CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When she was seventeen, Isabel Reichert—Isabel Jordan, then—had a date with Walker Shelton for the senior prom. She decided that she would lose her virginity on that night. It was her decision. She liked Walk, as she called him, and enjoyed it when he fondled and kissed her breasts. She even permitted him to put his hand between her legs a few times. Very briefly. There was some “dry-humping”, as it was called in those days, but they never came close to sexual intercourse, and she had never experienced an orgasm with a boy. From what she read, She was smart enough to know that wasn’t likely to happen the first time. However, there had to be a first time, and she selected prom night as the night to get it over with.

When she saw him in the halls at school, the situation and her decision gave her a tremendous sense of power. Walker Shelton had no idea what was in store for him. The anticipation during the day of the prom was excruciating; she couldn’t imagine an orgasm could feel much better. Her whole body was electric.

Isabel was feeling much that same kind of excitement as she drove home from Charleston. She had called Bill earlier in the day to ask his plans for the evening, and, as usual, he was not planning to come home until late. She pretended regret, while rejoicing at the prospects ahead. She had just fucked him, and he didn’t even know it. She was in control, and that was sexual in nature to her. All things considered, things were going quite well.

“What’s this about Breslin?” Karen Chaney asked when she finally reached Sam.

“I don’t know that it’s anything. He was waiting for me when I got home from school and that bugs the hell out of me. I have no idea how long he was here, but he appeared ready to wait as long as it took. Made himself comfortable at the table on the deck.”

“Did he go into your house?”

“Not that I can tell, and I’m sure I would know if he did. I don’t think he’s that clever.”

“I doubt it. You said in your message he was asking about Lockett’s trailer.”

“Yes, someone evidently trashed it. Breslin said it looked like they used an ax. He also said it looked like they were trying to find something. The only thing I can imagine Turner might have had would be money, which would confirm my suspicions.

“What suspicions?” she asked.

“That he was part of the operation. That he was out here looking for an off-load site when he drowned. Checking out the traffic. Especially if they’re considering Skeeter’s.”

“What about your place. You’ve got a dock and road access.”

“Maybe. Whatever money Turner might have made, he obviously didn’t spend. Look at how he lived,” Sam said.

“Whoever was looking for it would have to know Turner was involved.”

“That’s why I think it was Breslin who tossed the place. Why else wouldn’t he just turn it over to the Sheriff’s office and forget about it? I think it was him, and he didn’t find what he was looking for, so he’s out fishing.”

“And that’s your reason to suspect him?”

“It’s a guess,” Sam said. “The money would be a major problem if it’s found. I imagine whoever else is part of it is doing a little sweating right now.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Dropped a thought that it might have been a couple of black children playing around, knew the trailer was deserted and tore it up out of meanness.”

“I hope if that’s true, they didn’t find the money.”

“The alleged money,” Sam said.

“Right. Do you believe that could have happened?” she asked.

“That the kids might have found it? Not really, though I can’t imagine why he brought that scenario up, unless there was a reason.”

“Maybe he saw somebody like that over there,” she said.

“Or somebody saw him. That would be more dangerous than finding the money.”

“I think you’re right. Anything else?”

“I had the uncomfortable feeling he thought I might have it.”

“The money?”

“The money. Oh, he did ask me if I could satisfy his curiosity about your being a lesbian.”

“And?” she asked.

“Told him you might be for all I knew.” Sam heard her snicker.

“Why would he want to know that?”

“Give me a break, Karen. He’s trying to convince himself that’s the reason you haven’t invited him to your bed. Of course, it could be that he’s not attracted to you at all and just wants to pick my brain to learn more about you. The other possibility is that he was letting me know our relationship is not a secret. I think we’re going to have to be a little more discreet about being seen together.”

“I love sneaking around, makes everything seem so much more illicit,” she said.

“Most women do.”

“And I suppose men don’t.”

“Of course we do,” he answered.

“Want to sneak over here tonight?”

“Not tonight. I want to be available should Skeeter need me, and besides, you wore me out over the weekend. I need to recoup.”

“Your loss,” she said.

“I know.”

“Sam, do we have a relationship?”

“I’m not sure what that word means, but I wouldn’t bet on our having one,” he said. She hoped he was smiling.

“Bastard,” she said.

“Call me about the same time tomorrow or anytime if you get anything.”

“I will.”

When she hung up the phone, she realized she hadn’t told him about her conversation with Neil Dougherty. More significant, she thought, he didn’t ask. What a piece of work.

Summer heat was in the air, and it was only six-thirty in the morning. The rising sun painted a scarlet cast on the marsh, lightened by the veil of heat-generated mist that rose from the smaller creeks and rivulets that stemmed from the main branch of Jones Run Creek. It was beautiful and frightening at the same time, a conjunction that greeted the transition-days between spring and summer. The physical beauty is obvious; the fear more psychological, spawned by the gothic drear of early morning haze that held the true nature of the coming day in hiding.

It had only taken Ray Breslin a day to identify the two young boys he had seen at Turner Lockett’s trailer. A search of mailbox names, a couple of questions at the school, and he had them nailed. Marvon Jefferies and Bitta Smalls. They were easy. What kept him awake at night was the one he didn’t know, the one who hit him from behind and stolen his gun. He was afraid and that scared him.

Breslin was parked in a stand of trees that gave him protection from the view of anyone getting on the school bus that passed and stopped in front of Bitta Smalls’ double-wide, mobile home. He wanted to catch one of the boys alone, but it appeared they were inseparable. He wasn’t sure what his plan of attack would be if he did manage to get one of them alone, but he had to do something. Charley Clay was getting impatient. The last call from him was angry, not typical of the man.

Every possible scenario he came up with resulted in the same conclusion: the boys had the money. That knowledge stimulated the same frustration he experienced as a child when his mother, worried about his pudginess, put all the sweets in the house on the top shelf of the pantry. He knew where they were, could see them, but there was never enough time to pull up a chair and get to them without being caught and punished. Instead, he would just stare at the shelf, sitting right up there, just out of reach. He could live without sweets; the money was a different matter.

When the long, yellow school bus pulled to a stop—caution lights first, then red lights, then the little stop sign extending itself out from the body of the bus—Bitta Smalls and Marvon Jefferies walked from Bitta’s house together and got on board. Breslin remained hidden in the trees. Today he would go a step further, a risky one, but necessary. When Bitta’s parents left for work, he was going into the trailer to see what he could find. If the money was there and he took it, the problem was solved. They couldn’t tell anyone, and if they did, who would believe them?

It was seven-thirty when the Smalls left for work. The way the trailer was situated on the property, there was an easy approach through the trees that allowed him access without ever coming in sight of the neighbors or anyone passing down the road. He got out of his truck and made his way to the back door. Getting in was no problem. He used the “trailer twist,” a technique in which the door handle is twisted and jerked and pulled simultaneously. He had learned it from a B&E specialist he had met early in his career. The lock flipped on his first attempt to open it.

Breslin was surprised when he entered the home. It was immaculate. The furniture was not typical of any trailer he’d ever been in. It wasn’t luxurious or the most expensive, but it was of a quality that anyone would consider nice. Solid, not laminated, and the decor—lamps, wall hangings, throw rugs on top of a decent quality carpet—appeared designed. Everything worked. The standard, mobile home cabinetry in the kitchen had been replaced with custom-made built-ins, and the appliances were better-than-manufacturer’s quality. It was a home, substantial and enduring.

He went straight for the boy’s room, which was also neat and well-kept. The bed was made, and there were no child’s toys or collectibles scattered on the floor, as in most children’s rooms. Discipline, Breslin thought. If the boys had the money, their parents didn’t know. From what he could see, he knew these people would have gone straight to the sheriff. That was a minor relief.

His search had to be done with care; anything out of place would be noticed.

He put on a pair of latex gloves and began opening drawers and cabinets. There was a small desk, drawers built-in under the bed, a night table and two small closets. Even they were orderly. He found nothing. Several shoe boxes stored on the top shelf of one of the closets yielded only the typical young boy’s treasured memorabilia: rocks, baseball cards, sea shells, a flashlight key chain, a small looking glass—the kind that usually held a picture of a naked woman—which Breslin was surprised to find showed the faces on Mount Rushmore, and a number of other things that only a child could value enough to save. There was no money. He wiped the door handle after re-locking the latch and moved out toward the shed.

Everything the trailer was, the shed was not. Breslin stood inside the door looking at the maze of rusted farm machinery, gunny sacks full of who knew what, old tools, wooden boxes, an old tractor, long retired, broken appliances and most anything else one could imagine that was totally useless and decomposing with time. The thought of trying to do any kind of meaningful search was ridiculous. The money might be within feet of where he stood, but only the person who put it there would ever be able to find it. The kids would have to tell him. He closed the door and went back to his truck.

When he returned to Miami from his vacation sojourn to Jamaica, Brad Coleman had a few things to tie up before he left for South Carolina. He was looking forward to seeing Morgan Hannah even more than he anticipated when he called her. There were a number of messages waiting for him, along with a sizable number of correspondences. Sizable for a man whose location was, at best, guessed at. Much of the correspondence was from banks, investment services, real estate brokers, and attorneys, who handled the business of his international interests. Most of it was originally sent to private mail boxes, collected by the personal assistant he employed at each of his residences, packaged and sent to whatever location he left with them as a forwarding address. Like his money, his mail passed through a lot of stops before it reached him. It was a simple method of determining if anyone was tracking him. Somewhere along the path, they would make a mistake and be exposed.

There was nothing unusual in any of the mail and only one telephone call of any consequence. It was from a man Brad Coleman was more than familiar with. The man had been after him for several years to include cocaine in the inventory he smuggled and found it difficult to take “no” for an answer. Grass and hashish was one thing, in Coleman’s mind and philosophy, cocaine and any other hard drug was quite another.

The business had started as a lark back in his college days, done on a very small scale with a few friends, a typical scenario. Nobody thought about getting enormously rich or going big time. It was not an unusual story. He and his friends philosophically justified what they were doing with the old clichés: herbs were not a deadly drug; the fact that until the government took away the profit motive, they weren’t really serious about stopping its importation, and, the bottom line, morality can’t be legislated. Something that should have been learned during prohibition. At times the ideas, even in their own minds, seemed sophomoric justifications; however, as time passed, the old homily that clichés are only clichés because they are true seemed accurate.

The vacation in Jamaica was an epiphany. The excitement of the business was diminishing according to the law that governed such things. It had been a long career, but its time had come, and fortunately, he thought, he was smart enough to realize it. Now it was just a matter of cleaning things up, divesting and disappearing. There was no guilt to take with him. The old beliefs were still his guide, and he stuck to them. In addition to not dealing in hard drugs, and, in spite of the activities in which he was involved, he had never committed nor ordered any kind of violent act. It was one of the few virtues with which he credited himself.

He looked around the condo to assess its personal worth to him. It was luxurious and spacious, over three thousand square feet with an ocean view, yet there was nothing in it that was meaningful to him. It was one of his stopovers, never a place he lived. Of all the properties he owned, only one did he consider home: the large villa in St. Tropez in the south of France. It was there that he set up his life-to-be. The rest were business locations, and business never touched his beloved French villa. There he was at peace with the world and all of the cares it held. The rest were nothing.

By the time he boarded the plane for South Carolina, the condo in which he stood would be up for sale, and within a week it would be gone with no connection to Brad Coleman ever established. Removing himself from his physical holdings was no more than the act of removing the accouterments of battle, something to be left behind and forgotten, not a matter for sadness.

Morgan Hannah. He didn’t even know the woman, had said little more than “hello” to her, yet he thought he recognized some brand of spiritual synergy between them. Not the “love-at-first-sight” variety. He wasn’t sure what love was, but he knew there was something that bordered on “interesting-at-first-sight”. He saw it in her eyes when they met on the beach, was sure she recognized it in his eyes as well. It was the lady he was anticipating more than the enterprise he would be there to orchestrate.

The round, brass and walnut paperweight on his desk was receiving all of Cedrick Hamilton’s attention. School was, for all intents and purposes, over for the year. Normally he would be busy making the rounds of the district schools, shaking hands and wishing everyone a happy, well-deserved summer vacation. This year he wasn’t able to bring himself to do it. With all that was circulating around him privately and professionally, he felt like a hypocrite. The idea of being a leader was laughable.

He was startled out of his thoughts by the telephone.

“Cedrick Hamilton,” he said in a commanding voice that was more habit than any show of strength or confidence. He even recognized the sham in that.

“Good mornin’, Cedrick. How’s your day goin’?”

“Fine, Charles. Fine.” That it was Charles Clay was a cautionary relief, but there was no assurance that talking with him would be a cause for celebration.

“Cedrick, I got some disturbin’ news this mornin’. I wonder if you even know about it. If you don’t, I’m sure it will be less than welcome news.”

“You might as well tell me, Charles. Nothing could surprise me at this point.”

“Well, unless you’ve been leadin’ me down the primrose path, this, I believe, will be a surprise.”

“I’ve never led you anywhere, Charles. Will you tell me what it is, so I can add it to what I’m already drowning in?”

“We’ve got a problem with the auditors,” Clay said.

“I told you that. What’s different?” There was a sense of foreboding as he waited for the attorney to answer.

“No, this is a different kind of problem. It doesn’t look like my contacts are going to be able to exert any pressure to direct the audit toward those with a friendly attitude.” Hamilton’s stomach began to churn. His lids got heavy. He wished he could just go to sleep and never wake up.

“What happened? I thought you said—”

“I did say, Cedrick, but I didn’t know then what I know now.”

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” He wasn’t able to hide the impatience and dread in his voice.

“The audit is going to be done by a South Carolina firm, all right, but nobody we can work with. They are, according to my source, to be assisted by the South Carolina Department of Internal Revenue and the I.R.S.” There was silence on the line. Hamilton didn’t know what to say, how to respond. There was a scream inside him that would burst all of the blood vessels in his brain, but he couldn’t let it out. Cedrick Hamilton and everything Cedrick Hamilton was perceived to be was imploding. Think, he told himself. Right now. This moment. Think. He was always able to think logically under pressure, but this time his mind was blank. He had to get Clay off the phone. His mind, for once, couldn’t function on two tracks at the same time.

“Jesus! How did you find this out?”

“One of my contacts in Columbia. He had no information as to how or why the federal government got involved. Said he just heard about it yesterday and thought he ought to let me know. I don’t think it will happen for some time, so you might have a chance to get your wagons circled. What I can’t understand is why they’re interested.”

“I have no idea, but I’m not sure circling the wagons will have any affect. I was beginning to think we were in pretty good shape, along with your help, but this. I don’t know. Any suggestions?” Cedrick asked.

“No, my contact said he’d let me know if he heard anything. Try to keep a low profile for awhile. We might be able to get you out of this yet. What about our friend? Is he going to the reception?”

“Haven’t heard anything yet. I think he’s sufficiently interested, but I wanted to give him until the weekend to decide how he’s going to spend it.”

“We need his cooperation, Cedrick. Be hard pressed to come up with another site. And we have to count on you for that,” Clay said. Cedrick sensed worry in the man’s voice, something he didn’t need added to his own.

“I’ll take care of it, Charles. Keep me posted on the other situation. Do what you can for me.” There was hopelessness and resignation in his voice.

“I will, Cedrick. I will. Are you all right?”

“I’ll make it.”

“Don’t worry; we’ll come up with an answer.”

Hamilton hung up the telephone and went back to rolling his paperweight. There was nothing else he could do.