The High Tide Club

“Finally getting a paycheck was a real morale booster,” Lizzie said. “But Shug can’t keep these grounds up all by himself. He’s got to have help, from C. D. or somebody.”

“Louette says C. D. wasn’t that much help with the lawn maintenance anyway,” Felicia said. “He mainly wanted to take care of the boat and run errands on the mainland. She says he’s forever wandering off and disappearing for a day or two.”

“Does she have any guess where he goes?”

“Maybe shacked up with the girlfriend?”

* * *

They walked over to the barn, a creaky wooden structure that seemed to lean at a near forty-five-degree angle. It was painted a weathered white, and sunlight shone through cracks in the old boards.

“Shug says the barn roof is in worse shape than the house,” Lizzie remarked. “He’d finally talked Josephine into shelling out the money to hire roofers to do it, but then, after she got so sick, the roof sort of got put on the back burner.”

“She wanted her husband’s cars preserved, Louette says,” Felicia added. “I walked over here and looked at them this week. If you’re into cars, it’s a pretty amazing collection.”

Lizzie grasped one of the barn doors, and the rusted hinges squealed a protest. Inside, it was dim and relatively cool and smelled of mildew and mouse droppings. Four shadowy hulks were shrouded in dusty tarps.

She walked over to the car on the end and yanked off the cover to reveal a gleaming vintage roadster.

“This was the last car Gardiner owned, and we know Josephine worshiped him. And this car,” Brooke said, running a hand over the hood of the roadster.

Felicia walked slowly around the roadster and peered in the back. “Is this the same car she told us they dumped Russell Strickland’s body in when they went to bury him?”

“It must be,” Brooke said.

Felicia jumped away from the car, eliciting a belly laugh from Lizzie.

“What’s the matter, Felicia? You getting spooked by an old car?”

“Must be ’cause I’m spending all my time with these Geechees,” Felicia admitted. “I had no idea how superstitious my people are. Even Auntie Vee. You can’t leave a broom in a corner because she says that means somebody’s fixing to die. And don’t you let her catch you leaving a pocketbook on a bed, either. I’ve started writing it all down. It’s really pretty fascinating.”

Brooke carefully returned the dustcover to the roadster. “How far is C. D.’s place from here?”

“Just a little ways away,” Lizzie said. “It used to be the chauffeur’s house.”

The house stood in the shadow of an enormous oak tree. It was a step up from the humble slave cottages they’d seen at Oyster Bluff—wood frame, with a small front porch ornamented with simple Victorian-inspired gingerbread trim. Once, the house had been white, but only traces of the paint remained now. A front door with a small window was flanked on either side with tall windows.

Lizzie stepped onto the porch and boldly jiggled the doorknob.

“Lizzie!” Felicia scolded.

“He could be in there, hurt and unable to call out to anybody,” Lizzie said. She stepped to the right and pressed her face against the wavy window glass, which was smeared with ancient layers of grime and cobwebs. “Can’t see a thing through all this dirt,” she complained.

Brooke peered through the other window but saw only a shadowy interior.

“Let’s look around back,” Lizzie said, leading them around the east side of the house. A lean-to roof jutted off the back of the house. The wooden floorboards groaned under her footsteps. A weathered broom, rag mop, and dustpan hung from nails, and a fishing pole and plastic bait bucket stood beside the door.

Lizzie rattled the door handle. “Locked.” She took a step backward and lifted the edge of the doormat. Grinning, she extracted a large brass skeleton key, which she fit into the lock.

“Stop. You can’t just break into the man’s house,” Brooke said.

“Technically, it’s not his house. Louette says he doesn’t even pay rent. Josephine just let him stay here as part of the job. So technically, it belongs to the estate. Also, he could actually be in here, hurt or passed out or something, so really, this is a welfare check.” Undeterred, Lizzie opened the door and stepped inside.

“Nobody home.” She popped her head outside the door. “Come on in. Don’t be so prissy. If he comes back and catches us, you can say I was the evildoer.”

Felicia looked at Brooke and shrugged. “Might as well.”

* * *

They were standing in a compact galley kitchen. There were exactly four wooden cabinets, their doors warped from humidity. An opened plastic Sunbeam bread bag on the Formica countertop held a moldy heel of bread, swarming with black ants, and a jar of store-brand mustard was open, with a butter knife stuck into it. A greasy plastic ziplocked container held only the red stringy rinds of a half pound of bologna. The small stainless steel sink held a used coffee mug, a teaspoon, and a plate. An ashtray on the counter was full of cigarillo butts.

Lizzie sniffed the air. “Yeah, this is C. D.’s place, all right.”

“It looks like wherever he was going, he decided to pack a picnic,” Felicia said.

They followed her into the small front room, which looked like it had been furnished with cast-offs from the big house. The sofa, a 1940s relic, had worn maroon tufted upholstery and another overflowing ashtray was perched on the arm. The glass-topped coffee table was part of an old wrought iron patio set. It was littered with file folders and photocopied news clippings.

Lizzie ducked into the adjacent room. “Here’s his bedroom. No sign of C. D., though.”

“We should get out of here,” Brooke said uneasily. “This doesn’t feel right.”

Felicia perched on the edge of the sofa and began sifting through the papers. “Hey. Looks like he’s been reading up on Josephine and the Bettendorfs. Look at all this stuff.”

“Let me see.” Lizzie sat beside her. She picked up a paper. “He’s been spending time in the library, going through the old microfiche issues of the Savannah and Atlanta newspapers, dating all the way back to the mid-1930s. I’m kind of surprised he knew to do that.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t strike me as the researching type,” Felicia agreed. She looked up at Brooke. “He’s gotten copies of the old property tax records from the Carter County courthouse too.”

“It’s a matter of public record,” Brooke said. Against her better judgment, she stepped into the bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it was tiny, with worn wooden floorboards. The cracked plaster walls were bare except for a calendar from a marine supply store, the page turned to the current month. The old brass bed was unmade, covered with a cheap white cotton bedspread and a pair of lumpy feather pillows. A nightstand held an ugly, oversized lamp, an empty beer can, and the usual ashtray full of cigarillo butts. A pair of worn jeans hung from the doorknob of a narrow closet.

The drawers of a cheap wooden dresser facing the bed were pulled out.

“I feel like a Peeping Tom,” Brooke muttered.

But she looked inside the top drawer, which held balled-up crew socks and a folded stack of worn-looking white cotton briefs that had been pushed aside. An empty leather binocular case lay atop the briefs, and beside them was a half-empty cardboard box of bullets.