1 Lowcountry Boil Read online

  Nate knew me well. For six years we’d sold information by way of discreet investigation out of our office, Talbot & Andrews, based in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville is near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains—on the opposite corner of the state from Stella Maris. We interned with the same Greenville private investigator before opening our own agency. Nate wasn’t just my partner. He was my friend. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I wasn’t ready to tell him I was seeing ghosts. I shrugged.

  Nate took a sip of his beer. “I thought since the guy was trying to screw his wife over, he’d dredged up unpleasant memories.”

  I threw Nate my most dramatic oh puh-leeze look.

  He drew back, looked away. “Sorry.”

  I’ve never held it against Nate that his brother was my ex-husband, Scott the Scoundrel.

  Scott owns a private equity firm that devours other companies for breakfast, has team-building meetings over lunch, screws one of their wives over cocktails, then fires half the team before dinner. He is the progeny of Satan, but disguises it behind a perfect smile and a good-ole-boy manner.

  Nate is the same flavor of blond-haired-blue-eyed handsome, but Nate’s a good guy. We handled criminal defense cases, insurance fraud, and an endless variety of romantic indiscretions. We’d also been hired to do such sophisticated tasks as locate a trailer missing from a trailer park, determine who left an old goat grazing in a judge’s front yard, and track suspected UFOs.

  We had bills to pay.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  Nate nodded and drank his beer. He knew I’d talk when I was ready. One of the things I loved best about Nate was that we could talk over a drink, or not.

  I sipped my wine. Come home, Colleen had said. Home.

  I’d built a life for myself in Greenville, four hours away from the island paradise that spawned me, where all the people who mattered most to me still lived. If you added up all the hours I spent trying to explain to my family how I could do that, I probably have years invested in justifying my presence in the Upstate.

  After college, the reason was Scott’s budding career. After I saw through his polished veneer, discovered what I’d married and divorced him, I stayed because my own career was established. Those were the lies I told myself, anyway.

  The dirty little truth was I stayed away because my cousin, Marci the Schemer, had tricked Michael Devlin into a train wreck of a marriage, and they still lived on Stella Maris.

  Michael was the man I should have married. And you can bet your mamma’s pearls I would have married him had Marci not intervened. Stella Maris is a small town. The prospect of running into Michael and Marci at town picnics and Friday night football made me a little crazy. It was easier to live elsewhere and visit often. But Stella Maris would always be home.

  Marimba music announced an incoming call on my iPhone. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. My brother’s picture smiled back at me.

  I slid the arrow on the touch screen to the right and raised the phone to my ear. “Hey.”

  “Liz,” Blake said. The tone of my name told me something was very wrong.

  I waited.

  “Come home.”

  I sucked in a lungful of air. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Gram,” he said.

  Someone turned down the volume on the world. A giant bird beat in my chest, trying to get out. I stood, ready for flight. “What? What?”

  “Liz, she’s dead.”

  Like everyone else, at first, I assumed it was an accident.

  TWO

  Rain drizzled from dense, low-hung clouds the day we buried Gram. Sunshine would have been inappropriate attire for that somber Tuesday afternoon. I stood beneath the funeral home canopy feeling as if my whole body had been numbed for a root canal. It just wasn’t possible that Gram lay without protest in that coffin. Emma Rae Simmons Talbot was the most vibrantly alive person I had ever known. It violated some law of physics that all her energy had vanished in a tumble down her deck steps.

  Nate stood solidly beside me. He’d insisted on driving me home—had barely left my side since Blake called. This was only the second time Nate had ever been to Stella Maris. The first was the day I married his brother.

  After we sang Amazing Grace, the army of mourners invaded Mamma and Daddy’s five-thousand-square-foot lowcountry cottage. Each in turn, they murmured sympathies and made their way to the dining room, where Mamma’s antique mahogany Duncan Fife table labored under a spread of food I couldn’t bear to look at. Like a murder of crows, they roosted on the front porch railing, grazed off china all through the house, lighted in the screened porch, and gathered around the live oaks in the backyard.

  I felt guilty for wishing they’d all leave. It was a comfort, really, that so many folks came to pay their respects. But it’s hard to be hospitable when you’re grieving, and I was exhausted from the effort of being gracious. And all that handshaking and hugging kept me popping into the powder room to wash my hands and apply sanitizer. That many people, you had to figure at least a dozen carried viruses.

  Long hours later the crowd thinned to family and Nate. Aside from Mamma, Daddy, my brother, Blake, my sister, Merry, and me, this group included Marci the Schemer (Daddy’s dead sister’s only child) and Michael Devlin. As if that day wasn’t bad enough.

  In addition, there was a whole gaggle of Great Uncle Harrison Talbot’s family. Great Uncle Harrison was my granddad’s brother. Granddad had been waiting for Gram on the Other Side for twenty years.

  We gathered in the living room and waited for Robert Pearson, the family attorney, to read the will. It hadn’t struck me how barbaric this was, this custom of divvying up the remnants of a person’s life as soon as they were buried, until the life being divided was Gram’s.

  I sat on the end of Mamma’s buttery-yellow leather sofa beside my baby sister. Okay, Merry’s twenty-nine, but she’ll always be my baby sister. Her grip on my hand tightened. She looked crumpled, as if she was caving in from the weight of her grief. Fat tears slid down her cheeks. Although I’m two years older, four inches taller, and a few pounds heavier, we’re reflections of each other. In many ways our thoughts, emotions, and reactions are identical. As if one set of wires got crossed, the ways we’re different, we’re polar opposites. Merry cried out her sorrow openly. Mine was a private heartbreak, to be nursed in a dark quiet place.

  Blake, my older brother by one year, flanked Merry’s opposite side and held her other hand. He tapped his foot and tugged at the collar of his crisp white shirt with his free fingers. Blake was the Stella Maris Chief of Police, but his daily uniform was more casual. His neck was unaccustomed to starch and a tie.

  I was thinking not one of us gave a damn about the will—Gram wasn’t even cold yet—when I took a gander around the room. Let me tell you, after studying the faces of the Talbot clan, I reconsidered my position. Vultures hovered among us.

  Uncle Harrison’s eager eyes avoided mine. Two of his grown children chatted quietly in the corner, more excited than grief-stricken. Marci the Schemer perched on the edge of her seat, something like triumph painted on her face. She glanced my way and caught me staring. Our eyes locked and the corners of her mouth sneaked up. I felt nauseous.

  My eyes settled on Robert Pearson. He stood in front of the french doors that opened to the foyer, shifting from one foot to the other with this apologetic look on his face. Ridiculously young for the task at hand, he reminded me of Harrison Ford, circa the first Indiana Jones movie. The part of the family attorney was supposed to be played by a gray-haired man with reading glasses perched on his nose—not the guy who married one of my high school girlfriends.

  Robert cleared his throat. “If everybody’s ready, I guess we’ll get started.” He waited for the murmurs and fidgeting to quiet and then forged ahead. “First I just want
to say how sorry I am for your loss—our loss. I loved Emma Rae. Everyone on this island did. Her sudden passing shocked us all.” Robert’s eyes worked the room, finding each face in turn, sharing heartbreak with some, searching others.

  He gripped the will with both hands. “I’ll skip the formalities. Emma Rae had roughly eight hundred thousand dollars in various investments, which she left to her only surviving child, Franklin Talbot.”

  A wave of rustling swept the room as everyone squirmed in their seats. This was significant news, but not what they were waiting to hear. Everyone expected Daddy would get the money.

  It was all about the land.

  Protecting the land was a religion in our world.

  Land was power in our world.

  Robert continued. “With the exception of several personal items she wanted each of her grandchildren to have as mementos, her house, the contents, and the three hundred acres the house sits on, go to her granddaughter, Elizabeth Talbot.”

  I was stunned mute. My eyes and mouth opened wide (Mamma would later inform me) in a most unattractive expression that called to mind a freshly caught tuna.

  A gasp—really it sounded more like a cat hiss—riveted everyone’s attention to the wingback chair by the fireplace. My cousin, Marci the Schemer Devlin, stood. Her little bird-body trembled and her face flamed against her ebony pageboy. She stared Robert down for what felt like a Sunday afternoon. Then she pulled back her shoulders and stalked right out of that room. Michael followed her, offering an apologetic look to the room on his way out. No one spoke as the front door banged against the wall.

  For a ten count no one moved. Then, as if someone flipped a fire alarm, our extended family cleared out in a whirl of hugs, tears, and glares. The exodus left Merry, Blake, Mamma, Daddy, Nate, and me alone with Robert, who sat down in a recently vacated chair. I glanced at Blake and Merry. Two pairs of wide cobalt blue eyes, mirrors of my own, wore identical expressions of grief-laden shock. I turned to Robert for an explanation.

  Robert prompted Daddy. “Frank, you may want to expound a little on the contents of Emma’s will. I know y’all discussed the family holdings and how they would be distributed.”

  Daddy leaned forward on the sofa, his face sagging, eyes bloodshot. He was normally so young looking that strangers couldn’t believe he was my daddy. His sandy blond hair was the exact same color as mine before I got my multi-toned highlights—not a speck of gray on his head. I couldn’t believe how much the last few days had aged him. Mamma sat close beside him, one hand protectively on his leg.

  Daddy coerced air into his lungs. “Your Grandmamma’s property—the house and the land it’s on—that’s Simmons land. When my daddy died, I inherited the Talbot family land, acreage roughly double that of the Simmons tract. When the time comes, the Talbot land will be divided between Blake and Esmerelda, giving the three of you equal holdings.” More often than not, Daddy calls Merry by her given name—Esmerelda.

  Merry shifted beside me. Righteous indignation made it through her raw throat and swollen sinuses. “Marci gets nothing?”

  I stiffened. Any sympathy for Marci the Schemer felt like a betrayal. Coming from my sister it was especially brutal. Merry was given to making allowances for Marci on account of her unfortunate childhood. I was not.

  Robert glanced at Daddy. “This kind of thing is not unusual here, you know that. It’s not about making anybody rich. It’s about conservation.” He cleared his throat again, his voice turning hoarse. “From what I gathered, Emma Rae felt that you, Liz, would be a good steward of the land.”

  “But I don’t even live here, haven’t in years,” I protested. “Blake’s the oldest…he lives on a houseboat…” Okay, it’s a very nice houseboat. But at the time, I reasoned he could use a house.

  Blake shot me a look that did not convey brotherly love. He is quite fond of his simple life on a houseboat moored at the local marina, and although he frequently meddles in my affairs, he is not a believer in reciprocity.

  Daddy’s devastated expression, so out of place on a face that seldom took life seriously, asked things of me I was unprepared to give. “Things have changed,” he said. “You have responsibilities.”

  “I need air.” I sprang up from the sofa and bolted across the room. Through the dining room, into the kitchen, and out the back door, I made my way to the screened porch and collapsed on the swing.

  It was too much to absorb. Gram’s death had hit me like a battering ram to the stomach. How could I not have known this could happen? I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with her in recent years. The guilt was thick on my tongue.

  I was busy loathing myself when Colleen materialized beside me on the swing.

  “Stay,” she whispered. Since she died, Colleen didn’t have much to say, but what she said swelled ripe with import.

  “I can’t,” I told her. “My life’s in Greenville now. I have clients. Friends. A renovated loft.”

  “Important.” Colleen had an urgent look in her saucer-shaped green eyes.

  It hit me then that I had business with Colleen. “Have you seen Gram…on the Other Side?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  This alarmed me for reasons I couldn’t parse at the time. “You’ve got to find her. Tell her… Can I see her? The way I see you?”

  She shrugged and gave me an apologetic look. “Stay.”

  A tear slipped down my cheek. “I can’t make any decisions today. Don’t ask me to.” I shut my eyes, shut her out, and just sat there, rocking slowly back and forth, holding myself.

  I heard the back door open and close. When I opened my eyes, she was gone and Blake stood in front of the door, hands in his pockets.

  “I need to talk to you.” He sat beside me on the swing, right where Colleen had been seconds before, and loosened his tie.

  “Blake, I can’t stay here.” I shook my head. “I love this place as much as you do…”

  He turned to look at me.

  “…but I can’t make a living—”

  The intensity in his eyes cut me off.

  “Gram was murdered,” he said.

  Less than two weeks later, against Nate’s vehement objections, my condo was on the market and my kiwi-green Escape hybrid stuffed with luggage and boxes of essentials. Rhett, my golden retriever, rode shotgun as I quitclaim to my life in Greenville. Marci the Schemer ceased being a force strong enough to keep me away from Stella Maris the minute Blake uttered those words.

  I traded poor Nate for a ghost of a partner and moved home.

  THREE

  There are two ways to get to Stella Maris: by private boat or by taking the ferry from the Isle of Palms, our neighbor to the south. The ferry ride takes twenty minutes. Every time I make the trip, I get out of the car and watch as the town comes into focus. The old Beauthorpe homeplace sits at the corner of Main and Simmons, and in the backyard there’s a silver maple with a tire swing I’ve swung on a million times. When I see it, I know I’m home.

  My wheels touched the ferry dock just before noon that sunny Monday in early April. I called Mamma to let her know I was home.

  “E-liz-a-beth Su-zanne Tal-bot.” Whenever Mamma’s upset with one of us, she trots out all three names and enunciates each syllable. “Did your brother not tell you to stay in Greenville until he’s caught your grandmamma’s killer?”

  “Yes, Mamma, he did.” Frank-lin Blake Tal-bot apparently believed his dual status as my big brother and chief of police gave him two reasons to mind my business. I have never suffered his intervention a moment my entire life.

  Mamma was silent, perhaps reflecting on how middle children were often difficult. Finally she said, “I’ll change your sheets and air out your room.”

  “Mamma,” I said, “I’m going to Gram’s.”

  More silence.

 
“I need to be close to her.”

  She sighed. “I’ve got book club tonight, and a church meeting tomorrow. You’ll come for dinner Wednesday?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll call Blake and Esmerelda.”

  I needed to call Esmerelda myself. I hadn’t spoken to her in several days. And I’d have to call my brother. “Let me talk to Blake first.”

  “That’s perfectly fine with me.”

  I ended the call after Mamma sufficiently admonished me to be careful. I knew she was rattled. Stella Maris was one of those small towns where you could leave the door unlocked for the plumber and not think twice about it. Our island home was unacquainted with violence.

  As I drove with the moonroof open, windows down, through the streets of my hometown, the island reclaimed me. I slipped the clip out of my hair and let it tumble to my shoulders and whip in the wind. Rhett hung his head out the passenger window. The thick breeze was laden with the pungent scent of salt marsh, spiced with pine, and sweetened with magnolia blossoms.

  Stella Maris is a sultry, windswept Eden. Blake, Merry, and I grew up here on clay-colored beaches with the salt air sticking to our suntans. Blake’s toy soldiers defended our sand castles, and we learned to surf the foam-laced waves of the Atlantic that alternately caressed and pounded our playground. The island both nurtured and seduced us. My family’s roots sank deep into the sand and anchored us here. Our souls are salt-water cured.

  The island is roughly star-shaped, with the ferry dock at the south end of Main, between South Point and Marsh Point. The remaining three points of the star are Pearson’s Point, Devlin’s Point, and North Point. Two main roads crisscross the island—Main Street and Palmetto Boulevard.

  I drove down Main past The Stella Maris Hotel and The Cracked Pot, the island’s diner. Trees with border beds were wove into the sidewalk—even the main business district was green and lush. I bore right around the traffic circle bordering the park, made a three-quarter loop, and headed north on Palmetto Boulevard.