Missing

by Bill Noel

  “That mean no?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Say anything else?”

  “Yep,” said Charles, who then took off his Tilley, wiped his brow, and turned back to me. “Here’s the big clue.”

  He looked at the road and leaned back on the bench. The phrase “pulling teeth” came to mind. I decided to wait him out.

  “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  I grinned. “Yep.”

  He smiled. “Guess what she bought? Never mind, you’ll never guess. She bought a package of popsicles.”

  “Would’ve been my first guess,” I said.

  He shook his head and mumbled something and I said, “So?”

  Charles nodded. “Nobody knows where she was staying. Right?”

  “True.”

  “Her sister said she was going to a beach near Charleston. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the only beach she could have driven to before the popsicles melted?”

  “Good point,” I said. Maybe he actually did have a clue. “What about the other call?”

  “What call?”

  “You said you got three good calls.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said and hit the side of his head with the palm of his right hand.

  “Eric, at Bert’s, told me that a cute, African American lady came in the store a couple of times when he was at work the week before she turned up dead. Now Eric, being a good, law-abiding citizen, actually did tell the police. They showed him the photo of Nicole, and he said it ‘definitely could have been her.’ She didn’t say much, and Eric didn’t know anything about where she was staying.”

  “But,” I said, “if she was in Bert’s more than once, most likely she was staying nearby. If it was her, that is.”

  “Clue two,” he said and grinned like he had solved the crime of the century.

  “Then we need to tell the police,” I said.

  “Detective Burton?” said Charles.

  “No way,” I said. “And it wouldn’t do any good to tell Karen. She would have to tell her superiors, and that would end up with Burton.”

  “And go nowhere from there?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what are you waiting for?” said Charles.

  The chief answered on the third ring.

  CHAPTER 27

  BRIAN JOINED US ON THE SHADED PARK BENCH. HE SAID it wouldn’t have been good for us to come to city hall. We didn’t have to ask why.

  “So there you have it,” I said after Charles, with countless side trips and a lecture by Brian on defacing public property with missing-person flyers, walked him through what he had learned from Ada, Oscar, and Eric. “The two women had been on Folly. They probably stayed here.”

  Brian stared at a bright red Corvette as its driver stomped on the gas and headed across the river. Since it was headed off-island, Brian simply cursed under his breath instead of grabbing his radio to have one of his officers light up the sports car.

  “Okay, where was I?” he said. “Yeah, your super-duper clues.” He glanced over at me and then stared at Charles. “About Ada. First, she has cataracts. The dear lady couldn’t tell the difference between Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster if one of them ambled through her door.”

  “Don’t think the Loch Ness Monster can amble,” interrupted Charles.

  Brian shook his head and then continued, “She’s also a little, how shall I say it, prejudiced. Combine that with her eyesight and all African Americans who graced her door would look alike. I wouldn’t go to court with her as a witness.”

  “Doesn’t mean she’s wrong, does it?” said Charles.

  “No,” said Brian. “So let’s look at your big clue from Oscar. That would be the Oscar who left a life of sanity a half-dozen years ago, who has worked the night shift at Kangaroo for the last two years, and who thinks that Folly Beach is between Guam and Rota Island?”

  “Where’s Rota Island?” asked Charles, the trivia collector.

  “Never mind,” said Brian. “It’s far away.”

  “That would be the same Oscar,” I said.

  “And all he remembered was a hyphen and a pack of popsicles?”

  “Clues galore,” said Charles.

  “Uh huh,” said Brian. “What was the third phenomenal clue again?”

  “Eric at Bert’s,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Charles. “Eric talked to her, and he’s as sane as they come. I bet he never heard of Rota.”

  “I don’t disagree with that,” said Brian, “but what did he say that made you think that both women stayed on Folly? For that matter, what proved that even one stayed here?”

  “He saw the Sallee lady twice,” said Charles. He had crossed his arms and glared at the chief, almost as if daring him to challenge his “proof.”

  “I believe you said he ‘thought it was her,’ and even if it was, she could have been visiting, not staying here.”

  Charles exhaled loudly and kicked the ground. Brian then asked him to repeat what he had said once more. This time, Brian took notes.

  “Bottom line,” said Charles, “is that you don’t believe the two ladies were staying here?”

  “Didn’t say that. All I’m saying is that there’s nothing to prove they were. I’ll share this with my guys and tell them to snoop around some. They have some contacts and something might shake out. I’ll also take this to Detective Burton and—”

  “Crapola,” interrupted Charles. “Why don’t you just throw those notes in the river?” He pointed over his shoulder to the Folly River.

  “I know you have to share this with Burton,” I said. “But it may be a good idea not to tell him where you heard it.”

  Brian laughed. “So you and Burton are still not BFFs?”

  “Depends on what the Fs stand for,” interrupted Charles, again.

  Brian ignored Charles. “I’ll keep your names out of it.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” said Charles. “So, what about the missing girl from Buckhead?”

  Brian didn’t ask how Charles knew about her. “All we know is that she was supposed to be over here somewhere. We’re asking around.”

  “You’ll let us know if you find out anything,” said Charles.

  Brian smiled. “No.”

  “Hmm,” said Charles.

  For the second time since Brian had joined us, one of his patrol cars circled the block. I saw the chief glance at it out of the corner of his eye during the first pass. This time, he stared at it with his police glare. “Officer O’Hara,” he mumbled after the car turned down Indian Avenue. “El numero uno, asshole spy for your mayor.”

  “Guess you’re stuck with him,” brilliantly observed Charles.

  “No comment,” said Brian. “Oh yeah, Charles, speaking of the mayor, another thing about your flyers. He reminded me yesterday that if I found any of them plastered on any public surface on his island, I was to arrest you.” He pointed his forefinger at Charles. “You have removed all of them, haven’t you?”

  “Ask me in a couple of hours,” said Charles.

  Brian then said he had to get back to his office and plot how to stop all drinking on the island and, if the mayor was to have his way, vanquish all citizens with tattoos. We wished him luck. He said he would need more than that.

  “Up to flyer removal?” Charles asked as soon as Brian pulled back on Center Street.

  “If they’re in the shade,” I said.

  “If only,” he said. He swatted a fly off his face with his hat, picked up his cane from beside the bench, and waved for me to follow. The good thing about retirement was that I didn’t have anything else to do. The bad thing was that I didn’t have a good excuse to say no.

  The saving grace for two gentlemen in their early sixties was that the weather gods had prov
ided a much cooler day than what had encapsulated the island recently. It didn’t take us many steps to find the first of Charles’s flyers. Two were stapled on a telephone pole in front of the post office across the street from our bench. Between there and the Catholic church a block away were five telephone poles adorned with six flyers. He rationalized that since there wasn’t home mail delivery on the island, everyone passed the poles to get the mail. What better place to put them? I’m sure the mayor would have had a suggestion, but I nodded and kept walking.

  The decorative light poles that lined both sides of Center Street from the bridge off Folly to the Tides were Charles’s second-favorite flyer holders. He moaned about how he’d had to tape each one to the steel poles the entire time we were carefully removing the paper and tape without damaging the surface.

  “You do know that those two women were staying on Folly, don’t you?” said Charles. He nearly hit a passerby as he waved his cane around to cover all four corners of the island.

  “I don’t know it,” I said, “but I don’t think Brian took your information as seriously as he should have. It would be beyond a coincidence for both of them to be visiting here within a couple of weeks of each other and then winding up dead.”

  “So,” he said, “how are we going to prove it? You owe it to Samuel.”

  Charles was great at finding weak spots and zooming in on them. I ignored his attempt at instilling guilt. “Let’s say you’re right,” I said. “They had to stay at the Tides, or a bed and breakfast, or with a friend, or in a rented house or condo. If they visited Bert’s and Ada’s, they had to buy food or go into some of the other shops, frequent the bars, get their hair done, get manicures or pedicures or beanstalk wraps, or whatever young women get done to themselves.”

  We had reached the end of the main drag, and I said I’d check with the Tides and a friend, Bob Howard, with Island Realty. His company handled a good portion of the vacation rentals, and he had contacts in the other two island realty firms.

  Once Charles realized that I was taking his theories seriously, he said, “What’s going to happen to Aunt Melinda? I didn’t hear from her for decades, but she’s all I have left.” He tilted his head. “Think the docs could be wrong?”

  “She seemed certain about the diagnosis,” I said. “Anything’s possible, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

  “I know,” he said as his voice cracked. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 28

  LOOK WHAT THE DAMNED POLECAT DRAGGED IN,” CAME a booming voice from behind an old army surplus desk.

  The voice, and affiliated attitude, came from Bob Howard, a friend who was part owner of Island Realty, which was, as Bob described it, “The second largest of three very small island realty firms.” Charles had gone off to interrogate each employee of each retail establishment on Folly Beach, and I had walked four blocks back up Center Street to the frame house that had gone commercial years ago. The lobby reminded me more of a mom-and-pop motel in a remote section of Idaho than a successful real estate agency.

  Bob walked around the metal desk and squeezed between an ancient filing cabinet and the battleship gray secretary’s desk that held a beer stein of pencils and an IBM Selectric typewriter, surely the only operating model in Charleston County, perhaps in the universe. Behind the desk was Louise Carson, Bob’s aunt, who, at eighty-five, had to be Folly’s most senior real estate employee and was, without competition, the island’s prime busybody. In addition to the beer stein pencil holder and ancient typewriter, the desk held a modern police scanner; that electronic gadget got far more use than the typewriter. Louise wore the a loud, green and yellow floral-patterned dress that I would have sworn she was in the first time I’d met her some six years ago.

  Bob sucked in his ample stomach to slip around the wood-paneled counter to greet me. He was over six foot vertically and about two-thirds of that horizontally. He referred to himself as burly—one of the few things he understated. He wore his summer casual outfit of tattered shorts to compliment his food-stained, orange, short-sleeved polo shirt.

  Bob waddled around the office to get to me as I winked at Louise and asked how my favorite senior citizen was doing. She looked at her nephew and said she was as well as could be expected given that she had to put up with a “potty-mouthed walrus.” Bob grinned and said that it beat being dead. Louise said she wasn’t sure.

  “You here to buy a casa on the beach?”

  “Don’t think so,” I said.

  “Is this visit going to put a satchel-full of money in my bank account?”

  “Probably not,” I said and grinned.

  “Holy hell, you’re sticking your nose into something it has no business sniffin’ around in—again!”

  I pointed my forefinger at him and said, “You got it.”

  “Then I got myself a hankrin’ for a couple of those monster chef salads at Planet Follywood,” he said and rubbed his stomach.

  Bob usually wasn’t that friendly, so I took it as a good sign. “Two,” I said, knowing that would be the minimum bribe I could get away with for the favor I was going to ask.

  “Where’s your car?” he said and looked out the window.

  “I’m walking,” I said.

  “You damned well expect me to walk miles to the Planet?”

  Miles equaled shy of three blocks. I smiled and said, “Take it or leave it.”

  Truth be told, Bob was one of my favorite people. He had been my Realtor when I’d bought my house and rented the gallery. Over the years, he had provided invaluable assistance in helping me catch some unsavory individuals, and some things he’d discovered had saved my life on one occasion. He’s also an extremely kind, compassionate person if you can wade through his bluster.

  He bitched another minute but followed me out the door on my way to the restaurant. Bob was in his early seventies and not quite the poster child for Healthy Living magazine, so the walk was slow, to put it kindly.

  It was midafternoon, but the Planet was nearly full. The waitress directed us to a bar-height round table in the corner. Bob looked around the room for one of the larger tables where he could spread out; they were full. He grumbled about how they expected a “real man” to fit at this piddlin’-tiny excuse for a table. He took a couple of deep breaths and reminded me that regardless of the size of the table, he’d manage to get two—or more—meals to fit. The interior was an eclectic mix of tropical doodads, mismatched tables, and the casual feel of a friendly beach bar. We were seated under a mural of familiar Low Country scenes painted on the concrete block wall.

  A waitress with zombie-white skin and bleached-blonde, spiked hair smiled as she headed to our table. Bob gave her a big Realtor smile. “Hey, cutie pie,” he said, a comment politically correct for Bob. “My puny friend here’s going to buy me a couple of your Alamo burgers, extra fries—what the hell, throw in an order of onion rings too, and two Buds for me, and a glass of that fruity white wine for him.” He turned to me, “Want anything to eat?”

  I wondered what had happened to the chef’s salads he’d mentioned earlier. I also realized that I was hungry and knew this wouldn’t be a short meeting. “Chicken fingers.”

  She wrote it all down, as if she would forget such a complicated order, and headed to the kitchen. Bob watched her go and then turned to me. “Okay, what shit pile have you stuck your fallen arches in this time?”

  I started with Samuel’s visit to the house and walked Bob through everything I could remember about what my young friend had said, the two deaths, Charles’s theory about both of them having stayed on Folly Beach, and how I thought Bob could help.

  Bob’s first Alamo burger had come and gone, as had his first and second Bud, before I finished the monologue. He only interrupted to make sure that “cutie pie” was working on his second burger and third beer.

  “Let’s see if I have this right,” he said and took a sip. �
�You are taking the word of a teenager who already admitted to lying and are conspiring with your airhead friend Charles to find where two chicks stayed on Folly when no one knows that they ever stayed here, to find a man who is thin with long, dark hair who killed both of them, even though no one has said that one of them was murdered.” He looked at the ceiling as if there would be wisdom to be found there and then back at me. “How am I doing?”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” I said and grinned.

  “Holy crapoly,” he said. “Think that deserves a third burger. And now you expect your kind, wonderful, generous buddy Bob to pull a rabbit out of your ass and save the day. Again!”

  I nodded. “If you aren’t too busy selling all those multimillion-dollar houses in this bustling economy.”

  “If you put it that way, I could spare a few minutes to save your ass. I could have the staff check if anyone named Nicole or that hyphen person rented anything from us. Hell, if you’re real nice, I could check with the two inferior realty firms and see if they show anything. They owe me a few favors.”

  I couldn’t imagine what Bob could possibly have done to garner favor from his competitors. He asked me to write down the names of the deceased women and then surprised me by saying that he’d heard that Charles actually had a relative who would claim him. I asked where he had heard it, although I figured it probably was from Louise, the busybody. He said it was none of my damn business, and that he wasn’t about to “burn” his source.

  I told him about Melinda’s visit and what the doctors had said. The softer side of Bob finally made an appearance, and he said to let him know if there was anything he could do. He offered that he could find a small house for her if she was uncomfortable at the boarding house. I thanked him, and he said, “Hell, stuff it.”

  Bob had returned to normal.

  CHAPTER 29

  WEDNESDAY STARTED AS ONE OF THOSE DAYS THAT never stuck in your memory. Errands had to be run, and although the gallery was open only four days a week, expenses didn’t take a break. I spent the morning writing checks for taxes, utilities, insurance, and repairs to the air conditioner. I experienced a tinge of guilt knowing that Charles was canvassing businesses to learn if anyone had seen or talked with the two women. With luck, Bob was checking records to see if they had stayed on the island. And here I was, writing checks and trying not to think about the fate of the two young women and whether Samuel had actually witnessed an abduction.