The sun was setting when I walked out Folly Beach Pier for the second time, already wishing I’d brought Shelby. At least I’d brought the forty-five. Fisher paced nervously.
“What’s up?” I said.
He looked down at the wooden decking as he paced. “I got caught.”
“What, like they found you listening with a glass against the door?”
“The senior partner walked in when I was printing more files.”
“So, isn’t that part of your job?”
“Not these files,” he said. “I was stupid.”
“What did he say when he saw them?”
Still pacing, he shook his head. “Nothing. But he knew what they were the moment he saw them. I mean, it was so obvious, Cooper River Chemicals letterhead plastered across the screen.”
“How many companies do you guys do business with? Hundreds? How’s he going to know exactly what you were looking at?”
Fisher stopped pacing and looked at me. “He’s the senior partner. He knows everything that goes on in our firm.” His eyes lowered to the decking again. “He knows I wasn’t handling that particular account.”
I spoke before thinking. “What’s the worst that could happen to you?”
His eyes shot up to mine.
I raised my hands in surrender. The worst that could happen was exactly what happened to my uncle.
He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t go home.”
“Makes two of us.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“I do. They’ve got their hooks into your boss or he’s in cahoots with them. Either way, they found their leak. Whoever got to my uncle is going to come for you.”
He grabbed my shirt. “Stop it! Stop saying that!”
I forced his hands off me. “You know I’m right.”
“What do I do? I didn’t even get the file. After he left my office, I powered down my computer and walked out.”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t know you from Adam, but I’m running out of choices. I’ve got a place here at the beach. You’re welcome to crash there.”
“They’ll find it. All it takes is a few phone calls and anyone can be tracked down.”
“Sure, if they’re looking for me. But I rented the house with my uncle’s credit card, and I haven’t canceled it yet. I don’t think they’ll be asking around for him.”
“But you have the same last name, don’t you?”
“No. He’s my mother’s brother.”
Fisher looked at me but wasn’t looking at me, more like he was thinking.
I put a hand on the railing and watched the water, letting him make up his mind.
He said, “No one knows?”
“No one I don’t trust.” I turned and faced him. “Stay there. I’ve grown to like the couch in my uncle’s office anyway. I have one condition.”
He stiffened. “What’s that?”
“I want you to talk to Patricia Voyels.”
Fisher eventually relented. What else could he do? At the beach rental, he relaxed a little. The freezer had a bunch of frozen dinners and the view was, of course, perfect. Dressed in a pair of my shorts, and a T-shirt, Fisher wolfed down two microwave meals in record time and was working on a six-pack of beer. For a little guy, he ate as much as I did.
I called Patricia. She said she couldn’t meet with us until eight, which was in four hours. Fisher passed out on one of the chairs on the back deck. Shelby and I left him there and drove to the Pirate’s Cove, the gun in the glove box. I wanted my dog with me as I didn’t trust Fisher. On the way, I used the hands-free connection and phoned Darcy.
She answered on the first ring. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got the man with all the information on Galston in my hideaway on Folly.”
“Great,” she said. “As soon as I finish I’ll be on my way.”
“Hold your horses. The guy’s too jumpy. It took some convincing to get him there. Patricia’s coming at eight tonight.”
“You mean you aren’t there now?”
“I’m on my way to the bar.”
She said, “Who’s watching him?”
“He’s sleeping off a six-pack,” I said. “He’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t leave. Meet me at the Cove.”
I spent the time before the meeting with Fisher by helping the women wash out the industrial-sized freezer in the kitchen. It was in bad shape. Shelby napped on the lower back deck.
Paige had done a lot to clean the Pirate’s Cove. With a few added staff members, she had everyone scrub the wood flooring and walls, and polish the old mismatched brass fixtures my uncle had accumulated over the years. The bathrooms received new coats of paint and a thorough cleansing. Clean enough to maybe raise our inspection score next time around.
In order to see inside the freezer, I had to replace two burned-out light bulbs. The new illumination showed a filthy floor and a lot of past-due food to be pitched—stuff that hadn’t been on the menu for a long time. The way my life had been going lately, I half-expected to find a dead body hanging in there. My cell vibrated and I left the freezer to answer it. Fisher’s number was on the screen.
He was already talking when I accepted the call. “Pelton, I’ve got to go.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Look,” he yelled. “Something’s come up. They . . . they . . . My family. I gotta go.”
“Hold on a minute, Fisher.”
Nothing.
“Fisher?”
The call ended. I tried to get him back. No answer. Tried again. Again no answer. I stared at the phone. The urge to throw it against the freezer made me put it back in my pocket.
Patricia and Darcy strolled into the Pirate’s Cove at precisely eight o’clock. I’d already told them Fisher was gone, but they decided to come anyway. They took stools in front of me at the bar.
Patricia handed me a sheet of paper. “Here’s what I could find on your Mr. Fisher.”
It was a letter-sized sheet, handwritten, with Fisher’s name at the top.
“He works at the most exclusive accounting firm in Charleston,” she said. “Senior associates like him make mid-six figures, easy. More if it’s a good year. And it’s been a good year.”
I said, “No address?”
“I’m working on it,” Darcy said. “He’s got an unlisted number so I have to up my bribe.”
I put my hands on the bar. “What are you waiting for?”
Darcy snapped, “I’m on it!”
“The guy was scared,” I said. “Someone got to him.”
Darcy’s cell rang. She read the caller I.D. and answered, listening for a minute. Her mouth opened slightly and she looked at me.
At four o’clock Wednesday morning, I sat in the main conference room at the Palmetto Pulse with Patricia, Darcy, and Shelby. A picture of David Fisher splashed across the front page of the next issue, in color, hot off the press. He was slumped in the driver’s seat of his Volvo. Someone had found him in a back alley in North Charleston, not far from crack dealers and prostitutes. He’d been shot in the chest several times. Patricia had a cameraman meet us at the scene and Darcy did takes for the next evening’s news.
I crumpled the paper in my hands. “This story sucks.”
Shelby raised his head and looked at me.
Darcy propped her feet on a chair. “I didn’t realize you’d been promoted to my editor.”
“Not your writing,” I said. “The whole thing.”
The young reporter slipped off her sandals and massaged her feet. By my count, she’d been on the go for more than twenty-four hours.
“The police are filing it as a solicitation attempt gone bad,” Patricia said.
I said, “Gunned down by an unhappy hooker. You believe that garbage? I mean, the way they wrapped up the crime scene so fast, you’d think the cops had been paid by the job instead of the hour.”
“I’ve a connection at the bank,” Patricia said. “He told me Fisher was up to his eyeballs in debt.”
“A lot of people are,” I said. “That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“Most people aren’t successful accountants with eighteenth-century mansions on Tradd Street close to foreclosure,” Patricia said. “That’s probably why he was selling information.”
“He did say he was good with numbers.”
Shelby and I went to the beach rental to crash for a couple of hours.
I felt a tug at my sleeve and opened my eyes. Daylight made me close them again, fast.
Shelby barked.
“I guess I been neglecting you, huh?”
He barked again and ran to the back door.
I pulled the covers off and got out of bed. “All right, all right. I’m coming.”
He scrambled down the steps when I opened the door. While he did his business in the backyard, I looked out at the ocean, thinking David Fisher would never see this again. Shelby barreled up to me, barked, and grabbed his leash with his mouth and dropped it at my feet.
“But I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”
His next bark told me he didn’t care what I needed. I pulled on a pair of shorts, slid on sunglasses, and grabbed my wallet, and we headed out. Near the pier, I found a vendor selling coffee and bought an extra large. It was the way I liked it, sludge. After an hour or so of wandering aimlessly around, we headed back. The message symbol was on the screen of my cell phone and I listened to Darcy tell me to wake up. She was on her way and we were going to see McAllister. I dressed and slid the gun in the small of my back. With Fisher gone, it was not worth the risk going unarmed. Using the same logic, I left Shelby in the safety of the rental.
Darcy turned into the entrance to McAllister’s house on John’s Island. Posts holding iron gates flanked a driveway half-mooning to the front of the home. The large McMansion stood on twelve-foot stilts covered by lattice. As we swung around the drive, I saw the open garage doors. Taillights from a low-slung sports car peeked out at me in one of the three open bays. The red beauty with white racing stripes brought a whistle of admiration from me.
Darcy pulled us to a stop. “What?”
I pointed. “He’s got a ZR1.”
Darcy rolled her eyes and opened her door to get out. “So?”
“It’s the fastest production Corvette,” I said.
Too much like Jo, Darcy ignored my fascination with cars. “I did some checking. Our Mr. McAllister has another home in Mount Pleasant—ocean view. And a helicopter, a McDonnell Douglas 500E five-seater.”
Environmental cleanup must be a boom industry.
McAllister answered his own door wearing shorts, a knit shirt with a sports logo on the sleeve, and tennis shoes.
“Glad to see y’all,” he said. “I was ready to head to the courts.”
A black tennis racket case leaned against a black gym bag on the hardwood floor in front of a carved wooden entrance table. We stepped around the bags and McAllister led us past a great room with a high ceiling to a bar in front of the kitchen counter. He motioned for us to take seats at two tall chairs.
He said, “Can I get you anything? Coffee, OJ?”
“Black coffee,” I said.
Darcy passed.
McAllister poured my coffee and refilled his own.
I noticed the logo printed on the cups. “What’s Ashley River Recovery?”
“Oh, a business I’m working with,” he said. “We’re cleaning a site on the river. So, what’s up? You sounded a little concerned on the phone.”
Darcy flipped open the paper on the counter and turned it so McAllister could read the headline.
He took a drink from his coffee mug. “I saw that this morning.”
“He knew my uncle.”
McAllister raised his eyebrows. “The accountant did?”
Darcy said, “Did you know him?”
“I use the firm he works—worked for—to handle my taxes.”
“Galston used them too,” I said.
McAllister set his cup on the counter. “I’m not surprised. It’s the best in Charleston. At least the one with the best pedigree.”
The same could be said about how people were measured in Charleston. Either you had status or you had to buy it, but it was always there, around the corner of the next question, tucked in a few layers behind an insinuation. I was fortunate enough to carry the double negative of not from around here and not enough money. Darcy, on the other hand . . .
She hooked an arm over the back of her chair. “You know anyone there who would talk to you about what happened? Maybe what he was working on?”
McAllister said, “Being a pretty Channel Nine reporter, you ought to be able to get what you want without my help.”
“Maybe,” she said to him, “but I always work as many angles as I can.”
“Be careful those angles don’t have any sharp edges.” His mouth formed a slight grin and he took a sip of coffee.
I said, “So can you help us or not?”
He chewed on his lip. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can come up with. Now, if you don’t mind I have a tennis match in thirty minutes and need to get going.” He walked us to the door. “Give me a call this evening.”
I turned to him and offered a hand. “Thanks.”
He shook my hand and looked me in the eye. “No problem. Someone’s got to make sure things are on the level.”
Patricia found a home address for Fisher. After some discussion among the three of us, we decided I should go solo. Mostly, it was me saying I should go in solo. Darcy wasn’t giving in so easily. Patricia relented, saying Fisher’s wife probably wouldn’t want to talk to a reporter about why her dead husband was soliciting prostitutes.
In my bungalow on Sullivan’s Island, I buttoned the one white oxford shirt I owned and tucked it into the pants of my one suit, the Italian light wool I’d worn to my wife’s funeral. I laced polished black shoes, also made in the boot-shaped country, and added a matching belt around my waist. The dark-blue Hermes tie, a surprise gift from Darcy, knotted a perfect Windsor. I slid into the jacket as I walked into the living room.
Shelby stretched out next to Darcy on the couch, rested his head on her leg, and dangled his paws off the edge. His eyes closed.
Darcy saw me slide my gun down the small of my back. “All you need is a shoulder holster and a fedora and we could call you Bugsy.”
Ignoring the reference, I pulled a pen and pad out of a drawer, scribbled something, and placed the note in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. “Take care of Shelby if I don’t come back.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “If you don’t come back, I’m taking him and this house.”
“How about in the meantime you just take him back to the rental on Folly for me?”