Chapter three

Three hours passed. Sam’s cell phone woke him.

“Come on in, Sam. We need to talk.”

Rumpled, Sam started on the three-block walk to police station. Any other time, such a walk in the moist sea air would have been almost pleasant, the marina’s halyards clanging like wind chimes. This early morning walk was labored.

A blast of cold air slammed Sam in the face when he opened the door to the overly air-conditioned building for a hastily called morning meeting with the Chief of Police, Dan Singleton.

“Sam, I’ve looked over the reports and talked with the officers. We still don’t see the leads. The media folks are all over this one. They want a suspect, and so do we. Do you have any idea what this was about?”

“We weren’t onto anything, Chief. Just the regular stuff, nothing major.”

“Word is that Lee was caught up in some sort of love triangle gone bad. Know anything about that?”

“Lee? No way! He and Jenny were tight.” Sam rubbed his unshaven angular jaw and leaned back in the wooden chair, rocking it back on its legs to the point of danger. “I can’t believe there’d be anything to that. Is that what the guys think?”

“Nah; we’re thinking it’s a random act of violence. We’re gonna get the killer, regardless of the scenario. I just wanted to know as much as I could before getting started. I got a call into the Wilmington office, too. They’ll want to help, if they can.”

Dan stood up and reached for his coat. Even though he was shorter than Sam’s 6’2” lean frame, his bulk made him appear bigger.

“Have to go address the team now. There will be a service for Lee later this week. If you need to, take a few days off. You look like you could use some rest.” The chief stepped briskly out of the cool of his office and disappeared down the hall to the conference room.

“I don’t need rest,” Sam muttered. “I need answers.”

Walking slowly to the conference room, Sam felt the grip of grief around his neck. He braced himself for the meeting to come by leaning against the doorjamb. Not wanting the attention he was sure would follow, he preferred to stay to the back of the small pale-blue tactics room now crowded with fellow officers. Stoic, they listened as their chief cited how a valiant officer had fallen—one of the brothers who sought to fight crime on the streets of Carolina Beach—for no apparent reason.

“Lee Elliott was a good man, a good husband, and a good officer. He stood for what was right, and he tried to make things better for the people he met. We all knew Lee as a diligent cop, but what some of you may not know about Lee is that in the years he’s been here, he’s gotten involved with the community through charity work. In his off hours, he gave talks at some of the high schools to help keep kids off drugs. He regularly attended church, and he enjoyed taking teens out on his boat to show them there was more to life than just hanging out, looking for trouble. His efforts helped to keep our town safe. That’s why his death is such a punch in the face. Not only have we lost one of our own, but the community has lost a treasure.” Dan measured his words for effect.

“If anyone has information about why this happened, we need to know now so we can nab the killer,” Dan stated plainly. He sat down heavily and took a sip from a glass of water at the head of the table. “Meeting adjourned,” he said quietly.

The officers left the room solemnly. Some did not make eye contact with Sam, while others stopped momentarily to rest a hand on his sagging shoulders. No words were needed now.

Sam left the building without purpose. His boat was a wreck, his car was impounded, and his best friend was dead. “What did Lee have that somebody wanted?” he pondered.

Before long, he found himself a block away from Jenny’s. He crossed over to the beach and slowly stepped through the soft sand closest to the diminishing dunes. Every time a storm ripped through here, the beach lost a little more ground to the ocean. Often, while Lee and Sam had enjoyed the view of tourists roasting like pecans on the beach just steps away from his screened porch, Lee had said that fragile ecosystems like these barrier islands seemed to be magnets for three things: hurricanes, developers, and nuts. “All the nuts roll downhill to the coast,” Lee had joked.

Sam happened to think he was right. As the sun peeked over the ocean’s dark gray edge, Sam saw a few tourists already lining the beach with their obnoxiously bright coolers, towels, and umbrellas. May was warming up fast. It wouldn’t be long before the road was bumper-to-bumper with traffic and the beach was filled with visitors who all wished they were locals. Little do they know, Sam thought.

Jenny was sitting on the porch, one leg slung over the arm of the wide wicker chair and the other planted on the floor. Sam waved as he approached her.

Jenny unenthusiastically waved back, then absentmindedly ran her fingers through her short curly blond hair. Coming closer, Sam noticed a thin line of rubber laying across her legs. On the floor was a pie cutter-like tool.

“Hey, Jen, just wanted to see how you were doing today,” Sam called through the door. “What are you doing?”

“Lee had a long list of honey-do’s around here, so I thought I might as well get to them this morning, seeing as how I need something to do to keep my mind off of…things.” She got up and unlatched the screen door to let him in. “The only problem is I don’t know how to do half of what’s on his list. Take this, for instance.” She pointed at the top of the door where a screen was partially blown out. “Am I supposed to pull the whole door off its hinges and take it apart, or can I fix it while it’s on there? That’s why these things were on his list, not mine.” She collapsed in the chair again and started sobbing, her eyes already puffy and red.

Sam focused on the door so as not to join in her distress. He gently took the rubber strip out of her clutch and began to repair the door while she cried. Once it was done, he pulled up a white plastic chair and sat down beside her.

“Jen, there are no words I can tell you right now that will make things better. Lee was a good man and a good friend. I miss him too.” Sam gently placed his hand on Jenny’s shoulder, and she put hers on top of his hand.

“Thanks, Sam. When Andy came last night, he said you couldn’t come by. But you and Lee were together. Do you know what happened?” She was hopeful.

“No, I really haven’t had a chance to look into things yet, but I promise you I will find out who did this, Jen.” He hesitated before continuing. “Jen, when I walked up to your condo last night, I thought I heard somebody in your den looking for something in the desk drawer. I couldn’t see who it was in the darkness. Had you asked Andy to get something for you?”

Jenny looked puzzled. “I…don’t think so. Andy was with me.”

Not wanting to alarm Jenny, Sam changed his tack. “I must have been seeing things.”

“Why did this happen, Sam?” Jenny asked pointedly, as if hearing the news of her husband’s death for the first time.

“That’s the thing. Lee and I weren’t working on anything major, so I thought maybe he had told you about something he had going on.”

Jenny shook her head and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her bright yellow T-shirt. “We had a policy around here about him not telling me how his day was. I really didn’t want to know anything more than when he was coming home.” Jenny looked down at her hands, then up at the fixed screen door. “We were talking about fixing this place up to see what we could get for it, so he sometimes kept a list of what he was going to do to bring a higher price.” Jenny paused, then continued. “We were thinking maybe it was time for a house, with a yard. We were thinking, you know, about starting a family.” Sam knew, all right. Lee had talked with him frequently about what it would be like to raise a child on the beach. It might be fun, sure, but Lee was fearful of a toddler running out of the screened door and into the ocean before Jenny or Lee could get to the child. Sam and Lee had been part of one too many rescue efforts to know those sorts of accidents happened all the time.

Jenny got up and walked to the screen door. She ran her hands over the smoothed edge of screen that just moments before was rough. “Thank you for fixing that, Sam. I do appreciate it.” She walked into the condo, and Sam followed.

It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and to see that Jenny had crossed the living room and disappeared into the den.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here, Sam. Are you sure you saw somebody?”

Sam entered the den. There was nothing out of place, nothing disturbed. “Yeah, I know what I saw. Do you see anything that looks…weird?”

“No, Sam. Everything looks the way it did yesterday afternoon when I was in here doing the bookkeeping.” She opened the top desk drawer and pulled out a folder full of bills to be paid. In the drawers below were files filled with statements and paid invoices. “There’s not anything in here worth getting shot over, Sam; I can tell you that. Lee earned just barely enough for us to live on while I worked on my paintings, but he insisted I keep at it. He encouraged me to pursue what I loved, and so I tried to make things easier for him by tending to tasks he didn’t like to do…like paying the bills.”

“What about his to-do list? Where do you think he put that last?” Sam watched Jenny move to the closet in a smaller room, her studio. He watched as she looked in the closet filled with tools.

“This closet was his workshop,” she smiled. “We thought the next house should have a bigger garage so he could have some real woodworking equipment. We love living on the beach….” She caught herself, stopped, and started again. “I love living on the beach, but now, I don’t think I can stay in this place without him.” She paused and then rooted around on the makeshift shelves on cinderblocks that held Lee’s tools, tennis balls, and racquet, and some spare parts for their boat. “He kept his list of stuff to do for the boat in here, and a second one of projects he wanted to complete on our condo. Here’s the boat book,” Jenny produced a small green journal with a photo of their 1989 thirty-foot Catalina Stormy Monday on it. Flipping through tattered pages, she tossed it to Sam.

“What will you do with Stormy, Jen?” Sam asked as he reviewed the maintenance log for the boat’s engine, glanced a few pages further to see the fuel and radio logs, and then closed the book.

“I really hadn’t thought about it yet. There’s too much to think about. I just wish….” She turned back to the closet shelves, now digging furiously through Lee’s duffle bag, then his toolbox. “Here. Here’s the condo list.” Jenny held up a small, royal blue spiral-bound notepad, and handed it to Sam.

Sam immediately recognized it. He’d seen it dozens of times before, peeping out of Lee’s shirt pocket when they went to the local hardware store to get supplies for various projects.

Most of the pages were filled with scratched off projects. Sam remembered helping Lee with many of them: rebuilding the small steps and deck with the outside shower; installing privacy partitions around the shower to keep the wind, sand, and curious eyes off Jenny (she liked to shower outside after swimming each day in the ocean); regrouting the tiles in the master bathroom’s shower. Lee was meticulous about keeping all receipts for supplies, and they were stapled to each of the separate project pages.

“Do you think there’s something there, Sam?”

She looks tired, Sam thought. “I don’t know. Would you mind if I held on to it for a few days?”

“Take it. Take the boat book, too. Oh, the boat! Sam, I completely forgot about it. Would you mind checking on it? I haven’t been there in a few weeks. We were going to get it ready for the season this coming weekend, but I don’t have the heart to go see Stormy now.”

Sam nodded.

Jenny felt around the inside of the closet door for the keys to the padlock on the boat’s hatch boards. “Thanks, Sam; I appreciate it.” She gulped and tears welled up in her eyes again. Sam pulled Jenny to him in a bear hug. It was the only thing he could think to do. “I’ll be here if you need me.” He patted her on the back gently until she stopped crying. “Call me if you need anything, Jen. I’m only a few blocks away, so I can be here in no time flat.”

She nodded, and they walked silently to the back door. “Thanks for coming, Sam. Would you do me one favor?”

“Anything.”

“Find whoever made me a widow.”

Sam nodded and closed the screen door quietly behind him. Jenny’s words echoed in his ears all the way back to the marina.

Sam walked past his slip and six more boats to Stormy Monday, her deep blue hull gleaming in the mid-morning sun. The hatch boards were locked in place. Sam opened them and saw that the boat’s interior was straight, just the way Lee would have left it after a day of sailing. Everything was put away where it was supposed to be, and Sam envied the boat’s tidiness. He sighed, then climbed up the companionway steps and replaced the hatch boards and lock.

Stepping back aboard his own boat, Sam threw the two little notepads on a shelf over the galley sink and changed his clothes. He opened all the hatches, popped in an old cassette tape of Elmore James, and got to work putting his boat back in order. As he worked, he tried to recount every call he and Lee had investigated over the past year, but he could think of nothing that would get Lee killed or his boat tossed. But then what were “they” looking for? Who were “they”? Why wasn’t Lee’s boat tossed, instead of his?

Once he got the salon and galley back in place, he made himself a turkey sandwich, grabbed a Foster’s from the top-loading refrigerator, and reviewed the two notebooks. Maybe one held a clue.