Mosquito Beach by Bill Noel

Author:Bill Noel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Enigma House Press

Chapter Twenty-Two

After hanging with the upper crust, wine-and-cheese crowd last night, I wasn’t ready to face another large group at a restaurant, so I headed to Bert’s for breakfast. I grabbed coffee and settled for a cinnamon roll before heading to pay when someone called my name. Actually, the person said Christopher, so I knew before turning it was Virgil Debonnet. I preferred Chris for two reasons. First, it’s easier to say, shorter to write. Second, I didn’t like the name Christopher. Why? Just because. Virgil was slow to catch on.

I’d met Virgil six months ago a few days after Charles and I were kayaking only to be nearly decapitated by a single-engine airplane crashing in the marsh within feet of us. Four men were in the plane, two survived. The pilot had been poisoned causing the crash. To make a much longer story shorter, I met Virgil which eventually led to the two of us becoming the target of a killer. We survived, barely. Since then, Virgil and I had run across each other on several occasions.

I pivoted, smiled, and said, “Hi, Virgil. How many times do I have to tell you to call me Chris?”

He returned my smile. “I suppose more since I’m still calling you Christopher.”

Virgil was in his forties, my height, with slicked-back black hair, and always wearing sunglasses.

I shook his hand while asking how he was doing.

“Amazingly well for me.”

Two years ago, he owned a mansion overlooking the Charleston Harbor, a yacht, had a blue blood wife, a lifestyle bordering on one for the rich and famous. Drugs, drink, gambling, horrible stock investments combined to cost him his fortune, house, yacht, plus his wife after she told him poverty wasn’t in her genes. He now lives in a small apartment on Folly. From what I could tell, he was far happier than anyone should be after his downward spiral into poverty.

“Any luck on the job search?”

He’d burned all bridges in the financial industry where he’d previously worked. To my knowledge, he spends most of his days walking around the island or frequenting bars, sharing drinks and tall tales with those around him.

“My gainful employment hiatus is still in effect, although, my landlord allows me to remain in residence if I preform maintenance tasks on the apartments in my current domicile.”

“Good,” I said, not knowing what else to add.

“A roof over one’s head is a valuable commodity.” He smiled again. “Enough about me. The rumor mill has been milling stories of one Christopher Landrum, aka Chris, who apparently is taking more than a cursory interest in a skeleton recently uncovered at a nearby venue. Care to elaborate?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

He chuckled. “Enlightening what one hears while bending elbows with some of this enchanting island’s fellow imbibers.”

If the answer was in there somewhere, I missed it. “Who told you?”

“Let’s see,” he said as he looked down at his resoled Guccis. “Oh yeah, Macy at Planet Follywood shared what he’d heard from someone who works at Rita’s. Macy’s

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