Dead Center Read online

  “Did you see who?” Spencer asked, from the bedroom doorway.

  “Afraid not.”

  Bishop asked Spencer to keep an eye on me while she looked around.

  He said, “The ambulance should be here soon.”

  I closed my eyes. My head hurt, although not as much as it had minutes earlier.

  Bishop returned and Spencer asked her how the intruder had gotten in. A couple of years ago, someone had broken into the house and at the time Spencer had suggested I get stronger door locks, which I had.

  “Broke the window in the office, opened the latch, and climbed in.”

  So much for the extra-strong locks. At least Spencer wouldn’t be able to chide me for not heeding his advice.

  I heard the piercing wail of an ambulance in the distance.

  Spencer said, “Do you know anyone who would want to do this?”

  It seemed like a big coincidence that within the last few days, I found the body in the alley and now this, but I said, “No.”

  Cindy LaMond walked through the door followed by two paramedics from the Charleston County Emergency Medical Services. Cindy stood in the background talking to Officer Bishop while one paramedic examined the knot on my head while the other one checked my pupils, reflexes, blood pressure, followed by a plethora of questions about the injury and my overall health.

  The paramedic did what I dreaded when he said they wanted to transport me to the hospital to get a more thorough check up. I hated hospitals, and that disdain had increased tenfold since I had been on Folly. I spent more time in medical facilities the last eight years than some surgeons. I had visited my closest friends as they fought battles with death, and had been a patient myself a handful of times. I would rather swim to Bermuda than enter the emergency room doors at the hospital, and I was a poor swimmer.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The paramedic gave me a stern look. “Sir, there’s a chance you have a concussion. You should let the docs check you over.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll keep a close watch on it. I’ll have someone stay with me a day or so. If anything happens, I’ll go to the hospital.”

  In the background, Cindy mumbled, “Hardheaded.”

  “Your call, sir. I would recommend against it. If you’re certain, you’ll need to sign papers and we’ll be on our way.”

  The other paramedic stuck a clipboard in front of me with forms attached. I didn’t read the fine print. No need, I knew it released them from responsibility for anything horrible that happens because I had refused their kind offer of a ride. I scribbled my signature on the bottom. They grabbed their medical equipment, and on the way out, said, “Take it easy, sir.”

  The chief told Spencer he could go back on patrol, and asked Bishop to stay. Cindy then put her hand on my arm. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Will be,” I smiled—a mistake. It hurt.

  Cindy glanced in the kitchen, took a brief look at the mess in the office, and went in the bedroom.

  She returned and said, “Chris, I’m going to call Detective Adair to see if he can come over. It seems strange that this would happen so close to you finding the body. Besides, I’d like him to get his lab rats to take a look at the love note on your pillow. I think chocolate would have been more appropriate, but that’s me. Doubt they’ll find anything. You never know. It looks like whoever wrote it was a five year old you’ve pissed off or someone trying to disguise the handwriting with piss-poor printing.”

  Cindy stepped outside and made the call, I remained as still as possible in the comfortable chair, and Officer Bishop walked around the room avoiding the mess on the floor.

  “So you’re certain you didn’t see the assailant?” she said, asking the question I had already answered three times.

  “Yes.” I pointed to the overturned ottoman. “Have a seat, relax.” Her pacing was making me nervous.

  She didn’t say anything but righted the stool. “Nice house, Mr. Landrum.”

  “Thanks, officer, and call me Chris.”

  She nodded. “I’m Trula.”

  “Nice name.” I smiled. My head didn’t hurt as much this time.

  She lowered her head. “Thanks.”

  Cindy returned. “Okay, here’s the deal. Detective Adair will be here as soon as he can get away. I have to get to city hall for a blankety-blank freakin’ budget meeting.” She turned and pointed a finger at Bishop. “Don’t repeat that.” She turned back to me. “Officer Bishop will stay with you until the detective arrives.” To Bishop, she said, “Since our headstrong friend here told the EMTs someone would be with him all the time, you get first shift.” She huffed. “Now Mr. Landrum, you stay there with your butt stuck in that chair. Don’t get up. Don’t touch anything. Try not to let anyone conk you on the noggin until you tell your story to Adair. Think you can do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Good. I’ll have Larry stop by and fix the window.”

  It was close to an hour before Detective Adair arrived. Officer Bishop met him at the door and pointed to where I was seated, although since he was a detective, I suspected he could have found me. I stood and shook his hand.

  “We meet again, Mr. Landrum.” In addition to Adair’s normal preppy look, he wore a forced smile. He glanced around the room. “It appears your housekeeper had the day off.”

  I assumed it was his paltry sense of humor, so I smiled. Trula, standing behind Adair, grinned. Adair walked from room to room taking in the sorry sights and I returned to my chair. He came back and sat on the ottoman Officer Bishop had vacated.

  “Start from the beginning.”

  I repeated the story. He took notes and nodded as I finished each point.

  “Mr. Landrum, I doubt they’ll find anything, but I’m having the crime scene techs do their thing. Who has it in for you? Why does someone want you out of town?”

  I wished I had taped my earlier answers so I could play them back, although, if I had a tape recorder, which I didn’t, it would have suffered the same fate as my printer. I told him I didn’t know anyone. He looked skeptical.

  “Mr. Landrum, I’ve known you for what, a year?”

  “Yes.”

  “And in that time, you’ve been involved in two, no, three murders counting the one the other day. Now that’s a lot even for a cop to deal with, and you, what, a retired pencil-pusher and former shop owner, are smack-dab involved in three.” He shook his head. “And you don’t know anyone who could have done this. That’s hard to swallow.”

  My head still hurt and the last thing I wanted to do was get in a protracted conversation about the past. I understood his point. The unfortunate events a year ago had been resolved, and I couldn’t see how stumbling on a body in an alley could have anything to do with me.

  “Regardless, Detective, I don’t know anyone.”

  “Then I’ll leave and let you get some rest. I don’t know when the techs will get here, so please don’t touch anything that’s been disturbed until they’re finished.”

  I thanked him for coming and Officer Bishop walked him to his car. Before he pulled away, I wondered why I hadn’t told him about Barbara Deanelli’s unusual curiosity about the victim, and Preacher Burl’s free-floating anxieties about the death. I supposed it was because I couldn’t see how either could be relevant. Was I right?

  Two hours later, the techs from the Charleston County Forensic Services Unit arrived; two hours of awkward conversation with Trula Bishop. The techs didn’t comment on my housekeeping other than to say they’d seen worse. They went about their business, apologized for any mess they may have made, and told me to have a good evening. I couldn’t see how it could go any way but up. Officer Bishop went above and beyond her assigned duty to babysit me. She helped straighten up as much as possible. The techs had taken the tattered sheets and stabbed pillow, so she helped me make up the bed, and carry the printer’s remains to the trash. The flat screen television had survived the fall. It took me another hour to convince the vi
gilant officer I was okay enough to stay by myself. I was surprised when she hugged me on the way out the door, told me she was sorry for the trouble I had been through, and said she would drive by every hour to make sure everything seemed okay. I was touched.

  Winter temperatures didn’t bother me as much as the early sunsets. It was a little after seven and dark. I started to fix a glass of wine but figured if I had a concussion I’d better stick with something nonalcoholic. I refiled some of the more current documents, before feeling weak and moved back to the living room chair. I thought about drifting into a peaceful nap, but decided against it, again, because of the possible concussion.

  My headache had lessened until I tried to think who could have done this. I tried to convince myself that I had interrupted a burglary. The knife and note blew that wish out of the water. If someone wanted me dead, he or she had the perfect opportunity. Why leave me alive? Did the intruder think I was dead? Or, did something scare the person before he or she could finish me off? The who and why remained unanswered.

  The conk on the head not only hurt, slammed me with new unanswered questions, but reminded me of things I had been giving way too much thought to; things I had avoided until the death of Charles’s aunt a couple of years ago; things that had been bothering me since the beginning of this year. I was approaching my late sixties. Today my life could have ended; at best, I probably have thirty years left, and that’s if I was lucky. What have I contributed? I had spent most of my work life plowing fields of bureaucracy. My employer was in good shape when I was hired; was in good shape when I retired. My professional legacy will be a page of notes in an archived file in a storage room, never to be resuscitated.

  My dwindling bank account shattered my dream of owning a photo gallery, and damaged the pride and purpose of the best friend I’d ever had. It was also the same best friend who will probably be following his significant other six hundred miles away to follow her dream. My twenty-year marriage ended a quarter of a century ago. I had become reacquainted with my ex-wife four years ago only to see her murdered while trying to restart her life on Folly; a murder I may have prevented. I’m in a relationship with Karen, yet for reasons I can’t articulate, am avoiding taking it to the next level.

  I had spent most of my years avoiding talking about myself. I was a much better listener and more comfortable being on that end of a conversation. Would I feel better if I shared some of my doubts and fears with someone? I considered myself spiritual while not being big on organized religion. Maybe I could talk to Preacher Burl about some of the things that had been bothering me. Why not start at lunch tomorrow? I could ask about his concern over the Panella’s death and seek his guidance with my fears and anxieties. I smiled for the first time in hours when I thought by talking to the preacher I could kill two doves with one stone.

  Despite my efforts not to, I drifted off. The phone jarred me awake, and jarred even more when Karen screamed, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I shook my head to see if I was telling the truth. A headache but that was all. “Detective Adair tell you?”

  “I sure as hell didn’t hear it from you.”

  “Guess I got busy cleaning up and didn’t have time to call.”

  “Yet Kenneth Adair had time to be there, go back to the office, go out on a new homicide case, and still call me.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have called. I’m still shook.”

  She sighed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She had calmed. I reassured her I was okay and only had a little headache. She asked if I had any idea who did it, and she got the same story I’d shared with everyone and his or her brother over the last few hours.

  “Want me to come over?”

  “Thanks, but I need to get to sleep. I’m fine.”

  “You’ll call if you need anything?”

  I assured her I would.

  “Like you did today?”

  Okay, she wasn’t over it yet.

  I repeated that I would call.

  “You better. Oh, I almost forgot. The detective who’d worked in Nashville talked to his buddy over there. His friend called back this afternoon and our guy called me. Some people do call me.”

  “What’d he learn?” I hurried past her snide comment.

  “Good and bad news for Heather. Starr Management, owner Kevin Starr, is real. That’s the good news for Heather. I know you wanted to hear something terrible about him.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “The cop in Nashville had to make several calls before he found someone who’d heard of it. The Music City insider told the local cop Starr Management had been around for a couple of years and Starr’s relatively new to the business. The contact called him, ‘A minnow in an ocean of sharks.’”

  Oh great, I thought. “Because he has an agency and a stack of business cards, doesn’t mean he can help Heather?”

  Karen’s chuckle surprised me. “I’ve heard Heather sing. Nothing can help her.” Then she said she was glad I was okay.

  Karen’s call had shaken me awake. It didn’t do anything to make me less depressed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was to meet Preacher Burl at eleven o’clock at the Folly Beach Crab Shack. Burl had said he wanted to meet early to avoid the lunch crowd. Being the middle of the week in February, I knew there wouldn’t be a wait regardless when we arrived, and suspected it was so we could have a more private conversation, which was fine, since I wanted to know what he had been reluctant to share.

  The popular restaurant had opened moments earlier and I was given a choice of tables. I would have preferred outside on the deck, but it was in the low-fifties so I picked the spot that offered the most privacy. Burl hadn’t arrived and I spent time cracking open complementary peanuts, tossing the empty shells in a blue plastic bucket in the center of the table, and looking around the brightly-colored interior. Whoever had chosen the colors, avoided the beige section of the color wheel. Festive oranges, greens, and reds dominated most surfaces and left no doubt the Crab Shack was beach-centric, fun, and a casual-dining destination.

  The hostess had been pleasant, the atmosphere cheerful, and I knew the food would be excellent, yet I still couldn’t shake my feelings of despair and sadness. Were they the aftereffects of yesterday’s assault or something deeper?

  Burl approached and said, “What’s with the long face?” He smiled.

  I returned his smile. I didn’t tell him what I found amusing was how his full, milk-chocolate colored mustache contrasted with a few stands of combed-over hair covering his balding head as well as a diaper could cover a rhinoceros.

  “Welcome, preacher.” I avoided his question, and pushed the peanuts toward him.

  “Ah, my weakness.” He grabbed three nuts from the cardboard container and started breaking them open.

  “You could have worse weaknesses.”

  “I’m afraid that I do. None so onerous to render me inadequate as a spokesperson for the Lord.”

  Do I ask what they were? I wondered. I didn’t want to get distracted. “Don’t we all.”

  He nodded as the waitress approached and asked if we were ready to order. I had been in the restaurant many times and knew what I wanted without looking at a menu. Burl had as well and we each ordered fried flounder and water.

  “Preacher, the other day when you asked me to look into the death of the man in the alley, you said—”

  He leaned forward. “Have you learned something?”

  “No.”

  Burl leaned back, his shoulders sagged.

  His reaction reinforced my thought he knew something he hadn’t shared. “You said you didn’t know the man, and didn’t know how he might be connected to First Light.”

  “That is correct, Brother Chris.”

  Now the delicate part.

  “Preacher, the body was in the alley. He wasn’t closer to First Light’s door than to Barb’s Books or from the parking lot on the other side of the alley. People wa
lk through there all the time. There wasn’t any indication he had tried to break in the buildings, and he could have been going anywhere. What makes you think he had something to do with the church?”

  Burl frowned and looked at a mural featuring the Ferris wheel that had towered over the beach years ago. “Brother Chris,” he mumbled as he turned back to me, “you know better than most about the various trials, tribulations, and challenges God has bestowed upon me dating back to the first church He led me to establish in Mississippi.”

  I nodded. Burl had an unbelievably poor record of starting churches before he had crossed the Folly River two years age. One burned, one was run out of business by other local churches, and one closed after Burl was accused of killing a member of his flock to inherit a substantial sum of money. After arriving here, three of his followers were murdered and suspicion fell on their preacher. Some friends and I found the real killer and First Light survived the rumors and innuendoes.

  “Preacher, help me understand why you believe the death may be related?”

  “As you have heard me espouse, the Lord works in mysterious ways. I have also said, albeit on not as many occasions, the Devil follows a parallel path. He weasels into our lives, plants seeds of sin, and can appear at the most inopportune time and place.”

  Burl paused and stared at me. Was the answer to my question in there somewhere? Did Burl believe the hit man was at his doorstep at the behest of the Devil?

  “I’m dense this morning. Tell me again why you believe the death was related to First Light.”

  Lunch arrived before he could clarify, and Burl asked if he could offer a prayer. I said, “Of course.” He thanked God for the food, our friendship, and asked him to offer solace to those who were in pain. He said “Amen,” and pounced on his fish like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Was he hungry or avoiding answering?

  He gulped his drink and coughed as he swallowed. “Brother Chris, there are only so many times one can be pricked by a pin before believing he is a pincushion.”