Perils of a Pregnant Sleuth

By Dershie McDevitt

"An indomitable protagonist, a quirky supporting case, and plenty of Southern charm make this mystery a treat."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bublish, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647046088

Dershie McDevitt

Dershie McDevitt, a Wilma Dykeman Writing-Excellence Award Winner at UNC-Asheville, lives outside Asheville, North Carolina with her rescue dog, Sassafras, her opinionated calico cat, Orphan Annie, and her first and second husbands. Dershie and Larry, who have had the good fortune to have married each other twice, own a whimsical vacation home off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina on a buried island teeming with wildlife-the perfect setting for the fictional biology professor Callahan Banks to use her knowledge of nature to solve challenging mysteries.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Thursday, January 13

Waves, cold black waves, and sand from the shores of Velvet Creek have buried the brown-skinned man, his face frozen in a Munch’s scream of death. Only his long black hair, swirling like seaweed under the angry froth of an incoming tide, can be seen. The barbed wire, which encased his body when he was buried alive low on the bank of this remote tidal creek, has kept him from bobbing to the surface. But it has only been one tidal cycle…

A bigger, more powerful wave surges against the narrowed end of the creek, riding high up its banks and crashing with a roar against Lake Timicau’s eroding, earthen dam.

At least the displaced sand has softened the horror of the man’s expression, completely filling his open mouth and mortaring closed the deep, barbed-wire gashes across his naked back. He did all he could to free himself from those torturous barbs when he was alive, but it wasn’t enough. Immobilized, screaming himself voiceless, he drowned there by inches in the rising tides of Timicau Island.

CHAPTER ONE

Friday, January 14

The predator storm that’s stalked Timicau Island all morning has finally pounced in a rage of moaning wind and booming thunder. Sheeting rain floods the screened porch floor of the little swamp house on pilings and pools under the creaky rocker where Callahan Banks sits, her binoculars trained on a huge gator thirty feet below. She’s wet to the bone, her dark-brown, shoulder-length hair plastered to her head, the oversized, yellow tee stretched over her pregnant belly soggy. The storm is clearly worsening, but she has no intention of moving.

I won’t miss a rare chance to watch Albert eat that cormorant.

Lightning scribbles at the sky, then lights it up. Willows on the pond bank behind the thirteen-foot gator bend double in a gust. His sides heave. Callahan adjusts the focus on her field glasses as more of a black bird’s torso disappears into the gator’s mouth.

A live oak branch on the porch’s southwest corner slams into the roof. The little house shudders. A downspout breaks loose and falls two stories, the sound of its crash into the bushes below lost in the roar of pounding rain. Torrents of water shoot off the roof’s corner and cascade down the side of the house.

I’ll fix the downspout later.

And then, Callahan senses a letup. The storm has blown past, racing eastward out to sea so fast that only the sulfurous smell of lightning hanging in the air marks its passage. Waving limbs go suddenly still. Pelting rain gives way to a magnificent rainbow back toward the South Carolina mainland. Callahan arches her back to ease pressure from the baby and settles back to relish the view.

The world below is bejeweled with rain drops. These sudden and dramatic weather changes are part of what Callahan most cherishes about this wild barrier island where she was raised.

The wildness and then the raw, unexpected beauty.

A flag-sized banana spider web hanging from an outside eave is woven in diamonds. Sparkling puddles of trapped water line the bank of the swamp pond. The cattails near the gator were flattened by the deluge, but Albert has stayed stretched out there all morning, ingesting his waterbird breakfast by inches.

Callahan threw out her to-do list at nine when she heard the captured cormorant’s squawks. Attuned to reptilian eating habits, she knew it would take hours, so she made herself a cup of herbal tea, ran for the rocker, and settled in.

Alligators eat about once a month. One escaped its captors in Florida and was found alive a year later with its mouth still bound shut. Few people, let alone gung-ho biology professors like me, get to watch an alligator dine.

She smiles to herself at the choice of the refined verb.

If Mother were still alive, she’d make a poem out of it. Something like, The feeling, dahling’s, quite divine. Professor Banks watches Albert dine.

Callahan’s flamboyant, fifty-one-year-old mother, from whom Callahan inherited this quirky little house on stilts, died from breast cancer a little less than a year ago. Her only child is still struggling to find her way through that loss.

Boy, could I use her advice now. She’d be thrilled about the baby, regardless of the circumstances, but she wouldn’t want me to marry Pepper. To be truly happy, you must be the only one in control of your life. Lila had said it more than once.

This baby’s father, John Culpepper Dade III, is ten years Callahan’s senior and the island’s owner. Pepper is both handsome and rich, so is considered quite the eligible bachelor.

Except I wasn’t looking for or even wanting a husband.

Callahan had left Timicau Island fourteen years ago, first for college and then grad school. She’s now a tenure-track biology professor at UNC Asheville in North Carolina. And, though only thirty-two, she’s come home again, able to afford the luxury of an extended maternity leave because of her inheritance.

Unexpected financial freedom due to Mother’s frugality. Unexpected complications compliments of Pepper Dade.

Watching the old bull gator this morning has been a welcome distraction from agonizing about Pepper’s marriage proposal. He’s beyond delighted about this baby but is quite determined to make their child legitimate. Callahan’s thrilled about the baby, too.

But the marriage idea? Not so much.

She’s in her sixth month now, so he’s ratcheting up the marriage pressure.

He wants it to carry the Dade name and just doesn’t get that I’m the daughter of a ferociously independent woman. And I’m like her! I don’t want or need to live with anyone else.

Familiar anxiety is creeping back, her shoulders tightening, her belly pitching and cramping.

The thought of committing my whole life to another person makes me want to bolt.

Callahan’s so deep into her ruminations that it takes her a minute to hear someone coming up the steps to her deck. There’s a thud and then another on that outside staircase, the only one in the house. The thudding grows louder till Harry Applegate emerges from the stairwell. Nine years old, a triplet, and a new island resident, he’s her favorite budding scientist. But he looks worried as he runs across the deck toward her, his cheeks huff-and-puff red, the bill of his wet, purple baseball hat off-center. His husky voice is breathless from climbing two flights of stairs. Callahan, whew! Am I glad to see you! The earnest, brown eyes widen. Quick, can you come right now? He’s speaking in something pretty close to a yell. We’ve got a problem, and I can’t find Daddy anywhere. Tom and Dick and me, we were looking for buried treasure with a metal detector we sort of borrowed from Dad. He removes the wet hat and bellows, "Thing is, we think we’ve found a dead guy instead.

CHAPTER TWO

How did they find a human body with a metal detector? Was the deceased wearing a watch? Or armor?

Callahan follows the leaping boy with a brown cowlick atop his head down her two flights of stairs, but he’s faster and way more sure-footed than she is with her growing belly.

It’s probably a dead coon or a deer.

The Applegates have been Timicau residents for about two weeks now, since Dr. Wharton Applegate and his jolly, long-suffering wife, Annie, finally got the building inspector to declare their newly built house satisfactory for human habitation.

It’s probably just three active boys exploring an unfamiliar, uninhabited part of the island.

Still, Callahan’s uneasy. She’s gotten to know Harry during the house building and respects the child’s burgeoning and formidable intellect. There was a time, only six months ago, when she’d bitterly resented every new house being built on this island and the intrusion of so many strangers. But the arrival of Harry, his brothers, and gung-ho parents have brought her nothing but pleasure and new camaraderie.

It amuses Callahan when she reaches ground level that Harry’s taken charge. He’s already seated behind the steering wheel of the Applegates’ green, stretch golf cart—golf carts and bikes being the only modes of transportation around the island. I know the way, he says, motioning for her to join him. She’d changed into dry clothes and grabbed a Turkish towel before leaving so she does as told, first wiping the wet leather seat on the cart’s passenger side, then sliding in beside him. Would you like to dry off a bit with my towel?

He looks surprised when she asks. Naw, he says. I’m wet all over. It’s okay. We gotta hurry. Harry’s khaki cargo shorts really do look thoroughly soaked.

She uses the towel to cover her own legs.

There will be mud.

He’s adjusted the purple baseball hat on his head so its black bill is only slightly off-center. The rakish angle at which his ears stick out—ever a source of amusement to her—are laughably exaggerated as he pulls it down lower.

Well, give me the details, Harry. Where are we going, how did you find the body, and all that?

Okay, here’s the story. His husky voice also delights her. Listen. Lemme get us down your drive to Pelican Flight. My dad says I’ve got to be precautious if I think I’m old enough to drive a golf cart. Your driveway really could use some work, Callahan. I’ll tell you in a minute. He looks over his shoulder and rather expertly backs the long cart around several live oak roots that protrude into the cleared area below her house. Then, eyes narrowed in concentration, he swerves around a mud puddle only to catch the bottom branch of a low-hanging oak limb. There’s a chalk-on-blackboard screech as it scrapes the length of the cart’s metal top.

Yikes, Harry!

He ignores her comment.

He may be right about my driveway, but this shiny new golf cart is going to need some work before long, as well.

Her driveway is actually nothing but a worn, sand and dirt path under massive live oaks, willowy palmettos, scraggly slash pines, and one wild magnolia. Harry slows when he reaches Pelican Flight Drive, one of the four wide paths covered in crushed oyster shells that crisscross this two-mile-long island. He turns left and accelerates. Today, post-storm mud sucks noisily under the tires, and dirt balls fly in all directions—including onto both of them—as he barrels through puddles of standing water. He’s headed toward the north end of the island through a deep maritime forest, where occasional views of the ocean are visible through tree breaks to their right. The clean whiff of a world washed new hangs in the air, heightened by the scent of damp wood and rotting palm fronds.

I so hope this is a wild goose chase and we’re not off to find yet another body on Timicau Island.

Callahan swallows a lump in her throat. They’ve already had more than their share of murders here. Less than six months ago, three people were killed. Plus, there’d been the shock of discovering the murderer in their midst.

I need to let it go. The odds of that kind of thing happening again have to be improbable.

She studies the child beside her. Harry’s face is tilted chin up, so he can just see over the steering wheel. There are more dark freckles sprinkling the surface of his chubby cheeks than when she saw him on the ferry about a week ago.

It must be impossible to keep three little boys sun-screened as much as they come and go to the beach. How do mothers keep up with these things?

Gulp.

How will I?

Okay, he says at last. Now I can talk. His foot on the pedal is close to the floor, as the cart flies along this smoother main path, sand and water still spewing in all directions. His hat tries to blow off his head, so he takes it off and stuffs it in a cubby beneath the steering wheel. The January air under magnificent, gnarled oak limbs is nippy, the overhead tree canopy completely blocking any sun from the path. How these live oaks adapt to island habitats still wows Callahan. As the trees grow, they gnarl and gnarl, becoming so dense with age that their trunks and limbs can withstand hurricane force winds when even the supple palms on the island often cannot. Some of these old oaks are hundreds of years old. Though she’s wearing dry maternity jeans and an oversized sweatshirt now, these trees provide such complete shelter from the warmth of the sun that she’s grateful for the towel on her lap and wishes she’d thought to bring a windbreaker.

You know the submarine tower, Callahan?

The submarine tower? What? Oh, no…

She feels her forehead draw into a frown. Yes, yes I do. What about it, Harry? The decrepit, fifty-foot-high tower built for spotting German submarines during the Second World War is well over sixty years old now but is still standing on the northern tip of this round barrier island.

And, of course, those three boys would be drawn to that double-decker structure like filings to a magnet. It’s a wonder the dead body I’m heading to see isn’t one of theirs.

When Pepper began developing the island last year, he’d gone to considerable trouble, removing metal struts and posting warning signs, to discourage climbing up the rotting wood steps to the decaying spotting rooms at the top. It was the best he could do, because tearing the thing down and hauling it off the island would be exorbitantly expensive. Picturing the triplets up there gives Callahan the heebie-jeebies.

And we are headed in that general direction.

Harry hasn’t spoken again, and he’s looking uncomfortable.

So, Harry, what about it?

Uh, well, listen to this. Me and my brothers, we’ve worked out a way to heave a rope over the bottom support beam and knot both ends to a tree root down on the ground so it’s pretty easy to shimmy up. His eyes shine with excitement as he reveals his secret, but they stay on the rutty road ahead. Then, as if he senses her displeasure, he slows the cart. They emerge from the trees into an opening, the pewter-colored sky above them partially overcast now. You don’t need to worry about it though, Callahan. We’ve been super careful. Behind his words, she hears he’s the one who’s worried now. His husky voice drops to a whisper. You wouldn’t tell Mr. Pepper or Mama, would you? Some freckles disappear in a frown furrow between his eyes. We tested it. It’s perfectly safe and, man, you can see everything that’s going on around the whole island, from Capers Inlet clear out to the ocean. Maybe you could come up with us. His face lights in anticipation. Then, he glances uncomfortably at the swell of her belly. Or, if you keep it secret, I’ll show you how after your baby gets born.

Not wanting to alarm him and strangely honored that he seems to have assigned her to a privileged category somewhere between grown-up and child, Callahan resolves to say nothing right now. In some ways, she actually finds herself believing that Harry’s smart enough and careful enough to pull this off and have an exhilarating experience.

I did it, but that was at least fifteen years ago.

Thank you, Harry. I’d really love to go up there again after all these years.

So, am I irresponsible if I don’t tell someone? It may be healthy for them to have an adult confidante.

That niggling unease returns.

If Harry and his brothers have really found a buried body, their climbing that tower may be the least of our worries.

Callahan swallows twice, the anxiety tightening her chest something she wants to ignore. But doing that is never wise, either. Over the years, she’s learned to trust this language of her body. She can’t remember a single time it’s ever steered her wrong. So, what does the tower have to do with your dead guy? Tell me what happened.

Okay. Harry takes one hand off the steering wheel to scratch a bug bite on his nose, then wrinkles it like the scratch was unsatisfactory. Probably, now that I think about it, you oughta forget you know we’ve been up there, but I had to tell you because it’s how we found out where the treasure was buried.

There’s a rolling movement in her belly as the baby changes position. Callahan finds herself hoping that this child, whether a boy or girl, will be even half as earnest, curious, and full of spunk as this darling Harry Applegate.

Well, Harry talks on. We got off being banned from breathing each other’s air pretty late yesterday morning. Mama bans us when we fight too much. We have to stay in three different rooms for one whole hour. She said this was the earliest-in-the-day ban she remembers. When you get banned like that, it gets pretty lonesome, so we took off for the tower before we got into another fight. Yesterday, we got all the way up to the top part of the tower for the first time. Man, you can see miles in every direction. It was so great. See, it has two levels.

Like I didn’t grow up on this island.

We ate our picnic lunch first, and then we played Stump the Stupid for a while.

Callahan laughs. Stump the Stupid? That’s not a game I know. Exactly how do you play it?

You just take turns thinking up factuals that your stupid brothers don’t know, and whoever doesn’t know, the other brothers get to point their fingers and yell ‘STUPID’ as loud as they can. Mama won’t even let us say stupid, so we do it up in the tower now. Harry slows the cart and smiles at Callahan. I’m almost never the stupid, except for one time when they ganged up on me and looked up some stuff on the internet.

Well, I can see why. Callahan fights hard not to laugh. You, Harry, would be pretty hard to outthink.

He blushes a little at this. Maybe you could help me get some more Stump the Stupid factuals. Dick’s pretty easy to stump. Yesterday, he said arteries are a place to see painted pictures! But Tommy’s harder. Harry speeds up again, the air over the open, top half of the windscreen blowing his brown hair straight up in the air.

He looks like a comic book character.

I’d be happy to do that, Harry. But first, finish telling me what happened.

Well, after Stump the Stupid, we took out Tommy’s pirate spyglass again and looked all round on every side of the tower, and that’s when we spotted a boat and these two guys down there burying treasure. They were at that place where the creek floods at high tide behind the dam, digging with shovels on the edge. And one of them was bald with a tattoo on top of his head. That’s how we knew they were pirates, ’cause the tattoo was a skull and crossbones, the true pirate insignia. Harry’s face lights up at this evidently damning detail. We could see it in the spyglass. And they were noisy screamers like pirates are. For a while, one of ’em screamed a lot, but we were too high up there to hear what he was saying. Next time we looked down, they were gone, and the boat, too, so we figured it was safe to go looking.

Callahan knows the exact place Harry is describing, so she is now fairly convinced that there’s nothing to worry about. For one thing, she has a hard time believing anyone would actually have a skull and crossbones tattooed on his own bald head.

This really is sounding like three overactive imaginations.

She stifles another smile and returns her attention to Harry. I think I know where you mean, Harry. Pepper calls it Six Pipes, where that tidal creek flows in from the ocean, across the marsh and through those six huge pipes in the dam into Lake Timicau. Off-islanders sometimes boat up there on low tide and climb out to dig clams or to fish. It’s perfectly legal where your pirates were digging because they have the right to walk anywhere up to the high tide mark near the dam. That’s where Timicau’s private property begins.

His face darkens. Yeah, but I’m not through telling you everything yet. He takes a big breath as if to fortify himself and continues. So, Callahan, the tide was coming in really fast, and by the time we got down there, the place they were digging was covered up with water. Low tide this morning was six o’clock. I keep a tide chart in my pocket at all times. So today, we got up early to go digging, but Mama wouldn’t let us go till we had a healthy breakfast and unpacked three more moving boxes.

So, you haven’t told her what you all saw, Harry?

No. There was that deep scowl again. My mama would never let me keep treasure if it belonged to somebody else or let me look for it with dangerous pirates around. She doesn’t do good at being adventurous when it comes to me and my brothers.

It would take a saint to endure even their normal behavior.

As Harry prattles on, it occurs to Callahan that, if she stays here to raise her own child, these triplets will be the only other children on the island.

A potentially huge influence. Is that a good or a bad thing?

She pinches her eyes closed, trying to picture a future she cannot fathom.

I’m sure of only one thing. It wouldn’t be dull.

"So, we made a secret plan, me and Tommy and Dick. Our lips are sealed. We sort of borrowed Dad’s metal detector when we finally got out of the house this morning, to help us find the right spot since the tide coming in would wash away all the dug-up sand. Then… He shakes his head in disgust, clearly frustrated beyond his limits by his mother. Mama wouldn’t let us go till the lightning stopped, so we barely got there before the tide was high again. Good thing we had the detector though, ’cause it didn’t take us any time at all to find the spot. The minute we got on the dam, the detector started beeping like crazy. Tommy had a shovel, and me and Dicky had hoes, so we started digging as fast as hungry groundhogs."

This time, Callahan can’t tamp down her smile, so she turns her head. Well, that’s hungry.

Hungry groundhogs? Where do these things come from?

Problem is, the treasure was real deep, and the tide was coming in faster than we could dig.

So, what made you decide it wasn’t a treasure but a dead guy?

Because next—Harry’s voice lowers like there might be someone spying on him—Tommy started hitting metal, exactly like a shovel hitting a treasure chest sounds. Harry expertly turns the golf cart left onto Lake Timicau Drive, the golf cart path that runs east to west across the northern end of the island. But—his features cloud—the water kept seeping into our hole and filling it up, even though we were digging as fast as we could. He points to his wet tennis shoes as evidence of this perseverance, but it seems to Callahan that Harry always has wet, moldy-smelling shoes.

We got down deep enough though, before the sand started collapsing in, to see that Tommy wasn’t hitting a treasure chest at all. He was hitting barbed wire, a lot of it, wrapped around and around something, and the wire looked new. Finally, to get a better look, I stuck my head down deep into the hole, and then, I almost barfed up my liver. The golf cart slows to a stop as Harry becomes absorbed in telling his story. "I’m not what you’d call a body expert, Callahan, but what I could see under a couple of inches of the water down in there was the top of some guy’s head, inside of