The Sketching Detective and the Bluffton Murders

By Xlibris US

Late one night Fiona and Jack, after a long day in the sun, were sound asleep when they were suddenly awakened by wild, frightening, almost bloodcurdling screams. Although Fiona is much braver than Jack, she, on this occasion, was very much alarmed while Jack was very calm. He had heard those screams before. They were made by a barred owl also frequently referred to as a hoot owl.
The owl seemed to scream these words, Whoooooo cooooooks for youuuuuu? Whoooooo cooooooks for youuuuuu? According to an old wives tale common to the South Carolina coastal area, this owl arrives screaming in the neighborhood on the night when someone has just been murdered in the vicinity. The fact that on one particular night the owl arrives screaming its best when no one seems to have been murdered nearby provides a very important clue that helps our investigators identify the killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499019353

Book preview

cover.jpg

Copyright © 2014 by Jack Mccormac.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909054

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4990-1936-0

Softcover 978-1-4990-1938-4

eBook 978-1-4990-1935-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Cover Illustration By: Kersly Miñoza

Rev. date: 05/16/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

619504

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Bluffton

Chapter 2

The New School

Chapter 3

Two Sudden Deaths

Chapter 4

Visiting Chantal

Chapter 5

The Strange Symbol

Chapter 6

Mr. Tom Merryweather

Chapter 7

The Gallows Again?

Chapter 8

A Warning?

Chapter 9

Eavesdropping

Chapter 10

Tea Leaves Tell The Tale

Chapter 11

More Interviews

Chapter 12

Antiques And More

Chapter 13

The Doorstops

Chapter 14

The Coin Shop

Chapter 15

Shopping In Savannah

Chapter 16

Copying The Diamond Shippers

Chapter 17

The Inquisition

Chapter 18

Dr. Hill

Chapter 19

Polaris And Lie Detector Tests

Chapter 20

Another Body

Chapter 21

More Investigations

Chapter 22

Disappearing Silver

Chapter 23

A Birthday Party

Chapter 24

Why Was Karen Killed?

Chapter 25

A Visit To Skidaway Island

Chapter 26

Doorstops, Dogs, And Dna

Chapter 27

Two Weddings

Chapter 28

Nancy D. The Third

INTRODUCTION

Late one night Fiona and Jack, after a long day in the sun, were sound asleep when they were suddenly awakened by wild, frightening, almost bloodcurdling screams. Although Fiona is much braver than Jack, she, on this occasion, was very much alarmed while Jack was very calm. He had heard those screams before. They were made by a barred owl also frequently referred to as a hoot owl.

The owl seemed to scream these words, Whoooooo cooooooks for youuuuuu? Whoooooo cooooooks for youuuuuu? According to an old wives’ tale common to the South Carolina coastal area, this owl arrives screaming in the neighborhood on the night when someone has just been murdered in the vicinity. The fact that on one particular night the owl arrives screaming its best when no one seems to have been murdered nearby provides a very important clue that helps our investigators identify the killer.

CHAPTER 1

BLUFFTON

When I was a boy my mother and father would frequently take my brother and me on summer vacations to a little village on the South Carolina coast named Bluffton. My father had visited there sometime in his twenties and ever after had said, One day I am going to live by the May River in Bluffton.

My mother, brother, and I didn’t pay much attention to his remarks, but when he retired, he, much to our surprise, bought a small, ugly house together with a few acres of land located by the beautiful river. Though he had been looking for a house in the town for years, I think he was quite lucky to get this one. Usually to obtain a river place in Bluffton you have to inherit it or marry into it. My mother didn’t seem to care for his using the second method.

The house was small and rectangular, with both the exterior and interior walls constructed with ugly large red jumbo bricks. As I said, it was not a pretty place, but it sure was solidly built. The interior brick walls were covered with plaster and were actually rather attractive. During the next few years after Dad purchased the house, he had it remodeled and substantially enlarged. As part of this work, the exterior walls were covered with lovely old Savannah brick. After that work was completed the once rather shabby, ugly house had become very attractive. The yard, previously covered with trash, had been cleaned up and centipede grass planted so as to form a lovely green carpet. At least I thought it was lovely since I am the one who sprigged the lawn on weekend trips to the house. In addition we planted a large number of azaleas and camellias around the house, along the edges of the land and down near the river.

My name is Jack MacKay. I am a thirty-two-year-old assistant professor of civil engineering at the university in the town where we live. Several years ago I married a lovely red-haired, feisty, freckle-faced beauty from Vermont named Fiona McEwan. She is an architect and has her own small firm located in our town. Fiona dedicates her life to keeping me straight and often gets us involved in unexpected adventures trying to solve crimes.

I have recently decided there is a great deal of truth in old sayings. For instance, one of those sayings is Although blondes are wild and brunettes are true, you can never tell what a redhead will do. Another states, Redheads are wrapped in mystery and intrigue. The originators of these sayings surely must have known Fiona.

Recently Fiona obtained a contract to design a rather large middle school for the town of Bluffton. To handle this job it was going to be necessary for her to make quite a few trips to the town for consultation with the local school officials. As it was summertime, I was free to come and go from the university as I desired. As a result, Fiona and I decided to go to Bluffton for several weeks.

Since my parents had moved to Bluffton when I was in college, I never lived in the home by the river, but I did visit there quite a few times. Dad is now deceased and their home has been sold. I called a real estate agent in Bluffton and asked him about houses that were available for rent for the next few weeks. Much to my surprise and delight one of the ones available that summer was the home my mother and dad had previously owned. I immediately agreed to rent it for several weeks. A week later we packed up and drove the few hundred miles to the lovely river town for a protracted stay.

Bluffton is located several miles inland from the Intracoastal Waterway and behind the barrier island Hilton Head. Twenty miles to the southwest is the city of Savannah, Georgia. At the time my parents moved there I would estimate the total population within the Bluffton city limits, now called Old Town Bluffton, was in the range of 700 to 800. If the city limits at that time had been expanded by several miles to their present location the number of residents would probably have increased by only a few hundred more people at the most. Since those days, however, Bluffton has grown by leaps and bounds. Today the population is well over 40,000 and still increasing rapidly.

Chap%201%20Sketch%201.jpg

A sketch of South Carolina

The primary reasons for the amazing growth of the town are the development of the nearby resorts on Hilton Head Island and the construction of Sun City Hilton Head on the mainland near the island and close to the city limits of Bluffton. Of course another reason is that Bluffton is a lovely place.

The town was founded in 1825 as a summer retreat for wealthy rice and cotton planters and their families. At this location on the bluffs above the river they could find some relief from the inland heat of the Carolina summers. In addition, in this river community they could enjoy pleasant breezes and escape somewhat the mosquitoes of the nearby inland swamps.

I have shown a sketch here to familiarize you with Bluffton and the surrounding territory. Should you visit this area and become confused as to the names of the nearby rivers, you will not be alone. The rivers seem to run along for a few miles with one name and then suddenly their names change. I don’t know of any particular landmarks that show why and where the changes take place. One river in the vicinity has four different names within just a few miles. It’s rather like the street names in some English and Scottish cities. One river, shown in the sketch, the Okatie (that is an Indian name for water, I think), seems to start near US Highway 278 and then somewhere out in its marshy length it becomes the Colleton River. By the way, the name Okatie is pronounced OH ka tea and not O Katy.

Chap%201%20Sketch%202.jpg

A computer-generated map of the Bluffton area

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this part of South Carolina was occupied by the Yemassee Indian tribe and was called Indian Lands by the settlers. The Indians lived off the plentiful oysters, shrimp, and clams in the May and other rivers in the vicinity. In 1715 the Yemassee, together with some other Indian tribes, being very upset over the treatment they had received from the English traders, attacked and defeated the colonists in the area and killed quite a few hundred of them. In 1728, militia from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia attacked the Indians and drove them out. Their remnants moved to Florida and southern Georgia and apparently became part of the Seminole tribes. Soon thereafter Europeans began settling the former Yemassee land.

At about that time the British Lord Proprietors set up several baronies in the region. One of them, called Devil’s Elbow, contained what was later to become the town of Bluffton. Devil’s Elbow, also sometimes called Colleton Neck, lay between the May and Okatie rivers. It consisted of twelve or thirteen thousand acres and apparently received its name from the elbow shape of the Colleton River from the point where it joined with Port Royal Sound, or Broad River, up to a point near Spring Island.

The village of Bluffton was begun by the Walls and Kirk families and was first named May River and then later Kirk’s Bluff. Perhaps to avoid discriminating against the Walls, the name was changed in the 1840s to Bluffton, with reference to the bluffs that run along the river as it passes the old downtown area.

It is quite thought-provoking to realize that in this town in the 1840s the people were extremely irritated by the exorbitant federal taxes placed on the Southern states on imported goods. These people met in 1844 under a great live oak tree, now called Secession Oak, and expressed their desire to secede from the Union. Supposedly this was the first secession movement in the state. Finally, sixteen years later the state of South Carolina became the first state to secede.

Chap%201%20Sketch%203.jpg

Secession Oak

The famous tree where the people met is estimated to be about 400 years old. It is located on private property but can be seen from Verdier Cove Road located about 0.2 miles from SC Highway 46 on its route from Bluffton inland to the towns of Pritchardville and Hardeeville. Bluffton was incorporated in 1852 by the South Carolina General Assembly. In 1863, during the War of Northern Aggression, the town was largely destroyed by Union soldiers. In 1940 it was severely damaged by a hurricane.

My favorite building in Bluffton, and the favorite of many other people, is the Episcopal Church of the Cross. It is thought by many to be the most unique and beautiful church in South Carolina. It was built in the shape of a cross on a bluff overlooking the May River. The exterior of the structure was constructed with black cypress that has mellowed through the years into a lovely shade. This church, consecrated in 1857, is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places in America—recognition it well deserves. It was designed to seat 600 people and cost $5,000 to build. Union troops, while burning most of Bluffton in 1863, decided not to burn the church, I assume because of its beauty. Considerable damage was done to the building by the 1940 hurricane, but it has since been repaired.

Chap%201%20Sketch%204.jpg

Episcopal Church of the Cross

When Fiona first saw the church, I thought she, as an architect, was going to go bananas. She raved on and on about it and said she was going to plan to have her next wedding there. For some reason this statement gave me a great deal of concern as I wondered what she planned to do with me. Do you think she was planning to become a grass widow (that is, a divorced woman whose former husband is still living above the grass)? Or worse, do you think she was planning to be a sod widow (that is, a woman whose former husband is beneath the sod)? I must confess neither of these two states appealed to me, but the first classification was much more preferable than the second. If it was to be the second case, I was very much concerned over how she planned to handle the situation. My hope was that she really meant only to have a reenactment of our wedding, and it was to take place in this lovely church. This idea seemed so much more pleasant than the other possibilities just described.

To the right of our house, on the western side, is a rather large, heavily forested lot. Apparently when my parents bought their house this lot was tied up in an estate squabble. I was told that the owner of the land had left it to his children, but they had been unable to agree among themselves what to do with it. Therefore, they did nothing and just let the land sit there unused. Just beyond the vacant lot on the western side is the Bluffton Oyster Company or the oyster factory, as it is commonly called. It contains an area where oysters are shucked as well as a market for oysters, shrimp, and fish.

Right next door to our home to the left or downstream is a large house, supposedly built in 1889. I understand it was once operated as an inn called the Golden Eagle. The building is white with large green shutters on the sides of its very large windows. I have been told that the business that ran the inn was long ago moved to Beaufort, a town about thirty miles northeast of Bluffton. (If you have never been to Beaufort, you should try to go there someday. It is such a captivating place! I think when you see it there is a very good chance you might start making plans to move there in the near future.)

The building in Bluffton that formerly housed the Golden Eagle Inn is now in the hands of a private individual. It belongs to Mr. Tom Merryweather, a man who was originally from Savannah. In the front, or the river side, of the attractive old house is a beautiful green centipede grass lawn that gradually slopes down to the river’s edge a couple of hundred feet from the house. In its front yard there are several large live oak trees. At the time of our visit a large wooden picnic table was located down by the water’s edge. It would play a very important role in the unfortunate events that occurred during our stay in Bluffton.

Chap%201%20Sketch%205.jpg

Could one man move this table?

At the front of the old inn is a large screened porch extending the full width of the house. On the porch were several rocking chairs, a swing, and a pair of Pawley’s Island rope hammocks. From the porch, the view across the lawn, the river, and the distant marshes and on to a development called Palmetto Bluff is outstanding. There is a driveway covered with oyster shells running by the side of the house and on down to the edge of the water. Through the years the residents of the old house have used this driveway to haul their boats down to the river for launching.

Chap%201%20Sketch%206.jpg

Neighborhood sketch

As you look out from the front porch of the inn toward the river you can see to your left a large tidal creek named Huger Cove (the word Huger is pronounced you-GEE). Several houses and the lovely Episcopal church are located on the other side or to the east of the cove. They are not visible from the creek or the Golden Eagle due to the numerous bushes and trees in between. At the corner of the old inn property and at the junction of the cove and the river there was an old wooden frame with a vertical pole sticking up out of the ground. About ten feet up the pole from the ground was a horizontal beam sticking out from the pole and from it there hung a short iron chain and a circular iron loop. I always thought this frame was the remainder of an old sign that probably said The Golden Eagle Inn.

Through the years I have looked at this old post and cross arm many, many times as I boated along the river. Every time I looked at the thing cold shivers would run up and down my spine. Somehow it seemed to me as though someone was walking on my grave. On each of those occasions I would imagine there was a body hanging from a rope through the metal loop. I would blink my eyes and the vision would be gone—just a figment of my imagination, I guess. Because of these experiences I always called the thing the gallows.

Chap%201%20Sketch%207.jpg

The gallows

On each of those occasions when I thought I saw someone hanging from the gallows, I would ask myself, Do I have the second sight like so many of my Scottish ancestors supposedly had? After the events occurring during the next few weeks I was almost convinced that I did. Perhaps I should depart from the civil engineering profession and become a fortuneteller. Sometimes when I looked at the gallows I wondered if I was seeing some person who had long ago been hung there or was I seeing someone who would be hung there in the future?

CHAPTER 2

THE NEW SCHOOL

My first visit after arriving in town was to my father’s grave located in the Bluffton Cemetery. This cemetery is located on SC Highway 46 that comes in from the western side of town from Pritchardville and Hardeeville. The land for the cemetery was given to the town around the middle of the 1800s by Dr. James Kirk. I sat there by Dad’s grave thinking how lucky my brother and I had been to have had such a wonderful father. However, at the same time I had some sad thoughts concerning some of the obnoxious things I had said or done that must have given Dad so much pain.

As I sat there I wondered, as have countless others through the centuries, about the passage from life to death. When I get to thinking like this I always seem to think of the words concerning this journey written in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Strange is it not? That of the myriads who

Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through

Not one returns to tell us of the Road

Which to discover we must travel too.

My thoughts began to wander as I thought of the characteristics of my father.