1 Lowcountry Boil (5 page)

“You haven’t spent enough time here in thirteen years to know if anything’s missing.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Marci was a teller at the bank in town.

“Lunch hour.” She started towards the stairs.

I held up both hands. “Wait right here. I’ll bring Gram’s jewelry box down.”

“No need,” she said. “I know what I want.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll take her engagement ring.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped. She and I both knew that ring held no sentimental value for her. She’d likely sell it.  She only wanted it because she knew I did. I gritted my teeth. “You. Wait. Right. Here. Rhett, stay. Guard.” Guard wasn’t a command Rhett knew, but Marci didn’t know that.

I went upstairs to Gram’s jewelry box and took out the ring. It was a lovely piece with two-carat, emerald-shaped diamond in a platinum setting. I found a small velvet box in her dresser drawer, slipped the ring inside, and hurried back downstairs.

Marci wasn’t in the foyer. Wherever she’d gone, Rhett had tailed her. “Hey,” I called out in protest.

Rhett barked twice.

I cursed under my breath and followed his bark through the french doors into the living room. Gram’s style was tasteful, but eclectic. Her favorite piece had been a big green velvet sofa with wood trim and a row of fringe around the bottom. Marci sat in the middle of it, legs crossed, as if waiting for a servant to fetch her tea.

I laid the ring box on the coffee table. “I have things to do.”

“Well, I can’t stay.” She didn’t move. “It’s not fair, you know.”

“What?”

“You getting everything. You always were her favorite.”

I closed my eyes and willed Marci to leave.

“Why don’t you keep the house and let me have the land,” she said, as if she were offering me a concession.

“Now why, exactly, would I ever consider giving you—of
all
people—any part of what Gram left to me?”

“Because if you do…” She leaned forward and lowered her chin. “I’ll give you what you really want.” A knowing, evil smile slid up her face.

“Get out of my house.” I strode into the foyer and yanked open the front door. Rhett went to barking again.

Marci took her time getting up. She smoothed her skirt and picked up the ring box. “Think about it.” She slithered towards the door. “I’ve taught Michael how to please a woman. He’s much better than he was at twenty-two.”

“Ooooh! Out.
Now.
” I shooed her out like a chicken had gotten in and slammed the door behind her.

I was shaking with anger. Could she really be so cold-blooded she’d try to barter her husband? Every time I saw the evidence of who—what—Marci was, it shocked me.

I went to the kitchen, pulled the potpie from the freezer, and put it in the refrigerator to thaw. I’d need comfort food tonight. And I needed a glass of pinot noir. I pulled a bottle from the wine rack, fished a corkscrew out of a drawer, and poured myself a glass. Rhett and I went out onto the deck, where I practiced synchronizing my breathing with the surf.

An hour later, my blood pressure had lowered considerably. What was I doing before Kate came by? I went back inside, sat on the edge of Gram’s chair, and studied the room. She’d spent the last evening of her life here. What had she been doing? It was a Friday night. She was probably watching
Murder She Wrote
reruns.

I felt a draft.

Colleen appeared on the loveseat. “Stay.”

“I’m staying, all right?” I leaned forward. “Would you please find Gram? Find out what happened.”

Colleen turned transparent. “Can’t.” Her voice echoed.

“Why are you here if you can’t help?” I shouted.

“
Merry.
” The whisper was so loud it filled the room.

“What about Merry?”

A whirlwind burst through the sunroom. Paper and plant leaves rustled. Picture frames toppled and hit the sofa table. Colleen vanished.

I glanced down and noticed the stack of magazines in the sweetgrass basket had slid across the floor. A yellow legal pad stuck out from a folded newspaper. I straightened the basket’s contents and picked up the pad. There were two columns of names, in Gram’s handwriting. The guest list for Gram’s next cocktail party?

Lincoln Sullivan
. . .
Mildred?

Frank
. . .
Merry???

Grace
. . .
Mackie Sullivan

Michael Devlin
. . .
Marci

Robert Pearson
. . .
Olivia?

John Glendawn
. . .
HC/SD??

Lincoln Sullivan was the mayor, Mildred his wife. Frank must have meant Daddy, but why was Merry’s name next to his instead of Mamma’s? And why was Mackie Sullivan, Grace’s nephew, by her name? He surely wouldn’t be escorting her to a party. Olivia—one of my friends from high school—was Robert Pearson’s wife. But what did HC/SD mean? Why all the question marks?

What was this?

I quickly realized the left-hand column listed the mayor and the five remaining members of the town council. Gram had been the sixth. But what did the names on the right mean? I flipped through the remaining pages of the tablet, but they were all blank. I pondered the list for a moment and tucked it away in the corner of my brain to percolate.

After feasting on Kate’s chicken potpie—that rich gravy and buttery crust was all kinds of sinful—I took Rhett for a long walk on the beach. We walked south, towards town. The breeze was gentle on my skin. The mingled greens of pine, oak, and palm in the forest were deeper, the wild flowers lusher. Stella Maris was ripe in the falling light. I let my mind drift, soaking it all in. Rhett romped in the surf and chased shore birds.

We turned around halfway to the lighthouse at Devlin’s Point. On the way back, my thoughts turned to Nate. We would operate in different cities now, but we hadn’t dissolved our partnership. Already I missed our daily debriefing over drinks or dinner. I’d been gone less than twenty-four hours and I was concocting ways to convince him he’d always wanted to live on a sea island.

When Rhett and I got back to the house, I hauled the boxes with my office essentials inside. The living room was huge and had a wall of bookcases. There was plenty of room for my new office. I set up my wireless printer on a bookcase shelf. Then, I sat on the sofa, took out my laptop, and started a case file. Gram was my client.

I’d worked murder cases before, usually pre-trial investigation for the defense. I entered everything Blake told me into my standard interview form. “The following investigation was conducted by Elizabeth S. Talbot, of Talbot & Andrews Investigations, on Monday, April 4, 2011, at Stella Maris, South Carolina. On this date…” The format Nate and I use is a clone of the FBI’s FD 302. Judges and attorneys like this. They become familiar with FD 302s in law school, and find the unambiguous bureaucratese soothing. I printed out the interview notes, dated and signed the page, and placed it in the file along with the legal pad I’d found in the sunroom.

I set my laptop aside, padded over to the Chippendale secretary that housed Gram’s tower computer. I powered up the Dell and performed the equivalent of an autopsy on it. As expected, there was nothing there but recipes, emails of the forwarded-inspirational variety, and Internet bookmarks related to gardening and travel.

We’d left Greenville that morning before sunup, so by nine-thirty Rhett and I were yawning. We made our way up to the room that had been mine my entire life. Moving into Gram’s room was something I couldn’t bring myself to do.

SI
X

I slept fitfully that night, and had one weird dream after the other. In the most vivid, I sat on the toilet in Merry’s bathroom while Colleen lounged in the garden tub. The dream felt different from any I’d ever had before. It felt real.

Colleen snapped her fingers, spraying sparks from the tips. “Pay attention.” She pointed at Merry.

Merry fluffed her hair in front of the bathroom mirror. She leaned in for a closer look and applied a coat of lip gloss. A smile crept up her face.

A dark-haired man came into the room. He stepped up behind Merry, buried his head in her neck, and wrapped his arms around her. She closed her eyes and sank into his embrace. He raised his head and stared at me in the mirror as he caressed my sister’s breasts. His face came into focus and he grinned malevolently.

An electric current seared me and I jumped up from the toilet.

It was Michael.

“Seriously,” Colleen said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I spun on her, primed to pounce.

“Sit. Watch.” She gestured to the toilet.

Outraged, I sat back down on the toilet and propped my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hand.

Merry’s eyelids parted with a soft moan. Then, her eyes shot wide open and she began to struggle.

Michael laughed and held tight. “You knew exactly what you were getting into.”

Suddenly, I was flying backward through space. Merry and the bathroom got smaller and smaller, inside a circle that was rapidly shrinking. Then, POP! Merry, the bathroom, and the circle were gone.

I sat straight up in bed, disoriented.

It was morning and my phone was ringing. Sister-instinct told me it was Merry before I saw her picture on the screen.

“Guess what?” she said.

“What?” I might have been the teensiest bit cranky.

“I’m leaving Teen Council in Charleston.”

Merry was the executive director of Teen Council, a Charleston nonprofit that sponsored programs for at-risk teenagers. She was devoted to “her kids,” often spending her days off with them.

“What?” I asked through a yawn. “Why? You love your job.”

“I’m going to work for a foundation with this awesome new concept. They help inner-city gang members who’ve been convicted of violent crimes—murder, rape, assault—reenter society after they’ve been paroled. Its focus is building bridges between rival gangs.”

“Sounds like a suicide mission.” I was alarmed, but knew from long experience the way to talk Merry out of something was not via direct approach. Merry was often a mulish crusader. “Besides, you won’t like living in a big city.”

“That’s the best part.” She squealed. “I get to work right here on Stella Maris.”

“I don’t understand.” My deductive reasoning skills are sharper later in the day, after I’ve had coffee.

“We’re building a high-rise, state-of-the-art facility right here at Devlin’s Point.”

A volcano erupted in my neck and spewed lava into my brain. “Are you insane? That goes against everything—you’ll never get that past the town council.”

“I’m speaking to the council tonight. I’ve talked to several members informally. Not Daddy, of course—you can’t talk to him about building anything on this island without listening to a lecture about wildlife habitats and beach erosion. I’m pretty sure I have enough votes to get it passed.”

With a vise grip on the phone, I took slow, deep breaths. The one thing Gram would never have stood for was building a high-rise, state-of-the-art
anything
on Stella Maris. There were a hundred reasons why oceanfront development was a bad idea. Merry had always been as passionate about protecting the island as the rest of us. I’d never in my life heard her speak derisively about protecting wildlife habitats. Apparently, the only thing she was more passionate about was habitats for hoodlums.

“Over my burnt and scattered ashes you will.” I pressed ‘end’ to disconnect the call. Hopping mad, I flew into the yellow-tiled shower in the adjoining bath. I emerged moments later and stormed the walk-in closet, grabbing a pair of khaki capris and a lime green polo shirt.

I picked Mamma’s number out of my favorites list, then put my iPhone on speaker and set it on the skirted dressing table. I sat on the chair and reached for my moisturizer. Had Merry been talking to Michael “informally,” by chance?

All my life I’ve had dreams that, when examined later, seemed to have been a foreshadowing. Many times things are connected, but twisted. Just before Marci the Schemer tricked Michael into a sham marriage, I dreamed the flying monkeys from
The Wizard of Oz
carried him off to the Wicked Witch’s castle.

But Colleen had never made an appearance in my dreams before. Somehow her presence gave this one more weight. Colleen had been trying to tell me something about Merry, which made me wonder what last night’s dream could mean. Merry was capable of a great many things in the name of one of her causes. Fornication with My True Love, Michael, was not one of them.

Mamma answered on the fifth ring.

“Just exactly who does she think she is?” I asked.

“Good morning, to you, too, sweetheart,” Mamma gushed in a tone sugary enough to induce a diabetic coma. “Why, some mothers complain they never hear from their children at all, and mine…well, they have been on my telephone line all morning. I am truly blessed. Just think, had you and your sister not intervened, I would be sitting here with nothing to do except finish the last hundred dozen cookies for ‘The Most Fabulous Spring Bazaar Ever,’ for which I am, as you may recall, the chairperson for the fifth year in a row. It will commence Thursday morning at eight a.m. sharp, family melodramas notwithstanding.”

I knew right off I should have cooled down before calling my mamma. “I know you’re awfully busy, what with ‘The Most Fabulous Spring Bazaar Ever’ and all, it’s just that…” I searched for some reasonable-sounding way to put it and found none. “Merry has lost her mind. I would think that the long-term health and safety of every man, woman, and child on this island would merit a moment of your time.”

“Liz, darlin’, you really should reconsider your choice of vocation. Your flair for the dramatic far surpasses your skill at photographing fornicators.”

“Do you
know
what she’s up to?”

“She mentioned something about a fellowship hall for teenagers.”

“Ohhh! I cannot believe her. Of course she’s going to sell that sack of manure wrapped up in a lace doily with lavender sachets.” Classic Merry. She’d spin this project as something Mamma would support.

Something tickled the back of my brain, and I wondered for a split second why Merry told me the truth. She had to know how strongly I’d oppose her plans, and she wasn’t above giving the truth a coat of varnish for me just like she had for Mamma. I knew in that moment Merry was manipulating both Mamma and me, but I didn’t know yet to what purpose.

I tried to speak calmly. “She told me she’s building a youth center all right. But not a fellowship hall for Stella Maris kids. No indeedy. She
said
she was going to build a halfway house for gang members on parole.
Felons
, Mamma.
Murderers
…
rapists
…
From different gangs.
”

“
Surely
you misunderstood.”

“She thinks if she isolates them on an island—our island—she can convince them to all play nice. There are going to be gang wars on the beach, for heaven’s sake. Right smack-dab in the middle of Devlin’s Point.”

“Liz, you’re talking crazy. Your sister doesn’t
own
Devlin’s Point, and the town council—”

“—is being hornswoggled just like you are.”

“What do you—?”

“What I mean is, Merry has apparently conned enough members of the council into allowing some social engineers to use Devlin’s Point as a Petri dish.”

“Oh, dear heavens,” Mamma murmured.

“I’m going to find Blake. You’d better tell Daddy.”

“Oh, dear heavens,” Mamma repeated. “I’ve got to run—my cookies are burning.”