Chapter Thirty-Five

Crome eyed Blu upon his return with Tess, but didn’t have any energy to spare on giving him a hard time about it.

The hero neighbor was next door and had an arsenal as well as his entire property covered with cameras. They extended to the beach area, a tad farther out than necessary for home security in Crome’s opinion. If he didn’t need to see what was in the footage, he might have labeled the guy, an overweight white man in his forties, as a pervert. Or more specifically, a Peeping Tom.

Crome wasn’t the only one who’d picked up on it. Patricia, Darcy, and Tess were visibly creeped out by their good Samaritan.

He, on the other hand, seemed to be getting a little too much pleasure in having flesh and blood females in his fortress domicile. The beachfront property the guy owned meant that he was well off. Even if he had bought it cheap twenty years ago, the taxes on it at the present time alone would bankrupt most Americans.

Tess had written down the times the phone number in question had been found by the FBI to be on while at Crome’s address.

She said, “Crome, lemme see your phone.”

Crome handed it over. She scrolled through the recent calls, found what Crome thought was the time of his call, and told the peeper.

He worked the mouse, found the time, and played the footage.

Everyone in the room watched the screen and the camera’s eerie fixation on women in bikinis. It was as if it had a mind of its own, or, more accurately, was being controlled.

Crome caught the image of a man who stood up from underneath a colorful umbrella, closed it, picked it up, and carried it and a bag away. It was about the right time.

Blu said, “You all see that?”

“That’s him,” Crome said. He referred to the similarity between the man on the screen and the man on the video footage from the marina and Myrtle Beach.

Tess gave the peeper a wide-eyed smile, even more pronounced and flirty than the one she used in her segments. “Do you have any cameras that might track where that man goes?”

“Sure do,” the peeper said.

The man was quite proud of his miniature Big Brother set-up. Even if he used it primarily to leer at unsuspecting women.

Crome had the feeling that once they had gotten what they needed, the man would be exposed for what he was. And he didn’t feel bad about it.

  

Blu watched the footage, his frustration rising. Each time, the man walked outside the view of the camera, or the peeper had moved the camera to focus on some woman’s cleavage.

On video time-stamped four days ago, the cameras were left to roll and the man stayed in focus all the way around the house to his parked SUV out front. The SUV had a different license plate than what the group had recorded up to this point.

Blu, with the help of his daughter, had been learning how to use the access his PI license gave him to do his own DMV searches. Gladys, his DMV contact, would not continue to work there forever so he needed a long-term plan. Hope had proven more than proficient enough to help him.

Patricia had called her niece, Josie, to come over to her house on Montague where the group convened after leaving the peeper.

The general consensus was they all felt like they needed bleach baths to wash the creepiness of that guy off. Crome had made an offhand comment about using the cameras for target practice. Blu had a feeling that Folly Beach Police would get an anonymous tip about them. With the ability to spy on people like that, there was no limit to what the man might try, and it was best to put him out of business.

Josie set Blu up on her aunt’s computer and helped access the DMV records. Together they did a search on the abductor’s plate number.

The address that came up was another anomaly. Out of concern for moderation, Blu did not want Crome or Pelton to go roaring off, guns drawn, again.

And he didn’t want to put any of the women in danger.

Under protest from both Crome and Pelton, Blu called Powers and asked how he felt about doing a little moonlighting for Blu Carraway Investigations. He’d done it before, albeit a long time ago.

Luckily, Darcy Pelton managed to talk her husband off the proverbial ledge.

Unfortunately there was no one in the room who could get through to Crome. He was targeted first with the abduction of Maureen. Harmony and the mayor were another story, and it no longer made sense to Blu that this was solely about Crome.

Of course, no one could tell Crome that, at least in a way that he would listen.

Powers, perhaps from having twenty years of added wisdom, declined to be directly involved. He again offered the two patrol units but Blu didn’t want to spook their suspect by any visible police presence.

Faced with no other options, Blu went solo. He could have satiated his own controlling nature by giving Crome a bunch of rules he needed to follow. However, Crome was selective with what rules he followed under normal circumstances. Kidnap his girlfriend and the number of rules governing his actions dropped to zero.

The address was a home in a North Mount Pleasant subdivision off of Seventeen toward Georgetown. The homes were around twenty years old and the neighborhood was well-maintained. With the influx of new business in the Charleston area, all real estate benefited. This neighborhood was no exception. It also helped that Charleston consistently rated as one of the top cities in the U.S., if not the world, to move to.

And Blu Carraway Investigations benefited along with the growth. Unbeknownst to Crome, Blu had accepted Adam Kincaid’s offer to keep the investigation agency on retainer, hence the trip to South America with Jennifer Kincaid and her friends. It was a mid-five-figure job for two weeks’ worth of work. Blu misled—okay, lied to—Crome by not telling him about the extended contract. As far as he knew, it was a one-time gig and didn’t come with strings. Crome never could handle strings. If he could, Crome would have been with Maureen and maybe prevented her from getting taken. This all rattled around Blu’s head as he contemplated their next moves.

Given the seriousness of the situation with Maureen and Harmony, Blu could not risk dredging the gutter and maybe killing the wrong person.