Dead Center

by Bill Noel

  It took a half hour to haul Heather’s belongings to the car. Searching for something to be thankful for, I was reminded her apartment had come furnished, so none of the furniture had to be crammed in the Venza. We did have to find room for a large, black and silver karaoke machine, a music stand, and her “favorite” chrome, picture frame with crystals attached by a thin thread dangling from the top edge.

  She placed her guitar case and wide-brimmed, straw hat she wore when preforming, on top of her possessions, and announced she was ready to meet her destiny.

  I hated to see them go, but I was happy for Heather. On the other hand, I was sure her elation would be short lived. It wasn’t my place to tell her. I asked them if they wanted to go to the Dog for a farewell meal.

  Charles glanced at Heather. “Nah,” he said. “Better hit the road. Hope to get to Knoxville and spend the night before going the rest of the way in the morning.”

  “Mr. Starr wants me to call as soon as we get there,” Heather said, and hugged me. “Thanks, Chris. You’re the best thing that ever happened to Chucky—other than me. I love you.”

  I returned her hug and didn’t say anything. I wasn’t able to.

  She headed to the passenger seat and Charles scuffed his foot in the shell and gravel parking lot. I noticed he wore a black, long-sleeve T-shirt unadorned of any college identification; the same shirt he had worn at his aunt’s funeral, and one that was out of character from his logoed, T-shirt collection. I wondered if it was intentional or the next shirt in line.

  He looked at his foot that was still pushing gravel around. “Guess this is adios. You know I’m bummed about leaving.” He looked at me. “She’s special. Don’t find gals like her every day.”

  You can say that again, I thought.

  His eyes began to water. “Now,” he paused, sniffed, and said, “danged allergies. Chris, I think I’ve done a good job of training you to carry on my reputation. You still need to practice being nosy, and lazy, and you need to concentrate on being dumber. You’ve learned from the best, but you still have a way to go.” He stepped back and looked at my navy blue polo shirt and lightweight tan jacket. “As Andy Jackson said, ‘There goes a man made by the Lord Almighty and not by his tailor.’ I never did learn you how to dress.”

  He was right, thank goodness. I told him I would try harder to be like him, but he could never be replaced. He said he would be back in a few weeks to get the rest of his valuables, which meant a hundred or so T-shirts and three zillion books.

  “Chucky,” Heather squealed. “Music City’s awaitin’.”

  “Yes, sweetie.”

  He tipped his Tilley to me, winked, told me to take care of his island, and slid into the driver’s seat.

  Heather was ecstatic. Charles was happy. And I felt a void growing in my stomach, heart, and head.

  There were a few people on the street and sidewalks, yet all I could see on my short drive home was a small town hadn’t yet realized how sad it would be to have lost one of its most endearing characters. The colorful exteriors of The Grill, Woody’s Pizza, Planet Follywood, the Crab Shack, Taco Boy, and Snapper Jacks looked duller. Even the red signal on Folly’s stoplight looked pale.

  I walked in the house and tried to tell myself to cheer up. One glance at the broken window deepened my depression. Was my world falling apart or did it just seem that way? It had been fifteen minutes since he had pulled off-island, and I was already missing Charles. I didn’t know her as well as Charles did, but I missed Heather’s unique outlook, her quirky hobbies, and her ability to make him happy. I wouldn’t miss her singing.

  My mind switched to Karen. Would she be next to leave? I shouldn’t—couldn’t—stand in her way when it came to the job opportunity. She’d had a long and stressful career. She deserved to be happy and if taking the new job met that need, I would support it. Then again, am I part of the reason for her considering it? She wanted more from our relationship; at least she did at some point. Would that have made a difference in her career decision? I moved to the kitchen, grabbed a Diet Pepsi, sat at the table, took a long sip, and flipped through a copy of a new photo magazine that arrived yesterday. Neither the Pepsi nor the magazine offered solace.

  My mind switched to Preacher Burl and his concern for Douglas Garfield. After meeting with the obnoxious member of his flock, I had no interest in honoring Burl’s request to help him. I wondered if Garfield was responsible for the two break-ins. He had said he could take care of himself; that’s all I needed to know. So why did I feel guilty?

  Now to Dude. I had known him for years and while we had little in common, I considered him a friend. If I’d learned anything since moving here, it was that friends looked out for each other, watched each other’s back, and I could cite several examples of where they put their lives on the line for each other. Dude was worried about his sister and therefore, so was I. But what could I do? Was she in danger, or was she a murderer?

  I moved to the spare room and stared at the broken window. Cold February air rushed through the opening, bringing a chill but no answers. I closed my eyes and pictured Douglas Garfield smashing the glass; I could also see Barbara doing it. Or it may not have anything to do with the death in the alley and was someone high on drugs looking for the money to feed his habit?

  I shut the spare room door to keep the cold from infiltrating the rest of the house, took a walk on the pier, wondered if Charles and Heather had made it to Knoxville, watched the sunset behind the Tides hotel, and tried to cheer myself up by watching a sitcom. The artificial laugh-track failed to convince me anything was worth laughing about. I prayed tomorrow would be better.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  For the second time in the last few days, I called Larry to repair my window. He wasn’t at the hardware store and Brandon, Larry’s only full-time employee, said the owner was taking the day off and spending it with his “cutie-pie.” I asked if that was any way to refer to the chief of police. He said “yep,” and added if I wanted to incur the wrath of Larry, I could call his cell. Why not, I thought and punched in the number. Larry said he was having a “delightful” day with his lovely spouse watching her select onions at Harris Teeter. I told him the problem and he said, “Thank God. A reason to get out of this frickin’ grocery.” For Larry, shopping ranked up there with barreling over Niagara Falls. He said he’d be here as soon as he convinced Cindy they didn’t need asparagus and okra.

  Fifty minutes later, Larry pulled up in his yellow Pewter Hardware pick-up truck. Instead of asparagus and okra, he carried a red toolbox and a pane of window glass wrapped in brown cardboard. He also had a police escort in the form of Chief Cindy LaMond.

  Cindy said, “No way am I going to let the boy get away from me that easy on our day off.”

  I assumed it was her explanation of why she was with him on the emergency hardware store run. I also had a hunch she wanted to find out how the window got broken. I welcomed them and offered coffee, water, Pepsi, beer or wine. They chose coffee. Larry said if he wasn’t working with sharp glass, he would have taken beer. They grabbed their drinks and followed me to the spare room.

  Cindy looked at the window and squinted. “Hmm, rock? Kid threw a baseball through it? Meteorite?” She gave me her best police stare. “Wait, I’ve got it. Somebody broke in. Again.”

  I smiled. “Don’t suppose you’d buy a seagull strike?”

  Larry, showing wisdom, ignored our conversation and began scraping away the caulk around the broken pane.

  Cindy sat in the chair in front of my computer and leaned back. “Who and when?” She wore jeans and a denim work shirt, but had morphed to on-duty.

  “Night before last,” I said and took a deep breath. “Don’t know who.”

  “Night before last,” Cindy growled. “When were you planning to report it? Christmas.”

  “Now.”

  Larry hummed “Jingle Bells,” and continued his work as if we weren’t there. I wished I wasn’t.

  “Did you
think someone was taking a shortcut through your house to Bert’s?” She shook her head. “Lay the details on me.”

  I told her what little I knew. She asked why I was asleep at nine-thirty and if I was positive I didn’t see who it was. I said I didn’t get a decent look and added I didn’t see any reason to call the police. What I did see was an intruder wearing gloves so there wouldn’t be prints, and I scared him off before he—”

  “Or she,” Cindy interrupted.

  “Or she, got in.”

  Larry’s cell rang and he listened for a minute and said, “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen.” He put the phone back in his pocket, sighed, and said he had to go to the store and bail Brandon out. “The credit card machine—on its own, without any assistance from my computer-illiterate assistant—added three extra zeroes to a thirteen-dollar charge and the peeved customer won’t leave until the problem’s corrected.”

  Larry put the finishing touches on the new window and asked if Cindy was ready to go. She said she had things to discuss and Larry could pick her up when he finished battling Brandon and MasterCard. He tried to plant a kiss on her mouth on his way to the door. She turned her head and he got her cheek.

  “Remind me to never, never, not ever take that boy to the grocery,” Cindy said, as that boy drove away.

  I smiled. “Thought you two were having a fun day together.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  We moved to the kitchen and she asked if the offer of a beer was still good. I said yes and she accepted and plopped down in a kitchen chair. There was something on her mind, so I remained silent.

  She took a sip and put the bottle on the table and held it with both hands like it was trying to escape. “Got a strange call last night.”

  I remained silent.

  “Detective Adair called around ten and apologized for calling so late. That got my attention.”

  She took another sip and I nodded.

  “He said he had been talking with a detective with the Pennsylvania State Police. They were calling about Barbara Deanelli. Seems there’s an investigation going on up there and they knew she was living here and wanted to know if the sheriff’s office had her on its radar. They had contacted the great detective agency in the cloud, Google, and saw where her name popped up in a Charleston TV station’s report about a body found behind Barb’s Books, owned by you-know-who.” She paused and took a draw of beer. “Detective Adair told the Penn police person that if he knew that, he knew as much as Adair knew. He told the detective he would contact me since I was closer to what happened here and would get back with him if he learned anything. As you can imagine, he learned zero from me.”

  “Why’s she being investigated?”

  “Chris, haven’t you learned by now that hoity-toity state cops look at sheriff offices like you’d look at a rabid opossum; sheriff-office fuzz look at us local yokels like you’d look at the rat bit by the rabid opossum. State cops tell county cops squat; county cops tell local yokels half squat.”

  “Adair doesn’t know why Barbara’s being investigated.”

  “You missed your calling. He learned a bit more than I thought he would. The Penn police said it had to do with Barbara’s husband, now ex-husband.”

  “She’s not the subject of the investigation?”

  “He didn’t say, but my take is no. That’d depend on what they turn up.”

  “Think our murder could be connected?”

  “Our murder?” She frowned at me, and continued, “Doubt it, remember, my half-squat status don’t get me invited to many meetings about what’s going on.”

  “Has Adair learned anything else about Lawrence Panella’s death?”

  “Now that you ask, Adair did share a sliver of information with Chief Half-Squat.” She pointed to her face. “Seems Mr. Panella was living, as we say back home, high on the hog in Myrtle Beach; has a nice fancy house, wife belongs to an exclusive country club.”

  “You said he was a successful equipment salesman. Wouldn’t they make good money?”

  “No argument with that. Except a forensic audit of his finances showed there wasn’t a legitimate source of income to keep them in the lifestyle to which they had been accustomed.”

  “If he was retired, there wouldn’t be as large an income as when he was working.”

  “There you go,” Cindy said. “I agree with you again, that is until he said the audit went back the last six years he had allegedly been selling those big-ass machines.”

  “Is this where you tell me his W-2s didn’t add up to the money he was spending?”

  “Lordy, Chris.” She put her hand over her heart. “We’ve never been on the same surfboard together like we are now. You’ve smacked the dilemma right on its bald spot.”

  “If Charles were here, he’d quote a US President who said something about cash being king. People who hire hit men don’t pay with a payroll check.”

  “Right again. The bank records show a bunch of cash deposits under the ten-thousand-buck limit that has to be reported. The cops up there would love to question him about them. Unfortunately, as you know, he’s unavailable.”

  “Any deposits in the last few weeks?”

  “You’re pushing the limit on what the big-wig cops shared. If I was guessing, I’d say no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Pennsylvania cops asked Adair if he found a large quantity of cash on Panella or in his hotel room.”

  “Cash for the hit?”

  “That’s my take.”

  “And none was found.”

  “Five hundred bucks rolled up in a shoe in his hotel room, and he’d paid for the room with a credit card.”

  “Learn anything else?”

  “Cripes, Chris. Thought I was doing pretty good to charm that much out of Adair.”

  “You did.”

  “Speaking of Charles, do you think he and Heather are serious about heading to Nashville?”

  It was a stretch to say I’d been speaking of Charles. “Not thinking about it, they left yesterday.”

  Cindy leaned back like I’d slapped her. “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I were.”

  “Details?”

  I proceeded to tell her about their decision, Charles buying a car, their packing, and leaving.

  “How long do you think they’ll be there?”

  I shook my head. “The way Charles talked, it could be forever.”

  “Damn, double damn.”

  An hour later, the phone rang and an unfamiliar out-of-state area code popped up on the screen. Great, all I need is a telemarketer trying to sell me a condo, offer a free cruise, to give me an opportunity to donate to an incredibly worthy cause, or to buy a coffin at a discount. Larry had picked Cindy up after our cheerful discussion about death and Charles leaving, so I thought what the heck, rehearsed all the ways I was going to say no.

  “Mr. Landrum, I’m glad I caught you. This is Barbara Deanelli. Is this a bad time?”

  I was surprised. “It’s fine, how are you?”

  It beat having to say no, but I realized how dumb it was to ask her how she was. I doubted she called to share her condition.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” She hesitated. “A couple more questions. Could you stop by tomorrow?”

  “Sure. Any particular time?”

  “I’ll be here from nine on.”

  I told her I’d be there in the morning. I didn’t tell her it would be close to her opening because I had acquired a couple of nosy genes from Charles.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  If Charles was here, he would have me standing in front of Barb’s Books thirty minutes before she unlocked the door. He was hundreds of miles away, so I exerted a dollop of patience, and opened the door to the bookstore five minutes after it opened; not quite fashionably late, but the best my curiosity would allow.

  “Good morning, Mr. Landrum. What took you so long to get here?”

  A lighthearted comment, more progress. Barb stepped fro
m behind the counter and greeted me with a handshake. She wore the same red blouse she had on the first time I’d met her. She had switched from black to gray slacks.

  “Please call me Chris. Would’ve been here sooner but my flight was late.”

  Instead of looking at me like I was an idiot, she smiled.

  “Call me Barb. Tap water or coffee?”

  I started to ask if Barb Tap Water or Coffee was her Indian name, but decided not to push my luck with humor—attempt at humor.

  “Coffee would be great.”

  She waved for me to follow her to the back room. “Good, I got a new coffeemaker and wanted to try it out on someone.”

  She pointed at a black and polished-chrome Keurig machine that looked like it should be in a science lab rather than in a bookstore. I was informed it made one cup of coffee at a time, a feature I didn’t think was efficient, as I watched her insert a cartridge in the machine, pull a lever, and push a button. My Mr. Coffee machine that had lived on the same counter for years would have been humiliated sitting next to the high-tech gadget.

  We watched one cup brew and she repeated the steps and prepared one for herself. She said she should get back to the front of the store and motioned for me to follow. We sipped our high-tech coffee and talked about how nice the winter weather was as compared to the part of Pennsylvania where she’d been, and about how business had picked up. I didn’t figure either topic was why she had called, and waited for her to feel comfortable enough to share.

  After an awkward pause, she said, “The reason I called is I was wondering if you had a problem with rats?” She pointed to the corner of the room.

  And I wondered half the night about that?

  “No. There are a lot of them on the island. I’ve had a few in my house, never in the store. Do you have some?”

  She looked at the floor like one was going to step out from under one of the bookcases so she could introduce us.

  “There were a few, umm, droppings in the back room,” She wrinkled up her nose.