Death in Nostalgia City

by Mark S. Bacon

Max turned away and stared out the window. “Thought you were going to have good news.”

  “I do, Max. Dumond wasn’t trying to malign the park. In fact, he loved our rides. He said so. He said our Night of the Living Dead ride offered ‘campy, scary fun.’ But obviously that wasn’t his main point. We need to do something new to get attention--in a positive way. Get attention from the media and the public. What I’m going to show you is not my work but the work of several people. It’s our plan to get NC out of the doldrums, attract attention, and boost attendance.” She touched a corner of the tablet on Max’s desk and a colorful image appeared.

  Max, still facing the window, looked over his shoulder at it. “I’ve seen that before.”

  “No, you haven’t. The art department finished it this morning. It gives you a rough idea of what we’re proposing for Centerville.”

  “Too expensive.”

  “No, it’s not.” She clicked to the next drawing. “We can do all this for practically nothing.”

  Max made a noise between a snort and a sigh. Kate ignored him and clicked through the rest of her renderings, enthusiastically describing the plans, including an idea she’d just thought of for an impressive news media day when the project was ready to be unveiled.

  “We’ll have this finished--” She hoped. “--so the opening will coincide with the start of the excursion train to the casino on the Fourth of July weekend. And we’ll have a special press day. We’ll invite everybody. Media, celebrities, bloggers, politicians. Maybe some politicos from the ’60s and ’70s. This’ll be a new start for Nostalgia City.”

  “Will you be able to do all this in a month? I hope we have that much time left.”

  “It’ll be ready.” Kate would have to badger Drenda to shave some time off her projected construction time.

  “Leave this stuff here,” he said, folding up the tablet’s case. “I’ll look at it.”

  Chapter 26

  Lyle stepped softly so he wouldn’t disturb his dad. It was 5:30 a.m. He walked outside, wearing his usual running shorts and T-shirt with sweatbands on his wrists. He never wore the rubber band when he ran. A good workout was therapeutic enough.

  As his feet thumped the trail, he could think about potentially distressing subjects as if he were reading about other peoples’ lives in a newspaper. He could consider a story then turn the page with a sense of detachment.

  After warming up and stretching, he started on his customary tour with a plodding tempo. After he had jogged away from his condo, his thoughts drifted from the park to his father’s condition--and disposition.

  Soon, a crunching sound to his left interrupted his dark thoughts. Someone was running toward him. He heard the noise then saw another trail intersecting his.

  Suddenly a woman sprinted across the path in front of him. For a second she was just a beautiful flash, then she was Kate.

  “Kate, you’re out early.” Lyle paused a second to catch his breath. “You a jogger, too?”

  “Not always. But it helps me relax. Right now I need it.”

  Lyle nodded. So she ran for some of the same reasons he did.

  “This is the earliest I’ve been out since I moved here.” She straightened her Nostalgia City T-shirt. Under it, she wore Spandex shorts and probably an industrial-strength sports bra. She was practically bounceless. Did she sense him checking her out?

  She put her hands on her hips and one foot on a large rock. “We need to talk. I was going to call you. Anything new on the bus crash? Good thing our people will be okay.”

  “I checked the maintenance schedule. That bus had been out of service for weeks, just sitting in a lot waiting to be tampered with.”

  “So we don’t know when the sabotage took place. Could we get together this morning? Exchange information?”

  “I’m on duty in the cab at ten. Want to ride around the park?”

  “How about right now?”

  “Now?” Lyle said, looking down at his running outfit.

  “Okay, when we’re finished jogging. Can you meet me at my apartment? It’s the high-rise, about a mile down this trail. I’ll make coffee.”

  ***

  Lyle could hear the coffee machine hissing as he walked into Kate’s kitchen.

  It was modern and bright, with white cabinets and a light wood dining set nearby. Working with Kate was starting to make sense, but it wasn’t like police work--unless he considered her a partner. What would that have been like? He sat at the table and noticed a large, gray cat eyeing him suspiciously from a corner.

  “That’s Trixie,” Kate said. “She’ll just stare. She likes to keep her distance until she knows you.”

  Kate smelled clean. She had her hair up and wore a simple blouse, beige scarf, and dress slacks. Her briefcase full of papers lay open on the counter. She probably wanted him to know she’d invited him over for business.

  That was fine with Lyle. What he expected. “Nice place.”

  “I’m renting by the week. It’s one of those furnished executive apartments. Okay for now. My boyfriend Bruce is coming out this weekend and we’re going to look for a house in Polk or Flagstaff. But maybe that’s optimistic.”

  “About your relationship?”

  “No. The park.”

  “I know what you mean. But if we can just find out who’s doing this--”

  “There’s more to it, Lyle. I’ll explain.” She pulled out two mugs, set them on the table, then spun back to the counter to grab the coffee pot. Even in business clothes, she looked athletic.

  “Did you play basketball in college?” Lyle asked.

  “Yes.” A tiny smile replaced her solemn expression. “Good guess. Four-year scholarship. Forward. USC Trojans. Nineteen points per game my senior year.”

  “Wow. You were good. I suppose people ask you that all the time.”

  “Not every day.”

  “I’ve known you for three weeks and I just asked.”

  “I admire your restraint.”

  “Maybe it was just slow thinking.”

  “Basketball was good for me. It got me into USC. I’m not sure my grades would have been enough otherwise, and USC would have been a strain on my parent’s finances. Where’d you go?”

  “Arizona State, on the GI Bill. I lived at home part of the time. Wasn’t great fun.”

  “Major?”

  “English lit. I like to read and I wasn’t interested in anything else at the time.”

  “A lit major. And you became a cop?”

  “It did make me a little unusual.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t have too many coworkers who could discuss Henry James.”

  “No, but they could discuss LeBron James.”

  “Why’d you become a cop?”

  “My last two years in the service I was an MP. When I got out, I tried several careers. Nothing seemed to fit. Finally, it was the PD or teach English.”

  Kate squared the note pad in front of her and glanced down. Time for business. Lyle wasn’t too eager.

  “Ever find out anything about Bobby Bostic,” she said, “or that Bif Stevens guy?”

  “Yeah. Earl calls Stevens a second-rate Roy Orbison. He says after the ’60s, Stevens got religion and now plays at retreats, that sort of thing. No threat. Bostic, he’s another story. Earl’s interviewed him a couple of times.”

  “If Bobby wasn’t a sleazy, conceited, pain in the ass,” Kate said, “he’d just be a has-been entertainer.”

  “Earl agrees with you. Said Bostic’s ego has an ego. He told me Bostic once got into a fistfight at the Grammy Awards. Earl thinks he could be dangerous.”

  “There’s something about him. He really rubs me the wrong way.”

  “Literally?”

  “He’d like to.” She raised her shoulders in a shudder. “So what about the bus crash?”

  “The sheriff and security questioned everyone in the bus garage.”

  “And?”

  “Bates is still talking about the tribe. Two Native Ame
rican mechanics work at the park so Bates is ready to call out the cavalry.”

  “And it could have been sabotaged at any time?”

  “Even before the monorail. The bus was just sitting. Whoever diddled with the brakes did too good a job. The bus was probably meant to run for a few miles before the brakes gave out. Instead, they quit after two blocks--no passengers on board.”

  “That’s the good news,” Kate said. “But now we’re just waiting to see if something else happens. I hate waiting. I want to do something.”

  “How’d the crash photos get on TV? Bates had the thing cleaned up in less than an hour. You should have seen him.”

  “Some employee with a cell phone camera sold shots to the station.”

  “Great. I’m sure Maxwell would like to find that guy.”

  “He’s got other things on his mind.” The tone of Kate’s voice dropped sharply.

  “Something I don’t know?”

  Kate made eye contact. “I talked to Max the other day. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  She poured more coffee. “Years ago Max owned a Vegas hotel. Nice, but off the strip. After a while, he decided to expand, and he started construction of a new hotel called the Subway. The theme was subways of the world. Lots of it was going to be underground.”

  “Today it’s called the World Underground Hotel, right?”

  “That’s the new name. Back then, it was the Subway Resort. Only it wasn’t. After Max announced his plans and dug this giant crater, he ran out of money. He became sort of a laughing stock. Construction stopped and the pit just sat there. It would fill up when it rained. They called it Maxwell’s mud hole.”

  “Eventually he built the hotel, right?”

  “Eventually. And he made a bundle. But Max had a hard time getting over being the butt of jokes. He didn’t inherit any of his money. He worked for everything, all his life. He took the setback personally.” Kate took a quick sip of her coffee and set down the mug. “So then he moved to Arizona and started this huge project, using his own money and looking for investors. Before long, it became obvious he’d need help.”

  “Is that where Kevin Waterman’s corporation came in?”

  “Right. Only FedPat drove a hard bargain. Max needed lots of money. He didn’t want to run short half-way through like he’d done before, so he agreed to a loan with strings attached.”

  “Strings?”

  “NC not only has to make loan payments, we have to meet certain operating criteria. They call it performance standards or covenants. In other words, this mega-loan came with minimum attendance requirements. We have to keep enough people coming in or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “It comes down to this: the corporation has the right to make operating and management changes if we don’t keep bringing in more and more guests.”

  “So, Waterman is here to count our attendance?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Could they take over if we don’t pull in enough people?”

  “Ultimately, yes. In the meantime, they could start making management decisions and personnel changes. Max says we don’t have much time.”

  Lyle looked into his coffee, then back up at Kate. “So now we maybe have a financial motive. They wreck the park, then take us over. And Waterman is like a...spy.”

  “Not necessarily. Max is worried, but he thinks FedPat will give us a break. They invested more money than he expected. He’s grateful to them for sticking with him. Besides, what good would it do them if Nostalgia City tanks? They’d be losing their own investment.”

  Lyle thought for a moment. “Not if it was just temporary. They haven’t blown up the park, just wrecked some rides.”

  “That’s pretty hard to imagine. Would a big corporation use sabotage to run us out of business?”

  “Do big corporations--banks, for example--cook their books, flout regulations, and plot hostile takeovers?”

  “Sure, but not like this.”

  “Guess I was a cop too long. It just smells bad.”

  Kate shook her head. “Okay--just for argument--let’s say the motive is plausible, but how could we prove any of this?”

  “Prove it? We could, uh... ”

  “What would you do if you were still a police detective?”

  That was an ugly thought, but it gave Lyle an idea. “We could tap his phone. That would give us some evidence.”

  “Tap Kevin Waterman’s phone? You can’t do that.”

  “Sure I can. I’ve done it before.”

  “Didn’t you have to get a court order?”

  “We’ll skip that part. The NSA does.”

  “What if you get caught?”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s going on? I thought you hated waiting.” The more Lyle thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

  “Break into his office?”

  “Wouldn’t need to. I know an electronics guy in Phoenix who can tap a phone line with a paper clip and Scotch Tape. I used to get Travis Stringley a lot of work. He’ll do it.”

  “Max’d fire you. No, we need to try something else.” She picked up her cat and walked Lyle to the door.

  “I’ll keep working on it, but Waterman and his company look good for this to me.”

  Kate turned her cat’s head toward her. “What do you think, Trixie?”

  Opening the apartment door, Lyle suddenly turned around. “Hey, did you ever think about playing for the WNBA after you got out of college?”

  “When I graduated, there was no such thing as the WNBA.”

  “Really?”

  Chapter 27

  Kate and Bruce had never been apart for more than a few days at a time before she moved to Arizona. She thought seeing him again would tell her in an instant how strong their bond was. It wasn’t that easy. In the first twenty-four hours after he arrived in Flagstaff, and Kate picked him up at the airport, she only learned how much they both wanted each other--physically.

  They didn’t waste time having dinner in a Flagstaff restaurant but headed directly to Kate’s apartment. She’d stocked up on food. She’d had a pretty good idea how they would spend their first day together.

  By Saturday morning, their prolonged sex had taken up as much time as sleeping. When Bruce finally awoke, he reached for Kate, but she wasn’t there. She was sitting across the bedroom wearing a silky robe and looking through a real estate guide to northern Arizona.

  Bruce pulled the sheet back and patted the bed next to him. “Come here.”

  “In a minute. Our appointment with the real estate agent is in a couple of hours. I want to show you some of the possibilities we’re going to look at.”

  “Bring it over here.”

  He smiled and Kate saw the broad face, muscular shoulders, and child-like grin that had originally attracted her. He had joined a team in the Arena Football League out of college and played pro two years until an injury made him look for another line of work. He had coached for a few years then tried selling cars. Finally, he decided he was more comfortable working in a gym. He kept in shape and found out he was good at selling memberships.

  Kate stood and pulled her robe tightly around her. Doing so covered more skin, but emphasized her hips and breasts. She sat on the bed and set the real estate booklet in her lap.

  “Do we really want to buy a house here, now?” Bruce asked. “What about all the accidents and the publicity?”

  Kate had the same thoughts but, hearing it from Bruce, she took offense. Didn’t he think she could rescue the park? And he didn’t even know about FedPat’s deadline. Realistically, could she help NC pull out of its downward spiral of fear and financial losses? It was a risk. But she’d taken risks before.

  “Yes, we’re going to look at houses. Now pay attention.”

  “Can’t we go on some rides today, instead?”

  “You think it’s safe?”

  “I don’t know. Is it?”

  “How about a little confidence?” She pointed to a
photo of a sprawling ranch house. “Here, look at this house.”

  He reached over and ran two fingers along her neckline, under the robe.

  She pushed his hand away playfully. “Here’s a house in Polk. You’ve never been there. Take a look.”

  He put his hand back where it had been. “Kate how can we really be serious about this? Besides, we haven’t even sold the condo.”

  “We can afford it. Max’s giving me a low-cost loan and a bonus.”

  Bruce pulled his hand away and sat up. “A signing bonus? You didn’t tell me about that. And a home loan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Polk is kind of a small town, isn’t it?”

  “What, are you interested in house hunting all of a sudden?”

  “I always was.”

  “Yes, Polk is a small town. We’ll look in Flagstaff first.”

  “Yes, Flagstaff.” Bruce pulled the real estate guide off Kate’s lap.

  ***

  “It’s Saturday. Why did you have to work all day today?” Hank Deming looked up from his chair in the family room. “Can’t you speak to somebody? You shouldn’t have to be a cabbie when you’re doing this detective work.”

  Lyle had just returned from work. He had walked in the door, twirling his hat with two fingers. His father’s expression stopped him. “Dad, I’ve always worked Saturdays. It’s fun. You know I like the cab.”

  He and his father had had this conversation before. Lyle sighed to himself and walked to his bedroom to change. When he was dressed in comfortable jeans and a knit shirt, he glanced at his desk to see if his father had brought in the mail.

  In a corner was the stack of Federal Patrician Insurance forms and letters. He had not looked at the mail from the Boston company in a couple of days; NC problems crowded insurance out of his mind.

  “May as well get to it,” he said. He slid into his chair and pulled the stack of loathsome papers toward him. He opened the first envelope and started reading a message about which lab tests were covered by Sam’s policy. Halfway through, he stopped, mid-sentence. He let go of it and the letter seemed to float on the top of his desk. He stared at the logo in the upper left corner. “Son of a bitch.” He grabbed the letter, stood up, and for a moment didn’t know what to do. “Dad--” he started to say, but his dad wouldn’t care. “Son of a bitch.”