by Bill Noel
Cindy walked to the door and looked out. She put her hand on the door handle, and then mumbled something and came back to the counter.
“What’s wrong?” asked Larry.
“Nothing,” she said, a little too quickly. “Just keeping an eye out for our new king, Chief King. I’m on duty and on his list.”
“What list?” I asked.
“You’re not a fan of profanity, so I’ll leave it as his poop list.”
I wanted to laugh, but was impressed by her concern for my sensitive ears. “Why?”
She looked at Charles, and then at Larry, and finally returned her gaze to me. “Guilt by association. Our new king, Chief King has it in for you guys; says you’re troublemakers and his island would be better off without you slugs.”
We weren’t going anywhere, but since Cindy needed her job, she had to get back on patrol. She reluctantly left, and Charles, Larry, and I got back to slug-talk.
His island, I thought. If he spent more time trying to catch the crossbow killer, there’d be a lot less meddling.
CHAPTER 29
The hardware store business began to bustle, so Charles and I headed to the gallery. Our customers must have been in the hardware store. We moved to the back room and hashed and rehashed everything we knew about the victims. All three were gainfully employed, although Pat claimed to be on an extended vacation; two had some tie to the country music jamboree; and most significantly, to us anyway, all lived at the rapidly-becoming-infamous boardinghouse.
Finding other similarities was more difficult. We knew that none were originally from the area. Arno was from somewhere in Maryland; Pat from Kentucky; and Les we weren’t sure about but knew it wasn’t South Carolina. Two were male; one female. All three knew each other slightly and didn’t appear to have any history together. And all three had recent encounters with a crossbow arrow, or bolt, as Charles had clarified irritatingly often.
Regardless of how many times we analyzed what they had in common, the question “So what?” followed. After one more “So what?” Charles remembered he had a delivery to make for Dude. Along with working off-the-books for a couple of contractors, Charles made on-island deliveries for the surf shop. The money from these “tax-free” jobs allowed him to remain in his vaulted—unpaid—position as sales manager at Landrum Gallery.
He left, and I opened the business checkbook. Everything was written in black ink, but it screamed red. I listened to the doorbell not ring. I shook my head in disgust and disappointment. A bag of Cheetos kept me from falling deeper into depression—thank you, Frito-Lay.
Sometime in midafternoon, the phone—and not the bell over the front door—jarred me from my misery.
“Chris,” said Charles. I could hear his labored breathing in his voice. “You’d better get over here.”
“It’d help if I knew where you were. What’s wrong?”
“Surf shop,” he said, and the phone went dead.
If nothing else, he had my curiosity wide awake. I locked the gallery without fear of turning customers away, and briskly walked three blocks to the surf shop. By the time I reached the shop and huffed and puffed up the steps to the elevated store, I sternly told myself that I needed to lose weight. The air-conditioning slapped me in the face as I entered; it felt good. Most of Dude’s sales force could have come to town for a tattoo convention. The twenty-something clerk with slicked-back hair and a sleeveless T-shirt advertising Xtrak, whatever that was, pointed toward the back. He didn’t speak, and from other contacts I’d had with him, that was a blessing. His arm was covered with red and black ink; I wasn’t sure, but thought the entire Gettysburg Address may have been imbedded.
Dude and Charles were standing in a corner in what could generously be called the office.
Dude saw me. “Me be amped, Chrisster,” he said.
“Me be confused,” I responded.
He looked at me like he couldn’t understand why. Charles, who often served as a translator between Dude and me, stepped in.
“Dude’s excited and a little upset,” he said. “He’ll explain.”
That wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear, but turned to Dude.
Dude’s arms were crossed like he was cold. He leaned against the wall and then leaned toward me. “Travis be gone,” he said and stared at me.
I shrugged, and Charles interrupted. “More, Dude.”
“The Travster, be regular, youngin’, under thirty, not big on surfin’, he be goat boater, he be gone,” said Dude, all in one breath—all meaningless. His eyes darted toward the front of the store, and then back to us, and then back to the front.
“Dude,” said Charles, who was carefully watching the distracted shop owner, “let’s take a walk. The store’s in good hands.”
“Hands,” he said, still looking toward the front, “not good, but hands; let’s go.”
We walked out the backdoor and down the steps to the sand-covered lot. I wasn’t anxious for a walk in the late-summer heat, but appreciated Charles’s ploy to get Dude away from distractions.
As we walked away from the shop, I turned to Charles and whispered, “Goat boater?”
He smiled and looked at Dude, who was already a few steps in front of us. “Dude’s insulting kayakers and wave skiers.”
Maybe Kentuckians do need more education.
The walking, talking translator and president quotester yelled for Dude to slow down. He slowed but kept walking until he found one of the few large trees near the center of town. He walked around the tree like a dog staking out its turf and then sat and leaned against the trunk. Charles and I followed suit.
Charles spoke first. “Dude, see if I have this right. One of your regular customers, Travis Something-or-other …”
“Don’t think that be his last name …” interrupted Dude.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Green,” said Dude.
“Travis Green?” asked Charles.
Dude nodded.
“Okay,” continued Charles, “Travis Green is in his twenties and is a regular in the shop.”
Dude continued to nod.
“He’s not much of a surfer but is a kayaker. Right?”
Another nod.
“And you know he’s gone because he comes in every Tuesday morning before noon—has for two years—and hangs for a half hour or so.”
Dude added a smile to his nod. That was a compound sentence for him.
I was getting a little impatient with the speed of Charles’s translation, but my impatience came to an abrupt end with Charles’s next comment.
“Travis lives at the Edge?”
Dude’s smile was gone, but the nod spoke loudly.
CHAPTER 30
The roar of vehicles on Center Street, a block from where we were seated, was drowned out by the bass vibrations of “music” coming from the open windows of cars and monster trucks. The prime vacation season had ended, but there was still no shortage of visitors to the island. Squeals of preschool kids going to and from the beach were interspersed with yells of parents telling them to slow down, speed up, stop, or go.
Sweat rolled down my breastbone and my faded, red golf shirt was soaked, but I didn’t want to interrupt Dude and suggest we go somewhere air-conditioned.
“Dude,” I began, “what else do you know about Travis? Couldn’t he have simply missed a day at the shop?”
“He be gone, Chrisster,” he repeated. “He be regular as Pluto appearing. Real stable. My sun god, he owns a Volvo.” He opened his arms. “How predictable that be?”
I wasn’t sure about the logic, but Dude had no doubt.
“Dude,” said Charles, “you might want to add that other snippet of information you told me.”
“Not sure,” said Dude. He was pulling on a thread on his short
s and didn’t look up.
“Dude,” said Charles.
His fascination with the thread abated, and he made semi-eye contact with me. “No biggie,” he said, “when the Travster not show, I strolled.” He stopped and went back to the thread.
“Dude!” said Charles, louder this time.
Dude slowly looked up again. “Dudester not big detective like you and Chuckster,” he said. “Also, not—how they say it—constrained by search laws that inhibit the fuzz. So, visited Travis’s pad.” Dude turned to the tree trunk that had been his backrest, made a fist, and tapped the trunk four times as he said, “Knock, knock, knock, knock.”
“And …?” prompted Charles.
“Well,” said Dude, “didn’t want to make too much sound; didn’t want to disturb Mrs. Klein, so turned the knob, and, big whoops, door flew open.” He held both arms in the air and repeated, “Whoops!”
Charles lifted his cane, which had been resting beside him, and pointed it at Dude. “And …”
“Heard the casa be haunted,” said Dude. “Figured ghosts inviting me in. Had to go.”
Dude paused. He wanted to choose his next inarticulate words wisely. My mind raced. I imagined Dude finding a dead body, a crossbow arrow protruding from the carcass; or a crossbow sitting on the table waiting for Travis to use it on his next victim; or Chief King hauling Dude to jail. Dude’s response fell far short of anticlimactic.
“Didn’t see the ghost. Didn’t see the Travster. Didn’t see a picture of the Dudester on the bedside table …”
Charles interrupted before Dude shared a few thousand other things he didn’t see. “What’d you find?”
“Smelly clothes on floor, some in closet; old TV, eighteen-incher; rotting, old orange life jacket; broken watch on table, three thirty-five o’clock; bottle of aspirin and safety razor on three-legged table near the door; and, oh yeah, road map of Colorado. That’s all my nondetecting eyes viewed.”
Dude didn’t say much—at least not much that I could understand—but I knew he didn’t miss much, so I wasn’t surprised with how much he remembered. “From what you saw, Dude, did it look like he had left on his own?”
“Couldn’t tell; don’t rightly know how much he owned, so don’t know what was gone.”
“No blood or crossbow or crossbow bolt or dead body?” asked Charles.
“Didn’t notice that,” he said.
Dude remembered seeing a road map of Colorado and a razor; I suspect he would have noticed Travis stuffed in the closet with a crossbow bolt protruding from his chest.
“Guys,” I said, “we need to tell the police.”
“Tell them what?” asked Charles.
I started to reply, but Charles stopped me and started counting off on his fingers. “Should we tell them they need to call out the cavalry because one of Dude’s customers forgot to come in today?” Finger two. “Maybe we could tell them that Dude broke into someone’s apartment.”
Dude yanked his right arm in the air like he wanted to ask a question in class. “Whoa,” he said, “the ghost invited me; didn’t break anything.”
Charles ignored him and held up finger number three. “I got it. We could tell them Travis Green had the nerve to have a map of Colorado in his room, so he must be the killer—or dead.”
I wasn’t to be deterred. “Then how’re we going to feel if Travis is the killer and he strikes again—what if Cindy’s his next victim? What if he could be in danger, and we sat here under a tree and did nothing? What if this information could help them catch the maniac? This could help them solve it?”
Charles had finally closed his hand and stopped counting. He looked at Dude and then to his left in the direction of the Atlantic and the Edge. “Chris,” he said, “as the late, not so great, president Richard Nixon once said, ‘Solutions are not the answer.’”
If Nixon had really said that, he must have gotten the quote from Dude. I was clueless about what it meant but continued my argument. Finally, Charles—and even Dude, I think—agreed to tell our story to someone from the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department and not risk an encounter with, as Cindy had put it, king, Chief King. Before we lost our nerve, or Dude disappeared back to his planet of origin, I called the Sheriff’s Department from my cell phone. They agreed to have someone meet us at Landrum Gallery within the hour.
A young patrol officer strutted into the gallery forty-five minutes later. He introduced himself, and I promptly forgot his name. From what he said, I knew he wasn’t well-informed about the crossbow investigation and didn’t know much about the island. His hands trembled as he took notes. If this wasn’t his first month on the job, it wouldn’t be far off. I wasn’t happy with his inexperience, but understood why our call was low on their list. Why would anyone take seriously a washed-up surfer, an unemployed whatever Charles was, and an outsider?
He listened to our story—a story that conveniently omitted Dude’s invitation by a ghost to check out Travis’s room. We had to repeat everything twice—not so the rookie could make sure we were consistent, but so he could get it all written down. He thanked us for being “concerned citizens” and said someone would get back with us. After he left, we remained in the gallery and agreed that that would never happen.
Dude summed it up best when he called the officer a frube—or as Charles translated, a surfer who doesn’t catch a wave the whole time he’s in the water.
CHAPTER 31
A hefty wind blew in from the ocean and rattled the tin roof. The unsettling noise startled me from my nap; it brought back feelings of Hurricane Frank sweeping over the house.
It had been hours since Charles, Dude, and I told our story—most of our story—to the “proper officials” and I headed home for a nap. Once I realized I wasn’t going to blow away, the next sound I heard was my stomach pleading for nourishment. My cupboard was bare—its normal state—so I decided the short walk to Bert’s would be my best bet to quench my hunger. A pizza warming bin was near the door. The smell of the warm, enticing pizza made my supper selection simple. I grabbed two slices of pepperoni and cheese and then walked to the cooler for a six-pack of soft drinks. From the crowd in Bert’s, I knew I wasn’t the only needy person on Folly Beach. But most of the customers were focused on the beer cooler and chip rack. I felt like a zookeeper studying the eating habits of my charges when I heard Cindy’s pleasant voice behind me. She was wearing hot-pink shorts, a florescent lime-green sleeveless top, and pink Crocs—a drastic departure from her police garb.
“That’s a healthy supper you have there.” She pointed at the pizza and drinks.
She carried an identical box that had a distinct smell similar to mine. She hadn’t made a drink selection yet.
“You’re welcome to join me for supper,” I said. There wouldn’t be any pressure for me to fix food.
I was pleased when she said, “Sure. Now I don’t have to buy anything to drink.” She laughed.
I smiled and said, “Aren’t you afraid the king will see you with me?”
She looked around the store. It was full, but no one paid attention to us. “You don’t live that far from here; I’ll make a run for it. You can go ahead of me and signal when the coast is clear.”
“I’ll get home and grab my flashlight. One flash for all clear; two will mean a king spotting.”
“Hey, I’m a cop. We live on the edge.” She paused and giggled, “I even live at the Edge. I’ll take the chance. Now go ahead and do what men do, throw your dirty clothes under the bed and pick up the empty beer cans off the floor.” She turned and headed to the rear of the store.
She was half right. There weren’t any beer cans.
Cindy knocked and then opened the door before I could get to it. She stepped in and looked back outside before closing the door.
“I made it,” she said. “Didn’t see a single ki
ng.” She was breathing heavily, and I suspected she actually did run.
During our heart-unhealthy meal, Cindy shared stories about how some of the officers had hidden some of the acting chief’s papers so he couldn’t find things when he needed them. Two of the guys actually let the air out of the tires on his unmarked car. And one officer, whom she refused to name, had made an anonymous call to the State Police sex crimes division to report strange activities between the acting chief of the Folly Beach Department of Public Safety and underage bathing beauties.
I told her I was shocked, but didn’t try too hard to mask a smile. The police department was a close-knit community, and any outsider, especially one that was universally despised, would have a difficult time fitting in. Cindy had experienced some herself, but because of her can-do attitude and quickly learning how to play the game, her hazing was brief. Plus, she was a great cop.
She had already shared things that if word got out, could cost her, as well as her fellow officers, their jobs, so I felt comfortable telling her about Travis Green and Dude’s invite by the ghost. Besides, Travis was Cindy’s neighbor. She said she didn’t know him much at all. He was younger and kept to himself. She occasionally heard some loud rock music coming from his room, but it wasn’t on late and he was always polite. She said he drove an old Volvo, something I already knew, and worked somewhere off-island. She didn’t know where, but saw his car leaving early most mornings. She thought he was off Tuesdays, which was consistent with Dude’s story. She didn’t remember seeing him the last few days, and his car wasn’t in its usual spot.
She finished her pizza and asked if I had chips—and, while I was up, if I had beer. Fortunately, I met both of her culinary needs.
When I returned with post-meal appetizers and drinks, she said that she might see if Dude’s ghost would invite her into Travis’s room. I agreed that was a good idea.
“Cindy,” I asked as I poured myself a drink a little more potent than Diet Pepsi. “Who else lives there? I know about Pat, Lester, Arno, Cal, Mrs. Klein, now Travis Green, and you. Anyone else?”
