MY CELL RANG JUST AS I STUFFED THE LAST FRY into my mouth. We were off the island and headed west on 278, Red driving the Jaguar while I ate. I wiped grease and salt from my fingers onto a wad of paper napkins and picked up the phone.
“Bay Tanner.”
“Bay, it’s Loretta Healey. I just got your message.”
For a moment I couldn’t think of a coherent thing to say. I had placed the call—when? I couldn’t remember if it had been a day or a week ago. At the time, pumping the daughter of one of my late mother’s oldest friends had seemed of paramount importance. Intervening crises involving Joline and Kimmie Eastman had pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind.
“Thanks for calling me back,” I stalled. “Were you out of town?”
This time it was Loretta’s turn to pause. I should have recalled that her work as a special advisor to the president on immigration and Homeland Security issues would make information about her travels off-limits except for those who needed to know. And I didn’t.
“Overseas,” she said. “I don’t carry my personal cell with me. How’s the Judge doing?”
I gave her an abridged version of his recent health problems, which allowed me a perfect segue into the reason I’d called her in the first place. I glanced across the dim interior, but Red stared through the windshield, doing his best to pretend he couldn’t hear every word I was saying. It didn’t matter. I glanced at the ring on my left hand. He had a right to know.
“I want to ask you about something from the past,” I began. I could almost see her perfect eyebrows rise. In our most recent meeting—the first after more than twenty-plus years—we’d clashed on just about everything, from her stern warnings for me to stay out of the trouble Dolores and her family had found themselves embroiled in, to snide remarks about our Lowcountry society and mores. According to her version of things, Loretta had escaped the strictures of our upbringing not a moment too soon.
I hadn’t liked her that night she’d flirted shamelessly with my father in the front parlor at Presqu’isle. Her high-handed pressure to try and scare me off the case of Dolores and her son Bobby had done nothing to endear her to me, either. But she was quite a bit older than I. And she’d been around my house a lot back in those days. If there were secrets being kept—especially ones that reflected badly on my family—I was betting Loretta would be only too eager to spill them.
I inhaled and let the breath out slowly. “Do you know anything about a woman named Julia Simpson?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Some relative of yours?”
I debated whether or not to press the issue. If the name didn’t register, chances were she didn’t know anything. Still, I hated to pass up the opportunity.
“Maybe,” I hedged. “I ran across the name in some old papers. I’ve never heard her mentioned before, and I thought . . . maybe she was a black sheep or something. Piqued my curiosity.” My hand shook with the effort of walking such a conversational tightrope. “I just thought you might have heard her mentioned back in the days when you were at Presqu’isle so often.”
Her silence made me grip the phone more tightly.
“And you haven’t asked Tally about it.” She didn’t wait for me to reply. “So it’s something that might upset him to talk about.” Again she paused. “I wonder . . .”
“What?”
I heard the snap of a lighter and the slow exhalation of smoke. It made me itchy for a cigarette of my own.
“Well,” she said, “did you ever know what the big blowup between our dear sainted mamas was all about?”
“No. Do you?”
“I was around the day it happened, but it didn’t really register. I was a teenager and pretty oblivious to what the grown-ups were doing. But I remember my mother did a lot of ranting and raving, mostly about how money and position didn’t guarantee character, no matter how good your pedigree. It was one of the few times I ever saw the sainted Mary Grace Beaumont lose her temper. Ladies didn’t, you know, back in those days. I don’t think I was at your house much after that. Until last Christmas.”
The nature of our clash on that previous meeting hung in the air between us.
“Well, thanks anyway. It’s no big deal,” I lied. Some of my mother’s constant drilling on the social niceties drifted up from my subconscious. “How have you been, Loretta? I hope everything’s going well.”
Her laugh, a short bark, almost made me smile in return. “I can’t believe you actually give a damn, Bay. But since you ask, the job is keeping me hopping. Literally. I’m only home for about thirty-six hours before I have to head out again.” Her cynical tone sobered. “There’s always a crisis somewhere these days.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Thanks again for returning my call.”
“Let me know if you find this mysterious Julia. I’m always up for a good Lowcountry society scandal. About the only thing that interests me about the place these days.”
“Thanks again,” I repeated and hung up.
I stuffed the soggy remains of my fast-food dinner into the bag and tossed it onto the floor in the back. I could feel Red bursting to ask me about the call.
“She didn’t know anything,” I said. “Just that our mothers had some big fight and basically never spoke again. The name didn’t do anything for her.”
“You okay being a passenger?” he asked, completely ignoring my feeble explanation.
“Fine.” I slid down into the seat and eased it back a few inches so I could stretch out my legs.
Mary Grace Beaumont. The name conjured up all the memories of my childhood: Presqu’isle decked out in its finest, flowers and gowned ladies filling every room, their tuxedoed husbands flowing out onto the verandah with highball glasses in one hand and glowing cigars in the other. The constant din of conversation, occasionally punctuated by a lilting laugh. The clink of crystal and the rattle of the heavy Georgian silver on paper-thin china.
My mother had always been the center of attention, always the most beautiful and beautifully dressed of the company. The Judge had been upright then, tall and imposing in his black and white. They had seemed to me to be the most dazzling couple in the world. I could feel myself smiling as the pictures whirled and dipped in my mind in tune to the small quartet that always accompanied the galas at our home.
Then everyone would be gone. And from my room at the top of the stairs I would hear the arguments, my mother’s shrill voice, slurred by too much bourbon, cutting through the thick walls of the old mansion. I shifted in my seat, trying to remember when that had begun, because it hadn’t always been that way. Sometime back in my early childhood, the drinking became chronic. Emmaline’s temper exploded, usually at me, and I learned to avoid her. Lavinia offered comfort and a steady presence, and I became over the years more her child than my mother’s.
I wondered if the split with Mary Grace had come around that same time. Maybe something had happened, some awful occurrence that had turned my mother from an aristocratic member of Beaufort society into a screaming, ranting shrew. I picked up the phone and recalled the last incoming number.
Loretta picked up immediately. “Bay?”
“Yes. Sorry to bother you again, but I wonder if you remember when it was that our mothers had that big blowup. How old was I?”
“Let me see. You were pretty young. I’m not exactly certain. Why?”
Right around the time the drinking got really bad? So maybe that was what had sparked the argument. Perhaps Emmaline had embarrassed Mary Grace in some way. Or flirted with her husband. I heard a lot about that in those after-party shouting matches between my parents.
“Bay? You still there?”
“Yes, sorry. No particular reason. Your call just got me thinking about those days.”
“They threw some great parties. I used to come along once in a while. We watched some of them from the landing on the stairs, you and I, remember?”
It was uncanny how she’d read my mind. “Yes, I do. Well, thanks again, Loretta. Goodnight.”
I hung up before she had a chance to stroll any farther down memory lane. It was too unsettling, too . . . painful. No sense in dredging all that up. I’d made my peace with my mother’s alcoholism a long time ago. Rob always told me to remember the good times and let the rest go. The Judge and I tucked up on the sofa watching a baseball game on TV . . . digging alongside a sober Emmaline in the garden on a hot spring day . . . the fragrance of Lavinia’s baking powder biscuits rising in the oven . . .
I jerked at Red’s tug on my sleeve.
“Honey?” he said. “Wake up. We’re here.”
I didn’t remember drifting off to sleep, but I sat up with that foggy feeling you get sometimes after an unplanned catnap. I stretched and looked around me.
Red had navigated to the center of the little town of Jacksonboro, pulling in at the Stop ’n Save run by Duke Brawley. The lights were on in the store, and a couple of pickup trucks occupied the small parking area.
“Where to?”
I turned at Red’s voice. It had grown dark as I slept, and the lights from the dash cast a soft glow on the planes of his face.
“We have to backtrack a little,” I said, running my fingers through my tangled hair. “We need to take the road toward Walterboro.” I glanced again at the lighted store windows. “Hang on a second, though. Let me check something first.”
Before he could respond, I pushed open the door and stepped out into the chilly night. A stiff wind blew onshore from the ocean just a few miles to the east. The trees behind the parking lot bent and swayed, and I pulled my jacket more tightly around me. It smelled like rain.
Inside, a young woman lounged behind the counter, a magazine spread out in front of her. She looked up at the jangle of the bells over the door.
“Hey,” she said in a pleasant drawl. “Help you with something?”
I approached with a smile. “Is either Ellis or Duke around tonight?”
“No, ma’am,” she said. “Mr. Brawley was here earlier, but I usually take the evening shift. He’ll be back in at eleven to close up.”
“I see. Has anyone else been in tonight asking for them?”
She shook her head. “No, ma’am. Not since I came on at six.”
Joline would have been here earlier than that, if my guess that she’d called Kimmie from the store was on track. “I see. Okay, thanks anyway.”
I walked back to the cooler and extracted a cold Diet Coke and a ginger ale. I carried them to the counter and fished out my wallet.
“That’s three-twelve, with tax.” She handed me back my change. “Thank you.”
“Do you live around here?” I asked, the question out of my mouth before I realized I’d formed the intent to ask it.
The smile wavered a little. “Yes, ma’am. All my life.”
Now that I’d started this interrogation, I wasn’t certain where I was going with it. I cleared my throat to give myself a moment to think. “Uh, that house out on Holly Hill Road. The old McDowell place. Do you know anything about its history? Or the people who live there now?”
For some reason, the image of Ellis’s Miss Lizzie, standing at the end of the dirt road staring after the Jaguar’s taillights on Saturday afternoon, had popped into my head.
“Well, it used to be a rice plantation, back before the War. I think one of them was killed at Gettysburg, and then some other family took it over. But it’s always been known around here as the McDowell place.” She paused. “My pop says they used to let the school take kids through it when he was little, but they don’t do that anymore.”
“How about who lives there now? I met an older woman the other day out near there. And Ellis talked to me before about a Miss Lizzie. Would that be her?”
I saw the girl look past me, over my shoulder, and I realized someone was standing behind me. I turned to find a woman shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, a series of lottery tickets clutched in her hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said and stepped aside.
“No problem.” She handed two strips of brightly colored tickets to the girl behind the counter. “Got me a coupla winners here, Becca. Not much, but it’ll help.”
I moved to the glass door and peered outside. Red had gotten out of the Jaguar and stood leaning against the side of the car. I knew he would be getting antsy. I moved away to allow the lottery winner to get by and turned back toward the register.
The girl had dropped her head back over her magazine, hoping, I was certain, that I was done trying to pick her brain.
“Do you know this Miss Lizzie? And why Ellis and Duke refer to the place as the ‘Hall’?”
“Most everyone knows Miss Lizzie Shelly. I heard she came here a long time ago. And some people call the McDowell place Covenant Hall because they held secessionist meetings there back in the old days. We studied it in school. They signed some kind of paper agreeing to support the Confederacy.”
“How about the other people who live out there? Isn’t there another woman, younger than Miss Lizzie?”
“You’ll have to excuse me, ma’am,” she said stiffly. “I have to straighten out the stock before Mr. Brawley comes in.”
I conceded defeat. “Is there a motel anywhere close by?” I asked, one hand on the door to signal the inquisition was almost over.
“The little place here in town is closed during the winter. Won’t open up again until April or May. Most folks go over to Walterboro. Lots of motels out there by the interstate.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said, and her shoulders visibly relaxed.
“You’re welcome, ma’am. You come back now.”
I nodded and pushed open the door. I felt a couple of splatters of rain on my face as I moved back toward the car. We both slid inside, and I handed him the ginger ale.
“Thanks. What took you so long? Bathroom break?”
I laughed. “Sleuthing,” I said. Then, sobering, I added, “I think we need to get out to the Brawleys’. Now.”
Red nodded and wheeled the Jaguar around and back onto the highway.
The drizzle and the constant slap of the wipers across the windshield made locating Patience Brawley’s house difficult. Add to that the fact that there were no streetlights on Holly Hill Road, and it took us the better part of twenty minutes before I finally recognized the place. I told Red to go all the way to the end of the road and turn around.
“This is that plantation I was telling you about,” I said when he’d executed two-thirds of his three-point turn. The headlights pointed straight down the dirt driveway, and a hint of the red paint on the STAY OUT sign glistened through the rain.
“Not some place I’d be happy making a call on in the middle of the night,” he said a moment before he headed us back up Holly Hill. “Even without being able to see the house it looks kind of creepy.”
“So is Lizzie Shelly,” I said, remembering again those strange eyes watching me drive off. “I’m wondering if that girl—or woman—I saw running away is mentally ill or something.”
“You mean like a batty old aunt they keep locked in the attic?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Something like that,” I said, unsure myself why the memory of the fleeing figure should have conjured up that particular notion. Or maybe it had been something I’d heard from someone.
We drifted over to the side of the road in front of the Brawleys’ house. Red cut the headlamps, and I rolled down my window. There were lights blazing through the rain, and two pickup trucks and a small sedan sat in the driveway.
“Do you know what kind of car Joline Eastman drives?” Red asked.
“No. We should have thought to ask her husband.”
Red nodded. “I’m slipping. Only a couple of days off the job, and I’m already acting like a civilian.”
I ordered myself not to take offense. “I can call him.”
“Hang on. Who lives here?”
I raised my eyebrows. “I told you. Patience Brawley.”
“I know that. Who else?”
“Her husband, Carl, and her son, Ellis.”
“And they all work. So three vehicles makes sense. Right?”
“Right. So Joline probably isn’t sitting in the living room chatting about old times. Or tied to a tree in the backyard.”
Red returned my stare. “You really think these people would harm her? Did they strike you like that?”
“No. But Patience was barely controlling her anger at the mere mention of the Mitchell sisters. If all our speculating is anywhere near the truth, she has good reason to despise them, I guess. If she really believes Joline’s family killed her nephew.”
“That’s still the longest of long shots. It makes a nice theory, but there isn’t a shred of evidence to support it.”
“You were pretty gung ho about the idea this afternoon, after you found that cold case in the files. What changed your mind?”
“Experience. It’s way too convoluted. There’s no saying whether or not the body in the swamp even was this Deshawn guy. Or if it was anything other than a grudge killing or a drug deal gone bad. Usually the simplest explanation turns out to be the right one.”
I bit my tongue, and Red pulled the car into gear.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s nothing to be gained here,” he said. “Even if we knocked on the door and asked if they’d seen her, we wouldn’t be any farther ahead. Whether she paid them a visit or not, she’s obviously gone now.”
I grabbed his shoulder. “You don’t know that!”
“Bay, listen to me. How many times have we had this discussion about going off half-cocked? You can’t come up with a scenario and then interpret the evidence to fit your theory. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Maybe not for the cops. But this isn’t about evidence and probable cause and all those restrictions you had with the sheriff. What we do is get answers for our clients. Whether or not it’s enough to put someone away isn’t our job.” I forced my rising voice down to a more nonconfrontational level. “It’s about doing what we’re getting paid for.”
Red sighed and pushed the gearshift back into Park. “I understand, sweetheart. And that’s what I’m saying. You—we—are supposed to find a bone marrow donor for that little girl. All the rest of it is immaterial.”
I felt all the tension drain out of my shoulders. He was absolutely right. Nothing else mattered, and my chasing off after old crimes and family vendettas was just getting in the way.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. But can we just find out from the doctor what kind of car Joline drives?”
“Why?”
“So we can swing by Walterboro and check out some of the motel parking lots. I’m still worried about her, even though we wouldn’t take her husband on as a client. There had to be something that made her run off and leave both her children.”
Red smiled. “Point taken. Call him.”
I reached for my bag to retrieve my cell phone just as the figure appeared at my open window. I jerked upright to find myself staring into the eyes of Lizzie Shelly. And the business end of the pistol she held in her right hand.