Off You Go Read online

  Off You Go

  A Mystery Novella

  Benjamin Blackmore

  Contents

  Off You Go

  Opening Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Thanks for Reading

  Also by Boo Walker

  About the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Benjamin Blackmore

  All rights reserved.

  Sandy Run Press

  For Patty and Bert

  Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.

  Off You Go

  Benjamin Blackmore

  “I ain’t broke, but brother I’m badly bent.”

  -Fred Carter

  1

  She’d been watching him for a while. First from the parking lot, then from near the stage, where an old Gullah man thumbed his way through the blues on a beat-up pawnshop acoustic. Despite the heat and humidity of late summer, the farmer’s market in Mt. Pleasant on Coleman Boulevard was packed with natives and tourists alike, lined up to fill their bags with local produce and all things pickled, and to taste the saltwater taffy and the boiled and fried—yes, fried—peanuts, along with the homemade popsicles and whatever else in the growing variety of food-truck fare.

  Dewey Moses fumbled for the pack of American Spirits next to the cash register and fired one up. He handed the man in front of him his change and thanked him.

  “Next,” he said, eyeing the woman who had been watching him. She was now four back in the line, holding a stack of Dewey’s famous black heirloom tomatoes, Cherokee Purples. He worked his way through the cigarette and whittled down the line of people, throwing in two or three free jalapeños to anyone who spent more than twenty bucks.

  He finally got to her, his curiosity sufficiently peaked.

  “Afternoon, ma’am. That all for ya today?” He took the ‘maters—as his grandpa, the man who taught him how to grow things, had called them—from her hands and gingerly placed them in a brown paper bag. If Dewey died today, they could spit on his grave for a multitude of reasons; but they’d have to remember what he could do in the garden, especially with his tomatoes. At least there was that.

  “Are you Dewey Moses?” the woman asked. She had wise eyes that Dewey had seen in many women over the years, the kind of wisdom and strength you can only find in the eyes of a mother. Her brown hair appeared to be colored. Wrinkles of age creased her forehead; perhaps she was a grandmother. She had a figure that told him that she’d cooked her fair share of fried seafood and apple pies, too. Not that Dewey was judging. He didn’t do that. But he couldn’t help but notice the littlest things about every person, every situation. It was a gift and curse at the same time.

  “You’re not the IRS, are you?” he responded.

  She furled her brow. “Of course not.”

  “FBI? CIA? DEA? DIA? PGA? NRA? MLS? NBA?”

  “What in heavens are you talking about?”

  He smiled genuinely. “Yes, I’m Dewey Moses.” He removed his plaid fedora, bowed slightly, and took her hand. “And you, my dear?”

  She blushed. “I’m Faye Callahan.”

  Dewey had been told all his life that he made great first impressions. Enough people had told him that that he believed it, and he attributed it to an early life lesson. His grandfather had taught him to love people, even strangers. Despite their shortcomings and faults or opposite thoughts, he’d said, love them. Dewey still thought that might have been the best piece of advice he’d ever received.

  He gently squeezed her hand and said, “It’s a pleasure. What can I do you for?”

  She looked around and then whispered, “I hear you are good at getting to the bottom of things.”

  Dewey put his hat back on and looked around. “That’ll be six bucks for the ‘maters.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll throw my number in the bag. Call me in a couple hours. Okay, Mrs. Callahan?”

  She nodded and went on her way. Amazing how word spreads, he thought. Before long, he would need to hire help. And to think it had all started when his neighbor at the market asked him to find her son. He had stolen her car and run away, and she didn’t want to call the cops. Using a parabolic dish, Dewey was able to listen in on a conversation in the teenager’s high school parking lot. Two days later Dewey found the woman’s son down in Key West.

  At 2 p.m., Dewey packed up the vegetables he hadn’t sold into the back of his long bed truck. As he always did before starting the engine, he took a moment to look at the picture of his family next to the speedometer. His wife, Erica, and two daughters, Sonya and Elizabeth. With his shorter stature and his angular features—his somewhat sharp chin and nose—Dewey didn’t consider himself to be the most attractive man in the world, but somehow, he’d landed the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Erica stole every show. Made every other woman stare. Thank God his daughters looked more like her!

  That picture was the closest he’d been to them in a year and a half, and his heart broke over that more and more every day. He thought he’d known pain in his life, but that wasn’t the case at all. Nothing, including losing his sister to cancer, compared to what he was going through now.

  He cruised back to his little place in the woods on John’s Island with the window rolled down, chomping on an apple. Right as he was pulling into the driveway, his phone rang.

  “Dewey, it’s Faye. We talked—”

  “Sure. I’m glad you called.” He put the truck in Park and ran his hand through his blonde beard. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’d prefer to talk about it in person. Is that possible?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Callahan.”

  “Please call me Faye.”

  “Faye, if it’s not too much trouble, why don’t you ride out to my place on John’s Island?” Dewey gave her the address, and she said she’d be there in an hour.

  She was right on time. Dewey had unpacked the crates of vegetables and fixed a leak in his irrigation system out back, and now he was on the front porch in a rocking chair with a plate on his lap and tomato juice running down his chin from the glorious veggie sandwich he’d put together. He’d grown almost every ingredient: tomatoes, green and red peppers, basil, sprouts, onions, and greens. Then he’d topped it off with some homemade pickles, homemade jalapeño hot sauce, and mustard and Vegenaise, all in between two pieces of fresh cracked wheat bread he’d traded for back at the market.

  He took one last bite and set the plate down on the little table. Then he stood and lit up a Spirit with a match.

  “Please come up,” he said, as she stepped out of her BMW convertible, eyeing his property.

  Dewey didn’t have much left but the cabin and his instruments. Erica had kicked him out of their house, and she’d taken the girls. But he didn’t blame her a bit. In a few days, he’d be one year sober, but before that, his sister’s untimely death had sent him on a three-year binge as a full-blown vodkaholic. Put it this way…Bloody Marys had been his way of getting nutrients; vodka and water his way of hydrating.

  One thing that gave him some sense of relief was that he had never been a mean or violent drunk. He’d never screamed at his girls or anything of the kind. Though it was certainly nothing to be proud of, he had been more of a funny drunk, embarrassing himself to no end. T
here was the time he flipped his riding lawn mower after too many beers. The time he woke up the neighborhood doing his best Pavarotti impression in his underwear. Or the time he stood up on a plane to New York and tried to lead the passengers in a rendition of “Ramblin’ Man” by The Allman Brothers Band. All embarrassing…but no one had gotten hurt.

  Now, none of those stupidities were funny at all, and the only thing that mattered in his world was getting his family back. The divorce wasn’t final, so he still had hope. He was a changed man, and with all the work he’d put into himself, he thought he deserved a second chance. He loved Erica and the girls more and more every day, and he’d never give up.

  He’d been forced to leave their house over in James Island and make permanent residence in their cabin on John’s Island one bridge away. The one-story log cabin was right in the middle of their five acres, three miles from any other signs of life. Just the way they liked it. It was raised six feet off the ground and had a nice front porch, but there was a lot of work that needed to be done.

  The best part about the property was the fertile soil. The land had never been farmed before and was chock full of good nutrients. He could grow cucumbers longer than your arm and jalapeños that could melt your wrinkles.

  Along with ditching the Russian firewater, he had adapted a new lifestyle that had made an enormous difference. It was one that his wife had been trying to convert him to since they’d met at the College of Charleston. Organic tea instead of coffee. Cauliflower instead of steak. Yoga instead of long, worthless conversations at the Crabshack that would not be remembered the next day by either him or the strangers he’d been talking to. He’d even traded in pesticides for an organic approach in the garden. The only thing he had no intention of shaking were his smokes. He’d switched from Marlboro Reds to American Spirit Lights, but that was as far as he planned to go. For now, at least. He had to hold onto something from his past, almost like he needed a reminder. He’d lost twenty pounds and gotten back to his college weight, and despite the cigarettes, he ran three miles four days a week. Not bad for a guy staring forty in the face.

  He offered Faye a hand as she made her way up the steps to the porch, but she waved him off and used the rail instead.

  “I like your shoes,” she said. “They’re…happy.”

  “Thank you.” She was referring to his red Converse All-Stars. “I have them in every color. Today seemed like a red kind of day.”

  They both sat in rocking chairs and made small talk for a moment. He noticed the heft of her Southern accent. It wasn’t the country-bumpkin kind, more like the haughty I’m-sixth-generation-Charleston kind. She held the “Char” in Charleston long enough for Dewey to blow a smoke ring into the air and watch it rise. He loved hearing that accent; it reminded him of his deceased grandfather, Pappy, who had raised him from the age of three.

  That porch offered a wonderfully peaceful view looking out into the Carolina woods. There were no signs of human disturbance at all, just the grand old oaks dripping moss like honey and the hundreds of pine trees and the squirrels playing Tarzan amongst it all.

  Dewey pushed back in his seat and said, “All right, Faye. Talk to me.”

  “My daughter jumped off the Cooper River Bridge four days ago.” She stopped there, almost like that was all she had to say.

  Dewey reached back into his memory. “Callahan…I remember seeing your name in the Post and Courier.” That was it; Dewey had a knack for remembering everything he had read. “Was it Gina?”

  Faye nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking into her eyes and really meaning it. He pinched his beard.

  “Now, assuming you agree to help,” said Faye, “I don’t want you telling a soul what you’re working on. My husband doesn’t know I’ve come to see you, and I don’t want him to. Some things are done better silently.”

  Dewey nodded. He’d also read about her husband, Hammond Callahan, who owned Brightside Development. Hammond had gotten some media attention over the past couple months for his controversial efforts to develop Bird’s Bay, a two-hundred-acre waterfront property right over the bridge from Charleston in Mt. Pleasant. Not too far from the farmer’s market. At the moment, it was home to a World War II battleship, a high-end resort, a nature area with some of the best bird-watching in the state, and a very much loved public golf course where fifty bucks could get you way more than your money’s worth. It was the nature lovers and the golfers that didn’t like what he was up to.

  Dewey stayed on topic. “Didn’t Gina leave a note in her car that she’d abandoned up on the top of the bridge?”

  “She did, and people saw her jump. They ruled it a suicide.” Faye’s Southern accent kept getting stronger. “Even though they haven’t found her body yet, I know they will. It took them two weeks to find the body of the boy that jumped last summer.”

  Dewey pushed away a vision of what the boy’s body must have looked like after two weeks of getting picked apart by crabs. He’d read about that, too.

  “I’m not here because I believe she was murdered. I’m here because I want you to find out why she killed herself. Hammond doesn’t want to know, but I do. I have to know.”

  “Why do you think she jumped?”

  “I don’t rightly know. She was in a good place.”

  Dewey took a long drag. Faye was a good woman, and it made his eyes wet to think about how awful her world was at the moment. No one deserved to outlive their child. Dewey couldn’t imagine losing his Elizabeth or Sonya. Yes, he needed the money, but he also felt compelled to help. Especially since he couldn’t help himself. Discreetly wiping a forming tear, Dewey said, “I’d be happy to look into it.”

  2

  Hammond Callahan gritted his teeth and pointed his finger at the man sitting across from him—the man the Post and Courier called his protégé, a moniker he had agreed with at one point. The offices of Brightside Development were off Broad Street in downtown Charleston, and the two men were in Hammond’s high-ceilinged office on the second floor.

  “Your incompetence,” Hammond started, “is starting to outshine your abilities, to the point that I’m not sure what I saw in you in the first place. How the hell is it possible that your wife heard you talking to him on the phone? Didn’t I say to keep the discussions off-line? Wasn’t that the first thing I said? You got shit in your ears?”

  “You did, but—”

  “You are a worthless little bottom dweller and if there was anything I could do to cut you loose right now, you can bet your ass I would. But we’ve gone too far now. So I’m going to let you ride my coattails all the way through the deal, but if you screw this up, I’ll be on you heavy. You and I both know I have every reason to be. My patience is wearing thin. You get your wife under control and make sure she keeps her mouth shut. And get the fuck out of my office!”

  It looked like Rowe Tinsley wanted to say more, but he wisely held back, avoiding a punch in the face. Hammond stood with his palms planted on the desk. He watched Rowe walk out of his office and close the door.

  Hammond took a deep breath and let his head fall. He couldn’t lose the Bird’s Bay deal. It was the culmination of everything he’d been working on, everything he’d learned his entire life. He and Faye would be set forever. A pile of money was right around the corner; he just had to keep everything together. What was left of it.

  Of course, he could hardly ignore Gina’s suicide; it would sculpt the rest of his life. Working these countless hours trying to push this development through was distracting him from the horrors of her death, but as soon as he let his mind slip into thinking about her—like he was right now—it all came crashing down.

  His breath left him and he collapsed back into his chair, his head in his hands. The tears fell and he had to fight to keep from making too much noise as the crying came. He couldn’t let anyone in the office see him in a state of weakness. Never let them see you sweat.

  They were tears of anger and sadness. He hadn’t been t
he best father. He hadn’t treated her like he wished he had now. He regretted every time he’d raised his voice at his beautiful, innocent little girl. He regretted not being more patient with her as she struggled with her demons. He hated that the last time he’d seen her, he’d told her that she needed to settle down and get married, that Faye was ready for a granddaughter. He’d told her that so many times! He’d tried to guilt Gina into starting a family, when she hadn’t even had someone to love.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Hammond?” It was his secretary.

  Hammond sat up and wiped the tears from his cheeks. “I’m on my cell. Give me five minutes.”

  3

  Though it was Dewey’s least favorite part, he discussed the monetary details with Faye. Since he’d been kicked out, he’d given nearly every dime he made to Erica, intent on making sure his family was taken care of. It was never enough.

  As a dental assistant, Erica had always made better money than Dewey, but he still wanted to contribute. He had always spoiled his girls and wanted to continue doing so—which seemed absurd, considering he’d drunk his way into doing the opposite. Before he’d lost control, he’d been working at a plant nursery and singing in a local bluegrass band called The Carolina Lonely. Both had fired him the same month Erica had booted him. Now he was making a living off his vegetables and this little problem-solving business, which was finally starting to bear fruit.

  Dewey gave a number, and Faye didn’t even bother haggling. Dewey could only imagine how much the Callahans were worth.