Synopsis

Private investigators Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews thought they’d put Darius Baker’s troubles to rest—then his recently discovered son ropes him into a hemp farm investment with his college buddies. When a beloved Charleston professor—and potential investor—is murdered, Liz and Nate discover Darius keeps the PIs on speed dial.

A shocking number of people had reasons to want the genteel, bowtie wearing, tea-drinking professor dead. Was it one of his many girlfriends or a disgruntled student? Or perhaps Murray was killed because his failure to invest meant the hemp farm trio’s dreams were going up in smoke?

Though Liz’s long-dead best friend, Colleen, warns her the stakes are far higher than Liz imagines, she is hellbent on finding the no-good killer among the bevy of suspects. But will the price of justice be more than Liz can bear?

Take a virtual vacation to Charleston in Susan M. Boyer’s latest Southern charmer, Lowcountry Boondoggle … It’s a trip you don’t want to miss.

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Excerpt

The dead are audacious sorts. Take my best friend, Colleen. I’m not saying she’s brave. She is, of course, but you’d expect that, I suppose. The thing virtually all mortals fear most is death—either their own or someone else’s. Colleen cleared that hurdle our junior year in high school, when she downed a bottle of tequila and went swimming in Breach Inlet. She’s fearless, all right, but what I’m saying here is that Colleen has abandoned all sense of decorum. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that she’ll forever be a teenager. But her behavior at times is more fitting that of a six-year-old.

By way of example, on a Monday morning in late October, Nate and I were meeting with a client, Darius Baker, and his attorneys, Fraser Rutledge and Eli Radcliffe, in their elegantly appointed offices. Rutledge & Radcliffe is one of the most distinguished law firms on Broad Street in Charleston, South Carolina. The furniture in that office is museum quality, the sound so utterly dampened by luxurious rugs you almost feel the need to whisper like you’re in church. Colleen sat cross-legged like a child on the corner of Fraser’s massive desk. In her ankle-length tangerine dress with Swiss polka dots, her long red hair loose about her shoulders, she brought to mind a big orange tabby cat.

Talbot & Andrews Investigations—that’s the name of our PI firm—had an arrangement with Rutledge & Radcliffe. We didn’t work for them directly, though they’d tried to hire us many times.

But Nate, my husband and partner, and I had an open-ended contract, and lately, a sizable chunk of our workload came through Rutledge & Radcliffe. In a switch, we’d referred Darius Baker to them recently when he had an unfortunate run of luck and a pressing need for a highly skilled local criminal attorney.

That particular morning, Darius, our celebrity client, had requested the meeting with both his legal and his investigative teams. Darius always covered his bases. The five of us, Nate, me, Darius, Fraser Rutledge and Eli Radcliffe, congregated in Fraser’s office to put our heads together regarding the developing situation with Darius’s long-lost love child. Let me tell you, between the colorful personalities present, the sensitive subject matter, and the unconstrained teenaged guardian spirit, it was a potentially combustible situation.

Fraser Alston Rutledge III may have been the most comfortable person in his own skin I’d ever met. A study in contrasts, he clearly came from very old Charleston money. His seersucker suit was light blue, his bowtie and suspenders navy. The oil painting on his cypress-paneled office wall featured him with his Brittany spaniels. But his gelled hair, spiked on top, was not a style favored amongst the South of Broad set.

Fraser sat back in his executive leather chair and gave Darius a look that called his common sense into serious question. “Mr. Baker, Eli and I have deliberated over the developments you outlined by telephone, but for the sake of ensuring we are all on the same page here, let me see if I have the details of your predicament straight.”

Wearing jeans, a white button-down, and a navy blazer, Darius looked the part of a modern Lowcountry gentleman, which he was.

His smooth skin was the color of fine milk chocolate. He wasn’t quite forty, but he was completely bald. Darius closed his eyes, sighed, moved restlessly in his chair. “Fine.”

Fraser said, “A suspicious fire wiped out Brantley Miller’s entire adoptive family up in Travelers Rest back in March. In August, Mr. Miller contacted you online and indicated that he believed you were related. Subsequently, you ascertained that he is your son. He arrived in Stella Maris in September. Today is October 26. Mr. Miller is living in your home, and you have invested in his business venture with two other young men to grow hemp commercially.” Fraser tasted the word “hemp,” seemed to find it disagreeable.

“Last week,” continued Fraser, “another potential investor in that enterprise, Dr. Murray Hamilton, a beloved local college professor, who is coincidentally the uncle of one of Mr. Miller’s business partners, was murdered in his home over on Montagu Street and his house was subsequently blown to kingdom come, the remnants burned to a pile of ash. His nephew, one Tyler Duval—Mr. Miller’s friend and business associate—has been questioned by the police, and Mr. Miller is concerned that Mr. Duval may be arrested at any moment. Am I in possession of all the salient facts?”

Darius flashed him a pained expression. “Yeah. Sounds like it.”

Fraser leaned forward. “I would not be fulfilling my responsibility to you as a client of this firm if I failed to acquaint you with the many potential exposures you face here.” He proceeded to hold forth for the better part of ten minutes, which he was prone to do.

Bored, Colleen commenced standing on her head. “I wonder if I can hold this as long as he can talk?” Through some magic of hers, her dress defied gravity and didn’t flip over her head.

Eli, Darius, Nate, and I occupied the four deep leather visitor chairs in front of Fraser’s desk. Nate and I were the only ones who could see Colleen, and we ignored her completely. We’d discovered this was often the best strategy. Colleen loved nothing more than to provoke me in front of others, make me respond to her and look like a lunatic to everyone else in the vicinity.

Fraser droned on, oblivious to Colleen’s antics. “Eli and I have discussed this at great length. It is our considered opinion that you, Mr. Baker, and all of your interests, would be best served by keeping Mr. Miller and his friends—this hemp business and the recent untimely death of Professor Hamilton—at arm’s length. Your own legal troubles are not that far behind you. To become embroiled in another murder case at this juncture would be highly imprudent—”
Darius raised both palms and shook his head until Fraser stopped talking. As a relatively new client at Rutledge & Radcliffe, Darius was unaccustomed to listening to someone else talk for such extended periods. He had little patience with Fraser’s affection for the sound of his own voice. Darius looked at each of us in turn, wide-eyed and solemn, first Fraser, then Eli, then Nate, and then me. “I’m gonna be real with y’all.”

Until recently, Darius was the star of a hit reality TV series, Main Street USA. He traveled to a different small town each week, sampled the local food, attended festivals and whatnot, chatted with the local folks, and offered colorful commentary. He was a character, is what I’m saying. And his character spoke in “down home, easygoing, funny, Southern black guy, with a bit of Hollywood,” a patois that was his brand. Darius could no doubt turn that off if he wanted to. But it was rare for him to break character, even now.

Fraser sat back in his chair, raised an elegant eyebrow, and gestured magnanimously. “Well, by all means, Mr. Baker. Do be real with us.”

For her part, Colleen came down off her head and settled back into a cross-legged pose.

Darius continued, “Now, I know y’all have my best interests at heart. And I appreciate that, I do. But we’re talking about my son here. Brantley is my son. You feel me? Family is family. Now, I’m not stupid. I know he might’ve originally got in touch with me ’cause he was all excited about maybe he was gonna get himself some of my money. But we’re gettin’ to know each other. We’re buildin’ a relationship here. And he came to me for help. So I want to help. Now, can y’all help me help him…or not? ’Cause there’s more than one high-dollar law office and more than one set a private investigators in this town.”

Fraser’s brown-and-gold-flecked tiger eyes went hard, but he was silent, an unusual situation to say the least. I liked Darius more all the time. He respected Fraser’s abilities, or we wouldn’t have been there. But Darius wasn’t going to suffer Fraser’s high-handed manner in silence either. I was torn because I agreed with Fraser’s assessment if not his style.

“Darius,” I said, “does it not worry you the teensiest bit that we haven’t been able to rule out Brantley’s involvement in the house fire that killed his entire adoptive family barely more than six months ago?”

“Naw,” he said. “Uh-unh. I believe you tried your best to find something… anything…that would incriminate him in that horrible fire that killed that poor family, but you can’t.”

Nate said, “You make it sound unsavory—like we were trying to frame him, Darius. We’re just doing our due diligence, trying to protect you. You and anyone else on Stella Maris Brantley becomes involved with.”

Stella Maris is the island north of Isle of Palms where Darius and I grew up. He’d recently retired from the Hollywood high life and moved home. Brantley, a son—now twenty years old—had shown up fast on his heels, thanks to the marvels of DNA testing and its use in ancestry research.

“I understand that,” said Darius. “That’s why I continued to pay your bill this last month while you went up to Travelers Rest and looked into all a that. But if I understand what y’all are tellin’ me, you can’t find one thing to tie Brantley to that fire.”

“We can’t,” I said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s innocent. It may mean he’s very smart.” Brantley had turned up in our hometown out of the blue the second he learned his biological father was an international celebrity. Would he have come lickety-split if Darius had been a busboy? We’d never know. But I was keeping a close eye on him for the foreseeable future.

“Y’all just cynical,” said Darius. “Probably comes with the job. But I refuse to think the worst a him. If y’all had come back and told me you thought he set that fire, even if you couldn’t actually prove it, I could see sending Brantley packin’. But that’s not what you told me.”

“I am afraid I must agree with Miz Talbot and Mr. Andrews,” said Fraser. “Best to err on the side of caution. Especially given this latest development.”

“That’s not a development,” said Darius. “The fire over on Montagu has nothing whatsoever to do with Brantley.”

“As far as you know,” I said. “But he is connected to Professor Hamilton’s death. That’s the only reason you want us to get involved. Hell’s bells—think, Darius. One brand-new son. Two fires involving deaths.”

Darius said, “Brantley ain’t got nothing to do with that professor’s house catching on fire. If Sonny Ravenel thought for a second that he did, Brantley would be sitting over at the jail in North Charleston, just like I was for four long days and three long nights not very long ago. Sonny, he ain’t shy about locking people up.”
Sonny Ravenel was a good friend and a Charleston police detective. Back in September, he’d had no choice but to arrest Darius in the case of his high-school girlfriend—Brantley’s mother’s—murder, but that’s a whole nother story, and all behind us now, thank goodness.

“You’ve got to admit, it looks suspicious,” said Nate. “Brantley and his buddies meet with the professor, Tyler’s uncle, right?”

“That’s right,” said Darius. “They were there last Monday evening.”

“They need money for their hemp business,” said Nate. “The professor is skeptical. He doesn’t give them any money. Then the professor dies and leaves a substantial sum to his nephew, Tyler Duval. And then Murray Hamilton’s house explodes into flames, possibly destroying evidence.”
What was the protocol? Was Murray Hamilton properly referred to as Dr. Hamilton or Professor Hamilton?

Colleen consulted the ceiling, the way she does when she’s using the cosmic version of Google. “Professor Hamilton. Students would address him as Dr. Hamilton. Outside the classroom you use Professor to differentiate him from a medical doctor, though you’ll hear it both ways.”

Thank you.

“I never said it don’t look suspicious,” said Darius. “Of course it looks suspicious. I know all about suspicious, believe you me. If it didn’t look suspicious, I wouldn’t need y’all to help Brantley’s friend out of this mess. Suspicious don’t mean that boy killed nobody. And it definitely don’t mean Brantley burned somebody’s house down.”

Colleen blew a stray lock of hair off her face, looked annoyed.

“I tried to tell y’all…if Darius was in danger, I would know. Right now he’s not.”

About the Author

Susan M. Boyer is the author of the USA TODAY bestselling Liz Talbot mystery series. She was blessed with a quintessential small-town childhood and has had a life-long love affair with books. Susan is grateful to have been gifted with an over-active imagination. She was one of those children whose teachers were always telling her mamma that her talents needed to be “channeled.” She’s been making things up and writing them down her whole life

Susan’s debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, won the 2012 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, and garnered several other award nominations. The third book in the series, Lowcountry Boneyard, was a Spring 2015 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, and was short-listed for the 2016 Pat Conroy Beach Music Mystery Prize.

Lowcountry Book Club was a Summer 2016 SIBA Okra Pick and was short-listed for the 2017 Southern Book Prize in Mystery & Detective Fiction.

Lowcountry Boomerang, the eighth book in the series was released September 3, 2019. Book nine, LOWCOUNTRY BOONDOOGLE, is scheduled to be released June 30, 2020.

Susan loves beaches, Southern food, and small towns where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has crazy relatives. You’ll find all of the above in her novels. She lives in Greenville, SC, with her husband and an inordinate number of houseplants.

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