The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller) by Robert Reeves Page A

jeans , and saw it was Jackie calling.
    “Well, speak of the devil,” he announced into the phone as he brought it to his ear. Jackie was speaking softly; it was almost eleven p.m. on Friday night and she was likely trying to avoid waking Billy, Cole’s four-year-old nephew. A crowd of people passed by, making it difficult to hear exactly what Jackie was saying so he pressed his ear tighter to the phone. Being Memorial Day weekend, coupled with Spoleto, the streets were busy and loud with strays and couples.
    “You need to talk to me? Huh? Can’t this wait till tomorrow?” Cole yelled in hopes that Jackie could hear him. “No? Why not? I’m out with Ann. I’m supposed to see you at brunch tomorrow to pick up Billy, right?”
    From the comments Ann could tell that the conversation was serious. She looked at Cole in his jeans and his snow-cone blue gingham shirt and mouthed ‘dashing.’ Cole smiled and bowed with large accompanying hand gestures.
    Ann whispered, “Is everything okay?”
    “I don’t know.” Cole responded while covering the receiver of his phone. “She’s acting weird. Something’s up. She’s demanding I go to Mount P tonight.” A quizzical look came over his face as he pondered why his sister was being so insistent.
    Cole spoke into the phone. “Mount Pleasant? Tonight? Why?”
    After a few moments of listening, Cole whispered back to Ann. “She keeps saying she’ll fill me in when I get there.”
    Shaking his head in defiance, Cole responded to his sister. “Listen Jackie, I’m out with Ann and we’ve already had a few drinks. You’ve said no one’s is dead or dying, so let’s do this in the morning. I’ll come over earlier, say ten? But for now, Ann and I are going to close out the night.”
    Jackie had relented. Cole ended the call with a rushed, “Yeah, I love you too.”
    Ann’s eyes were big as she pushed for details. “What’s up?”
    “Ugh, no clue. She was like in a panic but refused to say why. But she said it could wait till tomorrow. So it’s clearly nothing urgent. Funny though. She told me to watch out and make sure to watch out for you, too.”
    Ann and Cole puzzled over the call for a minute more before brushing it off to wander the streets of Charleston, passing by cobblestoned streets and private gardens on their way back to the hotel. A horse-drawn carriage passed by without clients as it headed to the stables. Away from the main drag of Meeting Street, the thick air dampened sounds and made the city seem empty. Gas lamps lit their way with a warm glow usually associated with some European town. Reaching the hotel after their slow saunter through the side streets of the Peninsula, they parted to their respective rooms.
     
    BACK IN HIS room, Cole picked up the phone and called Jackie back; he needed to know what in the world was going on.
    Jackie pounced to answer the call, ultimately disclosing the reason for her earlier panicked call. “Yeah, some FBI agent, that’s all he would say.”
    Cole saw his face narrow into a puzzled look in the mirror that sat across the room, as he wondered why an FBI agent would want to talk to him. The FBI didn’t scare him. He had worked for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. the first two years out of law school, where he interrogated FBI agents, Department of Defense personnel, and others. But that all related to environmental cases. Them calling now out of the blue, well…that was new.
    Why would the FBI want to talk to me? At age three the FBI collected a copy of his fingerprints from a safety fair he attended at school. Since law school he had been fingerprinted at least half a dozen times in relation to school and licensing requirements in various states. Each event flashed in his mind with vivid accuracy. Trying to get away with a crime was the stupidest thing he could ever do.
    Cole’s mind immediately went to the image of a typed document, a pending application for admission to practice in New