Missing

by Bill Noel

  Charles called around two to say that Melinda wanted to go Walmart shopping. I thanked him for the update, which forced him to ask if I could take them. I considered it a small victory. A large victory would be if I’d convinced him to buy his own car or get his Saab repaired. I doubted that win would come soon.

  I didn’t mind taking Melinda shopping. It was fun to see her in her Carolina-blue hair being pushed around the superstore by her nephew. A blender and a set of four tall, plastic champagne flutes were the items she needed. She didn’t say why.

  We dropped her at Mariner’s Breeze and drove the additional half block to Charles’s apartment. The mild temperatures had continued, and he asked if I wanted to walk and take photos. We had spent many hours over the years traipsing around the island. We’d taken photos, talked, and laughed, and I’d watched him talk to every person he saw, friend, foe, or stranger. He also never passed a dog, cat, squirrel, or mouse without sharing a kind word.

  Charles was more hyper than usual. He didn’t say it, but he was worried about Melinda. He insisted on telling me about his visit to each business. I listened to what, if anything, the clerks and owners knew about the dead women, whether the stores were busy, and whether they were having any specials. He spewed a lot of words, but the bottom line was that no one seemed to know more than what they had heard on the news or from others. It was nearly dark, and we were several blocks from his apartment, so I suggested that we head back. We had passed Melinda’s building, and I stopped to shake some pesky gravel from my shoes. Charles had walked ahead. I rounded the corner of his building and saw him twenty feet from his door, where he had stooped to take a photo of a candy wrapper—one of his specialties. I rushed to catch up.

  I smiled as he focused on the discarded piece of paper and used his flash to take the photo. A sudden movement near his door caught my attention. The closest light was four apartments away, and I barely made out the shape of someone crouched down behind a row of straggly shrubs beside his entryway.

  My friend finished taking the photo and was a couple of paces from the shadowed figure. Charles was oblivious to the newcomer, but the stranger was turned toward him and didn’t see me.

  I thought it was Heather waiting to surprise him until I saw the silhouetted figure slip around behind Charles. The stranger held a three-foot-long, thin piece of something in his right hand. It was rigid, and the thought rebar flashed through my mind. Charles was still oblivious to what was happening as the intruder got in a baseball stance and was about to drill Charles’s head into right field.

  “Charles, duck!” I yelled.

  He looked over his shoulder at me and then obediently fell to the gravel lot. I was still five paces away.

  The deadly steel missed Charles by inches. The wind whistled as the weapon zipped through the air. The assailant stayed focused on Charles and raised the weapon to bring it down on him.

  I grabbed the end of the steel rod as he started to swing. He seemed surprised that I had reacted so quickly. That made two of us. He let go of the rod, and it threw me off balance. I fell back and tripped over Charles, who was pushing himself up from the parking lot.

  I landed on my back, hitting my head hard. I gasped for a breath. Charles stood and looked around. I inhaled as he helped me up.

  The steel-swinging intruder ran toward the far corner of the building. He was still in deep shadows and had a ball cap pulled down around his ears. Long, dark hair stuck out from under the edges of the cap. His face was hidden.

  Charles wiped gravel from his knees, looked at me, and shrugged. I waved for him to follow and started to jog after the intruder. Charles was a step behind, but I quickly realized that we weren’t going to close the gap. The assailant was young and swift, and he had a head start.

  I stopped, and Charles pulled up beside me. My back and head hurt from the awkward landing, and Charles was bent over with his hands resting on his thighs. We stood in silence. Cars crossing the Folly River and our gasping breaths were the only sounds that I heard. We waited long enough to catch our breaths and then slowly walked back to the car and drove up Sandbar Lane toward town. The odds were a million to one that we’d find him. There were countless places to hide, and it was dark. All he had to do was to stand near any building and we wouldn’t have seen him.

  “Did you recognize him?” I asked as I tightly gripped the steering wheel. I tried to watch both sides of the road.

  “No,” said Charles as he brushed the last few pebbles off his sweaty knees. “Never got a clear look. Danged hat covered most of his face. Couldn’t even tell if it was a man or woman.”

  We crisscrossed the downtown stretch twice and hoped that the attacker was dumb enough to walk down one of the well-lit streets. No luck. I drove back to Charles’s door and found the three-foot-long section of rusty steel rebar. The closely spaced ridges around the weapon would make it impossible to pull any useful fingerprints. We debated briefly but decided against calling the police. What could we have told them that would be useful?

  “I have a bottle of cheap wine in here. Interested?” said Charles. We stood in front of his apartment and stared at the weapon.

  “How could I resist such a generous offer?” My lower back ached from bouncing off the lot. The pain in my head had moved from an ouch to a headache. It could have been much worse.

  I moved the stack of books off a battered restaurant chair in front of one of his bookcases and gingerly lowered myself into it. Charles returned from his tiny kitchen with a Styrofoam cup of box wine and a Bud Light. He cleared a spot on the floor and sat with his back leaned against a shelf of history textbooks. He claimed to have read all the books in his apartment with the exception of a row of cookbooks. I had no reason to doubt him.

  Charles took a gulp, stared at his knee like he had never seen it before, and said, “You know President Calvin Coolidge once said, ‘Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.’” He looked up at me. “Thanks for the interception.”

  I didn’t know if Coolidge had said that, but the tenth case could have been terribly tragic for Charles. “You know what that was about,” I said.

  Charles nodded and hopped to his feet. He walked to the small front window and looked out and then over the bookcases on the far wall. “It means that Samuel saw someone abducted. It means that the two dead women stayed right here on Folly Beach. It means that they were murdered by a short, thin, dark-haired man or woman.” He took a quick breath and continued. “It means that someone I talked to in the last two days told him about me.” He paused. “Or maybe I actually talked to the killer. And, it means that we’re getting close to figuring out who it is. Finally, it means that the killer was going to make me his next victim.” He picked his cane up off the floor and pointed it at the door. “He was going to add me to the list tonight, right outside that door.”

  For once, I couldn’t argue with anything he’d said. I had to act, and act quickly. Too much was at stake.

  CHAPTER 30

  TO SAY THAT I HAD A RESTLESS NIGHT WOULD BE LIKE saying there are a lot of grains of sand on the beach. I couldn’t get comfortable. My back hurt whenever I turned, and I turned a lot. My mind flashed back to the person lifting the rebar to attack Charles and how close he came to being gravely injured or killed—and for what? What did my friend know? What had he stirred up? If his attacker was the person who had killed the two women, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who could stand in his way. Charles and I were within inches of him, but we didn’t see his face. The frightening thing was, he didn’t know that we didn’t see him.

  I told myself that the police, particularly Detective Burton would be unlikely to take us seriously and would do as little as possible to investigate. I found it ironic that it might take Charles getting killed to raise the issue to a level where someone paid attention. I then wondered if I
was in danger. Would Charles or I be as lucky if the assailant tried again?

  Since the death of my ex-wife earlier in the year, I’d been haunted by the thought that I could have done something to save her life. Everyone told me that I couldn’t have prevented what had happened. It didn’t help. I couldn’t help my ex, but friends were now in danger. Could I help them?

  The clock slowly rolled around to six a.m., and sleep didn’t return. I walked to Bert’s for coffee and hopefully a friendly conversation with a clerk. My back still hurt, but it felt good to stretch it by walking.

  Eric, who camouflaged a keen wit and intellect behind the appearance of a hippy who had forgotten to leave the 1970s, greeted me with a cheerful welcome and the latest gossip. He shared a couple of funny stories about a dyslexic tattoo artist he knew and his latest adventures on the river in his small sailboat. What he didn’t share was anything new about the two dead women.

  I was carrying my coffee in my right hand with a copy of the Charleston Post and Courier and a small bag of donuts in my left when I nearly collided with Marc Salmon. Coffee sloshed from my cup and splashed onto his shoes but missed his slacks.

  “Not where I prefer my morning coffee,” said Marc. He smiled when he said it.

  I gave a halfhearted apology, and he patted my shoulder. “No prob,” he said. “I’d been meaning to run into you anyway—get it, run into you?”

  I grinned, and he seemed satisfied that I appreciated his rapier wit. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He waved for me to step outside. Apparently Eric’s presence in the otherwise empty store wasn’t private enough for what he had to say. I followed him to the side parking area. A supersized likeness of Bert stared down at us from a mural on the building. The only other living things present were hundreds of bugs attracted to the lights.

  “Are your business licenses up to date?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

  Definitely a question I wouldn’t have anticipated. “I guess. Why?”

  He looked around again and appeared satisfied that Bert’s likeness wasn’t eavesdropping. “I was over at city hall yesterday. City’s business never ends, you know. Well, I was in the second-floor corridor outside the mayor’s office. His door was open, and I heard him talking—actually, he was yelling—and so I stopped beside the door. Wanted to be there to help him if he was in trouble, you know. Some angry citizen could’ve threatened him harm.”

  I nodded like I actually believed that story rather than jumping to the conclusion that Marc was doing what he does best, being nosy.

  “And then I heard your name.” He paused and nodded back at me. I didn’t respond immediately, so he continued. “He was saying ‘f-word Landrum’ was a thorn in his side and that he was stirring up trouble again, except he didn’t say ‘f-word.’ Some of the mayor’s supporters thought Folly would be better off if that ‘f-word Landrum’ would go back to wherever he came from.”

  I wasn’t surprised after my recent almost-lunch with the mayor. “Who was he talking to?”

  Marc shook his head and swatted a bug away from his cheek. “Don’t know. If I had moved past the door to see who was in there, the mayor would’ve seen me. Didn’t think that would be wise since he knows I’m not a supporter.”

  “Hear anything else?”

  “That’s when he said we need to find something wrong with you. Catch you with expired licenses, or some piddlin’ building code violation, or health code infraction, or anything.” Marc smiled. “He even said they needed to check your criminal record to see if there are some outstanding warrants for ‘porn, perversion, or mass murder.’ Aren’t any of those, are there?”

  I kicked the sand in the lot. “What did the other person say?”

  “Don’t think I heard anyone answer. The mayor was on a roll and didn’t leave any breaks for responses.” Marc slapped his face again. “Bugs!”

  I waited. If he had heard anything else, he wouldn’t hesitate to share it.

  “Oh yeah, I heard one other thing,” he said. “I didn’t hear all of it. The elevator started to rumble and I knew someone was heading up, so I walked toward the council chamber instead of past the mayor’s door.”

  “But you heard?” I prompted.

  “The mayor said something about starting rumors about Chief Newman; something to get him ‘run out of town on a rail.’”

  “You didn’t hear what the rumor was?”

  “Nope, too busy keeping from getting caught snoop—waiting to help if the mayor needed saving.”

  “You said the mayor kept saying ‘we,’ so it must have been someone who worked for the city, especially if they were going to access my records.”

  Marc looked up at Bert’s likeness and then back at me. “Likely.”

  “But you don’t know who?”

  “Somebody who doesn’t talk loudly. I’d suggest you watch your butt, my friend.”

  Oh great, just what I needed. And Marc didn’t even know about the rebar-wielding assailant.

  I was nearing the house and a healthy breakfast of donuts and more donuts when Charles called, “Aunt Melinda and I’ve decided we’d let you have breakfast with us at the Dog.” He giggled. “She said she’d even let you buy.”

  Donuts or Dog, Donuts or Dog? I thought. “When?”

  “Now,” he said. “We’ve saved you a seat.” He then said something I couldn’t understand and said, “Gotta go. They want their phone back.”

  It was near the overnight low temperature, and Charles had decided that we would sit on the deck in front of the restaurant. He waved as I approached. At least, I think he waved. My attention was more drawn to Melinda. Her hair had miraculously changed from Carolina blue to a red that was more illuminating than a stoplight. I held my stare to see if it would switch to green and then to yellow. She saw me, smiled widely, tapped the top of her head, and turned it so I could get the side view. I smiled back and mouthed, “Wow!”

  I walked to the far end of the patio and entered. There was one empty chair at the table, and Charles pointed to it like I wouldn’t have figured out where to sit. I continued to smile at Melinda. “Good morning, Melinda,” I said. “Is that a new blouse you’re wearing? Something looks different.”

  She giggled. “Silly boy. How about the new color?”

  “Stunning,” I said. “What happened with the fetching blue?”

  “I was afraid to ask,” said Charles, who then sat back in the chair.

  Melinda frowned at Charles and then smiled at me. “People kept pointing at me and saying, ‘Carolina blue.’ I didn’t know what they meant, and then the nice man pushing the rusty grocery cart around town with empty gas cans in it told me that it was the University of North Carolina’s school color. Then he said they were called Tar Heels and the more intelligent people around here didn’t like them.” She shook her head. “How was I to know? And who wants tar associated with their hair?”

  Who indeed, I thought. But Melinda didn’t wait for me to say anything.

  “So while you and Charles were out causing a ruckus yesterday after you dumped me at the apartment, I walked to Folly Curls and shared my dilemma with dear Damian. He was so nice—he’s gay, you know. He said that a lot of his clients, especially the young ones like me”—she giggled—“change their hair color all the time and asked me what color I wanted. I said I didn’t know, and he showed me a book with a thousand colors. I chose rambunctious red.”

  “You chose that out of a thousand colors?” said Charles.

  Her smile disappeared. “So?”

  He glanced over at me. I wasn’t going to bail him out.

  “Beats Carolina blue,” he said and waited for her to respond. Her smile didn’t reappear. “I like it,” he finally said.

  “I think it makes me look younger. What do you think, Chris?”

  The beginning of
a grin appeared in the corner of Charles’s mouth; he turned toward me.

  Think it will make it a lot easier to cross the road in traffic, I thought. “I agree with Charles. But you didn’t need it to look younger; you already do.”

  Charles head dropped, and he mumbled something undistinguishable.

  She smiled and then turned to Charles; her smile disappeared. “Chris,” she said, continuing to look at Charles, “Charles tells me that things got a bit interesting last night. He said that he had to save you from almost getting decapitated and then chased a bad guy away before he could come after you again.”

  I looked at Charles, who stared into his water glass. “That’s not exactly how I remember it,” I said.

  Melinda continued to look at Charles. “I suspected it wasn’t exactly like that,” she said. “Whatever happened, let me put my foot down. I packed all my belongings and took that god-awful bus ride down here to be with my only living relative and enjoy a wonderful rest of my life with him.”

  “Now, Aunt M.,” said Charles.

  “Now nothing, Charles. Hush. The key word in what I said was living. That means you not being dead.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” said Charles. “Now don’t you worry your sweet, rambunctious red head about it.”

  “Why not?” she asked. I wondered that as well. “I’m not the brightest lightning bug in the woods—heck, I didn’t even know what color Carolina blue was—but it seems like you are sniffing too close to a killer and he’s wanting to do something about it. Now why doesn’t that put you in danger? Just asking.”

  Amber refilled our coffee mugs and grinned at Melinda’s hair.