1 Lowcountry Boil (32 page)

FORTY-NINE

Only moments before, the rain had been coming down so hard the windshield wipers didn’t improve visibility. Gradually it subsided to a drizzle. Michael pulled the Jeep into a parking space as close to the dock as possible.

Blake said, “Do you think there’s any chance it’s him?”

“Oh, I’m dead certain it’s him,” Michael said simply.

We all stared at him, stunned, for a moment. The windshield wipers squawked across the glass.

“What changed your mind?” I found my voice.

“It’s his boat. That’s the same boat he left on twenty-five years ago,” Michael said. He opened the car door. “Stay here. All of you. For right now, at least, this is between him and me.”

Blake, Merry and I were uncharacteristically quiet for a minute after Michael slammed the door and ran down the dock.

Finally, I said, “That’s pretty brazen. Stuart must not have been too concerned about being found out if he sailed back home on the same boat that was supposedly lost at sea.”

Blake shrugged. “Not many people would recognize it after all this time.”

I thought about it. “Someone might have thought there was a boat in the marina that
looked
a lot like Stuart’s old boat, but who would dream it was really him?”

“Let me see that letter.” Blake cracked his door to turn on the interior light.

I handed it to him. He read for a few moments.

“I don’t know which I’m more shocked about,” Blake said. “That Stuart Devlin is alive, or that Gram had a love affair with him for what, fifteen years?”

“Here comes Michael,” I said.

Michael climbed back into the Jeep. “We missed him.”

“What now?” Blake asked.

“Let’s go check on Deanna.” I remembered the urgency in Colleen’s voice. I had to get to Deanna’s house.

“Not tonight,” Michael said.

“Agreed,” said Blake. “I say we wait for your Dad to show up.”

I opened the door and hopped out. “Y’all wait here if you like. I’m going to Deanna’s.” I took off running while they were still deciding if I was serious.

FIFTY

I hesitated at the edge of the marina parking lot. The marina is on the northwest side of the island. Sea Farm, Deanna’s neighborhood, is on the southeast point. I was roughly seven miles from her. Even if I ran through yards and hopped hedges, it would take me at least an hour to run it—the town was an obstacle course between us. My car was at Mamma and Daddy’s house. It would be quicker to run home and get Gram’s Caddy.

I darted up Marsh View drive as the rain began to grow heavier. Within five minutes I was on the front porch. I retrieved my spare key from inside the bell of a wind chime and let myself in. Rhett trotted out to meet me and I ran right past him. I pulled up short in the hall. Stuart had taken Gram’s spare set of keys from the kitchen drawer. My keys were in my purse, in the back of Michael’s Jeep.
Damnation.

I’d violated my own cardinal rule: I’d left my gun, my phone and my keys behind. I had no means of protection, and no means of communication once I left Gram’s house. Dammit. Think.
Think.

The van. The keys to Granddad’s van were in his desk. My desk. I bolted into the office and flipped on the light. Rhett chased after me. The keys were in the top drawer. I grabbed them and headed towards the kitchen. Through the mudroom and down the steps I flew. Rhett followed, barking admonishments.

I climbed into the van with a prayer it would start. After a little encouragement, it roared to life. I pressed the button on the remote clipped to the visor to open the garage door. When it was high enough to clear the van, I backed out, threw the van in drive, and hit the accelerator.

Rain now poured from the sky in buckets. I fumbled for the windshield wipers. When they came on, I swerved to miss a palm tree. Even with the wipers on, I could barely see ten feet in front of me. At the end of the driveway, I turned left down Ocean Boulevard. Palmetto would have been a shorter route, but would have had more traffic, and several stoplights I didn’t dare run in this weather.

At the end of Ocean Boulevard, just before Devlin’s Point, I turned right and navigated through a series of side streets towards Pearson’s Point—the point of the island where Sea Farm had been built. I was almost halfway down Pitt Street when a Jack Russell terrier bolted in front of the van. I slammed on brakes.

A blinding white bolt split the oak on the corner. Thunder, combined with the simultaneous crack of the lightning strike nearly deafened me. The oak exploded, branches flying in every direction. The trunk split, half of it falling directly in front of the van, the other half landing in someone’s front yard. In the headlights, debris fluttered to the ground. The end of a sizeable limb rested inches from my windshield.

Had I not braked for the dog, the van and I would have been under the shattered tree trunk.

To stave off hyperventilation, I took slow, measured breaths.

I couldn’t drive around it. I backed up to try another route. The van sputtered and stalled, as if on cue. Hopping in the seat to encourage it, I turned the key. The engine made a grinding noise, then fell silent. I climbed out. I was close enough now to make a run for it.

The quickest route was straight down the beach to Sea Farm, then into the neighborhood. Deanna’s house was only three blocks off the water. When I hit the beach, I took off my shoes and ran as hard as I could, staying close to the water where the sand was firm. Lightning split the night sky, severing it from pole to pole, and rendering me momentarily blind. I kept running. The rain soaked my clothes. By the time I turned off the beach, my knit top and jeans had absorbed so much water I felt like I was weighted down by chains.

I stopped to catch my breath, hands on my knees and breathing hard, under the porch of the first house I came to. I wrung as much water as I could out of my shirt and darted up the street.

Colleen waited for me on Deanna’s back porch. “Troy.” She pointed at the broken pane in the back door.

I shivered. The last time Colleen and I encountered Troy in a house at night someone ended up dead.

I darted off the porch and around to the front of the house. Sam Manigault should’ve been parked out front. But he wasn’t. Michael, Blake and Merry should’ve beaten me here in the car. Clearly, Michael didn’t start the Jeep and peel out right behind me, or he’d have caught up with me before I got out of the marina parking lot. But
surely
they eventually followed me. But the street in front of the house and the driveway were empty. I pulled up short. No time to think about it. I doubled back, slipped in the back door, and closed it silently behind me.

The shrill ring of the phone startled me.

Footsteps. Someone was in the foyer.

I tiptoed from the kitchen, through the dining room, and stopped at the edge of the foyer. I leaned back sharply. Troy was just ahead of me. He stood at the entrance to the living room. Beyond him, Deanna sat calmly on the sofa, sipping tea. She didn’t look surprised to see Troy.

The phone rang again. She sat her teacup down and reached for the portable phone on the coffee table.

“Don’t answer that.” He waved his gun at her.

Damnation. I needed my gun.

She shrugged. “If I don’t, the police will be here in five minutes. You tripped the alarm when you broke the window.”

“
D
—
”

“Don’t swear in my home,” she ordered calmly, like she was talking to a sassy kid.

He wavered. “Answer it. Tell them you set it off accidentally and everything is fine. Screw it up and I’ll shoot you first, and then go upstairs and visit with your daughters.”

Deanna stared him down and reached for the phone. “Hello… Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I set it off accidentally. It was stupid of me… Rubber Duck… Thanks, you, too.” She pressed ‘end’ and laid the phone back on the coffee table.

Troy said, “Now get me my money and I’ll be on my way. Nobody has to get hurt.”

“Why on earth would I give you money?”

“Don’t play games with me, lady. I did the job, just like you asked, now I want my money.”

Before Deanna could form a response to his demand, the lights flickered. Then the house went completely black. A glance out the window told me the streetlights were out, too. The storm had taken out the power. I blinked, willing my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Lightning briefly illuminated the room. Troy hadn’t moved. I prayed Deanna realized she had the advantage now. She knew this house and he didn’t. She needed to move. If he couldn’t see her, he couldn’t shoot her. All she had to do was to stay alive until the cavalry arrived.

I was only a few steps from the front door. The stairs were behind me. I stole over to the door. I waited for the thunder, then closed my eyes and bit my lip as I disengaged the deadbolt and the knob-lock. Either we’d need a fast way out or Blake and Michael would need a fast way in. I backed up the stairs, out of the foyer. I was poised to stage a distraction if help didn’t arrive soon.

Deanna said, “Not only did I
not
ask you to kill my husband, I specifically told you no one was to get hurt.”

“We both know what you meant.”

Deanna sounded firm, not scared. It must have been the shock. “I can only assume in your messed up criminal mind, you mistook what I asked you to do, which was to
follow
my husband. Nothing I said can be construed by any reasonable person to have been a contract for murder.”

Troy said, “I’m not gonna stand here and argue with you. Get me the money. Or your little girls are going to grow up without a mommy, but with some interesting memories from this evening’s entertainment.”

Something in the kitchen clattered. They both froze. My ears strained to determine its source. A bolt of lightning revealed the dripping wet figure stepping into the foyer. Troy now stood between the figure and Deanna. He took a step to his right and waved the gun back and forth from one to the other in the dark.

“What I can’t figure out,” the newcomer said, “is why you’re trying to collect payment for a job you didn’t do.”

Stuart Devlin. What was he doing here?

“What is this?” Troy demanded.

Stuart said, “I was there. You didn’t kill anybody.”

FIFTY-ONE

While Stuart had Troy distracted, I came down the steps and backed out of the foyer. I didn’t think Stuart or Deanna had seen me, but the main thing was Troy hadn’t. I circled back through the dining room and into the kitchen. Crouching low, I scanned the family room for Deanna. The lightning flashes were coming closer together, making it difficult for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I shivered in my soaked clothes.

Desperation rose in Troy’s voice, eerily disembodied by the pitch dark. “Look, I don’t know exactly what you wanted done. And I don’t know who the hell this guy is. But I know you offered me twenty-five grand to do
something,
so you must have the cash handy. Get it,” he growled menacingly.

Thunder crashed over our heads. Lightning lit the room long enough for me to realize that Troy was advancing on Deanna.

Colleen appeared across the room in a silvery-lit aura. “Over here,” she cried.

I darted across the room, bumped into a table and knocked over a lamp. I dove behind a chair just as Troy fired a shot in my direction. My stomach roiled at the
pfft
sound. 

“Who’s there?” Troy yelled.

“Tell him you’re Merry’s ghost,” Colleen said.

My voice sounded enough like hers. He’d fall for it. “It’s me Troy, Merry.” I peered around the edge of the chair.

“Merry?” Lightning flashed. Troy took a step in my direction. Horror fought with wonder on his face.

“Is that the same gun you shot me with, Troy?”

“
Merry
…baby, I swear I never meant to hurt you.”

“You never meant to roll me in a rug, shoot me in the head, and bury me at a construction site, Troy?”

“It was Kristen. It was all her fault.”

In a flicker of lightning, I saw movement behind Troy. Stuart was creeping up behind him, poised to pounce. Troy must have sensed him approaching. He spun around and raised his gun.

I screamed as the next shot rang out. Stuart fell to the floor. Troy turned and fired again in my direction.

“You can’t kill me twice, Troy.” I laughed wildly.

Thunder crashed and lightning exposed the fear on his face. “What do you want?”

“Leave here. Leave Deanna alone.”

For a moment, all I heard was the rain.

“No,” he said. “I want my money. Now.” Simultaneous thunder and lightning punctuated his demand. Through the strobe of lightning, he moved towards Deanna.

I picked up the lamp I’d knocked over and threw it at him. I missed by a couple of feet, but he turned towards the crash.

The lightning came so quickly now that the room was almost continuously lit.   

Standing, Deanna raised a revolver. Hell’s bells, Deanna had a gun?

Troy looked back just in time to register surprise.

“No!” Stuart and I shouted at once.

The blast was so loud I felt it in my teeth.

Troy crumpled to the floor.

A pungent cocktail of nitroglycerin, sawdust, and graphite hung in the air.

Stuart jumped up.

“You’re all right.” I’d been certain he’d had been shot.

Stuart said, “I’m fine. I ducked just in time. He thought he got me.”

Stuart knelt by Troy. I stepped towards Deanna.

“No pulse,” said Stuart.

  “Oh my Lord,” Deanna said. “I…I didn’t mean to fire the gun. I only wanted to scare him off.”

I put an arm around Deanna. “Hey there.”

“Hey, Liz.” Deanna sounded deceptively calm, as if her limit for shock had been overdrawn.

Stuart crossed the room. He took the gun from Deanna and tucked it in the back of his pants. “It was a reflex,” he said. “He threatened your children.”

Deanna tilted her head sideways. “Who are you?

He sighed. “There’s no time to explain everything to you now, but I’m your father-in-law. I’m Stuart Devlin.”