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A cold case heats up . . .
A dead man in Big Bay Creek, spring break, and a rogue FBI agent would be enough to drive Chief Callie Jean Morgan to drink . . . if she hadn't already quietly crawled inside a bottle of gin to drown her sorrows over a life ripped apart by too many losses.
When her investigation into the stranger’s death heats up an unsolved abduction case, Callie finds herself pitted against the town council, her son, the agent, and even the raucous college kids enjoying idyllic Edisto Beach.
Amidst it all, Callie must find a way to reconcile her grief and her precious taste for gin before anyone else is killed.
C. Hope Clark is the award-winning author of the
Carolina Slade Mysteries and now the
Edisto Island Mysteries. During her career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she met and married a federal agent—now a private investigator. She plots murder mysteries at their lakeside home in South Carolina when not visiting Edisto Beach. Visit Hope at chopeclark.com.
Coming Soon!
Chapter 1
UNROLLING LAST month’s police report in
her hand, with two dozen residents assembled behind her, Police Chief Callie
Morgan spoke to the Edisto Beach Town Council. Not the best way for a girl to
spend a Saturday evening.
But this was a
command performance. Even without the council meeting, her son Jeb being home for
spring break prohibited her usual six o’clock routine. She hadn’t had a drop of
Bombay Sapphire in—what? Three days?
She read from
her sheet—the council holding copies of their own—listing her tasks for the
past month, her thoughts on the hurricane contingency plan, and the general
performance of the force after receiving two additional officers the council so
graciously approved for hire five months ago.
Thank God for
the last one. Kept her from traffic duty. Kept her from people...
Finally, the
end. Smile for the camera. She flashed a professional show of teeth at
these five people who expected her to be beholden. Unfortunately, that included
Councilman Brice LeGrand. Then she gave a nod to the mayor—who was nice to her
face, neutral in public.
They’d made her
the last item on the evening’s agenda. Not that she was on trial, but she made
certain her report included the accomplishments of her department, details the
council seemed to take more interest in of late.
The report was
complete. Competent. But her heart wasn’t in it this evening. Her heart wasn’t
in much of anything anymore. Muscle memory, work ethic, and an office manager
named Marie kept Callie running the Edisto Beach PD, but heart? That was asking
too much. She left passion in a rainy ditch on Pine Landing Road last
September. Everyone had seen Mike Seabrook as invincible, never thought he
could die, but he did... attempting to save her.
"Well,” Brice
drawled at the front of the room, glancing at his casually dressed peers to his
left, then his right. "She’s obviously no Seabrook, but we can check off the
police department.”
The words
slammed her like a mallet. A female gasp came from behind her in the audience.
A councilwoman covered her mouth, and mumbles arose around the stuffy meeting
room reeking of overcooked coffee, the confinement too tight for whispered
words not to be heard.
Everyone watched
Brice, the supporters and the opponents, both sides equally intimidated. "Y’all
remember those jokes he’d tell? Mike could make these meetings more of a
social. He’d bring donuts, Snickers bars, even sang his report that one time.”
Brice managed a hound-dog look of sadness while giving no condolences to the
police chief at attention before him.
Blood rushed in
Callie’s ears. With an embarrassed board frozen before her, stunned citizens
behind her, Callie stiffened in defense. "Excuse me?” She crushed the papers in
her hand, but she wasn’t sure she had the strength for Brice’s challenge, or
the focus to handle it properly. Not without getting fired on the spot...
or being arrested for murder.
And God knows
there’d been ample murder on the island.
She’d been
exonerated by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division in the shootout. But that
fact paled in the shadow of Mike Seabrook’s death. The community had adored
him. And he’d been the man she’d professed to love just twenty-four hours
before he succumbed to a bullet and a knife on a muddy, desolate, rained-out
road.
The room had
gone silent. Silent! How many people still held her accountable?
Did they expect
her to brawl, retaliate? Surely they sensed she couldn’t take a single breath
without the memory.
Or was this a
test as to what she could handle?
Then, Sophie
Bianchi, wearing her more formal black yoga pants, leaped from her seat,
jeweled hands on tiny hips, her black pixie hair shaking with rage and a
hundred-dollar highlight job. "Well, I’ll sure as hell say something if none of
you will. What’s wrong with you people? And Brice, you’re a gold-plated jackass
and do not represent the voices of everyone here, regardless how big and bad
you think you are! Don’t you remember the price this woman has paid for us?”
"How about the
price we’ve paid?” he yelled. "Not all of us wanted her as chief!”
One councilman
gave a soft "Yeah.” The councilwoman nodded, then seemed to catch herself when
Sophie gave her a glare. Grumblings traveled the room.
Callie was
mortified. Were they doing this now? Formally, they couldn’t launch into
judgment of her without the issue being on the agenda, but the mention this
month meant a formal discussion the next.
Her phone
vibrated in her pocket. As Sophie continued dressing down the council despite
Brice’s hard, heavy-lidded, and challenging gaze, Callie peered at Jeb’s caller
ID. No message and no urgency. She refused it and turned her focus back to
Sophie. Jeb had probably forgotten her town-council meeting obligation.
"This woman”—and
the yoga mistress gripped Callie’s hand—"has saved this beach more times that
you’ve peed in the ocean, you pompous dolt.”
Snickers rolled
around the room. Brice’s cheeks reddened.
A text came
through Callie’s phone. 911, Mom. Call me.
Callie spun her
back to the council and strode to the back of the room, redialing his number.
He picked up after one ring.
"What’s wrong?
Where are you?” she whispered, a hand covering her other ear to hear better.
Jeb had never cried wolf in his life. She glanced over at the government-issue
wall clock. Quarter to eight.
"Chief Morgan,”
Brice said into a microphone the small room really didn’t need.
She held up a
stiff arm, finger pointed, indicating one moment.
"We’re kayaking
up Bay Creek,” Jeb said, his voice quivering. "Oh my gosh, Mom. We were coming
back and...” His words turned softer, his mouth away from the
phone. "It’s all right. Mom will take care of it.”
"She’s on the
damn phone, Brice,” Sophie scolded. "Probably an emergency. It’s what you hired
her to do.”
Callie pressed
her ear harder to hear better with the other. Was that Sprite crying?
Instinctively, Callie glanced at Sprite’s mother. Sophie was still giving what-for
to Brice.
"Jeb?” Callie
spun back, head tucked down. "Is Sprite okay?”
Panic still
laced his tone. "She’s fine. And I’m fine, but this floating body hung up in
the grass isn’t.”
Callie
stiffened, then held a hand in front of her mouth and whispered, "Give me one
second.” She scooted back up the aisle and patted Sophie’s arm. "Gotta go.
Police emergency.”
The board
deserved the yoga mistress’s spitfire temper, and her ire would distract them
from this new issue long enough for Callie to escape and reach her son.
Jeb’s voice
rose. "What do I do, Mom?”
Knocking a chair
in passing, Callie barged toward the door to the hallway, heart pounding. "I’m
moving to where I can hear you. Are y’all alone?”
Night insects
chirped and called in the phone’s background. "Yes, ma’am. We’re the only ones
out here.”
That he could
see.
As she passed
the audience, some mumbled at her abrupt departure, but Jeb was the only person
left in Callie’s life who could keep her going. Humidity smacked her as she
burst outside, praying the phone signal held. She barely heard Brice calling
after her.
The fire of dusk
heightened the tension of the what-ifs playing in her head. It would soon be
dark. She heard Jeb soothe Sprite again.
"Okay,” Callie
said, reaching the parking lot streetlight. "Talk to me.” She jogged toward her
car, fobbed open the cruiser, her black shoes making divots in the sand and
gravel lot.
"We found him a
half mile north of the public dock near the state park.”
She ran to her
trunk, extracted a cap, flashlight, and windbreaker. The Zodiac rescue craft
was ever ready for use, but she’d never called on it before. Firefighter Bobby
Yeargin was the designated driver of the boat.
The thought of
her son with a dead man chilled her to her core. "Are you sure he’s dead?” She
cranked up the engine and left.
"Trust me,
there’s no doubt about that.”
"Do you know
him?”
"Jesus, Mom, I’m
not rolling him over to tell!” She heard him catch his breath. "And I thought
that would be tampering with evidence.”
Adrenaline
coursed through her like a rain-swollen river. Was this a drowning, a slip in a
boat, a drunk who fell in—too inebriated to find his way out? Jeb probably had
the same thoughts, but what he might not think of was murder. And he wouldn’t
wonder if the murderer watched in hiding.
God, make
this all an accident.
"Okay, listen to
me, son.” She forced a calm, steady tone to override his fear...
and hers. "Does the scene appear safe?”
"What do you
mean?”
Without being
there, Callie had no idea if the body was fresh, old, just dumped....
Jeb and Sprite maybe having interrupted something at the hour of day when the
grays of nightfall beckoned someone with equally dark plans. Jeb didn’t need to
touch the corpse to determine any of this, either. "Without upsetting Sprite, Son,
scan the area. Look nearby first. Then do a three-sixty. See anyone?” She
swallowed. "While you’re doing that, I’m ordering the boat to come out there.
Be right back.”
As she turned
left on Lybrand, she placed the emergency call on the radio, which would alert
the first responders for water rescue. Clipped words, directions, and an order
to meet her at the dock.
Then she
returned to her son. "Jeb? See anyone?”
"No, ma’am.”
She released
half the breath she held. "Now, scour the distance, up and down the creek. Any
boats? Anybody on the land watching? Any cars running? Look for lights.”
More seconds,
with water sounds against the fiberglass kayak telling her he moved to follow her
directions. A thump from his oar. "No, Mom. Nobody.”
Thank God. She tore past the Wyndham resort
entrance and shot a small, desperate prayer up that the body wasn’t a local, in
spite of the fact a tourist could be worse.
As she moved her
cell to the other ear, her fingers gave a slight tremble she wished hadn’t
surfaced. She fumbled the phone, but recovered it. "Damn it,” she whispered
before she caught herself.
"Mom, you okay?”
"I’m fine,” she
said, almost angry at him for asking the routine question he’d asked for every
day of the four months leading up to his departure for college—and in every
weekly phone call since. Synonymous with Have you been drinking?
Sure, she
sometimes ended her days by smoothing the edges, but she hadn’t today. You’d
think he could tell the difference.
"Okay,” she
said, her cruiser making a small slide into the marina parking lot. "Stay
there. Stay alert, and keep this call open. I don’t care who tries to call in,
don’t hang up. I won’t be long.”
At the dock, she
saw from a distance that someone already prepped the boat. Two divers, locals,
readied another boat a few slips down. The emergency call also directed the
coroner in Walterboro to send someone ASAP. By the book. Per the plan. Without
fanfare or interruption of the council meeting in the administrative building
she’d just left. It was April, spring break, and the last thing Edisto Beach
needed was street talk about a death... or another of Brice’s
lectures, hammering her inability to keep Edisto safe. Again.
A gust tossed
her hair and made its way across the bay, the tide incoming. She donned her
cap.
"Chief? You
ready?” hollered Yeargin.
She waved her
okay and headed toward the watercraft. Calm settled over her. "Jeb, we’re about
to head your way. You’ll see our lights. I’m hanging up now. We’ll lose signal
over the water.”
She remained
police chief of Edisto Beach because of her ability to manage trauma without
spilling it onto everyone else. She’d been hired originally because she "walked
the walk” due to her Boston detective experience and "talked the local talk”
having been born and raised in these parts. But Officer Seabrook and Officer
Francis’s deaths last fall bit a huge chunk out of her self-assurance. She
never wanted to pull a firearm again after she’d shot the killer that night,
with relish and way more bullets than needed.
But this wasn’t
about the cop in her. It was about the mother. She’d find a way to do whatever
needed to be done. Jeb had no idea of the ramifications of finding a body...
particularly if he’d run across a body not meant to be found.
Chapter 2
JEB HAD FOUND the body hung up in the
weedy marsh a few dozen yards north of the Edisto Interpretive Center in the state
park, on the Colleton side of a water that changed width, depth, and character
with each tide. Charleston County owned the other side, a magical line in the
water dividing the counties. Jeb and Sprite still huddled in their kayaks
against the marsh grass of the Colleton side, well out of the way of the dive
operation.
As the two
divers reached the boat’s side, Callie braced herself against the Zodiac’s
rocking. She was still frustrated at how long it took the deputy coroner to
arrive. He hadn’t even apologized.
As divers laid
the floater in the boat, a credential case slid out, smacking onto the deck
like a dead fish. Yeargin and the coroner were focused more on the body, so,
pushing back a dull headache, Callie shined her flashlight and one-handedly pried
the wet leather open to identification and a badge. Well, hell.
She shifted to
block Yeargin’s view. The body’s driver’s license hid behind the creds, and
with her hand covering the gold shield, she studied the dead man. Even bloated,
the face fit the photographs close enough. "Bag it and put it away,” she told
the deputy coroner, who quickly slid the ID into an evidence bag, then into his
case. Then at the coroner’s disapproving grunt, Callie shifted her light,
reaching farther into the victim’s soggy pockets.
She restrained a
small moan of her own, feeling somewhat relieved—and not the least bit
guilty—at the corpse being a stranger. A dead federal agent meant federal
company within hours. She just happened to be the poor uniform in charge of the
tiny beachfront town where this guy chose to die. Her responsibility for one
night, tops.
Soft water
lapped against the inflated black boat, the briny odor of the disturbed pluff
mud dominating that of a death too recent to have begun to rot. Chilly
saltwater drained from the body to form puddles in the skid-proof bottom of the
twenty-five-foot worn-looking Zodiac. The gray-haired dead man wasn’t in much
better shape—ocean denizens had commenced feeding on small sections of his
eyelids, hands, ears. The sea recycled the dead pretty friggin’ fast, but he
hadn’t been in long, she guessed, having fished a few out of the Charles and
Merrimack Rivers back in Boston.
The young, lanky
deputy coroner, Richard something, did a cursory study, and when his gloved
hand touched the skull, he gave a quick glance at Callie. She touched lightly
where he had. Something, or someone, had knocked the dead man hard on the right
side of his head. As if rearing a bat and hitting for a homer.
She sat back on
her haunches and scoured the close vicinity, then took her scan farther out.
One upscale home shone north of their location before a bend where a few others
would be. Only the wealthy could afford to front meandering Big Bay, where the
smallest parcels of land ran upward of half a mil. Everywhere else she looked
remained silent and pitch black.
This was a body
dump. Too many obstacles for this body to have floated far. The deed happened
here, or barely a stone’s throw up the creek. A stone’s throw from where Jeb
had been.
Kayaks nestled
amidst the grass, Jeb reached across to hold his girl’s hand while his police
chief mother did her thing.
In round halos
of halogen lights, a couple of johnboats floated to the side of Callie’s
vessel, the emergency first responders numbering seven plus the coroner. Though
loyal to the tiny South Carolina beach community, these scanning eyes belonged
to people who didn’t need to know much more than that they’d found a floater.
News of a dead federal agent would explode like a virus once they made shore,
faster than Callie could make the proper family notification...
or reach the authority connected to that badge.
Just what
everyone needed at the beginning of the season.
She couldn’t get
Brice’s evening performance out of her head. The man would be even more driven
to ruin her reputation since she walked out of his meeting without clearing it
with him or playing Father-May-I. He would second-guess each of her moves—like
he didn’t already—and take the opportunity to misinterpret facts and spin
scandal. Which made one thing certain... she’d keep the
details of the night hidden from the councilman as long as possible.
Everyone’s
flashlights bounced off reeds and sawgrass, searching for the unusual, but the
water barely moved now that the body had been extracted and secured in the boat.
"What you
thinking, Chief?” asked the Edisto firefighter at the helm. Yeargin wasn’t a
native, but he had fifteen years under his belt. He bore responsibility for
maintenance of the rescue boat because he fished these waters every chance he
got. Her youngest officer, Thomas Gage, had been begging for Yeargin’s
responder slot for a year.
"We got ID, but
not much else,” she lied, not wanting to mention the badge, then reached a hand
to the deck, a mild wave threatening to teeter her off balance. The night
breeze flapped her windbreaker, and she fastened the bottom two snaps and
tugged down the brim of her cap covering short brunette hair she trimmed
herself. In spite of the recent warm spring days, she’d worn her more formal
long-sleeved uniform for the town-council meeting. A shiver made her glad for
the warmer apparel. Inside, a nervous freeway of anxiety zipped and zinged,
seeking those old instincts that once served her so well on the street.
Unfortunately,
this poor dead chump served as the first test of her ability to function since
losing Seabrook.
The deputy
coroner returned to his seat on the boat. There were three or four people named
Richard in the coroner’s office, and she hadn’t learned in her ten-month tenure
who was who yet. This Richard had observed the body in the water, helped remove
it, and taken pictures. He seemed to consider his work done.
Callie turned
back to the body, speaking over her shoulder. "Guess you need to get him back
to the morgue before you know if this head wound was the cause of death.”
"You’re good,
Chief.”
Sarcastic
bastard. He’d said less than a dozen words since stepping onto the boat. Quiet.
Borderline rude. Resentment against her, or was she overthinking this? He could
simply be pissed he’d had to leave a good warm dinner on the table.
"Recognize the
guy, Callie?” Yeargin asked.
Callie shook her
head. "I take it you don’t either.”
"Who is it?”
shouted one of the other responders in another boat.
"Don’t know
yet,” Yeargin hollered, then turned back to her. "Hank’s still in the water
waiting for orders, Chief.”
She kept feeling
the pockets for clues.
"Wish you
wouldn’t,” Richard-somebody said. "I should be the first line in the custody of
evidence, and I don’t like anything touched until we get back.”
She ignored him.
In her flashlight beam she counted over a hundred dollars in the deceased’s
money clip. A cloth handkerchief but no initials... old
school without flare. Keys to a Nissan and most likely a residence. She felt
around his waistband to his back.
Here we go. A small-of-the-back holster, clipped
to his belt... empty.
Yeah, Richard-whoever. This is why she should search
the body here.
"Tell them we’re
missing a handgun,” she told Yeargin, who again shouted to the two divers.
Finally, she
dared shine the light deeper into cloudy eyes that used to be brown, widened
with the shock of the unexpected. "Why were you on my beach?” she muttered.
"Age, say late fifties. New khakis, new polo, mild sunburn already...
not local. A vacationer but not an outdoorsy sort.” She studied his hands. "Not
blue collar. No ring. And most of all, no boat.” Still crouched, she set down a
knee. "How did you get out here?”
Unless this
unarmed FBI agent fell off the closest dock and floated until he got hung up, a
more sinister motive made the most sense. But Richard-something could make that
determination.
The diver
shouted. "Not finding anything, Chief, but depending on how many tides happened
while he floated, that gun could be under six inches of mud by now. We can look
again in the daylight, if you like.”
"We can head
home,” she yelled back, already calculating that the man had been in the water
for one tide cycle, max. The death happened that day. "I think we’ve found all
we’re going to find in the dark.”
She nodded to
the deputy coroner. "Help me zip him up, if you don’t—”
In looking up at
him, her gaze landed on her son and his date still huddled with a flashlight.
"Jeb? You and
Sprite paddle over here.”
Still shell-shocked,
Sprite lifted her oar and plopped it into the water, Jeb protectively letting
her lead. Her long raven curls piled on her head, the eighteen-year-old high
school senior reached the marine response boat and gripped a rope.
With her oar
resting lengthwise atop her craft, she made room for Jeb, who securely wedged
her kayak against the boat. Their small waves kissed the rubber sides of the
Zodiac.
The chivalry
wasn’t lost on his mother, a reminder of Jeb’s father. Though proud of her
blond, way-taller-than-her son, she recognized the fear, too. Keeping in mind
the girl he liked to impress, Callie searched for the right words. The kids
needed her strength, though she hated bodies worse than anyone present,
regardless of her experience... because of her experience.
She and the coroner
finished zipping the bag, then she leaned on the side of the Zodiac, her gloved
hand slipping once on the edge, which was wet from when they lifted the body
into the boat. "I’m sure this scared the bejeezus out of the two of you, and
I’m proud of the way you handled it. However, until we identify this man, we
can’t afford for you, me, or any of these men to chat it up around the beach.
Understood?”
"Yes, ma’am,”
Sprite said demurely, sweeping a curl blown loose behind her ear. Jeb nodded.
"And I hate to
say this, but Sprite, you cannot tell your mother. Not yet. We can’t have
people freaking, going nuts calling, thinking this guy belongs to them. It
shouldn’t take long to find his name, and I should be the one to tell the
family, not some gossip on the street. You hear? Let me explain it to Sophie,
so she doesn’t get mad at you.”
"She’s already
tried to call me,” Sprite said, holding up her phone.
"Text her you’re
on your way in, but if she presses for answers, tell her to call me.” Callie’d
have to tell Sophie something or she’d dig hard at these guys upon their return
and spread the news as colorfully as she addressed the town council. Everyone
loved Sophie, but the problem was she loved everyone back, which meant lots of
loose conversation.
Callie shouted
at the closest johnboat. "Hank? Can your boat tow the kids back?”
"Sure thing,
Chief.”
Sprite gave a
nervous scoff. "Can’t I just ride in the big boat? Hitting your oar on a dead
body, that’s just...”
Jeb pushed off,
emboldened. "There are no more bodies. Come on. We’ll just hook up behind them
and coast.”
Sprite
hesitated, then paddled effortlessly like the young could, and moved out of the
boat’s path, catching up with Hank. He anchored them, then motored slow while
the others took off to the marina.
"Get us home,
too,” Callie said, removing the gloves and taking her seat, acting as if they
found waterlogged stiffs every week. But her mind churned.
"Been a while
since I’ve seen one of those,” Yeargin said, tilting his chin down at the black
bag.
"Never long
enough,” she said.
"Got that
right.”
He focused on
his steering, moving around Hank and the kids. Callie waved as she passed, then
sat back and pretended to study the moonlit landscape since the deputy coroner
still remained in his own world.
What the hell
was a dead FBI agent doing in her neck of the woods? In an area of the
Lowcountry that nobody accidentally got lost in.
Edisto Beach
existed at the end of the long highway known as 174, dead ending in the
Atlantic. You either came here on purpose or you didn’t come. The wind filled
her jacket, and she hunkered down in her chair with her thoughts for the last
half mile to the dock.
That first name
on the creds was one not easily forgotten. Pinkerton. Like the detective
agency, which was quirky. Last name Rhoades. She’d worked with many FBI agents
in Boston. So had her deceased husband, a deputy US marshal. God, four years
seemed so long ago.
"You’re awful
quiet,” Yeargin yelled over the wind.
"Bodies tend to
do that to me,” she replied, knowing he’d hush at her response. Every
administrative and government worker understood full well she had the most bodyexperience of anyone on Edisto Beach, and had no desire to share the details.
They began to
pass moored boats at private docks. Back at the marina, they’d load the poor
guy in an ambulance and she’d escort him to Walterboro, calling the Charleston
FBI office en route. She began to feel the first investigative itch she’d had
since... well, in a while.
The agent wasn’t
dressed to be on the water, but had ventured armed. However, most law
enforcement wore a piece, on duty or off.
Nobody had
missed him yet. Unless nobody knew he was out here.
She
instinctively reached for her phone. Seabrook would.... She
withdrew her hand, trying to nonchalantly set an elbow on the arm of the seat,
hoping Yeargin couldn’t possibly have read her mental misstep.
She hadn’t yet
shed the reaction to call Seabrook’s work cell, ask his thoughts, get him to
ride along. And each time she almost dialed, she felt the unhealed hole in her
heart crack and ooze.
He remained on
her speed dial, and she caught herself rubbing her thumb over the number when
she missed him. On the worst of evenings, she sat alone on the front porch of
Chelsea Morning, her beach house, and called his voice mail.
Her office never
questioned why Edisto still paid for that phone to remain active.
Along with her
office manager, a chunk of the sympathetic community still handled Callie with
kid gloves, and she let them. Her privacy was precious, plus, they couldn’t see
her sweat. They had to believe that the cop they hired could hold it together.
She could label
the floater as a blessing, if one were prone to be so morbid. A reason to focus
on something other than the huge hole in her life. An event to drag her back to
law enforcement that consisted of more than the occasional rental break-in, or
open–alcohol container tickets.
Or she could
curse this incident as a chance for Brice to remove her for good.
She wasn’t sure
which was best.
