No Joke

by Bill Noel

  Charles and I introduced ourselves as the person we hadn’t yet met walked past us on his way to the kitchen.

  “That’s Ray,” Theo said and gave me a sideways look like he was reminding me about the rude, obnoxious one.

  Pete started to say something when Ray returned carrying a cup of coffee. He looked to be about fifty, five-foot eleven, and movie-star handsome. It was clear that he got his looks from his mother.

  “Who are you again?” he asked, not caring that he interrupted Pete.

  We hadn’t said who we were in the first place. I let it go and told him our names.

  “Why are you disturbing our peaceful morning?”

  “They’re friends,” Theo said. “Remember when we were talking yesterday? You said you would like to meet them since you weren’t here when they brought Wallace back? I asked them to stop by this morning.”

  “Must have been Pete. I wasn’t paying attention to what you were yakking about.”

  Wallace said, “Theo was telling us that they had a friend who owns a country music bar who may let us do our act there.”

  Wallace had been closer to reality than last night, yet he didn’t remember me bringing him back. Strange.

  “Sorry, Chris and Charles,” Theo said, and waved for us to return to the couch. “That wasn’t the reason I wanted you to meet the group. You’ve been nice to me from the day we met, can’t say the same for everyone. I wanted my new acquaintances to meet you. Sure you don’t want coffee?”

  The phone in the kitchen rang, and Theo left to answer it.

  Sal watched him go and leaned closer to Charles and me. “Glad we have a few seconds without.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “The reason I’m here is I’ve been worried about Theo. We haven’t talked often. The last couple of years when I called, he sounded out of it. He couldn’t remember much of anything.” He waved his hand toward his friends. “We had a break from touring, so I wanted to get over and help. Theo has money. I didn’t want anyone taking advantage of him.”

  “How’s he been since you’ve been here?” I asked.

  Ray interrupted, “Old and stuffy.”

  “A gentleman, a true gentleman,” Pete said, as he gave Ray a dirty look.

  Sal flipped the back of his hand at Ray like he was flicking away a mosquito. “I don’t understand it. He seems fine. Don’t know what’s going on.”

  Theo returned. “You talking about me again?”

  “Nah. We were saying that since Chris and Charles are here, we’d ask if their friend, Hal, would hire us to do our act in his bar.” He turned to me. “Of course, we’ve performed in large venues all over the country, entertained thousands. We’d like to get back to our roots, you know, intimate venues, closer to our adoring fans. We have all the money we need, so Hal wouldn’t have to pay the fees we’re accustomed to. Of course, we couldn’t work for free. You understand, don’t you?”

  I glanced at Charles, who leaned back on the couch and folded his arms. Thanks, friend.

  “It’s Cal, not Hal,” I said. “I don’t know if he’d be interested. We’ll ask.”

  “I can still picture that SRO crowd in Chicago, Sal,” Wallace said. “Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

  Charles leaned my direction. “SRO means standing room only.”

  I whispered, “I know.”

  Sal patted Wallace’s back. “Wallace, I believe that was a couple of years back.”

  Ray blurted, “Damnit, stupid. Join us on planet earth.”

  Wallace turned to me. “That’s my charming son.”

  I nodded.

  Theo said, “I know you two must run, so we won’t keep you. I wanted you to meet my guests.”

  I didn’t know we had to run but understood why. Theo was giving us an out. We apologized for having to leave so quickly and said it was nice meeting Theo’s friends—Ray excluded. That remained unsaid.

  Theo and, for some reason, Wallace walked us to the door.

  I took the opportunity to ask, “Have you thought more about the body you saw on the beach?”

  Wallace rubbed his chin. “Body?”

  I reminded him what he’d said about seeing a dead body. I omitted the multi-year window.

  “I said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, fine sir. I don’t recall that.”

  Charles looked down as I said goodbye to Wallace and Theo.

  As we walked away, Charles said, “Wow, let’s do that again. I didn’t know comedians could be so funny.”

  Right, I thought, along with, Did Wallace see a body?

  Chapter Five

  I was to meet Barb Deanelli for supper at Loggerhead’s Beach Grill, located across the street from her oceanfront condo. She owned Barb’s Books, a used bookstore located on Center Street in the space that had housed my unsuccessful photo gallery. We’d been dating for less than a year.

  It was warm for April, so I took a seat on the restaurant’s elevated deck and watched for her crossing West Arctic Avenue. I had acquired some of Charles’s habits through osmosis. While not a full half-hour early, I arrived at the restaurant before the time we were to meet, enjoyed the warm breeze pushing in from the ocean less than a half block away, and talked to Becca, one of Loggerhead’s servers.

  Within a minute of the appointed time, Barb gracefully walked across the street. She was my height, much thinner, with short, black hair, and wore linen slacks and one of her several red blouses. She saw me leaning against the railing, waved and, seconds later, arrived at the table and gifted me a smile and a peck on the cheek. She asked if I’d been waiting long.

  Not wanting to be accused of being Charles-in-waiting, I stretched the truth, saying that I’d just arrived.

  Becca returned, and we each ordered a glass of wine. Barb added a conch fritters appetizer.

  Barb watched the server leave, shrugged, and said, “What can I say? I’m starved.”

  She was four years younger than I, yet her metabolism was that of a twenty-year-old marathon runner. She never gained weight. I hated her for it.

  After the traditional winter lull that affected most businesses on the island, vacationers had begun arriving, and Barb’s Books reaped the benefits. The downside was that I hadn’t seen her as often as I would’ve liked. I wish I could’ve said that about business when I owned the gallery.

  Our drinks arrived.

  Barb took a sip and said, “I hear that a, and I quote, ‘stupid ass local’ ran in the middle of traffic on the busiest street in town to escort a ‘funny looking guy flailing a fishing pole’ to the sidewalk.” She took another sip.

  Barb had moved here from Pennsylvania a little over a year ago, and had already learned how to accumulate gossip and an occasional fact with some of Folly’s better practitioners of the art.

  I grinned. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Sorry, bookstore owner, book-buyer privilege.”

  I reminded her that she was no longer practicing law, and that I doubted that there was any such privilege.

  “Maybe not. The more important question, was it true?”

  Becca delivered the conch fritters.

  Barb stuffed one in her mouth, gracefully, of course, and I proceeded to share the entire Theo, Wallace et al. story.

  Barb didn’t interrupt, something I wasn’t accustomed to from my other friends. When I finished, she asked, “Is Sal anything like his brother?”

  It wasn’t what I’d expected her to say, although it made sense. Barb was my friend, Dude Sloan’s half-sister, and they were less alike than a turnip to a trampoline. Dude was an aging hippie stuck in the 1960s, had never met a sentence that he couldn’t mangle, while Barb had been a successful attorney with the ability to use the English language as it was intended. I shared that Sal was different than his brother, although not as different as Barb was from Dude.

  “Think he saw a dead body?”

  “Good question. He could have, although his credibility tanked when he couldn’t decide when he’d see
n it. He also said that he performed in Chicago last week, when he was reminded by one of his friends that it’d been two years ago. It seems more fantasy than fact.”

  “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be true.”

  “I agree. That’s why I told Officer Allen Spencer, who shared it with Chief LaMond. Allen said that the chief had a couple of her guys walk part of the beach. I don’t know what else to do.”

  There was little I could add about Theo’s friends and the alleged sighting of a body, so I asked if she’d seen Dude lately.

  She chuckled and said that he’d stopped in the bookstore to see if she wanted a surfing lesson. I remembered the one and only lesson I’d had with Dude. It was terrible. Wipeout was the one surfing phrase I could identify with. I swore I’d never get on another surfboard, more accurately, never attempt to get on another surfboard.

  “What’d you say?”

  Barb took a sip, looked in the glass, then at me. “I told the dear, sweet man that there was a better chance of getting me to go shark fishing barehanded.” She chuckled. “Dude said, ‘Okeydokey, you be sorry.’” Her smile turned serious. “I figured something out. Dude didn’t think I’d go surfing. He was using what he knew to reach out to me.”

  Barb and Dude, other than sharing a father, had little in common. They hadn’t lived near each other after high school and had only reconnected a year ago, the result of a horrific event that involved a hired killer who’d been sent to eliminate Barb. One of Dude’s loyal employees had given his life to save Dude’s half-sister. It wasn’t the Hallmark Channel way of bringing estranged siblings together.

  “What made you decide that?”

  Her smile returned. “Suppose it was because after I said that a surfing lesson was off the table, he plopped down on the floor, crossed his legs yogi style, and said, ‘Me be glad you here.’ He pointed a finger at me then at his head, before saying, ‘Maybe break pumpkin bread together.’”

  That be Dude, I thought. “I hope you can spend time together. Dude’s one of the good guys. From what I can tell, doesn’t have many true friends.”

  “We’re having supper next week. Maybe you can join us. I’ll need someone to translate Dudespeak.”

  I laughed. “That would take someone with a greater Dudespeak vocabulary than I have. Charles often translates it for me. When are you meeting?”

  “Don’t know. It has something to do with a phase of the moon. I’ll get back with him after the weekend to narrow it down.”

  Dude, in addition to being Folly’s leading expert on surfing, and an expert on and still residing in the 1960s, is a worshiper of the sun god, and a student of astronomy. He speaks in solar terms rather than what the rest of us call days, hours, minutes. I find it endearing, and equally confusing. That be Dude.

  I agreed to join them when Barb figured out when they were breaking pumpkin bread.

  She gave a sigh of relief and changed the subject. “Karl and I attended a few comedy clubs in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t, and guess I’m still not, big on jokes and many of the stand-up comics we saw felt that, unless their act was filled with profanities and sex jokes, they weren’t funny.”

  Karl was Barb’s ex-husband, who had been arrested and disbarred after bribing state legislators and governmental officials. Their breakup was the primary reason that Barb had moved to Folly.

  “I went to a comedy club decades ago,” I said. “You’re right about the subject matter.”

  Our entrees arrived.

  Barb had ordered broiled flounder and in a feeble attempt to eat better I’d selected the fried flounder; it beat a half-pound cheeseburger.

  Barb took a bite then turned toward the beach. “The reason I brought it up was, didn’t you say Theo’s brother and his friends were in their seventies?”

  “Three are. Wallace’s son is younger, of course. He’s probably fifty.”

  “I thought being a stand-up comic was a young person’s game. The ones I saw were in their twenties and thirties.”

  “I suppose most are, although there’ve been several famous older comics.”

  Rodney Dangerfield, George Carlin, and George Burns came to mind.

  “I’m sure there are, though it seems rare. My point being, I wonder how long ago it’s been since Theo’s group performed.”

  “Sal mentioned that they had a break in their touring. I suppose a break could be a few years. Why?”

  “It’s the lawyer in me being suspicious. From my experience, things seldom are what they appear. Your friend, Theo, is wealthy and in his eighties. That’s an inviting combination for con artists.”

  “Sal said the reason for being here was to make sure Theo was okay. I know what he’d meant about Theo seeming forgetful, possibly suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. I also know that Theo’s smart and, since he got his hearing aids, he’s better. I doubt Sal and his buddies will be here long.”

  Barb shook her head. “Don’t forget, you told me a couple of years ago that Theo came close to giving that con man in his walking group a million dollars.”

  Point taken. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Barb took another bite, washed it down with water, and patted my hand. “Good. He seems like a nice man who could use a friend like you.”

  We spent the rest of the meal talking about mundane items, like the unseasonably warm weather and the larger than normal numbers of early vacationers on the island.

  She also reminded me that, unlike someone at the table, she had to be at work in the morning. Subtle, it wasn’t. I walked her to her condo.

  Instead of going home, I headed up Center Street and listened to the live music coming from St. James Gate and Snapper Jack’s. I leaned against a wall near where I’d parked Wallace in a rocking chair after helping him out of the street and smiled when I thought of how he’d been dressed. I also remembered that his dress shoes looked like they’d recently been polished.

  If he’d seen a body that day, he couldn’t have walked far along the beach, or his shoes would’ve been sand covered. That could mean that the body was in the dunes close to the center of town. I also realized that since he couldn’t narrow down when he’d seen the body, if, in fact, he had seen one, his shiny shoes could’ve meant nothing. If there had been a body and it hasn’t been found, it must be back off the beach, probably behind the dunes’ line.

  Barb was right. While she had to go to work tomorrow, I had little, if anything, to do, so why not spend some of that useless time checking out the dunes closest to where I met Wallace?

  Chapter Six

  I called Charles at 7:00 the next morning. He’d never resisted waking me when he wanted to share something, or simply to pester me. It was payback time.

  He answered with a yawn followed by, “My apartment better be on fire.”

  I was no fan of caller ID. “I thought you’d be up and hankering for a walk on the beach.”

  “Only if my apartment’s on fire. What’s so important to interrupt my beauty sleep?”

  “The sun’s up, it’s a nice day, and I doubt extra sleep will help your beauty. How about meeting me at the Tides in a half hour?”

  “Sure,” he mumbled before hanging up.

  That was the kind of wake-up call I’d received from him more times than I could count. It felt good returning the favor. Besides, I’d spent the last hour thinking about Wallace’s claim about seeing a body. I’d feel terrible if there was one out there and I hadn’t tried to find it. If Wallace was delusional, or if he’d stumbled on a body in his more distant past, a walk on the beach with a good friend was still a great way to spend the morning.

  I was in the lobby of the hotel talking to Jay, a Tides employee and a friend, when Charles stumbled through the front door. He wore cut-off shorts, a Tilley hat that matched mine, and a long-sleeve, white T-shirt with ASU in green on the front. Charles has the largest collection of college logoed T-shirts and sweatshirts this side of the Mississippi River—possibly on both sides. I’d given up asking ab
out them; a fact that I knew irritated him, which was more reason not to ask.

  Jay hadn’t learned. “What’s ASU?”

  Charles puffed out his chest and grinned. “Adams State University. You know, the one in Alamosa, Colorado.”

  Jay rubbed his chin. “Oh, that Adams State University.”

  “Yep, the Grizzlies.”

  “Interesting,” Jay said, before excusing himself. I suspected he’d heard all he wanted to about Adams State.

  Charles watched Jay leave, before saying, “Okay, what’s up?”

  “Couldn’t I want to walk on the beach with a friend?”

  “That’s a remote possibility. Remote if this wasn’t the beach where Theo’s houseguest said that he’d seen a body. Seems to my sleepy brain that we might be here to gander at more than sun, surf, and sand.”

  “That’d entered my mind. A couple of Chief LaMond’s officers looked to no avail. Besides, Wallace could’ve been off a few years on when he allegedly saw what he may or may not have seen.”

  “Those would have been cops who ran down here, ogled college coeds, peeked at a couple of spots along the beach, got tired of getting sand in their shoes, and headed back to their fun job of writing parking tickets.” Charles pointed to his chest. “You’ve realized, after all these years, how outstanding a detective that yours truly is, and you called me to find the dead John or Jane Doe.”

  “Wow, you got me,” I said, not hiding my sarcasm, although he was righter than I’d admit.

  “So, what are we waiting for, Beachcomber Chris?”

  We walked down the steps from the outside bar to the beach then headed left under the Folly Beach Fishing Pier. If a body had been this close to the pier, it would’ve already been discovered, so I didn’t pay much attention to the dunes until we passed East Second Street where single-family residences dominated the beachfront and fewer people frequented the area.

  Charles had brought his Nikon and started snapping photos of yellow flowers snaking through the sand, and shots of one of his favorite subjects, a discarded Doritos package. If I had to describe his photo style, I’d call it eclectic. Others less generous have said he was a trash photographer. Regardless, he loved snapping photos, so I waited while he composed his latest masterpiece. He hated trash on his island as much as he loved photographing it. He picked up the empty package and stuffed it in his pocket.