“Has she said anything to you about Curly?” I said.
“Nothing that I paid any attention to,” Beth said.
“What did she tell you?” Starnes asked.
“Oh, she said that he was making eyes at her one day, stuff like that. Nothing to it. Curly’s just one of those playful kind of guys, teases a lot, you know. I know I’m Curly’s girl. He’s not interested in a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“Fourteen,” Starnes corrected.
“Yeah. Wow. I can’t believe my baby’s fourteen years old. I forgot that she turned fourteen last year. Wow, I can’t believe it,” Beth said and stared off as if in a daze.
I thought it a tad odd that a mother would not recall exactly the age of her daughter.
“Anything else you can tell us?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Beth said.
“I mean, have you and Laurel been arguing or fighting about anything else?” I said.
“Not really. She’s her normal self most of the time.”
“And when she’s not?” I said.
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Have you been able to ascertain those times when she is not her normal self, to quote you?”
“You mean like when she’s irritable as opposed to what I would expect of her?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Not really. I notice it a lot sometimes at supper or afterwards.”
“Is it just you two at supper most of the time?” I said.
“Yeah, just the two of us and Curly comes over a lot.”
“For supper?”
“Yes, and he stays afterwards. I like to talk and he talks and you know, like a date sometimes.”
“And where does Laurel fit in?”
“I’m lost,” she said.
“When you and Curly are talking like on a date, is Laurel around or does she go off and leave you two alone?”
“Funny you should ask that,” Beth said.
“Funny?” Starnes said.
“Yeah. She seems to want to go off and leave us alone, but most of the time Curly insists that she stay so we can all get acquainted.”
Curly the social animal.
“But you and Curly do have some alone time, right?” I said.
“Some. Not enough to suit me. Or Curly even, I would imagine.”
“Because he wants Laurel around much of the time?” I said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said and wiped her nose which seemed to be streaming a little.
“And you have talked with Laurel about Curly?” I said.
“She doesn’t like to talk about him. She told me that she didn’t trust him, but I told her she was being foolish and that Curly was only teasing her.”
“Anything specific?”
“I don’t follow,” Beth said.
“Did something happen between Curly and Laurel that caused her to express the distrust?”
“Distrust about what?” Curly’s caring nature yelled at us from the doorway. I could smell the strong cigarette odor as it slowly moved into our space from one of his exhales. “I thought you were going to help search for the kid?”
“Just trying to figure out why she left such a winsome situation,” I said.
“What does that mean?” Curly snarled as he approached Beth’s bedside. “Who you callin’ winsome?”
“Just a joke,” I said. “Beth told us that you liked to tease.”
“Gotta have some fun, you know. Yeah, I tease some. Don’t mean nothing by it. Harmless teasing. Keeps life interesting,” he said.
“Unless the person being teased doesn’t get the joke,” Starnes said.
Chapter 3
The bed of the old pickup was rough and smelled like something had been freshly killed and left there for too long. The tarp that covered her was heavy and smelled equally bad. The gag in her mouth made it difficult to swallow. Breathing wasn’t a problem. Her hands were bound as were her feet. The two men had tied her hands and feet separately, and then had stretched a rope to join her hands and feet along her front. This joining forced Laurel to assume a fetal position with her knees bent and her arms extended to reach down.
Laurel was blindfolded with a greasy, red bandana. The odor of the blindfold was making her nauseous.
With the tarp over her entire body, and the redundant, greasy bandana covering her eyes, there was no way she could discern night from day. Now and then the truck would hit a bump in the road and the metal frame of the truck bed inflicted pain on her right side. It was uncomfortable, but she tolerated it since rolling over was hard to do. A couple of failed attempts had educated her to that truth.
Laurel Shelton was not a normal adolescent girl. Her years of hiking and roaming the trails of the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina had conditioned her body to withstand some discomfort. However, she was beginning to suspect that she lived under an unlucky star or maybe a dark cloud. This was the second time in her life that she had been kidnapped. Most people have never had the privilege.
Compared to her first kidnapping experience, these two guys were amateurs. They had made a few mistakes in their endeavor to apprehend and to contain her. Their first error was in tying her hands in front of her instead of behind her. Their second mistake was in not taking her cell phone from her. Number three mistake was in tossing her backpack in the back of the pickup just before they threw her into the truck’s bed. Number four was maybe the worst mistake they made. They did not know the intelligence of the one they had kidnapped. The mentality which believes that all young girls are the same would be their significant failure in holding onto their prey.
Laurel’s unskilled captors had bound her hands in front. Despite the darkness of her present situation, she easily removed the small cord which bound her wrists together by working her arms back and forth to loosen the restraint. She then pulled the gag from her mouth, slid the bandana from her eyes to her neck, and then folded her legs closer to her chest and removed the rope from her ankles. All of this was accomplished underneath the tarp.
Slowly she crawled under the tarp toward the tailgate of the truck. She realized that she had been thrown towards the cab. She decided to remain under the tarp and move ever so slowly so as not to call attention to herself in case it was light enough outside that her captors could view the truck bed through the rear window.
Laurel peeked out of the end of the tarp and was glad to discover it was nearly dark. She retrieved her backpack and patted her pocket to be sure that she still had her cell phone.
She waited for the right moment to escape from the two criminal masterminds who had lucked into their capture of her along the AT. She silently cursed her fate at tripping over that tree root. She relived that scene several times before she let it go. Rubbing her sore knees and ankle, she wondered how far she had come in the truck. Of course, she had no way of knowing. Nor did she know precisely where she was at that moment.
The truck slowed down and Laurel decided to jump just as the vehicle made a turn onto another road. There was a slight pause or hesitation, and then it began to accelerate slowly. She realized that the truck was a manual transmission. Next came the scraping sound when the driver released the clutch before the gears had re-engaged when he shifted from third to first.
One of the men cussed loudly. She guessed it to be the passenger and not the driver, but only because of the direction of the sound.
She waited a few seconds, and then moved slowly from underneath the heavy tarp. The fading light from the setting sun allowed her to quickly study the landscape along the road. She wanted some high grass or a few weeds if not shrubs to provide her with some cover once she jumped from the truck bed. She also wanted to avoid jumping onto large rocks if she could.
It was easy for her to conclude that she was still somewhere in the mountains, but nothing looked familiar.
She lifted her head above the tailgate and used the fading light of the sunset, along with the dim h
eadlamps of the truck, to see the thick forest on the passenger’s side of the truck. It was now or never for her escape-jump.
She reminded herself of the need to be quiet when she jumped. At least she needed to be as quiet as possible as she would be landing on the ground as the truck accelerated. The ditch on the side of her planned leap made for a perfect bed of mush in which to soften the sound of body hitting the ground. She could live with mud on her as opposed to being bound by ropes. Her plan was to lie still for a few moments in case the landing made more noise than she intended.
She leaped.
“Didya hear that?” the rider said to the driver.
“What?”
“I heard something back there,” he said and pointed to the woods on his right.
“For cryin’ out loud. ‘Course you heard something out there. Animals out there. They live there. They make noise. Roam around. Jest settle down, will yeah? We’re almost there.”
The rider turned to look back in the bed of the truck. The tarp was still in place and appeared to be lumpy.
“Everything alright back there? Ya see anything?” the driver said.
“All still. Nothing moving. She ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the rider said.
The truck sped on towards its destination, but without the precious cargo they had captured less than an hour earlier. They were oblivious to Laurel’s getaway.
When the truck was out of sight, Laurel remained still for another few minutes. It was uncomfortable to lie in the ditch with that murky water all around her. The wet grass began to chill her. Despite the discomfort, she held to her plan of escape.
It was now darker and her eyes were slowly adjusting to the night sky and the environs around her changed position. Whatever was in this ditch with her was surely better than being in that truck under the tarp as a prisoner of those two men.
The sound of rushing water caught her attention.
She delayed a bit longer to make sure that she had managed to get away from the two less-than-clever kidnappers. A few minutes later, it was time to move. Her knees and ankle still hurt, but she forced herself to move to the other side of the gravel road, the direction of the sound of running water. A distant light reflected on the water.
Probably a river, or maybe a large creek, she thought. She turned around in the same spot several times, trying to get her bearing. She knew McAdams County well, but in the dark, she had no idea as to her location. The river helped, but not enough. If she only knew which body of water this was.
She decided to take her chances in the woods off to the right. Better there than following the road. As clumsy as those two were, they might come back looking once they discovered she had gone. Her goal was to get away completely. Second to that, she wanted to make sure that this time it would be harder on them to find her and subdue her.
Fearlessly, she moved into the woods as she swung the backpack onto her shoulders with purpose. Confident that she could find her way through any wood and along any trail, she started her journey with fresh hope and great courage. Her confidence was invigorating. She promised herself to be more careful this time.
Chapter 4
“I have a hunch,” I said to Starnes as we climbed in the Jeep and closed the doors.
“If it’s a good one, tell me.”
“We’ll never know unless we try it.”
“You get me in a lot of trouble with that attitude, you know.”
“We always find a way out. So, here it is …my last memory of Laurel Storm Shelton hiking was when she guided Rosey to Big Bald on the Appalachian Trail from the Shelton Laurel area.”
“What makes you think she would take that trail again?”
“Can’t say.”
“And you base this on … what?”
“That’s why they call it a hunch,” I said.
“Who’s they?” Starnes said.
“Sometimes you’re impossible.”
“I try,” she said.
We brought along a piece of clothing from Laurel’s room to allow our non-professional dogs to smell and to lead us to the fourteen-year-old girl. It was a long shot, nothing more. It was a hope. A lot like my hunch about where to begin our search in the vast mountains of western North Carolina.
Despite Sam’s lack of training, he had managed to save my life enough times that I trusted his instinct as well as my ability to communicate with him. Starnes remained skeptical, which was her modus operandi. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have both Dog and Sam. Wherever Sam would go, Dog would follow. Both had skills and got along quite well with each other.
We drove to the access point of the Green River Trail deep in the Shelton Laurel community of McAdams County. Less than three hours from our beginning this trail we would make it to the AT.
“I don’t like this hunch,” Starnes said as we started out.
“You have a better idea?”
“No. I just want it on the record that I don’t like this hunch.”
“The reason being,” I said.
“The reason being that this is a killer hike, no matter where you begin and where you end.”
“Your reason is duly noted.”
“Hooray.”
After giving both canines a chance to smell the recently worn clothing of Laurel Shelton provided by her mother, we watched the dogs bound up the mountain as if they had all the energy in the world. Compared to us, they had all the energy in the world. If wishes were horses.
We followed them at a short distance of about twenty yards to begin with. We had to hustle to maintain that separation. Now and then Sam would come back to check on me, making sure that I was still coming and doing well. Dog followed Sam back to us each time. I doubted that she was checking on Starnes. She simply liked going wherever Sam went.
The distance of separation gradually extended. I knew it would eventually. The twenty yards soon became fifty, and then we lost sight of our canine companions. I wasn’t concerned, since I knew Sam would always double back and see if I was still coming along. The way of the Labrador Retriever. An hour and a half into our uphill agony, we found Sam sitting by a tree fall just off the path. Dog was sniffing around the area.
“You wanna rest here?” I said to Starnes.
“I wanted to rest a mile back,” she said.
“That’s about where we started,” I said.
“Yep, that’s when I wanted to rest. I’m good now. Let’s keep going. Nightfall will get us soon enough.”
I called Sam and started up the trail once again. He barked at me and remained seated near the tree fall. I grabbed Starnes by the arm to halt her from proceeding.
“I think he’s found something,” I said.
I walked over to him. He moved slightly from the spot and barked some more.
“Was she here?” I said to him.
He barked once. It was our usual exchange indicating a yes answer to my question.
“She was here,” I said to Starnes.
“And you expect me to believe that?”
“Matters not to me. I believe it and that’s sufficient evidence that we’re headed in the right direction.”
“The relationship you have with that dog is nearly as strange as the relationship you have with your computer,” she said.
She turned around to find Dog who was still moving around excitedly, sniffing every plant, bush, and tree available.
“You think she was here?” she said to Dog.
Dog stopped moving and sniffing. She sat down and looked straight into Starnes’ eyes. She barked once.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s sufficient for me. Our dogs agree. Let’s keep going.”
Starnes shook her head at my verbal confirmation.
“Show the way,” I said to Sam and he broke into a run up the mountain once again. Dog quickly adjusted to Sam’s brisk pace.
Another hour into our hike we reached a nearly level area where it appeared that some hikers had rested.
“You know this trail better
than I do,” I said to Starnes. “How much further to the AT from here?”
“Maybe twenty minutes if we hustle,” she said.
I watched Sam sniff around the area.
“Was she here?” I said to him.
He barked once. Dog barked once as well.
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Starnes said, “or in this case, monkey hear, monkey repeat sound.”
“You’re losing your imaginative spirit,” I said to her.
“Not sure I ever had one. I’m a scientist.”
“Sounds a bit negative towards scientists,” I said. “Can’t scientists have imaginative spirits?”
“I would imagine that some might have that trait. I happen to not be one of them.”
We increased our pace and climbed some more. Twenty-five minutes later we found the AT. We still had a few hours of daylight left, so I was beginning to feel optimistic.
“Now which way?’ Starnes said.
“She would go north.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I have to assume that she is running away from something or someone. Why go south towards the direction of home? If she felt safe at home, she would have stayed.”
“You think that Curly the stooge has something to do with her departure?” Starnes said.
“I do. But again, it’s only a hunch. Coupled with the fact that I don’t like the man, it’s easy for me to cast aspersions.”
“Made a good impression, did he?”
“I wanted to shoot him.”
We turned north and tried to hurry our pace. Despite the daylight remaining, we still knew that finding the girl would be difficult at best, or maybe pure luck, with the few hours of light we had left. If we were on the right trail …. Dog and Sam were leading the way, and we were doing our best to follow.
A few minutes passed and Starnes stopped dead in the trail and turned back toward me. I paused and waited. She seemed eager to say something.
“I wanted to shoot him, too,” she said and then turned back to the trail and ran ahead.
The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon Page 3
