63
On Friday morning, Brooke’s cell phone buzzed to signal an incoming text. It was from a number she didn’t immediately recognize. It was a screenshot of a court document. She squinted as she read the tiny print. It was a copy of a Chatham County property tax lien against Gabe W. Wynant, in the amount of $90,000, on behalf of KPW Roofing Inc.
Beneath the screenshot was the text message:
Heard you’ve been looking for me. Your boyfriend Gabe is a phony. If you want to know what I know, come over to island and we’ll talk.
Now she knew the number. It belonged to C. D. She was relieved that he was apparently alive and well but annoyed at his reference to Gabe as her boyfriend. And what was this about a lien?
Okay, when and where?
My friend Ramona has a boat tied up at the municipal pier. It’s called Foxxy Lady. She’s waiting. I’ll pick you up at the Talisa dock. Come now, okay?
She hesitated, wondering why she felt uneasy about responding to a text from the old man. He was harmless, wasn’t he? But where had he been hiding, and why was he reaching out to her now? Her thumbs flew over the phone’s keyboard.
Waiting on my assistant to arrive at office. Can’t leave ’til then.
She glanced at the clock on the office wall. Farrah was thirty minutes overdue. So this was what the old man had been furtively researching in the library databases. The real estate lien must have been the result of a clerical error. Gabe’s town house in Savannah was on West Jones Street, one of the most beautiful streets in the downtown historic district. It was easily a $2 million property. She frowned. What was C. D. up to?
The office door opened, and Farrah breezed in, her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and left ear as she sipped from a huge Styrofoam Slurpee cup. Brooke fixed her with a disapproving stare. “Gotta go,” Farrah told her caller. “My boss is giving me the death stare.”
The girl set her backpack and Slurpee on her desk. “Sorry about that. What’s up?”
“You’re late,” Brooke said. She picked up her phone and texted C. D., and she reached for her pocketbook.
Leaving now.
His return text was almost immediate.
Come alone and don’t tell nobody.
“I’ve got to go,” she told Farrah. But the idea of a secret meeting with this paranoid old man was making her feel paranoid.
“Go where?” Farrah asked, sifting through the stack of papers piled atop her desk.
“I’m meeting C. D. over on Talisa.” Brooke quickly filled her assistant in on her mission. “It’s probably bogus, but he claims to have some damaging information about Gabe. Do me a favor, will you? Just in case, take a look at the online tax records for Chatham County. See what you can find in the way of tax liens.” Another thought occurred to her. “While you’re at it, check the plaintiff and defendant indexes and see if Gabe has been party to any recent civil actions.”
Farrah nodded as she scrawled notes to herself. “How far back should I look?”
“Maybe the past three years? And while you’re at it, check the Glynn County records too. I can’t remember the exact address, but his house on Sea Island is on Blue Heron Street. It might be listed under Sunny Wynant.”
“Who’s she?”
“His wife. She died two years ago.”
“For real? I mean, he drives a Porsche.”
“It’s called due diligence,” Brooke said. She fixed her assistant with what Farrah called her death stare again. “This is all highly confidential stuff. A man’s reputation is at stake. If anybody asks, just tell them I had an appointment this afternoon. Not a word about my going over to the island or who I’m meeting with. Right? I’m not sure how long I’ll be over there, so can you pick Henry up from day care if I’m not back by 2:30?”
“Sure thing.”
“And Farrah? If you’re late picking Henry up? That’s a firing offense.”
*
C. D.’s friend Ramona had jet-black hair that fell nearly to her waist. She wore flowered board shorts and a neon-orange bikini top that displayed a pair of saggy sixtysomething-year-old breasts. “All set?” she asked after she’d helped Brooke onto the eighteen-foot Foxxy Lady.
Brooke nodded, and Ramona backed the boat away from the slip.
“You’re a friend of C. D.’s?” Brooke asked. “Have you known him a long time?”
Ramona’s smile was enigmatic. “Been knowing him off and on for a while. More off than on, but since last week, I guess you’d say we’re on again.”
“Has he told you what all the secrecy is about?” Brooke asked.
“He says he’s fixin’ to come into an inheritance—which, knowing C. D., is a lot of crap. He also says I should keep my mouth shut about what I know, so that’s what I been doing.” Ramona turned her back to Brooke, and a moment later the boat was flattening out, skimming across the calm waters of the river with Talisa straight ahead.
*
C. D. was seated on a black motorbike at the edge of the Shellhaven dock. He raised a hand in greeting to Ramona, who returned the salute. Lionel, the little Geechee boy who’d been sitting on the dock, waved too.
As Brooke walked toward C. D., she heard the boat’s engine start and turned to see the Foxxy Lady pull away from the dock.
“Get on,” C. D. said in lieu of a greeting.
“No helmet?” Brooke asked nervously, straddling the bike and gingerly wrapping her arms around the old man’s midsection. She noted the leather holster clipped to the waist of his shorts.
“We ain’t goin’ that far,” he said. “You didn’t tell nobody you were comin’, right?”
“Right,” she lied.
He steered away from Shellhaven, turning in the opposite direction. The small bike’s engine labored beneath the weight of two riders. Bits of rock and crushed oyster shell sprayed her ankles and calves as they rode along, and she kept her lips clamped together and eyes squeezed shut against the stirred-up sand and grit.
The bike finally slowed after they’d been riding for ten minutes. She looked up when she heard the waves pounding ashore and saw the old lighthouse looming in front of them.
“We’re here,” C. D. said.
She was grateful to hop off the bike and have both feet on the ground again. He pushed the bike off the roadway, leaning it against the abbreviated porch of a small wooden edifice that Brooke realized must be the lighthouse keeper’s cottage, the same one Josephine, Millie, Ruth, and Varina had stayed in the night before discovering Russell Strickland’s body.
Was this where C. D. had been hiding out?
Instead of entering the cottage, C. D. turned and walked toward the lighthouse itself.
“In here,” he said, pushing against the heavy wooden door, which opened inward on long-disused hinges. An open padlock hung from a rusty hasp screwed into the rotting wooden doorframe.
“Here? In the lighthouse?” Brooke peered uneasily inside. The landing in front of her was narrow, maybe six feet wide, and green-painted wooden stairs spiraled up the exposed brick column. Dust motes swirled in the shaft of sunlight pouring down from the top.
“You got a better place?” He started up the stairs, and she was surprised at how nimble he was. She stood, rooted in the doorway, already regretting having come this far. She saw now that C. D. Anthony wasn’t just a harmless, aging eccentric. He was paranoid, and he was armed.
C. D. read her expression. “Come on, now. You think I’m gonna hurt you? I swear, that ain’t what this is about.”
“What is this about? Why can’t we just talk down here?” Brooke hoped her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
“I like it up top.” He jerked his chin upward. “You got a 360-degree view up there. I can see anybody coming or going. See the whole island. That’s why I chose it. Anyway, I got my dossier up there. That’s what I want you to see.”