IN FOR A PENNY
A Bay Tanner Mystery
First in the Series
Author: Kathryn R. Wall
2006 Reissue Edition
5.5"x 8.5" Trade Paperback
Retail $14.95US; 272pp
ISBN 978-1-933523-12-5 print
ISBN 978-1-933523-83-5 e-book

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IN FOR A PENNY
The First Bay Tanner Mystery
Author: Kathryn R. Wall

Chapter One

The blue and white Gulfstream taxies slowly to the end of the private airstrip, then executes a sharp, 180-degree turn. The pitch of its engines climbs to an ear-splitting whine. I can almost feel her yearning to be off, like one of the Judge's golden retrievers straining at the leash.
     A fierce August sun, glinting off the sleek metal skin of the plane, nearly blinds me. I raise a hand to shade my eyes just as the pilot releases the brake, and the graceful jet seems to leap into the air. With a final wave, I turn back toward my car.
     The explosion knocks me to my knees. Windows in the tiny service building shatter. Flaming debris rains from a smoking sky. Instinctively I throw my arms up over my head.
     White-hot pain sears my left shoulder, and I choke on the sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh. Dust swirls in the aftershock, and pieces of the dying plane clatter off the corrugated metal hangar.
     Inside my head a voice is screaming, but no sound comes. A deathly stillness blankets me . . .

I struggled to free myself from the grip of the relentless images. My lungs gasped for air, and my heart thudded against the wall of my ribs. I could feel my head whipping from side to side in frantic denial, and still I could not escape . . .

Again I lie stunned and helpless under the blazing sun. Again I feel the sharp curve of pebbles beneath my cheek, smell the dank sweat that rolls down my side, as I cower on my face in the dirt and listen to my husband die . . .

The shrill of the telephone jerked me back. Heavy silk drapes, stretched across French doors that gave onto the deck, kept the room in total darkness. I fumbled for my reading glasses and flipped on the lamp. I drew a deep, calming breath and picked up the receiver.
     "Hello?" My throat was still thick with the horror of the dream-memory, and it came out more like a croak.
     The clock radio on the nightstand glowed 7:35. Not exactly an ungodly hour for someone to be calling, but still early enough to send a little shiver of fear skittering down my back. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Hello?"
     My hand reached automatically for a cigarette. It was alight, and the first deep, satisfying cloud of smoke had settled into my lungs before I remembered that today was the day I was going to quit. Again.
     "Lydia? Is that you, dear?" The tiny voice was barely audible over the pounding of my heart.
     No one—no one—ever calls me Lydia. At least not to my face. I was born Lydia Baynard Simpson, but I'm Bay to my friends and to anyone who aspires to join their ranks.
     "This is Bay Tanner. Who is this?"
     "Oh, yes, of course, dear, how silly of me. It's just that your dear mama, rest her soul, always called you Lydia, and so that's how I always think of you. This is Adelaide Boyce Hammond."
     Miss Addie! Lord, I hadn't seen her since my mother's funeral more than fifteen years ago. For all I knew, she could have been dead, too. She and Emmaline Simpson had been Braxton girls, inmates of that stuffy academy that had finished so many of their generation of aristocratic Southern debutantes. Her soft, melodious voice conjured up memories of lazy summer afternoons and tea on the verandah.
     Unconsciously, I sat up straighter, pulled the sheet tight across my naked breasts, and stubbed out my cigarette. "Miss Addie," I crooned, "how lovely to hear from you. I hope you're well?"
     The years of my mother's relentless campaign to turn her tomboy daughter into a proper lady had not been entirely wasted. I could, when pressed, trade social niceties with the best of them.
     "Why, yes, dear, I'm quite well, thank you. I was deeply saddened to hear of your poor husband's untimely passin'. So tragic when the young are taken before their time. I hope my note was of some small comfort to you?"
     Note? I didn't remember any condolence message from my mother's old childhood friend.
     But then, it had been almost a year ago, and the weeks following Rob's murder had been a blur of physical pain and emotional anguish. I had been allowed out of the hospital only long enough to sit huddled in a wheelchair while dignitaries from Columbia and Washington extolled the virtues of my dead husband. The memorial service had been as much media circus as tribute.
     There hadn't been enough pieces of him left to warrant a burial.
     Absently I fingered the deepest of the shiny-smooth furrows of scar tissue that criss-crossed my left shoulder.
     "Yes, Miss Addie, it certainly was a comfort," I lied, "and very kind of you."
     "Not at all, dear. I do so admire the brave manner in which you've conducted yourself since your bereavement. Your poor mama, rest her soul, would have been very proud."
     I could see I was going to have to draw it out of her, the reason for her call.      Otherwise we might be dancing this courtly minuet of pleasantries until lunch time.
     "Thank you. Is there something I can do for you, Miss Addie?"
     "Oh, yes . . . well. Oh dear, this is somewhat difficult." I could almost see her tiny octogenarian's hands fluttering, like hummingbirds around a feeder. With a gentle sigh, she got down to business. "I spoke with the Judge yesterday, and he suggested I call you. About a little problem I may have? He was certain you could advise me as to what's best to do."
     I should have detected the fine hand of my father in this. Though retired from his law practice, as well as from the bench, Judge Talbot Simpson was still a full-time meddler in my life. "What problem is that, Miss Addie?"
     "Oh, just a little investment I made awhile back. Quite safe and certain to be very profitable. The young man assured me. Perhaps you know him, Millicent Anderson's boy, Geoffrey?"
     My fingers tightened around the receiver, and I felt a hot flush creeping up my neck. Oh yes, I knew him. Or rather, I had. Geoff Anderson had been my hero, my knight, my first, serious love. The fact that I was a gawky adolescent and he a much older Citadel cadet had made no difference. The only saving grace had been his total ignorance of my deep, but undeclared devotion. We'd lost touch after his graduation. I'd heard somewhere that he'd recently abandoned his Miami law firm in favor of real estate development.
     "I remember him," I said with studied understatement. "What exactly is it you and the Judge think I can help with?"
     I was fairly certain I already knew the answer, or at least the gist of it.
     The Judge had an apoplexy when I transferred out of pre-law and into the business school during my junior year at Carolina. He was so angry he refused to pay my tuition bills. I promptly applied for and received a full academic scholarship to Northwestern and marched defiantly across the Mason-Dixon Line into enemy territory. A masters degree in accounting and another in finance had not been enough to earn me his total forgiveness, but he never had any hesitation about sending his friends around for free advice. I did his tax return every year, too, the ungrateful old buzzard.
     My mind wandered back in time to catch the last of Miss Addie's reply. ". . . for lunch today? It would be lovely to see you again, and I'd feel so much easier if we could discuss it in person."
     I couldn't think of a graceful way to refuse. I jotted down the directions to her condo and promised to be with her by twelve-thirty.
     I plumped up the pillows behind me and lit another cigarette. My second of the day, and my feet hadn't even hit the floor yet.
     Damn the Judge and his meddling!
     It wasn't that I minded so much advising Adelaide Boyce Hammond about whatever financial problem she imagined she had. There was nothing to keep me from picking up my professional life right where it had left off. Not physically, anyway. The scars would remain, and a slight weakness in my left arm, but I'd learned to camouflage both pretty well. And, even though my mother's trust fund and my own knack for picking stock market dark horses made earning a living optional, I loved my work.
     But after Rob was killed, I just had no desire to get back in the race. I had dropped out, scurrying back to the refuge of the beach house to lick my wounds and mourn.
     "Baynards are made of sterner stuff." I heard my mother's reproach as clearly as if she towered next to the bed, frowning down on me. I got my height, almost five feet, ten inches from her side of the family, along with leaf-green eyes a lot of people assumed were colored contacts. The auburn tint to my dark brown hair and a tendency to wisecrack my way through uncomfortable situations came courtesy of the Judge.
     Nightmares about Rob, and now visions of my dead mother!
     This was exactly the reason I didn't want to sip weak iced tea and pick at mushy shrimp salad across the table from Adelaide Boyce Hammond. She was the past, mine and my mother's. I had expended a large chunk of my adult life trying to shove those painful memories to the farthest recesses of my mind. Miss Addie would bring them all back. Not that she'd mean to. She just wouldn't be able to help herself.
     I squashed out the cigarette and flipped back the covers. I shrugged into Rob's tattered College of Charleston T-shirt and padded barefoot across the room. Drawing the drapes, I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the deck.
     Two ancient live oaks, their twisted limbs dripping Spanish moss, provided dappled shade, but I could already feel the promise of the scorching heat to come. It was low tide. Beyond the dune crowned with sea oats swaying lazily in a light breeze, the ocean retreated from a wide expanse of empty beach. Not quite empty, I realized, as a solitary jogger rounded the headland and trotted into view. Beside his master, a young black lab, not yet grown into the promise of his oversized paws, loped along in the surf.
     The mid-July sun glistened off the runner's golden arms and chest.
     Rob always looked like that after a few days at the beach: his unruly shock of light brown hair bleached to the color of ripe wheat; his long, rangy body drinking up the sun.
     I buried my face in the shoulder of his T-shirt. Though it had been laundered many times in the year since his death, I could still smell that faint, musky man-odor that had been his alone.
     At least that's what I told myself.
     A car door slammed somewhere below me. Seconds later the soft voice of Dolores Santiago, my part-time housekeeper, drifted up. Her Spanish endearments, interspersed frequently with el gato, told me she was fussing over Mr. Bones, the ragtag tomcat that adopted us not long after I came home from the hospital. The scruffy, battle-scarred tabby had wandered erratically in and out of our lives ever since. Apparently he had decided to grace us with his presence this morning.
     I turned my attention back to the beach. The jogger had stooped to pick up a piece of driftwood and fling it out over the water. With a yelp of delight, the black lab bounded in after it.
     Something about the sweet joyfulness of the scene caught at my throat.
     We had been happy like that, Rob and I. Carefree, unmindful of how fragile it all was. We had taken so much for granted.
     And some bastard had shattered it, blown our joy into a million bits of steel and glass . . . and flesh.
     "Señora Tanner?" A soft tap, and the bedroom door slipped open. "Señora?"
     "Out here, Dolores."
     I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of the sacred T-shirt and turned back into the room.
     "Your paper, Señora." She dropped the Island Packet onto the linen chest at the foot of my bed. "Breakfast in twenty minutes?"
     Dolores always seemed to be smiling, her white teeth a sharp contrast to the olive skin and blue-black hair drawn up into a tight bun at the back of her head.
     "Make it thirty, okay? I haven't showered yet."
     "You have the tennis at nine, no?"
     "I'll make it. And just fruit this morning, please," I added, heading for the bathroom.
     "Si, Señora."
     Dolores would undoubtedly cook me eggs or French toast or hotcakes and stand over me just like my mother used to do until I cleaned my plate. But I kept trying.
     I snatched up the paper on my way by and glanced briefly at the headline: Body Pulled From Chicopee River.
     Another drowning, I thought as I peeled off the T-shirt and stepped into the shower. How can people be so incredibly careless?
     Only a few hours would pass before I realized just how wrong that snap judgment would turn out to be.

* * *

Come Labor Day, the permanent residents of Hilton Head Island, South Carolina breathe a collective sigh of relief, thankful to have our golf courses and beaches, restaurants and roadways returned to us once again. Then, from September to May, the island is almost paradise. Except for an occasional brush with a hurricane, the weather is temperate, sunny and mild, with only a few cold days in the dead of winter.
     However, on this steamy July afternoon at the peak of tourist season, at least half of the one hundred thousand average daily visitors that clog the main island thoroughfare had conspired to make me late for my appointment. Traffic had come to a complete standstill, and the sun beating down at high noon made me wish I hadn't put the top down on my white LeBaron convertible. I kicked the air conditioning up a notch and reached for the newspaper I'd tossed into the front seat beside me.
     I skimmed over the drowning story and flipped to the state news section. Although I had been out of the official loop since Rob's death, I still recognized most of the names associated with affairs in Columbia. I had worked with many of these people as a special consultant on financial fraud cases, building evidence and even testifying on occasion. I had thought I was gaining a reputation of my own, outside of Rob's influence, but requests for my professional services had been non-existent since his death.
     I knew I hadn't endeared myself to any of them with my relentless demands for action during those first few months. Someone had viciously murdered three men: Rob, his civilian pilot, and a state trooper assigned for protection. Not only had no one been prosecuted, they weren't even close to making an arrest. While everyone—including me—had their suspicions about who had planted the bomb, there was no evidence and no new leads. The trail had gone cold.
     A few weeks ago, when it dawned on them that I would never resign myself to accepting that, they stopped taking my calls.
     A blare from the horn of the big van filling my rearview mirror jerked me back to the present. I dropped the paper and eased the gearshift into drive.
     Fifteen minutes of crawling brought me to the Sea Pines Circle, that landmark of the island and bane of drivers uninitiated into its mysteries. I had no doubt this was the origin of the backup. Locals often told tongue-in-cheek stories about tourists stuck for days on the inside lane of the traffic roundabout. I exited at the first right and left them to battle it out.
     The Cedars, a fairly new retirement community, nestled among the pines and sweetgums at the edge of the marsh along Broad Creek. Planned for the active senior, most of it was devoted to independent housing designed for those who could take care of themselves. Miss Addie was in the "assisted living" area, a three-story building where residents purchased their own apartments but received cleaning, transportation, and meal service as part of their monthly fee.
     I gave my name to the officer at the security gate and parked in front of the main building where Miss Addie and I had agreed to meet. A blast of frigid air, in sharp contrast to the stifling heat outside, greeted me as I pulled open the heavy door. I flipped my sunglasses on top of my head and approached the antique reception desk. The woman's smile looked as artificial as her stiff blonde hair. Her beige suit, however, was impeccably cut, and gold bangles clanked on her wrists as she folded her spotted hands primly in front of her. The nameplate to her right read "A. Dixon".
     "Good afternoon, and welcome to The Cedars. How may I help you?"
     Her perfect diction revealed the hint of an English accent. Her expression held that mixture of arrogance and superiority so common among many expatriate Brits. She glanced disdainfully over my navy blue polo shirt, slightly wrinkled white duck pants, and espadrilles before returning her pinched gaze to my face.
     I half expected her to inform me that the servants' entrance was around back.
     I brushed a stray lock of hair back off my cheek and stretched myself up to my full height. Two could play this game. "I have a luncheon engagement with Miss Hammond," I replied in my best Southern aristocrat's voice.
     "And you are . . . ?"
     Lord, this woman was something! You'd think I was trying to sneak into Buckingham Palace.
     "Mrs. Tanner. Mrs. Lydia Baynard Simpson Tanner."
     There! Match that mouthful, honey, I thought.
     "You're expected, Mrs. Tanner," she replied, consulting a list on the desk. "Please proceed straight down this hallway. The dining room will be on your right. Our Mr. Romero will seat you."
     I gave her an icy nod, then marched off, shoulders squared, back ramrod straight. I could have balanced the entire Encyclopedia Britannica on my head without losing a volume. Mama would have been proud. Only the slap of my scuffed espadrilles on the polished Mexican tile detracted from my grand exit.
     The entrance to the dining room was flanked by two potted ficus trees, a maitre d's stand, and Mr. Romero. He was tall, Latin, and gorgeous. If I'd been twenty years older, I'd have had a run at him myself.
     "Madame?"
     "Mrs. Tanner for Miss Hammond."
     "Of course, right this way."
     His smile was a knockout, even if the mouthful of gleaming white teeth weren't his own. I followed him to a table set for two in a small alcove by a window. Pulling out the unoccupied wicker chair he seated me with a flourish.
     "Enjoy your lunch, ladies."
     Almost every pair of female eyes, including mine and Miss Addie's, tracked his progress back to his station at the door.
     "Such a charming man," Miss Addie said, a look of almost girlish adoration on her wrinkled face. I turned away, slightly embarrassed for her. Miss Addie had never married. Some tragedy in her youth my mother had hinted, but never quite got around to explaining. With an effort, my hostess dragged her attention back to the table.
     "Well, Lydia, let me look at you. How lovely you are, dear. Quite lovely. Those green Baynard eyes, so like your mama's. How I've missed her these last years."
     Miss Addie raised a delicate lace handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her faded blue eyes, magnified by thick, wire-framed bifocals. She was dressed formally in an aqua print summer dress she probably still called a frock. Her pure white hair had been recently styled and lay in soft curls around her sunken cheeks. She wore no makeup, and her skin had the pasty-white cast of those who have heeded all the warnings to avoid the sun. Miss Addie's aversion would have come long before the fear of melanoma. In the times in which she and my mother were brought up, girls whose skin became darkened by exposure to the sun were thought "common". A single strand of pearls—real ones, I was sure—lay against her bony chest, and pearl clips adorned her ears.
     "Thank you, Miss Addie. You look wonderful, too. You haven't changed at all." I glanced down at my hastily chosen sports clothes. "I wish you'd told me y'all were so formal here, though. I would have dressed up a little."
     A sweet smile softened her face. "Nonsense. You young people have the right idea. Comfort should be just as important as those stuffy rules we learned at Braxton. But I'm too old to change now, and it's probably just as well."
     She laughed lightly and indicated the other occupants of the dining room with a wave of her delicate hand. I had been right this morning in comparing her to a hummingbird. "Just look at some of these old fools. Why, if I had legs like tree trunks, I certainly wouldn't display them for all the world to see."
     Her gaze rested on an overweight woman who had risen a few tables away. The short skirt of the obviously expensive tennis ensemble barely covered her ample rearend. And her legs did resemble some of the gnarled live oaks that dotted the property.
     Miss Addie caught my eye and winked conspiratorially. In that moment, I remembered why I had always liked her best of all that group that had danced attendance on my mother: Miss Addie had a sense of humor.
     Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
     If the company turned out to be a pleasant surprise, the meal was even more so. Miss Addie had "taken the liberty" of choosing the menu: a crisp green salad, followed by an exquisite salmon with fresh asparagus in hollandaise sauce. We waved away the offer of an extensive wine list, both of us opting for freshly brewed iced tea in frosty glasses.
     The reminiscences proved less uncomfortable than I'd feared. Even Miss Addie's continual use of my hated first name became almost bearable. Though her chatter scratched against long-buried memories of a childhood I had thought safely repressed, I managed to smile and nod as she recalled with fondness the days when my mother had reigned supreme over local society.
     Over thin wedges of real key lime pie—with real meringue—I tried to edge the conversation around to the reason for her call. "Now then," I said firmly as we both laid our heavy linen napkins on the table next to our plates, "tell me about this investment problem of yours."
     Miss Addie fidgeted a little, but eventually realized it was time to get down to business. "Well, it has to do with Grayton's Race."
     My blank look betrayed my ignorance.
     "That old rice plantation on the Chicopee? Oh, surely Emmaline must have talked to you about it, dear? Your mama loved the old place so." Miss Addie's smile melted years off her face. "You should have seen it in its prime. Well, not that we did either, exactly. By the time your mama and I were old enough to attend parties there, it had fallen into some disrepair. But there were paintings of it, as it had been in the last century, a truly imposing greathouse. Wide verandahs, white porticoes, a magnificent avenue of oaks. Quite similar in many ways to your house, Lydia."
     "Presqu'isle was my mother's house, not mine," I snapped. My hackles had risen again, and I couldn't really say why. Maybe because the Judge and I were always aware that it was my mother, Emmaline Baynard, who had brought the antebellum mansion into the family. My father and their unplanned, change-of-life little girl had always been interlopers. We might live there, but we'd never really belong.
     "Of course, dear, I know that. Your mother's people have lived there for almost two hundred years. But, like it or not, you are a Baynard. Some day Presqu'isle and all its responsibilities will be yours."
     I didn't want to talk about this. I hated the house. I wanted no part of it after the Judge was gone, and it had passed to me. They could tear the damned thing down and turn it into a parking lot for all I cared.
     "You were saying? About Grayton's Race?" I forced a smile.
     "Oh, yes. Well. One of the sons was killed in the First War. Another drank himself to death. Then it all fell to some northern cousins, and they sold off parcels willy-nilly, and . . . oh dear." Miss Addie applied the lace hanky to her eyes once again. "We had such lovely parties there when I was a girl. It's all so sad."
     It was beginning to come back to me now from articles in the local paper, scanned and forgotten, and from gossip around the Club. A real estate investment company had been formed to buy up the surrounding land and restore the old plantation house to its former glory. The Race would become the centerpiece of a planned community with antebellum style homes on large lots, with one or two golf courses thrown in for ambiance. Most of the acreage fronted what locals always referred to as "the pristine" Chicopee River. Those who lived along its unpolluted banks, as well as some outside environmental groups, had protested loudly. I didn't blame them. It was just the kind of desecration I hated. We had already lost too many trees to the greedy axes of the developers.
     Miss Addie sniffed delicately, reclaiming my attention.
     "So Geoffrey Anderson talked you into investing. How much?" I asked bluntly.
     Miss Addie hemmed and hawed, fluttered her hands, and refused to look me in the eye.
     I finally managed to worm it out of her. She had plunked down two hundred thousand dollars, almost everything she had left of her inheritance after buying her apartment at The Cedars. Without the income generated by that money, invested in CDs and solid mutual funds, she would soon be hard pressed to meet her monthly fees at the swank retirement home.
     I struggled to keep control of my temper.
     "Why didn't you call me before you made this decision, Miss Addie? Unless you can find someone to buy you out, I don't see how I can help you."
     "Well, really Lydia, it seemed so safe. Geoffrey promised we'd have our money back, and with a sizable profit, in just a few months. And he is Millicent Anderson's boy. After all, one just has to have faith in one's oldest friends, doesn't one?"
     I had my doubts about that. Every family, regardless of how far back its lineage could be traced, had its share of scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells.
     "So why the sudden concern?" I asked resignedly. I should have listened to my instincts this morning and found some plausible reason to beg off.
     "Well, I've talked with several people, friends from the old days, you understand, and they seem to think it might drag on for a long time. There are rumors circulating, something about a piece of land they need to complete the project. Apparently the owners won't sell. I'm told it could endanger the whole project." The faded eyes behind the thick glasses glistened with unshed tears. "I've called and called, but Geoffrey doesn't seem to get my messages. The Judge thought that maybe you could talk to him and find out when we can expect to get our money."
     "Our money?" I jerked upright in my chair, my hand sending the sterling silver salt shaker rolling across the table. "What do you mean, our money?"
     Miss Addie absently gathered a few grains of the spilled salt in her arthritic fingers and tossed them over her left shoulder. "Why, mine, Lydia. And the Judge's. It was upon his advice that I relied. Well, his and Geoffrey's."
     "My father has money in this scheme?" I could feel my voice rising, and other late diners glanced uneasily in our direction.
     "Well, dear, of course he does. Didn't I mention that on the telephone? In honor of your dear mama, of course. You see, we local investors are to have bronze plaques with our names embossed on them. A Gallery of Honor in the main hallway of the Race, an eternal memorial to our help in restoring one of the truly great plantation houses of the old South."
     I was nearly hyperventilating with anger. I had to get out of there before I embarrassed myself and this dotty old lady.
     Bronze plaques, Gallery of Honor! What a crock! Geoffrey Anderson had really been reaching when he came up with gimmicks like that to entice investors into his project. And what would happen if they never got title to this disputed land? The investment would be worthless; the property, unsaleable to another developer. How could my father have been so gullible, a man with his education and experience? And to have taken Miss Addie down along with him!
     I regained my composure long enough to solicit Geoffrey's phone number and mark it in my address book. I thanked Miss Addie for lunch, promised to get back to her soon, and planted a gentle kiss on her paper-thin cheek. I left her staring out the window, a sad smile on her wrinkled face.
     Mr. Gorgeous said something as I passed, but I was too upset to respond.
     Geoffrey Anderson was going to wish he'd never messed with my family and friends. But before I tackled him, my father and I had a few things to discuss. Like, where he had gotten the cash to invest in this harebrained scheme, and exactly when it was that he had taken total leave of his senses.

copyright ©2006 Kathryn R. Wall

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