Lowcountry Boneyard (12 page)

Eleven

Saturday morning I ran hard. I did my usual five-mile route around the north point of Stella Maris, past the marina, to Heron Creek, then retraced my steps past my house all the way to the end of Main Street and back. I pounded the clay-colored sand as if I were trying to outrun something with large teeth. Rhett raced beside me, occasionally detouring to chase a shore bird, then galloping to catch up.

By the time I stripped out of my running clothes and ran into the surf, he sprawled panting by my chair. I’d blown off my steam on the run. I swam at a more leisurely pace, then bobbed around a bit just for the feel of water on my skin. Finally, I rode a wave back to the shore. I slid into the robe I’d left on my chair. I was lost in the rhythm of the surf when I heard footsteps on the walkway.

“Got your clothes on yet?” I recognized Blake’s voice. My older brother knew and thoroughly disapproved of my habit of swimming in the altogether after my run.

“Yes, you’re safe from being scarred. Come on out.”

He took the canvas-and-wood beach chair beside mine. My brother is a good-looking man—five-ten, well-built, fit, blue eyes, medium-brown hair, nice cheekbones. But he has a tendency towards bossy and ornery, which likely explained why he was still a bachelor at thirty-five. “Isn’t the water getting too chilly for this nonsense?”

“Feels good to me. Usually I can swim through late October. I’m hot natured.”

He blew out a long breath. “I’ll be glad when November gets here.”

“Why does it bother you so much that I skinny dip in the mornings? I do it before the walkers are out. No one’s ever seen me.”

“I’m your brother. I prefer that you keep your clothes on in all situations.”

“Is that what you came out here before breakfast to tell me?”

“No. I came to find out exactly what happened here last night that required you to discharge a firearm. Experience has taught me that I didn’t get the whole story. Plus, I wanted to save you some time. I checked out Joe Eaddy. No sense in you duplicating the effort.”

“So Merry broke down and told you?”

“Moon Unit told me first.”

“Me too. What’d you find?”

Blake shrugged. “Nothing bad. Guy’s clean. Seems to be a responsible, upstanding citizen. ‘Course that could just mean he’s a smart criminal. No red flags, anyway.”

“Good to know. Thanks.” Merry’s love life looked a lot more promising than mine at the moment.

“Sonny tells me you’re working the Heyward case.”

“Yeah...oh dear Lord. That’s a mess of heartbreak. I can’t figure why Nancy Grace isn’t all over it.”

“Because the girl moved out of her parents’ house. She’s twenty-three. No crime in that.”

“Her parents don’t see it that way.” I sighed. “I guess they’re not the type to call in Nancy. They likely prefer to keep things discreet. Probably wouldn’t care for camera crews South of Broad.”

Blake lifted his Boston Red Sox cap and settled it back on top of his close-cropped hair. “Yeah. They called you instead. Not sure how I feel about this case.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the one hand, I’m glad you’re not working on my island. I like it when the police blotter in
The Citizen
reports nothing but animal control and teenage mischief. On the other hand, I like it best when I can keep an eye on you.”

“Oh,
puh-leeze
. I have been working as a PI for more than thirteen years, most of it without your attempt at oversight.”

“Only when you worked in Greenville, I could imagine you taking pictures from a safe distance of men sneaking out of bedroom windows and such.”

I tilted my head left and right.

“I’ve done my share of fidelity cases over the years.”

“Is Nate in town?”

“Yes and no.”

“The hell does that mean?” He looked like he’d taken a bite of something nasty.

“He’s staying in Charleston.”

“Issue with the case?”

I sighed long and hard. “Lots of issues. But tonight at Mamma and Daddy’s house? This is Merry’s night to introduce Joe. Let’s just leave it at Nate is working the case, okay?”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

I reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “Thanks. But not right now.”

“I like Nate. Seems like a good guy. Nothing whatsoever like his scumbag brother. That said, if he needs his ass kicked, you let me know and I’ll help him out.”

“I don’t think it will come to that. Let’s just focus on making Merry’s beau feel welcome, and try to act as normal as possible so as not to scare him off.”

“Yeah, past a certain age she’s not gonna look any better.”

“
Frank-lin Blake Tal-bot!
”

He barked out a laugh. “You sound exactly like Mom.”

Oh good grief. I did. I covered my face with my hands.

“Now about the gunfire…”

The look he leveled at me, which he might’ve stolen off a bull, told me I’d just as well get it over with. I sighed long and loud, then told him all about it, after which he let fire an elaborate string of curses.

After a shower, coffee, and a Greek yogurt, berry, and granola parfait, I settled in at my desk. My first order of business was security. I’d installed my high-tech Wi-Fi system myself. When it worked, it let me monitor the house while I was away, and gave me an early warning of trouble when I was home. But it was vulnerable to anyone with a jammer. Jammers were designed as countermeasures—to stop folks from spying on you. They also had nefarious uses.

Sometimes Nate and I used them, but we were on the side of the angels, so I never lost a minute’s sleep about it. Anyone who had the special delivery of snakes in their wheelhouse was not working for the good guys. I called Mack Ryan at Security Solutions Incorporated in Charleston to get his advice. Our paths had crossed on a previous case. He was an ex-Navy Seal and owned SSI. He listened as I explained my problem.

“Nothing you can install in a residence is going to be one hundred percent unassailable,” he said. “Your best defense is a protected wired system. You can still tie it in to your network. As long as you have Internet access you can still get alerts. Or keep the wireless system and install a redundant wired system. You want me to send out a team of techs?”

This was beyond my skillset and what I had time to deal with. “Yes. Thank you. Redundancy sounds good. How soon can they come?”

“For you? ETA thirteen hundred hours.”

“Thanks, Mack. I really appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it. You want us to monitor it?”

“Thanks, but no. Just make the cameras motion activated when the system is on, and have the feed go to a DVR.” His monitoring and the response team that went along with that were pricey. And I was squeamish about someone else having access to cameras inside my home.

“Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Will do. Tell the techs the golden retriever doesn’t bite.”

“Roger that.”

With that settled, I turned my attention to the profiles I’d started Thursday afternoon. Based on the way Nate and I divvied things up, Matt was my priority, even though my gut said he wouldn’t hurt Kent on purpose. I needed to know everything there was to know about Matthew Thomas. But in an hour of digging, I added little to what I already knew. He’d grown up in Mount Pleasant, attended Wando High School, and had two brothers. His father was a well-respected contractor, his mother a homemaker. Matt had been a baseball standout, and could likely have gone to college on a scholarship had he not chosen a culinary degree at the Art Institute. No one in the family had a criminal or civil complaint history. On paper, they were the poster family for the American dream.

Every detail of what Matt told me, from his grandmother leaving him and his brothers each a hundred thousand dollars to how he’d worked his way up at High Cotton, then left to go to FIG was verifiable. I’d talk to the neighbors next.

After trying several combinations Ansley had suggested, I logged on to Kent’s Facebook profile. Her last update was two months before she disappeared, and it was a check in from dinner at Poe’s with Ansley. I scrolled through Kent’s two hundred eighty-six friends. How well did she know them? All of them seemed to be in the same age group as Kent. But online predators would disguise themselves as just that. Who’s to say one of these “friends” wasn’t actually a stalker?

A few were family—her cousins, Charlotte’s boys, Lyndon, Fraiser, Wyeth, and Charles Bennett. Some of the names I recognized from the list Ansley had given me. I clicked through to each of their pages. Many had shared a post Ansley put up the day after Kent went missing with her photo, asking everyone to help look for her and pray for her safe return. The posts had accumulated thousands of likes, comments, and shares.

All two hundred eighty-six of Kent’s so-called friends had to be vetted. An online predator was a real possibility. This was going to be a time consuming process. I needed someone to delegate this to. Ansley. She could do it faster than I could. She’d be able to spot someone who didn’t belong. I called, gave her the password that worked, and told her what I needed.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I’m on it right now. It’s a relief to be able to do
something
.”

“Thanks. If you find anything remotely suspicious, call me right away.”

“Will do.”

I turned my attention to Evan Ingle. His birth certificate was interesting. He was born at home in West Ashley with a midwife attending. Did people do that anymore? The women I knew birthed their babies in a hospital, with the comfort of all the painkillers modern medicine allowed. Evan’s mother was Talitha Ingle, but in the box for the father’s name on his birth certificate, the word “unknown” was typed.

He’d attended Porter Gaud and then, hell’s bells, Evan Ingle had a BFA from Clemson. He was only a year younger than me, which meant we were there at the same time. That was an odd coincidence, but I couldn’t see any relevance. I moved on.

Evan’s timeline got sketchy between college and April 2007, when he opened his gallery in Stella Maris. I did a quick real property check. He owned the gallery outright, and had apparently paid cash for it because there was no record of a mortgage. He would’ve been twenty-six at the time. Where did the money come from? Was his mother wealthy? The West Ashley neighborhood where he’d grown up was nice, but not affluent.

A few clicks later I learned that Talitha Ingle had died August 10, 2014 in a two-car accident on Highway 17 in West Ashley. I pulled up the
Post & Courier
article. There was a photo of a Camry and a minivan, both crumpled, surrounded by emergency personnel and vehicles. I scanned the article. The driver of the minivan had run a red light and broadsided the Camry. Talitha Ingle was killed at the scene. The driver of the minivan died later at the hospital. There were no passengers in either vehicle.

I clicked over to the obituary section. Talitha was buried at Magnolia Cemetery the following Saturday. She was predeceased by her parents, who had tragically also been killed in an automobile accident. What were the odds of that happening? She was survived only by her son, Evan Ingle of Stella Maris.

I turned all of that over and over in my head. Evan’s mother had died two months ago. He hadn’t mentioned it, but why would he? He didn’t appear to be in mourning—he was going out socially—but people grieve differently. And as riveting as his story was, there was no connection I could see to my client or his missing daughter.

Because the timeline was still uncertain, and by way of dotting my i’s, I called the John Rutledge House Inn and spoke to the innkeeper. I asked her to go to the Talbot & Andrews website and call me back on the number listed there to verify my identity. Then I asked nicely if she would verify that Evan Ingle had checked in on Friday night—technically Saturday morning—between twelve-thirty and one. She was happy to confirm, though she made a point to tell me she wouldn’t have given me information I didn’t already have.

I profiled the remaining artists who’d been at Bin 152 the night Kent disappeared. There were no red flags, so I moved them all with Evan to my “most likely not connected” list. 

Time to go talk to Matt Thomas’s neighbors.

The GPS I’d attached to Matt’s pickup truck emitted a clear signal from a few blocks off Coleman Boulevard in Mount Pleasant. He was at his parents’ house. Hopefully he would be there a while. I circled through the two-block area around Matt’s bungalow a few times to see who was out and about. The weather was near perfect. Several mothers with children in tow headed in the direction of Hampton Park. I pulled to the curb a few houses down from Matt’s on St. Margaret Street.

I’d mulled pretexts on my way from Stella Maris. Sometimes, the truth is the best strategy. I approached the modest red brick house on the immediate left of Matt’s house. No one answered the door, though I rang twice and waited patiently. I left my card in the crack between the storm door and its frame.

The neighbors on the right didn’t come to the door, though there were two cars in the drive. Maybe they’d gone to the park. Or maybe they thought I was selling something. I walked across the street and tried a smallish but neat white frame house. The lovely front porch, with its swing and wicker furniture, beckoned me to come sit a spell. Hanging baskets and pots on the steps overflowed with flowers.

A fresh-faced, thirty-something woman with short, dark hair answered the door promptly. Dressed in yoga pants and a tee, she waited behind the storm door for me to state my business.

“Hey,” I said with a warm smile. “I’m Liz Talbot, a private investigator.” I offered her my card.

She gave me an appraising look, then opened the door a crack and took my card. She studied it, then looked at me squarely. “What can I do for you?”