The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

by M. Glenn Graves

  It was early afternoon, and I decided to enjoy what was left of my time off. I must say that I love my mother, but being secluded in a house for six days with her with no hope for escape except by going outside and enduring the wetness of the weather, makes me glad that she lives in Clancyville and I reside in Norfolk. The miles between us are a gift.

  As my mother has aged, she has become more negative. She criticizes nearly everything. Most of what she critiques I agree with, but I don’t want to talk about it. And if I happen to agree with her, it only feeds the negative treadmill. If I disagree, then I am doomed to listen to her droning out the reasons why she is correct in her assessment of said evil. Evil. That would be her word.

  I have decided that this could be the one reason that I still live alone except for my canine partner Sam, the beautiful, majestic, black Labrador Retriever who wandered into my life several years ago. He stayed with me of his own volition. There was no coercion on my part. I suspected that he liked me and that he chose me to be his partner. If I told you how smart he is, you would only say I was bragging and just another dog lover. Probably so. But, on the other hand, his deeds of prowess are legendary, if only by my own assessment.

  I also live with Rogers the computer. I would never call her a computer in any open conversation where she might overhear such a term. Until she can put forth a more accurate noun that depicts what she is or who she is, she is simply Rogers for the time being.

  Sitting in my old, comfortable chair by the window, I was counting the raindrops since the rain refused to quit altogether. That’s what detectives do when they have pressing cases in which they have absolutely no interest in solving, except for greed. Drinking coffee and counting raindrops. Excitement pervades. I was doing my best to avoid the documentation of Zelda’s infidelities.

  The phone rang and moved me from my coffee-induced stupor. I lost count of the raindrops. Rogers answered the call using my voice. Some computer, huh?

  “Clancy here,” she said with perfect diction.

  She sounded more like me than me. Frightening on some level.

  The speaker phone was turned on so I could hear the voice of the caller. I screen my calls for obvious reasons. Occasionally even a good detective like me is threatened.

  “Rogers, put Clancy on the phone,” the surly, female alto voice on the other end said bluntly.

  I recognized the voice.

  “I’m here,” I said from across the room. Rogers’ sensitive microphone system easily picked up my voice. I was still lodged deeply into the aging chair. Too comfortable to move.

  “Get over here, now,” Starnes said.

  “Is that an order?”

  “As close as it gets. Laurel Shelton ran away from home. She’s been gone two days now. Beth Call is climbing the walls.”

  “Beth say why she might have run away?”

  “Nothing so far. She’s too upset to think rationally. I need your finesse to handle her. You know me. I have no finesse in such things.”

  “I don’t recall you having finesse in anything,” I said.

  “Now, now. Let’s not get too cocky here. Get your butt to my place ASAP so we can go look for her.”

  “A clear example of your finesse.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Bring the dog. You reckon Rosey can join us?”

  “He’s working in California. I will have to wait for him to call me this time.”

  “More stealth, huh.”

  “I’ll pack a bag and leave immediately. Don’t wait up. I should be there in time for breakfast.”

  Halfway across Virginia I deduced that the monsoons that had invaded the home town of my youth as well as the city of my adult residence were coming from the west. This brilliant deduction was simply the result of finally driving out of the rain as I traveled toward the mountains of western North Carolina. Since it was night, I could see nothing but dark sky and oncoming headlights. Intermittently.

  I turned onto Highway 29 South near Danville and headed towards Greensboro. It was faster if I stayed on the major roads instead of doing the back roads thing. It was after ten o’clock, and I was already bone weary. Sam was asleep on the seat beside me.

  I pulled off the highway and parked at the first rest stop in North Carolina. After a restroom break, I gulped down two cups of coffee from my thermos and gave Sam some water. The coffee gave me enough of a stimulus to continue my way toward helping my friend look for a teenager who had helped us on a case nearly two years ago. I was going to the home of Starnes Carver, who had relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina from Norfolk. We had worked together a short while with the Norfolk police force.

  I was in Asheville by two a.m. Bone weariness had evolved into near exhaustion, so I pulled over on Highway 19/23, which is the Future I-26 West towards Tennessee. My destination was McAdams County, the home place of Starnes Carver.

  It was 5:30 a.m. when I awakened. I imagined Sam to still be in the throes of a fast-paced dream since his front legs were moving rapidly. There was no rain descending on us. I used the magic button in my Jeep to roll down the window. The air seemed fresh and clear and cool. No wonder Starnes loved it here.

  This was my first trip back to Starnes’ world since I had bought my new Jeep. I lost my old one some two years ago in this county. Rough roads and hard driving will do it every time. Add to that some men with guns, a rainy night, and, well, my new Jeep is really just a different Jeep from the one I had back then.

  I pulled into Starnes’ sparsely graveled parking places in front of her white framed house at the edge of the holler where both of her parents had lived and died. Starnes had left McAdams County and worked alongside of me in Norfolk as a crime scene analyst. She was one of the best I had known. A few years back she had left Norfolk to return home to take care of her aging father and mother. The mother died almost immediately, so Starnes stayed on to care for a father who did not feel the need for such care. Starnes handled that difficult situation with more grace than I could have done.

  After dear old Spud Carver died, Starnes stayed on in the county working as a substitute sheriff when the duly elected one was wounded and had to spend time in the hospital. She stayed on in an advisory capacity after the democrat returned to office without so much as a thank you for her job well done. Perhaps the newly formed advisory position was the overt thank you.

  It was nearing 6:30 a.m. by the Jeep’s clock when Sam and I crawled out of the vehicle. After the demise of my previous Jeep nearly two years ago in this very county, I had managed to find a newer model without breaking the bank on a new one. This newer one, newer than my totaled dream car long gone, had more gadgets and gizmos than any space vehicle NASA could create. I was still learning which button did what.

  I opened the front door of Starnes’ house and smelled the freshly brewed caffeine-laden aroma emanating from the kitchen at the back of the house. Sam trotted into her house ahead of me.

  “It’s about time,” she said as she handed me a large mug of coffee upon entering the living room.

  Dog greeted us as if she liked us. She was nothing more than a stray that had wandered into Starnes’ mountain home a few years ago and stayed. Something like Sam had done to me. It must have been our magnetic personalities that attracted these canines. Without a doubt.

  Besides being Sam’s close friend, Dog was unique in that she had three good legs, having lost one doing battle against a larger-than-life critter trying to kill her master. Sam was injured by the same beast but without such a significant loss. However, one would never know that Dog had any kind of physical handicap except for the visual confirmation. She moved with the greatest of ease. I don’t think Dog believed she was handicapped.

  Starnes had placed an additional dog dish on the floor beside Dog’s food dish. It was full of food which Sam began to guzzle as if he were a stray on a two-week fast. Dog joined him and the tandem ate side by side. Occasionally they would pause in their wolfing down the morsels to look at each other. BFF
s.

  “I thought I made excellent time,” I said.

  “Sleep any?”

  “A few hours around North Asheville.”

  “We need to go hiking,” she said.

  “I figured that. Think we ought to stop by and talk with Beth Call before we launch our search?”

  “Continue our search. I’ve been at it for the better part of two days now. Beth Call wasn’t saying much yesterday when I touched base with her,” Starnes said.

  “Sometimes it’s what they don’t say that is telling.”

  “That’s what makes you the shrewd investigator. I’m just the processor of the scene of the crime.”

  “You probably know more than you realize.”

  “To what do you elude?”

  “Tell me what Beth Call said when she called you.”

  “Said that Laurel had been missing for almost twenty-four hours. She said that her daughter had left without telling her that she was going anywhere.”

  “That’s not usual for Laurel,” I said, remembering the young girl who was so responsible when she helped us on our last case together here in the mountains.

  “No, not usual. She and her mother have always been close.”

  “Something changed,” I said. “And yesterday, when you checked in on Beth, did she have anything else to say to you?”

  “Well, there’s this man in her life now.”

  “And this was a revelation for you, I suppose?”

  “I don’t see Beth or Laurel that much. They live across two or three mountains from me, and my work doesn’t always take me to their place. I had no idea that Beth had a boyfriend.”

  “Is that what she called him?”

  “I think I heard that term used. But, what I do remember her saying was something along the lines of … Hamish and I were alone in another room whenever Laurel probably left.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Does that mean something?” Starnes said. “Or are you just being prudish?”

  “Probably a clue.”

  “You usually say yikes when you are on to something.”

  “Or when I am surprised by a turn of events, or danger is lurking.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Maybe both. What’s the guy’s name again?”

  “Hamish McClure. Nickname is Curly.”

  “Obvious reasons for that nickname?” I said.

  “I don’t think so. He’s mostly bald.”

  “Irony.”

  “Or maybe he’s stupid and named for one of the Three Stooges,” Starnes said.

  That was why I liked her. She mostly went for the downside of human nature. In my line of work, I wallowed there a bit myself. When you see the sordid side of people, it makes you go to the bad before you can see the good.

  “Let’s go see Beth and maybe get to meet Hamish McClure,” I said.

  “Curly.”

  “Oh, yeah. Curly.”

  “Why do you want to meet Curly?”

  “I don’t like to judge people until I can eyeball them up close and personal.”

  “Then you’ll judge them,” she said as a conclusion.

  “You betcha.”

  Chapter 2

  It was ten o’clock when we arrived at Beth Call’s home in the Hickory Fork Creek section of McAdams County. I recalled that there was a trailhead not far from her home. It was one of many favorite hikes Laurel had in her mountains. What made this one especially appealing for us now was that it was close to her house. Accessibility can be crucial if one is running away.

  “You look for Laurel along the Hickory Fork trail close to here?” I said to Starnes as she knocked on the door.

  “Drove down a few miles and picked up another trail which intersected that one to save some time. I figured by the time Beth had contacted me about her missing daughter, Laurel had had enough time to cover the short five miles from the Hickory Fork trailhead to where I overlapped it deeper into Shelton Laurel.”

  “The short five miles, you say,” I said in mocking tones.

  A man answered the door before Starnes could provide some sarcasm regarding my athletic competence. The man standing in front of us was balding to the tune of the male-pattern stuff. He was attempting to grow some facial hair as if he was trying for a goatee but was not having any notable success. The only other noticeable feature of this slender, male specimen was that he was holding a cigarette in his right hand, squeezed tightly between his index and middle finger with his thumb resting lightly against the filter. He exhaled a cloud of cancerous smoke in our direction as he sized up the two females standing on the porch. With my shrewd detective skills, I deduced that Curly McClure was the character staring blankly at us through the screen door.

  “Come on inside, you must be that detective,” he said as he pushed open the screen and allowed us to enter. We left the dogs in the Jeep. I noticed that he failed to acknowledge Starnes.

  “We haven’t had the pleasure,” I said after I was inside. I extended my right hand as an obvious sign that I intended to shake hands with the man.

  He looked bewildered. His eyes dropped to his right hand that was still holding his short stub of a cancer stick pinched by the same two fingers I had observed before he permitted us to enter, then he looked at me as if I had asked for a kiss and a hug.

  “I’m Clancy Evans,” I said to the man who appeared to be in his mid-forties and living in another zone despite our proximity to each other at that moment.

  “I don’t shake hands with a woman,” he said and pointed to the other room. “She’s in there, bawling her eyes out. See if you two can git her to stop all that stuff.”

  Mr. Sympathetic.

  Starnes and I moved in the direction of his point.

  The balding, yet unnamed, man of forty-something years trailed us into the room where Beth was sitting at the head of her bed with her back against several pillows. She was wiping her eyes and trying unsuccessfully to stop crying, or so it seemed. My first thought was that bawling her eyes out had been a stretch. Perhaps I had missed that portion of the displayed emotions.

  “We’ll find her, Beth Sweetie,” he said in a most insincere voice. He took another drag from his stubby weed and let it fall to the floor before he stepped on it as a way of extinguishing the fire.

  Macho man was wearing a tank top and some cut-off shorts. The tank top was intended, I guessed, to show off some muscles and upper torso parts that would wow the opposite sex. It was purely guesswork on my part since I saw no indication that he had anything resembling muscles that needed to be displayed by such a shirt. My friend Roosevelt Washington was another story when it came to having muscle tone. I thought of the irony that existed. My friend Rosey never wore tank tops. He wasn’t about showcasing his well-chiseled body. Subtle can be good and enticing.

  “So, when exactly did you notice that she was missing, Beth?” I said.

  She looked at the man before answering.

  “It was nearly supper time two days ago. That’s right, isn’t it Curly?” she said.

  Macho Curly had yet another cigarette already in his mouth and was in the process of lighting it. We waited for his response to Beth’s question. He blew a cloud of smoke over the bed and it nearly engulfed the room. I couldn’t help but consider the stuff of second-hand smoke. Too much reading on my part.

  “I asked you not to smoke in here,” she said to him.

  “Geeze, honey,” he drawled out his words, “whatever you say.”

  His obvious sarcasm was dripping with arrogance.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s about right, luv,” he continued as he removed the cigarette from his mouth and returned it unceremoniously to the pack he had retrieved from his shirt pocket. “She didn’t show for supper, and Beth got all worried about her. I told her that the kid’d be okay, that she was just out somewhere playing, you know, doing little girl stuff. But damn, when she didn’t come home by the next night, well, we all got pretty worried. Beth here fell apart and went to cry
ing her eyes out.”

  Mr. Sensitivity continued his empathetic way with words.

  “Did you call the Sheriff right away?” I said.

  “We did, and he told us to drive over to Madison and file a missing person’s report. And we did, for all the good it’ll do. If she’s lost in these mountains, … well, there’s no telling where she is or if she’s still alive,” Beth said.

  “Let’s not go there just yet. She knows these mountains better than most, and I can’t imagine her getting lost unless she ends up on some unfamiliar trails. Even that’s hard to imagine,” Starnes said.

  Beth wiped her eyes with her wet tissue. She then drew another from the box next to her side and blew her nose.

  “I’m goin’ outside to smoke,” Macho Curly said and left the room.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Beth said as soon as he was gone. “He knows better than to smoke in the house.”

  I thought she was genuinely sorry about Curly. I know I was. Smoking notwithstanding.

  “Who is he?” I said to Beth.

  “Curly,” she said. “That’s his nickname. His real name is Hamish. We just call him Curly. Curly McClure.”

  “Boyfriend,” I said to verify what I had already been told by Starnes.

  “He came when I was really lonely. He’s not too bad after you get used to him.”

  I think she meant that, but I was having a hard time getting used to him. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get used to him. But then I had only been around him for less than ten minutes.

  “Does he get along with Laurel?” I said.

  “Most of the time. She doesn’t really like him that much, but you know that middle school age bracket. She’s going through puberty and all. It makes her irritable and hard to get along with, even for us. You know what I mean … mother and daughter thing. We argue more now.”