Off You Go Page 5

  It didn’t take long for him to feel dizzy and faint, and reality momentarily faded away.

  When he came to, he was drooling blood onto the pavement below him. He gasped deeply for air, spending thirty seconds trying to calm his breathing.

  He turned slowly, feeling the pain from where the belt had been. He brushed off bits of gravel and slowly pushed himself up. No one had noticed him. The attacker was gone. Dewey stumbled some before finding his balance. He dusted off his fedora and placed it on his head.

  His camera bag was gone. He’d spent more than a thousand bucks on that camera and lens. What a bad day. His wallet was missing, too, although the man hadn’t taken his phone or his smokes.

  Dewey was tempted to call the cops, but to what end? They always slowed him down. Dewey was clearly on the right track. Had he taken a picture of this attacker earlier? Most likely.

  His throat still felt a bit raw, but his head was clear; luckily, it didn’t seem like he had gotten any kind of a concussion when he hit the ground. Dewey decided he was okay to drive. He stumbled to his truck and drove back to John’s Island, defeated. To add to the misery, the front door to his place was wide open. Someone had broken in. He ran up the stairs, saying, “No, no, no, no.”

  Gina’s computer was missing. After a few minutes, he confirmed that was the only thing taken. It wasn’t worth involving the cops.

  After cleaning up his face, Dewey plopped down in a rocking chair on the porch. “This just sucks.” The thing that bothered him the worst was losing his driver’s license. He was not a fan of the freaking DMV. He’d almost rather start bicycling around, but then he’d have no way to transport his crops.

  Dewey’s phone rang. T.A. Reddick popped up on his caller ID.

  “Dewey here.”

  “I got your tests back, buddy. The fingerprints are a match.”

  “I thought so. Thanks for your help.”

  “You sound flat. What’s going on?”

  “Having a less than stellar day, that’s all.” Dewey elaborated.

  “Let me know if you need a professional’s help. You PI’s love to get in over your heads.”

  “Why is everybody a PI hater these days?”

  “You people are a dime a dozen, Dewey Moses. A dime a dozen. And at least half—you not included—are numbskulls.”

  “Anyway, let me go before I kill myself. Hopefully we can get together and pick some tunes soon.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Dewey made a sandwich and sat down with one leg over the other to read the day’s paper. On the second page of the Post and Courier, something caught his attention. The headline read, “Golfers, Say Good-bye to Bird’s Bay.” There was a picture of two men underneath. The man on the left, the older of the two, was Hammond Callahan, Gina’s father.

  The man on the right, as captioned beneath, was Rowe Tinsley. Dewey didn’t recognize the name, but he certainly recognized the face. “Where have I seen you before?” he said, setting the open paper down on his lap and taking a bite of the sandwich.

  He looked back down at the photo. The man looked to be around Dewey’s age—just under the hill. He was celebrity handsome and had a confident half-smile that showed he knew it. His hair was cut very short and showed some graying around the ears.

  Dewey enjoyed another bite without taking his eyes off the photo. It was the gray sideburns that finally triggered the memory. He sat up and jabbed his finger at the man’s head. “It was early today! In the park!”

  In fact, Dewey had taken a picture of him. Rowe Tinsley had been walking alone in the park, wearing suit pants and a white button-down. It looked like he’d just taken off his tie.

  Dewey’s day just got a lot better.

  8

  “Rowe Tinsley. Are you my guy?” Dewey stared long and hard at the man in the photo. “I bet you didn’t count on me having a photographic memory. I’m going to get you, you little dirt eater.”

  Dewey read the article. Over the past two months, he had read several like it, discussing the details of Bird’s Bay and its possible development into a luxury community with stand-alone homes, condos, parks, a marina, and retail and restaurant spaces. Dewey had a vested interest, as he loved the game of golf and had been playing since he was four. Matter of fact, he’d been playing Bird’s Bay for more than thirty years. Dewey played in high school but didn’t bother with the College team. He liked to think he could have made it. Though his size kept him from being a big hitter, his short game was top-notch. Or at least it used to be.

  He didn’t get out as much as he used to, but when he did, Bird’s Bay was high on the list. It was the best inexpensive course in the state. Many of the holes were right on the harbor. Not to mention, it was the closest course to downtown Charleston, so it was easily the most popular. He understood how controversial ripping it up could be.

  Rowe Tinsley, the article stated, was Hammond Callahan’s right-hand man at Brightside Development. With some very slick maneuvering, Brightside had managed to convince the state to move the public golf course to another piece of land. Since 1958, Bird’s Bay had been owned by the people of South Carolina. The terms created at the time did not allow for the property to ever be sold or developed save one condition: a land swap. Supposedly, the written terms were quite vague when it came to the swap, but if a property of equal or greater value was swapped for Bird’s Bay, it could be allowed.

  A year before, Brightside Development, with the help of several sizeable investors, had purchased 284 acres north of Mt. Pleasant, off Highway 17. They’d agreed to build a brand-new golf course and swap the entire property for the land hosting the golf course and bird sanctuary on Bird’s Bay. The state would keep the land, along with the water associated with the retired battleship. The reason the state was about to agree was because of that battleship. The Navy had publicly and formally requested a much-needed renovation of the ship, which had become a mainstay and serious tourist attraction for Charleston County.

  The renovations were estimated to cost upwards of one hundred million dollars, an amount the state could never pay back based on the current income of the battleship tourism and the golf course. Brightside Development and its investors, as part of the land swap deal, had agreed to absorb half the cost of the renovations. As Hammond was quoted as saying halfway down the article, “We all win. We get to keep our battleship, we get a newer and better golf course, and we get to realize the true potential of some of the finest land in the Southeast.”

  “Spoken like a politician,” Dewey said, sticking the last bite of the sandwich in his mouth.

  He took a pair of scissors out of the kitchen drawer and cut out the article. Then he called Faye. She said she could meet him at six in Mt. Pleasant. He wrapped up a few things around the house and left a few minutes early. On the way, he called Ashton, the computer whiz, and asked him to put together a packet on Rowe Tinsley.

  Getting to Mt. Pleasant required using several bridges. First, he crossed the John’s Island Connector to James Island, then the James Island Connector to Charleston, then finally the Cooper River Bridge to Mt. Pleasant. Up and down and up and down and up and down.

  That last bridge was the one that Gina had jumped off. Dewey had time to kill, so he parked on the Mt. Pleasant side and started walking up. The Cooper River Bridge was a three-mile long cable-stayed bridge reaching high enough into the air to let the thousands of container ships pass underneath yearly. It also reached high enough to provide for an almost perfect suicide jump. There had been ten jumpers since the bridge had been completed in 2005. No one had survived. Two had lived long enough to make it to the hospital but had died within twelve hours.

  Dewey visited his dark side for a moment as he slowly meandered up the walled off pedestrian path. He contemplated how suicide could happen. Even at the darkest of his moments, he hadn’t given it much thought. And there were three reasons why: Erica, Elizabeth, and Sonya. He could never have left them. Even after Erica had kicked him out, w
hen he was drinking two gallons of Russian firewater a day and barely eating and waking up not knowing where he was. Sure, he hated himself; sure, he didn’t want to be alive…but the love he had for his family was too deep and unshakeable. He had to stay alive. He had to be there for his little girls, even if that meant only sending them love from afar.

  Dewey thought about the woman he’d heard speak at the AA meeting. It was her little boy who had saved her. He was the reason she couldn’t do it. If you had nothing to live for, killing yourself might not be that difficult, but for someone with a child—even one in your belly—it really wasn’t an option. So Dewey was having a hard time accepting the fact that Gina had jumped over that bridge on her own.

  “Did someone make you do it?” he asked. “What did Rowe, the Hippo, have to do with it? Did he really break your heart so badly that you wanted to take his child away from him? Your child? It makes no sense to me.”

  Dewey looked at the bikers and joggers and walkers enjoying the beautiful late afternoon. The view from up there was hard to beat. Charleston truly was a city of wonder. As he looked over the low skyline of Charleston, Dewey thought about how it probably didn’t look that much different than it had eighty years ago. The powers that be, the South-of-Broad folks—the same ones who were pushing for the Bird’s Bay development and more disastrous cruise business (an entirely different discussion)—had done one thing really well, and that was preserving their precious Holy City. It was nothing short of the finest place on earth to Dewey. He was never going anywhere. The ocean, the food, the scenery, the people, the fertile soil. What else do you need?

  Reaching the top, Dewey took hold of the rail and looked down. His legs tingled. Yes, sir, it was a long way down. The boats looked miniscule from up there, but the harbor looked massive and dangerous and deadly. He wasn’t particularly fond of heights, so he couldn’t imagine jumping.

  Something occurred to Dewey. “But you weren’t afraid of heights, were you, Gina? This was like just another day at the wall.”

  Dewey met Faye about fifteen minutes later in the Whole Foods parking lot. She climbed into his truck. Despite everything in his life being a mess, Dewey was a clean guy, and this included the inside of his truck. They shook hands, exchanged pleasantries, and she commented on his cleanliness. He told her it was from his OCD military grandfather having raised him.

  Wasting no more time, Dewey handed Faye the newspaper clipping of her husband and the potential Hippo. “I’m assuming you know Rowe Tinsley pretty well?”

  “Sure, I know Rowe. What does he have to do with this?”

  “Potentially everything.” He explained what led him to Beaufort and what happened there. Then he dropped the bomb. “Rowe was there in the park. He was one of the men I took a picture of.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. Is this a possibility?”

  She stared off through the windshield. A painful minute later, she said, “I hate him. I hate Rowe. He’s a playboy. Yes, it’s a possibility. Hammond will kill him, literally.”

  “We can’t make assumptions. It could very well be a coincidence.”

  “Well, I doubt it. This is exactly the kind of thing that that predator would do.”

  “Let me find out more before you get ahead of yourself. Please, Faye.”

  She nodded, still staring out. Dewey felt the phone in his pocket vibrate. Someone had texted; he’d check it later.

  “Tell me about him.”

  She finally looked at Dewey. “He’s a first-rate scumbag. His wife has caught him cheating before. Maybe more than once. He told Hammond all about it one day during a round of golf. I never liked him since the moment Hammond hired him, but of course Hammond cares more about drive and intelligence than plain old common sense and moral stature. I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe it.” She spoke with deep pain.

  “Gina and Rowe knew each other?” he asked.

  “Of course. He’s been working with Hammond for more than ten years now. He’s been to our house many times. And vice versa. We’ve eaten Thanksgiving dinner with them, for God’s sake.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the Old Village in Mt. Pleasant. On the water, near the Pitt Street Bridge.” Dewey knew that area well. He asked her several more questions. Rowe’s second and current wife was a stay-at-home mom to their twins. He had another son with his first wife; the boy was sixteen and a junior at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, one of the toughest preparatory schools in the nation to get into. (It wasn’t just grades that got you in. This guy clearly had some friends in high places.) He was forty years old, about the same age as Dewey, so Rowe had had his first child much younger than Dewey.

  “There’s something else, Faye.” Dewey wasn’t sure if sharing more was a good idea or not, but she was his employer. “Gina was pregnant.”

  “What?” Faye sat up and put her hands on her thighs. “What? How do you know?” He told her, and her kind face quickly melted into a ball of tears and sadness. Dewey let her work through it, suppressing a sadness of his own, and then said, “Faye, I have to say this—though I expect more from the two of you. If this does prove to be true, it’s not a situation for you to deal with on your own. I told you I would find the truth, and I will, but I will not let the two of you do anything illegal. Especially your husband. You might want to think long and hard about even telling him.”

  Dewey offered Faye the handkerchief from his back pocket. She wiped away her tears and smiled in a deeply sad way. “Do I look like the kind of woman who would go break someone’s legs for sleeping with my daughter? I’m sure he’s not the first older man that she’d slept with. Or married one. But I can promise you that, if this is true, Rowe will certainly be looking for a new job within a week, and most likely a new wife. I’ll make sure she finds out. That bastard.”

  Dewey was suddenly seeing the darker side of Faye Callahan, the apple-pie-baking, sweet mother of one. Of course, everyone has a dark side somewhere, and this news was enough to provoke the worst in anyone. Matter of fact, although he was telling her that he didn’t condone any illegal activity, he was thinking how—had it been one of his daughters—he’d be feeling quite differently.

  “You find out the truth, Dewey Moses,” she told him. “You find out the truth and you come tell me immediately. I want proof.”

  “I will. You’re going to stay out of it, right? I can’t have you going around telling people, especially Hammond.”

  “I will stay out of it until you confirm it.”

  “Good. I don’t like Rowe anymore than you. He whooped my butt this morning. But you’re only going to slow me down if you don’t listen to me.”

  She opened the car door. “I want to know if he was sleeping with my daughter and exactly what that had to do with her suicide. I know it had something to do with that baby. You find out if he’s the reason my baby girl and my grandbaby are dead.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be in touch.”

  As she closed the door, worry washed over Dewey. This was getting unhealthy. He did not get into

  this business to create more pain for people; he got into this business to solve people’s problems. To do something good for somebody else for once in his life. At the moment, he didn’t feel like he was helping anything.

  He’d intended on grabbing a quick lunch in Whole Foods but he’d lost his appetite. Instead, he took a seat on the tailgate and fired up a smoke. After a couple of soothing drags, he pulled out his phone to look up the address of Brightside Development. No better time than now to go by and visit. Besides, Dewey wanted his darn camera and license back almost as much as he wanted the truth.

  He’d forgotten that he’d missed a text message. It was from a number he didn’t know. It read: It’s Candice. I live next to Gina. You told me to let you know if someone came by. Her dad’s over here. The text was followed by a smiley face emoticon. Dewey was not a fan of the emoticon. In fact, he detested them.

  So H
ammond was over at Gina’s. Nothing wrong with that. It was probably a similarly cathartic experience to visiting a grave. Dewey had gotten everything he needed, so he wasn’t worried about things getting moved around.

  “Back to Rowe Tinsley,” Dewey said, ignoring the woman passing him who looked entertained by him talking to himself. “I guess we need to talk.” Dewey was not much of a fighter, so he wasn’t looking to go another round with the guy. He did think about calling T.A. Reddick to help out, but he didn’t. Non-violence was his method. Dewey was about to unleash some psychological revenge that would be much more satisfying than a punch in the face. Dewey was a peaceful man, but Rowe Tinsley had attacked him, and he’d cheated on his own wife. Rowe was not a good man, and he was about to pay.

  9

  Hammond Callahan looked in the mirror in Gina’s bathroom. Her hairbrush and lotion and makeup were still on the sink. He looked at the wrinkles on his forehead and the bags under his eyes. His hairline was receding at a much quicker pace these days. The realization that he wasn’t going to live forever was hitting him hard. He’d lived his entire life like he would live one thousand years, working harder than anyone else he knew, building a business and a name for himself.

  For what? So that they would name a building after him after he was gone? Or a golf course or a development? Those things—the next deal, the next big payday—had mattered so much to him, for most of his life, but not so anymore. He’d never been there for Gina, and he’d never been there like he should have for Faye. That’s what mattered now. Sure, they’d had a grand life and he’d spoiled both of them to no end, but recently, that didn’t feel like enough. What he had not given them was his time, the thing he valued most. Both of them had tried to tell him that. Faye had begged for it, but he hadn’t listened. Not until it was too late.