?” asked Charles.

  She shook her head. “Don’t know. He has a bunch. Mr. Elder lives most of the year in Baltimore, and several of his businesses are there. They have something to do with the Internet; cloud technology—whatever the hell that is—and software. He yelled about something else, but I couldn’t catch what it was.”

  “Does Mr. Elder have a home here?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” said Marlene. “One of those humongous houses on the ocean out past the Washout. It’s got a large enough lot he could build another house on it if he wanted to.”

  “Not hurting for money, then?” said Charles.

  “You never know,” said Marlene. “I have to go. Please, nothing to Sean a
bout this, please?”

  A clap of thunder accented the second please. The expanding large, and increasingly darker, thunderheads were almost overhead, and the last verse of Cal’s 1962 hit, “End of Your Story,” was winding down while most visitors and artists were looking skyward at the clouds.

  You never know. How true, I thought.

  The show was scheduled to run until seven p.m., but by four-thirty, the looming threat of rain, the painfully high temperature, and the palpable, stifling humidity had thinned the crowd to near- nonexistent.

  Charles and I cowered in the back of the tent to avoid the direct sunshine that competed with the rolling, ominous-looking clouds.

  Charles fanned his sweat-dripping face with his Tilley. “You know, Chris,” he said, “if you keep the gallery open, we wouldn’t have to be sitting here enjoying this wonderful weather.”

  “We’ve sold more today than we did last month in the gallery,” I said.

  “Got more sunstroke, dehydration, and insect bites too,” said Charles. With a dramatic swoop, he smacked his hat against his leg. A symbolic insect killing?

  “True,” I said, “but it cost less—no rent, utilities, insurance, and—”

  Charles interrupted, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it.” He paused and pulled his shirt away from his sweaty chest. “What do you think about this? We could take one wall of the gallery and make a used book store. I could bring my books and sell them. Wouldn’t that help?” He didn’t make direct eye contact but looked in my direction.

  Charles collected books like some people collect friends, or money, or stamps. I knew the offer to sell his valued collection was the ultimate sacrifice he could make. I felt like a heel. I also didn’t want to give him false encouragement; I didn’t see a way in the world that selling a few books would significantly stop the bleeding.