Other than being on the high side of nosy, Charles felt that if any of his friends learned anything he might have the slightest interest in knowing, the friend must tell Charles within a nanosecond of learning it. So the first thing I did after talking with Cindy was to call my friend.
After a dozen rings, I hit end call. Up until several months ago, Charles failing to answer was the norm. He had a phone in his apartment and unless he was there the call would have been wasted. He didn’t have an answering machine and didn’t own a cell phone until he and his long-term girlfriend, Heather, had moved to Nashville so she could pursue her dream: a career as a country music singer. She had been talked into moving to the country music capital of the universe by an agent who had heard her sing at an open-mic night. No one had ever compared Heather’s voice to her idol Patsy Cline; truth be known, no one had ever compared it to the melodious singing voice of a snapping turtle, but nothing could deter her from trying. To say Heather and Charles’s move to Nashville was a disaster would be a gross understatement. The highlights of the trip included Heather being arrested for killing her agent, her attempting to kill herself, and me nearly being murdered. I’ll save the details for another time, but suffice to say, only two good things came from their move: Charles’s cell phone purchase and Heather deciding they should move back home to Folly where she could pursue singing in front of far less discerning audiences. I hit redial and gave Charles one more chance to get the latest news. No luck. You can lead Charles to a phone, but you can’t make him answer.
I tried again the next morning with better luck. Charles answered, and I began telling him what I had learned about the body in the park.
“Whoa!” he interrupted. “When did you find out?”
“Last night.”
“Last night! That was hours ago. And you waited all those many hours to tell me? Why didn’t you call me?”
I rest my case!
“Charles, I tried. I called twice but you didn’t have your phone on.”
“Excuses, excuses. Hmm, maybe I was sort of with Heather. We were…”
“More than I need to know. The point is I tried.”
“Okay,” Charles said. “Apology accepted. What’d you learn?”
I must have missed the apology; regardless, arguing with him would be like arguing with a jellybean. I told him the details Cindy had shared and who Lauren’s parents were.
He hesitated and said, “You’re kidding.”
I assured him I wasn’t.
“I didn’t know he had a daughter.”
“I didn’t either,” I said, “but I also don’t know much of anything about him other than he was a terrible detective, he can’t stand me, and he lives next door.”
“When are we going to go pay our respects?”
“Never, would be my first choice,” I said.
“He’s your neighbor. Because he hates you is no reason not to tell him, especially his wife, that you’re sorry about their loss.”
Charles was right, at least this time, and I told him we should probably wait until this afternoon or tomorrow. Charles said he had to make some deliveries for the surf shop and wouldn’t be available until late afternoon. I thought the later the better and suggested tomorrow. He asked what time this afternoon would work. I sighed and said around six.
“I’ll be at your house at five.”
Charles hasn’t owned a watch since I’ve known him, but time was one of his many quirks. He considers on time to be thirty minutes earlier than most mortals do and seldom fails to point out how late people were if they showed up on time. When he said he would be at the house at five, I assumed he thought it would take us a whopping half hour to walk from my house next door so we could arrive by five-thirty instead of six o’clock like I had suggested. Charles was Charles, love him or leave him. Until moving to Folly, I had been under the misunderstanding that appointed times equaled appointed times. I had adjusted to Charles time.
As sure as clockwork, I stepped out my front door at five o’clock and was greeted by Charles. It was in the upper eighties, but he wore a long-sleeve, navy blue T-shirt with a gold NYPD logo over the breast pocket. His usual attire included a long-sleeve college T-shirt or sweatshirt with a logo of the college mascot adorning the front. He didn’t say it, but the NYPD shirt was his way of showing respect to Brad Burton, the former cop. For reasons I had not been able to determine, the shirts were always long-sleeved, and he carried a handmade, wooden cane. Charles, at five-foot eight, was a couple of inches shorter than me and a few pounds lighter. He had shaven for today’s sympathy visit, but still had stubble on his chin and with his unruly gray hair, could have been mistaken for a street person. Today he looked his best.
“Well, I see you’re looking boring as usual,” he said and pointed his ever-present cane at me.
My green polo shirt was adorned with nothing, and I had on light-weight tan slacks, and boat shoes. Most of my work life had required a coat and tie, and I seldom wore a message on my chest. Charles considered it boring, and to him it was, but it was me. The one thing that did surprise me about Charles was that he was carrying a clear vase with several flowers in it. They looked suspiciously like blooms from a landscaped area in the yard next to Charles’s apartment.
“You didn’t have to bring me flowers,” I said.
“Ha, ha. They’re for the Burtons.”
As if I didn’t know that. Regardless of their origin, it was a thoughtful gesture, but I wasn’t about to acknowledge it.
“Want a beer?” I asked since I was in no hurry to visit my nemesis.
Charles looked at his watch-less wrist. “Guess we have time.”
“Do they know we’re coming?”
“No.”
I chose not to comment further about having time and waved him in. He set the flowers on the front porch and followed me to the kitchen, grabbed a Bud Light from the refrigerator, took a large sip, and plopped down in one of the chairs at my kitchen table.
“Hear anything about Lauren’s death?” I asked and poured a small glass of Chardonnay.
In a community of numerous rumor collectors, Charles was among the best. If he put half as many hours in something that paid as he does cajoling information—both fact and fiction—out of others, he would be one of the city’s wealthiest citizens.
“Heather said she heard from one of the hairdressers at the salon that Lauren was dating someone over here.”
In addition to being an aspiring singer, Heather was a psychic, or so she said, and made a living as a massage therapist at Milli’s Salon.
I took a sip of wine and asked, “What’s interesting about that?”
“The hairdresser has known Lauren for several years and while she’s dated several guys, this was the first serious one.”
“Who is he?”
“The hairdresser didn’t know.”
“Hear anything about her death?”
Charles looked at his wrist. “That’s one of the reasons we’re going next door.”
Charles prided himself on being a private detective. That’s using the terms loosely since he had zero training in the field and wouldn’t qualify as a private detective in South Carolina, or any other state that had a semblance of qualifications for the profession. His rationale for being qualified was that he had watched countless police shows on TV and had read countless books involving private eyes. Charles was a voracious reader and owned more books than many small-town libraries. His imaginary profession had been bolstered over the last few years because he and I had stumbled, bumbled, and fell into several murders and through pure luck and a little skill, had helped the police catch some killers. Which brought me back to Brad Burton and why he had such strong negative feelings about me, and probably Charles.
I nodded. “And I thought it was to express our sympathy to Lauren’s parents.”
“That too,” Charles took a sip of beer, clinked his can down on the table, and pointed his cane toward the front door. “We’re late.”
I shook my head and followed him out.