Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Henry’s old practice on Broad Street had been updated over the past twenty-five years.
It was a coastal blue with white shutters and trim.
A wide front porch filled with white rocking chairs gave patients who didn’t want to sit in a waiting room with the contagious a chance to get fresh air.
A discreet sign by the front door read DR. ELIAS WHARTON, FAMILY MEDICINE.
I parked across the street but left the engine running and the air on full blast. Chowder had his face pressed to the window leaving a fog of hot breath.
The place looked well tended. The lawn was cut. I tried to picture Henry coming up the walkway, briefcase in one hand, coffee in the other, ducking the low branch of the live oak by the gate.
I pulled out my phone and dialed.
Walt picked up on the second ring.
“Mabel,” he said. “I’ve just finished making copies at the library. Everyone will have the intel shortly, and I’ll leave the originals behind the landscaping rock in your back garden. There are spies everywhere.”
“I appreciate it,” I told him. “I need to see if you remember a name.”
“I never forget a name.”
“Do you remember Dr. Wainwright’s nurse? The one who worked for him at the time of his death.”
“Of course I remember her. Jackie Henshaw was her name then. I’m not sure if she ever married. The clinic only lasted about a year after Henry died. If that long. I’m not sure if she stayed on the island. She was a pretty young thing right out of school. Very friendly. You looking her up?”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “I want to get to know Henry and figured she’d be a good place to start. Nurses know things, don’t they?”
“In my experiences, nurses know most things,” he confirmed. “Tell her hello if you find her. She was a sweet girl.”
“Thanks, Walt.”
“My pleasure.”
I hung up smiling, and then called Dash.
“Miss me already?” he asked when he answered.
“Of course.”
There was a few seconds’ silence and then he laughed. “And I can assume you’re calling for another reason too?”
“Since you mention it,” I said. “I need an address for Jackie Henshaw. That was her name in 2001. I’m not sure if she has a married name. She was Henry Wainwright’s nurse.”
“Give me a minute to look her up and see what I can find,” he said, and I could hear him typing through the receiver.
“Got it,” he said. “Jackie Henshaw Caldwell. 4406 Cypress Point.”
“That’s only two streets over from me,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Call me again next time you miss me.”
I tucked the phone into my bag, and pulled away from the curb. Chowder let out a series of short urgent barks as we went through town, and I stopped to get him a pup cup because otherwise I’d never hear the end of it.
I decided to wait and stop by Jackie’s house on my way home, and after Chowder had finished licking the whipped cream from his nose we set off toward the park.
This was also one of Chowder’s favorite places to go and I could see his excitement building.
Or at least as excited as he was capable of becoming.
I wasn’t going to tell him there was another reason for our visit to the park.
This was Deidre’s neighborhood, but it had also been Henry Wainwright’s.
The houses here sat deeper behind their wrought-iron fences, and the live oaks made tunnels of green shade overhead that turned the afternoon light to the color of weak tea.
There was a lot of old money on this street.
I parked two streets over on a side road, hooked on Chowder’s leash, and we started walking.
Henry’s old house was the Wainwright family home, a Greek Revival of pale yellow stucco that had been on the island since post-Civil War.
It rose two stories to a slate roof, with six white columns running the length of a deep front porch and a second-story gallery above it that ran the same length.
A pair of mature magnolias flanked a wrought-iron gate, and a crushed-shell drive curved up to a side entrance through a tunnel of live oaks.
Chowder chose that blessed moment to water one of the trees outside of the estate, and I could have kissed him for his timing.
“Imagine living in that big house all alone,” I told Chowder. Though I could imagine it because I’d lived in my big house all alone until Chowder came along.
The current owners had two small bikes laid down in the drive and a complicated-looking play yard visible through the side gate. A Range Rover was parked near the carriage house, and there was a sticker on the back window for a prestigious private school in Charleston.
I stood across the street under the shade of a live oak and let myself look.
The lot was deep. The house sat well back from the road behind a wide expanse of clipped lawn and a circular bed of camellias, and the property carried back to a stand of pines at the rear.
The nearest neighbor on the right was blocked by azalea hedges and a low brick wall. The neighbor on the left was the same.
I thought about a gunshot sometime in the evening on an October night.
It got dark around seven o’clock in October, and people were usually out walking in the park in the evenings, so the chances of hearing a gunshot would be greater.
Which led me to think, if the killer was smart, then he’d wait until later in the evening.
I also thought about the weather. We typically got a lot of rain in October.
I pulled out my phone and subtly took a few pictures of the front of Henry’s house, and then I searched the Farmers’ Almanac for the weather the night Henry died.
“Well, look at that, Chowder,” I said. “October thirteenth and fourteenth we had quite a storm. That would help cover the sound of a gunshot, don’t you think?”
Chowder had finished watering the trees and had decided to lie down on the sidewalk. Frenchies weren’t known for their endurance.
The house directly across the street from Henry’s sat behind a low brick wall and a thick hedge of boxwood, with a pair of crape myrtles flanking the front walk.
It was a Charleston single house in pale yellow brick with black shutters.
It was three stories and piazzas were on all three floors.
The bottom piazza had lush ferns hanging between the columns.
There was a gold placard on the brick wall to the left of a black iron gate that read The Pruitts. The people in this neighborhood tended to be generational, and I’d remember the name when I started to do a search for any neighbors still on the island.
My eyes drifted to the upstairs window, and I saw the curtain move and the shadow of a person moving. It was also a neighborhood where someone was always watching.
I thought again about the tragedy this island had endured by having Milton as sheriff for so long. Anyone with a lick of sense and half an investigative brain could have gotten to the bottom of Henry’s death in a short amount of time if procedure had been followed.
“Come on, Chowder. Time to get up.”
We walked back to the car and Chowder hopped in, clearly spent for the day, and I turned the AC on high.
“Don’t worry, you’re going to get a nap. We’ve got one more stop to make.”
Chowder ignored me, so I started singing “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” to give him a little boost.
He didn’t look boosted as I drove down Waterfront and neared my house, so I pulled into the driveway and let him in through the mudroom. He didn’t even look back to see if I was coming inside. He was a dog on a nap mission.
The breeze off the water felt like heaven, and there were several families across the street on the walkway that were headed down to a sandy embankment that was nice for picnics and swimming.
Cypress Point was technically on the same stretch of waterfront as my own home, but the road followed the river and the way it curved made Cypress Point its own private neighborhood.
The Caldwell house was a white coastal contemporary with a two-story front porch and a grand staircase that led to the second floor, which was where the main entrance was. I parked at the curb. Pulling into a stranger’s drive uninvited was bad manners.
I walked up the stairs, grateful now I’d thought to drop Chowder at home, and rang the front doorbell.
A very attractive woman opened the front door.
Jackie Caldwell had the shade of blond hair that could only be found at an expensive salon, and a fringe of bangs that highlighted cerulean eyes.
She wore yoga pants and a thin-strapped workout top on a body that didn’t look like it needed working out at all.
I recognized her, of course. She’d been in the tea shop many times, but I’d never gotten her name.
“Why Mabel,” she said, surprised to see me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”
“I’m sorry for dropping by unannounced,” I said.
“No trouble. I just got back from Pilates and was about to pour myself a glass of iced tea and put my feet up. Why don’t you join me?”
“Oh, well thank you. I’d like that.”
I would’ve done the same had a practical stranger shown up at my door. Southern hospitality was drilled in at an early age.
I followed her into a wide foyer with golden pine floors and a black modern chandelier that looked like it had been designed by Edward Scissorhands. There was a large painting with color splattered across the canvas and stairs with a black iron railing that led down to the floor below.
She moved like a ballerina, with smooth, fluid movements, and I watched in fascination as she took a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and poured two glasses. She had to be in her fifties at least, but she could have passed for closer to my age. I was tempted to ask who her esthetician was.
“Come on out to the porch, and you can tell me why you’re paying me a visit. Do you want any cookies? They’re store bought. I can’t bake like you.”
“I’m fine with tea, thank you.” And I followed her out a set of French doors and to one of the black rocking chairs on the porch.
“I’m here to talk about Henry Wainwright,” I said.