Murder on the Cape Fear (20 page)

“
I never had the tank repaired,” Cam explained. “I was going to but I just didn’t get around to it. No one uses that gear but me. I never dreamed anyone would.” He looked at his watch and his red, sore wrists. “As he was descending, he’d never notice the bubbles coming from the tank. And when he realized he was out of air, he’d be too deep to swim back up. Plus, he’d probably panic and consume what little air there was left instead of conserving it.

“
He’s been down there over an hour. He won’t be coming up.”

23

“
We met Drew Ramsey a few years ago at a bikers’ meet at Myrtle Beach,” Jimmy Pogue said.

As soon as the news had broken that the murderer was Drew Ramsey and that the Coast Guard had recovered his body from the Cape Fear, Jimmy Pogue came out of hiding and returned to Wilmington.

“
He’d had too much to drink. We all drank too much at a bike meet. When he found out who Patsy was, that she was a well-known mystery writer, he began telling her the story of the lost gold. He told us that he was the rightful heir because the gold had belonged to his ancestors, had been payment to the Confederacy in exchange for cotton, but as there was no longer a Confederate government, he had every right to it.

“
He had records showing that the Gibraltar had sailed with gold from Liverpool and had disappeared during the assault on Ft. Fisher. Somehow he was able to learn that Captain Pettigrew and the crew had been taken prisoner, but that the Gibraltar went down. He didn’t know where. That’s when he moved to New York and befriended you, Laura.”

We were gathered on my patio on Monday evening, consuming glasses of wicked martinis that Jon had concocted. All of us were glad to be alive. Glad that the ordeal was over.

Laura said, “But he never let on he knew I was a descendent of the Captain’s. Instead, he pretended to be interested in the blockade of Wilmington. So I was the one who told him all about the Captain and his adventures as a blockade runner. I even told him there was a journal and that I was sending it to Professor Benjamin Higgins.”

“
Did you say Drew Ramsey had been a biker?” Clarence Gaston asked. Then he turned to me. “Did you know that it was a motorcycle that struck me on Third Street? The motorcycle shattered my lower spine and left me paralyzed from the waist down. That’s why I am in this wheelchair.”

“
Do you think it was Drew?” I asked.

“
Must have been. If it had been a true accident, the person would have stopped. I think it was premeditated. He wanted me out of the way, so he could search the house. Remember, Laura? The police were always saying vandals were breaking in, but it must have been him.”

“
And he killed Patsy because she recognized him and suspected he had murdered Hugh Mullins,” Jimmy said. “She was recording her suspicions on a tape recorder.”

“
I found the tape in my house, Jimmy,” I said. “I turned it over to the police.”

“
I wanted to go to the police too but Patsy said no. Patsy wasn’t afraid of anyone. All the glory she experienced with her first book’s awards went to her head. She thought she was God’s gift to the literary world. That she could do no wrong. She thought: No one would dare lift a finger to the great Patsy Pogue!”

“
She did have a lot of confidence,” I said, wanting to be kind to a grieving husband.

“
Confidence? She was arrogant. Coasted along on those early awards. Each succeeding book was poorer and poorer. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

He leaned forward, intent on explaining her, intent on understanding her himself.

“
You’d have to see where she came from. How she was raised. Her people were dirt poor. And ignorant? She was the only one with any brains. The only one to go to college. But she never did finish. Quit when she met me. Those were the people she wrote about in her books. She couldn’t accept that times and tastes had changed, and that those characters were no longer characters but caricatures.”

“
I saw you leave that day,” I said, “the morning when she was killed. Did you discover that she was dead?”

Jimmy had the decency to hang his head. “I did. She had no pulse. I was a coward. I knew who had killed her and I knew he’d be after me next. So I ran. I hid out with her family in Lincoln County, way out in the country. Her people populate a large rural area there. You can’t get up their road without one of them knowing. I knew I’d be safe there.”

He managed a dry chuckle. “That’s who she was always collecting things for. All the furniture off the street, all the knick knacks. We’d pile them in the truck and drive them up that country road and her folks would be tickled pink.”

Everyone has a good side, I thought. And Patsy loved her family.

“
But I thought she had money,” Melanie said. “She led me to believe she was going to buy a large house.”

“
She was doing that for me,” Jimmy said. “It had been a dream of mine to buy a large house and convert it into a bed and breakfast. I thought it was something we could do together, run the B&B, especially since her career as a writer was over.”

“
But how did you plan to pay for it?” Melanie asked.

“
I think we could have gotten a loan. I’d have taken a job. And I was trying to convince Patsy to find a job too.”

“
But why did she say you should have burned the house down?” I asked. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I did overhear her say that.”

“
She didn’t mean burn it to the ground, just create some fire damage. Then we could have gotten it cheaper. We were going to have to do a lot of restoration and remodeling anyway. I’m pretty handy with a hammer, and so are many of her brothers. We were going to do most of the work ourselves.”

“
So you didn’t want to buy the Captain’s house because you thought gold was hidden inside?” Jon asked. “Care for a refill, Jimmy?”

Jimmy lifted his glass. “No, I wrote a book of my own once. On the fall of Ft. Fisher. So I knew that if Captain Pettigrew had been taken prisoner, he would not have been able to deliver gold to his house and hide it there. I just assumed the Union Army had confiscated it. We wanted the house for its location, the bluff over the river. And for its history. The history of the house would have attracted guests to our B&B.”

“
Well, that’s true,” Melanie said.

“
The police say they will release her body tomorrow,” Jimmy said. “Her people are coming and we are taking her home.”

“
I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

Cam said, “I know it is not my fault, yet I feel guilty about my leaky air tank. I never dreamed someone would try to use it. No one ever uses my wetsuit or my gear but me.”

Melanie slipped an arm around his shoulder. “It is not your fault and I want you to stop blaming yourself.”

Cam went on, “That last time we went diving, the Saturday I had a mishap with my air tube, after Jon and I returned to the boat from the medical center, I just laid out my wetsuit on the deck to dry. And I put the tank into one of the lockers, planning to have it checked, never thinking someone would take it.”

“
Melanie is right, Cam,” Jon said. “You couldn’t know.”

He topped off our glasses, then said. “The moment Cam told Drew about Melanie’s phone call and that you had found the Captain’s letter that revealed where the gold had been sunken, he became a changed man. Gone were the polite manners, the cool charm. He became driven. Consumed.”

“
He’d been in a fight,” Cam said.

“
Bruised, was he?” Binkie asked. “I gave him a beating he’d never forget.”

Jon went on, “The excuse he gave was that someone tried to rob him late one night. We just never put it together than he was the one who attacked you, Binkie. Anyway, he had on a big baggy shirt.”

“
Like the one he had on when he was piloting that speed boat and almost hit your deck?” I said.

“
I guess that was him,” Jon said. “Under that shirt, he had a gun tucked into his waist band. Who would have thought he was armed? He forced us to tape each other’s ankles and wrists and then when we couldn’t move, he put the gun back inside his waistband and taped us to each other, back to back. Last, he taped our mouths shut.”

“
So when he came up to the wheelhouse dressed in my wetsuit, there was no way I could warn him,” Cam said.

Jon continued, “He called Wilmington PD, said he was part of a terrorist movement and that he had planted a bomb on Memorial Bridge. Then he tossed the phone overboard. Guess he thought they might use GPS to trace the location of the call.

“
He knew enough about sailing to pilot the yacht up the coast to where he thought Craig’s Landing used to be located. He said he had memorized the contour of the coast line from old maps and he knew just where to look. After that . . . well, you know the end of the story.”

“
The end of the story is that Jon and I have gutsy, beautiful women so much in love with us they risked their lives to rescue us,” Cam said, and gave Melanie one of his adoring looks.

When the Coast Guard divers went down to recover Drew’s body, they reported seeing no evidence of the sunken blockade runner Gibraltar. With a hundred and forty-three years of coastal storms, the changing currents could have swept the ship far from its original position. The Gibraltar and its cargo of gold would now become the stuff of legends. Divers and scavengers would lust to find it. But the state’s Underwater Archeology Department would scan the area with sonar and if any diving team could find the Gibraltar, they would.

The next afternoon I was driving west out Highway 74/76 to Leland to meet Melanie at Elaine McDuff’s bakery shop to finalize the cake selections. I was playing a CD of the Beetles and singing along to “All You Need is Love” when suddenly something that looked like a large black cloud filled my rearview mirror. I blinked and looked again. The black cloud was approaching rapidly. And then just as rapidly it surrounded me. The noise was deafening, drowning out John and Paul, George and Ringo. Motorcycles, twenty, thirty, and more, flowed around both sides of my car, and behind it and in front of it. The drivers wore black leather jackets and black helmets, and chains. Their ladies, clutching onto the leather clad drivers, were scary looking. And dressed all in black too. They were a tough band, and they didn’t like it one bit that I had somehow landed smack dab in the middle of their parade.

With looks that could kill, they motioned me over to the side of the road, or gave me the Greek salute or shook their fists at me. But I couldn’t pull over to the curb to let them pass, because my right side was blocked by motorcycles zooming past me.

They were going around me and I could only hope they’d soon out-distance me and be gone. I slowed down. I didn’t want to be in their parade any more than they wanted me there.

There must have been a hundred of them. And then the truck appeared. A white pickup with an open back. At that point, a space magically opened up on my right and I pulled over to the curb and stopped. The driver of the white truck waved to me as he drove by.

Jimmy. It was Jimmy Pogue. In the truck’s bed rested a shiny new coffin with fancy hardware. Draped with the Confederate flag.

I could feel my eyes bulging wide. Patsy’s coffin. Jimmy had said her people were coming to take her home. She was on her way to her final resting place in Lincoln County.

Wait until I tell Melanie, I kept thinking as I re-entered the highway and continued my journey to Leland.

In Elaine’s parking lot, I waited in my car until Melanie pulled in beside me. “Did you see them?” I shouted.

“
See who?” she asked.

And I told her all about Patsy’s most unorthodox funeral procession.

Melanie just arched her eyebrows and gave her hair a swing. “Takes all kinds.” She had already moved on from the Patsy murder and was focusing on our wedding. “Oat, now I don’t want to hear any arguments from you. I’ve decided on the five tier wedding cake, vanilla and chocolate layers with fondant icing.”

“
Fondant, but isn’t that the most . . . “

Melanie glowered at me. “Yes, it’s the most expensive but it’s the classiest and has the smooth matte finish that is so perfect for decorations. Like a cascade of sugar fruits, you know, pears and cherries, so Christmassy looking. For the bachelor’s cake, I think . . .”

She turned on me so abruptly I almost bumped into her.

“
Oh, oh,” she cried, “I almost forgot,” and she actually did a little jump into the air and twirled around, like from her high school cheer leader’s days - all she needed were pom-poms. “The most exciting thing has happened. Colin Cowie is available. He’s going to come down here and plan everything for us.”

“
What?”

“
Oh, don’t look so blank. Even you know who Colin Cowie is. He planned Oprah’s fiftieth birthday party. He is the best party and wedding planner, and so hard to get. But Candy gave him a call for me!”

“
Melanie! I thought we agreed we were going to keep this simple. You are spending a fortune on this wedding and we . . .”

“
I declare, Ashley, what do you think money is for? We’re alive for pity sakes. You can’t take it with you. Besides I owe you for what I put you through with Patsy.”

She gave me a wicked grin. “And as Patsy Pogue would say: Hearses don’t come with no luggage racks!”