by Bill Noel
Cal raised his hand, proving why the early years in elementary school are the formative years. “Can we ask questions now?”
Charles laughed. “Easy ones,” he said.
Cal looked at his hand and wiggled his fingers. I could almost hear him mentally counting questions. “If theory one is correct and Rowland found the thief,” said Cal, “why did Barlow have someone put arrows in Les and Arno, and where’s Travis—isn’t that overkill, almost overkill, and maybe overkill?”
“Because …” said Charles.
This time Cal interrupted. “Whoa, hold it a second; let me get all my questions out.”
Charles’s half-open mouth closed.
“Now,” said Cal, “in theory two, let’s say the thief found out that Rowland was after him and he killed her; why shoot Les and Arno?”
I could stay silent for only so long. “Misdirection.”
That got their attention. “If only Rowland was killed, either by someone Barlow hired or by the thief, the police would have focused only on her. That would have led directly to Barlow.” I hesitated, had a vague thought, and then lost it. “Barlow would have told them about the thief, and with only one murder, all the cops’ focus would have been directed toward Rowland.”
“So,” said Cal, “you’re saying some friggin’ idiot actually killed innocent people to misdirect the police.” He shook his head. “That’s sick … that’s damn sick.”
“If you think that’s sick, he used a crossbow,” said Charles.
It was already midafternoon, so we decided to stay in Lexington and get a fresh start in the morning. I suspected that Cal had his mind set on another miniconcert and becoming reacquainted with his new Lexington fans. The older I got, the less excited I was about long drives, so I agreed that another night at the Sleep Inn was fine. We retired to our respective rooms after Charles agreed to let me buy them supper. He was generous like that.
I called Karen Lawson to see how her dad was. That was the reason, wasn’t it? She was at work and couldn’t talk long, but was excited and told me he was doing better than the docs had anticipated. She knew he was on the road to recovery when he started griping about not being at work and began asking everything about the crossbow killer. She asked when we were heading home, how Charles was handling the big city, and if Cal was with us. She closed by saying that maybe we could get together when I got back—something about “hankering” for one of Al’s burgers. I said sure, closed the phone, and wondered why she asked about Cal.
No one answered at Amber’s. She didn’t have an answering machine, so I’d have to call later.
I met Charles and Cal in the lobby. More accurately, I met Charles. Cal was leaning over the check-in counter in deep conversation with the clerk, who coincidentally had been 50 percent of his concert crowd when the clock on the wall said last night’s show was over. After a couple of loud “hmms” by Charles, Cal broke away from his conversation and walked with us to the car.
“Negotiating frequent guest points?” asked Charles. Cal smiled and folded his long legs into the backseat and we headed to Logan’s Roadhouse. For the next two hours, we enjoyed a scrumptious, unhealthy steak meal—loaded baked potatoes, yeast rolls, salad with non-fat-free dressing—and split their famous big and chewy hot fudge brownie. And washed it down with Milwaukee’s finest suds.
Crossbows, the Edge, Barlow, Rowland, Les, Arno, Travis, a near-fatal heart attack, and Acting Chief King never entered the conversation. They weren’t missed.
CHAPTER 47
“Name’s Trigger.”
That was the first Charles and I had heard from Cal since his head hit the headrest as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot. He had slept through Kentucky and across the Tennessee state line. We were near Knoxville. Before we left the hotel, he said something about getting too old for too much fun. Not even Charles asked what that meant.
Charles had been fiddling with the dial on the radio, trying to get updates on the latest hurricane, but had given up and switched the XM radio I had given to myself as a treat before moving to Folly. It was always tuned to the country channel, Willie’s Place.
“Roy Rogers’s horse—the stuffed one?” asked Charles, finally responding to Cal’s comment.
“A stuffed horse? Huh?” asked Cal.
“Never mind,” said Charles. “Who’s Trigger?”
“Not who, what,” said Cal.
“Okay,” said Charles. I heard Charles’s mounting frustration. “What’s Trigger?”
“Willie’s guitar,” said Cal.
Please let it go, Charles, I thought.
“Willie Nelson?” asked Charles.
“Duh. Know another Willie with a guitar named Trigger?”
And I thought Dude was from another planet. I could physically feel the tensions from my work-life leaving my body as I headed back to my home at the beach and listened to the semi-incoherent, nonsensical conversation between my carmates. Having supper with Steve Dewrite brought back too, way too, many memories.
Cal was awake and ready to talk. “Did I ever tell you about Willie and …”
“Yes,” interrupted Charles.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” said Cal.
“Here’s a Charles’s rule of thumb,” said Charles.
I wasn’t aware he had rules; I perked up.
“Anytime,” he began his rule, “someone starts a sentence with, ‘Did I ever tell you …,’ they had; so stop them before you have to suffer through it again.”
This was fun. “Cal,” I said, “you haven’t told me; what about Willie?”
Charles rolled his eyes. “Shee!”
That made my morning.
“I was in the alley between the Ryman and Tootsies enjoying an adult beverage with a couple of Opry sidemen,” said Cal. “One of the musician-followers—groupies in modern lingo—came out of Tootsies and said that Willie was slightly under the influence of firewater and depressed; said he had decided to kill himself. He had walked out onto Broadway and plunked himself down in the middle of the road, waiting for a car to help him meet his maker.” Cal laughed loud enough to shake the seats. “By the time I got my legs under me, Willie’s wife de jour grabbed a couple of hefty guys and pulled him out of the street.” Cal had stopped laughing and stared out the window. “Sure miss the good ole days.”
“Yeah,” said Charles.
Cal cocked his head toward the XM box. “Met that guy once,” he said.
“Willie? You already told us that,” said Charles.
“No, the guy hosting that radio show, Bill Mack.”
“And he is…?” asked Charles.
Cal squinted in Charles’s direction. “How can you think you know everything and not know who the famous Bill Mack is? That boy’s been country music’s biggest DJ since the sixties. And one of its best songwriters and a good singer to boot.”
“Guess I listened to the wrong radio stations,” said Charles.
My guess was that Bill Mack had never been president.
“Bill lives down in my home state; must like it more than I did.” Cal shook his head. “He’s still there. He even let me visit his overnight radio show a couple of times. Anyway, he’s a nice fellow.”
Charles wasn’t overly impressed; he turned the XM off and continued to fiddle with the radio. He finally found a station that had more understandable words than static. The announcer said something about Greta, but that’s all I caught.
“What’d they say about the hurricane?” I asked Charles.
“Something about it growing strength and expected somewhere along the coast late in the week.” He turned and looked at Cal. “The Bill Mack fan club was so loud, I missed it.”
I drove another half hour before I realized that the only words from the backseat came from the ra
dio.
The silence was broken when the nasal-sounding voice from the rear said, “Cal to front seat … Cal to front seat.”
I looked in the rearview mirror; Charles turned toward Cal.
He had our attention and leaned forward, “I’ve been thinking.”
I inwardly tremble when Charles says that, but didn’t know Cal well enough to know how to react.
“And …,” said Charles.
“People expect to see me decked out in a fancy, rhinestone-covered coat, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. I play to what others want to see and think I am.” He hesitated, waiting for who knows what. “Well, to be honest, I’m more comfortable in this golf shirt and shorts than all that other stuff. It ain’t misdirection like you were talking about yesterday, but it’s deception—creating an image. Reality don’t really play into it; it’s a front, you could say.”
“Makes sense,” I said. I bit my lips not to say so what. Cal was trying to tell us something, something important.
He sat back and picked his guitar up from the seat beside him and held it like he was going to break out in a tune. “No doubt that Barlow’s a fraud, trying to put on airs, be something he ain’t; yes, no doubt. But there’s someone at the Edge doing the same thing. Charles, I’m not trying to shoot down your theory about Barlow being the killer; after all, you’re the detective. But I think there’s a killer at the boardinghouse, and we’re only seeing what he … or she … wants us to see—seeing what we expect.”
“Want to tell us who?” asked Charles.
“Nothing’d give me more pleasure,” said Cal. He began strumming his guitar. “But I don’t have a clue.”
“Speaking of rhinestones,” said Segue Charles, “how long have you had your outfit you wear when you sing?”
“Longer than I’ve had sobriety; several decades. The Stetson’s so full of hair grease, you could fry hamburgers in it. The coat’s on its umpteenth re-stoning.”
“Eeyou, to the hat,” said Charles. “Where do you get rhinestones?”
That’s the kind of trivia Charles feasts on. The words who cares are not in his vocabulary.
“Used to order them from a little company in Nashville,” said Cal. “It’s out of business. Now I get them at Claire’s.”
“The kids’ store?” asked Charles. He forced back a giggle.
“Yep.”
That’s a good example of seeing what we expect to see, I thought. All we have to do is see what we aren’t seeing. And I thought finding the killer was going to be difficult.
CHAPTER 48
My heart nearly stopped as I turned on Arctic Avenue in front of the Holiday Inn. Two Folly Beach patrol vehicles were parked a block up at the boardinghouse—one on the berm, the other in the parking lot. We had pulled back on the island, and I was taking Cal home before running Charles to his apartment. Had there been another murder? Was Cindy okay? Had someone been arrested? My mind raced.
“Don’t guess they’re here to welcome us home,” said Charles. A statement both ironic and prophetic.
I pulled into the lot beside the boardinghouse and was relieved to see Cindy safe and sitting in the car parked at the street. She didn’t appear as happy to see us. Officer Spencer was in the car beside me. He waited for Cal to unfold his oversize frame from the backseat and grab his traveling bag from the trunk. Charles and I were standing beside the car when Spencer approached my door.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, fine … sure,” he said. His left foot shuffled in the sand, and he didn’t make eye contact with us.
“What’s up?” asked Charles. He had walked around the car and joined me leaning against the Lexus.
“Take the car home. I’ll follow,” said Officer Spencer. He was almost whispering.
I nodded and then waved bye to Cal, who awkwardly stood outside earshot. He thanked us for the weekend and opened the door to the house. I drove the short distance home and watched the patrol car following close behind.
“I hate this,” said Spencer. His eyes darted between Charles and me. We were standing beside my car in front of the house. Cindy had parked behind Spencer but stayed in the car. “You’re under arrest.”
Charles looked at me and then at Spencer. “What the …?”
Spencer held up his hand to stop Charles before he finished his question. There was no doubt what he would be asking. “I’ve been ordered by Acting Chief King to take both of you into custody. We knew you were out of town and waited for you to get back.”
“What charges?” I asked. I felt like I was in a television show.
“Remember,” Spencer continued, “I told you he would be pissed when I gave him Rowland’s papers?” A couple of cars whizzed by, and he looked at them. “Let’s go on the porch.”
We moved to the porch—less conspicuous than standing by the road—and Spencer said, “He was more than pissed. I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. He turned red, asked me a bunch of questions I had no answers to, pointed toward our holding cell, and told me he wanted the two of you in it. In it now.”
“What charges?” I tried again.
“Obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and the acting chief’s favorite, meddling and screwing with his investigation.” Spencer’s expression was a cross between a snarl and a smile. “Sorry, guys, I told him you gave me the papers after you saw what they were. He didn’t believe me.”
During my first sixty years around the block, I had never been arrested. But I couldn’t imagine how an arrest could have been more polite, more apologetic, and stranger than this. Spencer asked us to join him in the cruiser. He apologized for having us sit in the rear—the prisoners’ seat behind the barrier that protected him from the wild and crazed arrestees. He drove to the salmon-colored, contemporary combination city hall, fire and police department, and holding cell. Charles shook his head. I stared ahead and reevaluated if I had been too hasty retiring from the boring life of a health care administrator.
Spencer opened the heavy steel cell door like a bellhop at a four-star hotel. He waved for us to enter the room, excuse me, the cell and said he would bring us a cordless phone. He suggested—highly suggested—that we call a lawyer. In his words, the charges were pure BS. I’m not an expert on police procedures, but suspected he had broken a half dozen of them since he greeted us at the Edge. I almost expected him to hand us a menu and ask if we wanted appetizers before supper. Instead, he handed me a cordless phone and the Charleston phone book.
Charles removed his Tilley and set it on the steel ledge that served as a bed in the small cell. Officer Spencer had taken his cane when we entered the building. I asked if he wanted the phone book. He shook his head and fiddled with the secret pocket in the crown of the hat, and fished a folded piece of notebook paper from the pocket.
“Hey, Sean,” said Charles, after he punched in the number from the paper. I assumed he had called Sean Aker, of Aker & Long, attorneys-at-law. Sean was a skydiving buddy of Charles and partner at one of two law firms on Folly Beach. I had met him a few times over the last couple of years and had used his services to start Landrum Gallery.
“Yeah, it’s Charles … oh, just fine; you?” I assumed Sean was more or less than fine since his answer took longer than Charles’s. “Chris and I … yeah, that Chris … uh-huh; yeah, we may need a little of your help. We’re in the Folly Beach hoosegow … yes, Sean, jail … oh, something about obstructing justice, yada, yada, yada, and pissing off the acting chief of police.”
Charles rolled his eyes and held the phone away from his ear. “Yes, Sean, yes … I know you’re not a criminal attorney. That’s why I called you; we’re not criminals. Okay, okay … yeah, call on this number and ask for Officer Spencer. If someone named Chief King answers, hang up…. Okay, thanks.”
I gave him a chance to say something
and then finally asked, “So?”
“Said I was an idiot for calling him; I needed a criminal attorney; and then said he’d make a couple of calls and see what he could do.”
Spencer opened the door. He had been watching through the small window in the cell door.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
A key to the cell; a ride off the island; wake me up from this nightmare … “No. Thanks anyway,” I said.
Spencer returned a half hour later with the phone and handed it to Charles.
“Yeah, Sean … okay … they can do that?” Charles’s voice grew louder with each word. He glanced at Spencer, who was standing as far from the cell door as he could and still be in the corridor outside the room. “Yeah … and happy dreams to you, too!”
Charles handed Spencer the phone. The embarrassed officer took it and asked if there was anything else he could do. Charles asked, “What’s for supper?”
Spencer shrugged and closed the door.
“Guess where we get to spend the night?” said Charles as he looked around the tiny space.
“Ritz-Carlton?” I asked.
He simply shook his head and sat on the steel bed attached to the wall. A toilet and, for some strange reason, a shower were on the opposite wall. Charles looked around the room like he was on cootie patrol; he studied each corner, crevice, and the floor from edge to edge. “Think the room’s bugged?” he asked, and continued to look.
“I doubt it—that would violate some constitutional right or something,” I said.
He asked me to sit beside him on the bed and leaned closer. I wondered if Mrs. Klein was right about our relationship.
He whispered, “If Acting Chief King is this mad after we turned the papers over to the police, what’s he going to do when he finds out we were in Lexington interrogating a key player in his case?”
I was so shook about being thrown in jail—albeit a nice, clean, almost sterile-looking, jail—I hadn’t thought that far ahead. My initial reaction was to come clean with the chief, tell him everything, and pray for the best. My second reaction was that I knew any self-respecting lawyer (if there was such a thing) would gag on that approach.
