by Bill Noel
Food arrived and we ate in silence with a few bursts of frustration, anger, and whether he’d admit it, fear from Mel mixed in. I reinforced what Charles had suggested about Mel keeping his mouth closed and letting his attorney do the talking. Mel said that he would, but his personality and direct approach to a problem would make it hard. He had looked at his watch a couple of times and finally said that he needed to get to his meeting with Sean. He thanked us for listening to his ramblings and said he’d get lunch. That was a new experience for me but I managed to handle it without reaching for the check. Charles, as usual, managed to sit on both hands during the awkward check-grabbing portion of the meal. Mel stood, saluted us, started for the exit, then turned and said that we could get the cumshaw. Charles saw the confused look in my eyes and whispered, “Marine-speak for tip.”
Mel was gone, I had enjoyed a nice meal, prayed that he would follow our, and Sean’s advice, added another word to my vocabulary, and listened to Charles say that we needed another drink. I succumbed.
“What do you make of it?” he asked after the waitress delivered our drinks.
I took a leap and decided that he was talking about Mel’s situation. “He’s playing with fire lying to the police. Asking Mel a second time about his trips to the bar, tells me that Detective Adair knows that it’s more than two visits without Caldwell.”
“You betcha.”
“But, nothing I know about Mel tells me that he would pick-up, or be picked-up at a bar by a college student.”
Charles tilted his head to the left. “Even if he was snookered.”
“I doubt it. Trouble is, if Adair must have a witness who claims that Mel was there with Drew Casey, and Mel’s already on record lying about the number of times he was there and denying that he knew Casey, he’s twisted himself into a knot. That’s a knot that’ll take more than Sean to untie.”
Charles rolled up his napkin and tried to tie it in a knot. “That macho-Marine could be in a minefield of trouble.”
We sipped our drinks and Charles scooted his chair around so he had a better view of the creek.
“Umm,” he said and shook his head.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
I’d spent countless hours with him over the years. If I’d learned anything, it was that nothing was never nothing. I lowered my head and looked at him with my upturned eyes. He caved.
“Okay, okay,” he muttered. “Speaking of knots, think Heather and I should tie one?”
That wouldn’t have been on my top twenty list of what “nothing” had meant. Before she left us with only memories, Charles’s Aunt Melinda had made a deathbed wish that Charles would get married. Melinda had lived in a small apartment across the hall from Heather and they had talked about how much Heather wanted to become Mrs. Fowler. At an impromptu memorial for his aunt, Charles proposed, but in the months since then, he’d told Heather that he couldn’t go through with it. He told her he had proposed more because of Melinda. Heather had been hurt, angry, and had felt rejected. But they had continued to date.
I wondered why he had brought it up again. “Do you want to?”
Charles stared at the creek like he thought a mermaid was about to leap out of the water and say yea or nay.
“Remember when we first met,” he said, and continued to stare at the water.
“Sure.”
“I told you that people thought I was gay because I’d never had a girlfriend.”
I smiled, which was wasted on him since he continued to look at the water. “You said you weren’t gay but that you couldn’t afford yourself much less a girlfriend.”
“Good memory. Did you know people are saying that again?”
“Why?”
“Umm,” he hesitated but never wavered from watching the fascinating creek. “Umm, they’re saying that since I hang around with you so much, we must be lovers.”
That threw me. “Think I should tell Karen?” I used humor, or attempts at humor, as my main defense against things that made me uncomfortable or when I didn’t know what to say.
Charles turned away from the creek, shook his head, and looked at me. “Suspect she already knows you’re not gay.” He shook his head again. “Chris, you know I’m not gay, and most of the time it doesn’t bother me about what people think, but it got me to start thinking again about getting married.”
“Any conclusions?”
“Most people my age have settled down, married—some two or three times—and have a passel of kids, and mortgages, and IRAs, and, patios and patio furniture, and, well, bunches of stuff. Seems like I should be settling down before it’s too late.” He sighed. “I know Heather wants to and Lord knows, I couldn’t find anyone better. It was about the last thing Melinda said to me.” He paused and then turned back to wait for the mermaid.
That’s what Melinda wanted and what Heather wants. “What does Charles want?”
He fiddled with his glass and folded his napkin into the shape of a sail. I didn’t think he was going to answer, but he said, “I’ve lived alone my entire life. I eat what I want to eat when I want to eat, go where I want when I want, do what I want when I want, wash my underwear once a month whether it needs it or not. Chris, I don’t know if I could change.” He paused. “Don’t know if I want to.”
That was more than I wanted to know, but it was good he was talking about it.
“What’s your gut tell you?”
“Most of the time I start pondering this, my guts too busy with heartburn to tell me anything.”
That should tell him something. “You need to listen to your heart, head, and your gut and if they all say yes, that’s your answer. It should come down to what you want, and only what you want.”
“Easier said than done.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay, now that we have my future figured out, how about you? When are you and Karen getting hitched?”
It was my turn to stare at the mesmerizing creek.
“Good question, my friend; good question.”
Chapter Sixteen
I dropped Charles at his place after eight miles of talking around his question about my matrimonial plans. It wasn’t that I was avoiding answering; it was having to answer the same question that I posed to him at the Crab Shack. Avoidance was another one of my defense mechanisms that I had perfected over the decades, so instead of further pondering the question that I had no answer to, I turned my attention to Mel.
I was pulling into the drive and remembered that William had the murder victim in two classes. I backed out of the drive and drove five blocks to the professor’s small, well-kept house. William was in the garden when I pulled in behind his car. He looked up from tilling the soil, or whatever you do to work garden-growing magic. He smiled and leaned the hoe against the oak tree that shaded the back half of the garden.
He waved me to two shaded chairs. “You’ve come to give me a temporary respite from this laborious task.”
I smiled. “And to give you a break from hoeing.”
“Shall I fetch ice tea?” he asked.
“Sounds good, can I help?”
“Unnecessary, I’ll return momentarily,” He took off his sweat and dirt-stained gardening gloves and headed to the house.
I had spent several summer days under this tree during my first year on Folly. Gardening was William’s passion and he had said that it was his way of escaping the demands of his students, his idealistic yet unrealistic administrators, and the petty bickering that takes place in most work environments. I had spent many years working in a large, bureaucratic company and had shared similar stories with him. I’m not certain that misery loves company, but it made for interesting conversations.
William returned with a silver platter holding two large glasses of tea and a silver ice bucket. I thanked him and he said that it was the break that he needed. Of course he used more multi-syllable words to say it.
“While I appreciate your appearance,” he said, “I s
uspect that this visit is for more than providing me with a chance to catch my breath.”
“Guilty as suspected,” I took a sip of tea. “I was wondering if you remembered anything else about Drew Casey or his classmates that could help figure out what’s going on.”
William took another sip and nodded in the direction of the house that I had lived in when I first moved to Folly; more accurately, the house that replaced my house, since mine had been torched with me in it by a murderer who thought that I was getting too close to learning his identity. “Am I detecting that you’re having more than a passing interest in the tragic death of my student? Have we, meaning you singularly, forgotten the fatal result one can face from becoming ensnarled in police business?”
“You’re right, of course. I know what I’m doing can be dangerous, but as you have figured, I don’t take kindly to people accusing my friends of things they didn’t do. I’ve known Mel Evans for going on two years. I’ve trusted him with my life, and I’ve never seen anything to indicate that he could have harmed that kid. For that reason—”
William raised both hands. “Chris, no need to continue. I can only hope that I have as good a friend as you if I find myself in such a difficult situation.”
“You do, and you’re looking at him.”
“I’m humbled. In return, allow me to respond to your initial query. As I said the last time you broached this topic, I make it a practice not to become involved in my students’ lives outside the classroom. But I knew that you had an interest in Mr. Casey’s death, so I put my classroom-only practice on hiatus and paid particular attention to what students were saying about the young man’s demise.”
“Learn anything?”
“I did, but I don’t know what to make of it. Perhaps it will provide you with some enlightenment. And to be honest, I had heard some of this long before Mr. Casey’s death, but I was hesitant to talk about such matters.”
I motioned for him to continue.
“A month ago, I asked him how he was doing. It was a benign enquiry and I often ask students the same thing. Their typical responses center on classes and majors.” He hesitated and tilted his head. “Mr. Casey’s answer was outside those parameters. He shared that he had been teased relentlessly by some classmates.”
“About what?”
“His sexual orientation,” William said, almost in a whisper. “He wasn’t one to hide his homosexuality and was paying the price for his openness.”
“Did he say who was teasing him?”
“He didn’t share names, and I didn’t ask. He said he didn’t want to make a case out of it and dropped it thereafter.”
William may have thought that was critical information, but I didn’t hear anything that could be helpful. “Was that it?”
“That’s only a prelude to what I shall now disclose.”
He stopped making eye contact, and was uncomfortable with the topic. I again asked him to continue.
“The day before yesterday, I overheard two students who had been on the fateful excursion. One of them, Dawn Henderson by name, said to Peter Mellon that she was glad that, and this is her quote, ‘the queer’ got what he had coming to him. I’ve had the impression that Ms. Henderson was, how shall I say it, pre-judgmental when it came to African Americans. I suppose those feelings could also apply to homosexuals, but I’m not certain. She went on to say that she knew that the ‘queer boat driver’ had killed him.”
“She said she knew?”
“Those were her words, but here’s the part that I believe to be most significant. Mr. Mellon chided his classmate when he told her that she didn’t know that the, umm, homosexual boat captain killed Mr. Casey. Mr. Mellon said that all she knew was that Mr. Casey, along with more than one other gay individual, landed on Boneyard Beach with the group, but she did not recall seeing him get off the boat when it returned to the dock.”
“Why not?”
“Because, according to Mr. Mellon, he and his fellow adventurers were so inebriated that they wouldn’t have known if Santa Claus and his reindeer had exited the boat upon return to its mooring.”
“What did she say to that?”
William chuckled. “She gave him a look that I was pleased that she had not directed at me, and said that she ‘knew what she knew,’ whatever that meant.”
“What did her classmate say?”
“They walked away and I felt it unwise to follow.”
“One more question. My understanding is that one person booked the excursion and that Mel didn’t get the names of the others, so I doubt any of them knew Mel or anything about him before they had met on the dock.”
“Appears logical.”
“Then how did Dawn Henderson know Mel was gay? That would have been the last impression I would have had when I met him for the first time. He looks and acts every bit the ex-Marine that he is; he dresses macho, rants-and-raves macho, and unless pushed, never says anything about his personal life.”
“That would be my assessment.”
“Do you recall anything that either of the students said that indicated they knew?”
“No.”
William kept glancing at the hoe and at the garden. I had pushed him out of his comfort zone, both by talking about Mel’s sexual orientation and his sharing that he had been eavesdropping. It was time to change the subject, so I asked him what he had planted for the growing season. He smiled, exhaled, and went into a monologue about the various vegetables that were planted, what he would be planting next, when they would be ready to harvest, what kind of salads he made with some of them, and how he prepared the meat that he featured with each veggie. He said a lot more, but with my total lack of interest in gardening and cooking, I tuned out somewhere around how the zucchini would be ready in the next couple of weeks, but he would have to wait until the fall for the parsnip, or maybe it was catnip.
I thanked him for the tea and conversation. He thanked me for stopping by and allowing him to take a break. I told him that it was my pleasure, and he told me not to get myself killed.
I agreed that that would be a good idea and left him with a smile on his face. I wasn’t as cheery.
Chapter Seventeen
I pulled in the drive and Chief Cindy LaMond pulled in behind me in her unmarked Crown Vic.
I met her in the yard between the two cars. “What’d I do wrong now, Chief?”
“Several things, I’m sure.” She shook her head. “But, that’s not why I stopped.”
I started to make a smart comment, but waited.
“I’ll stop playing police chief around seven; can you stop by the house after that? I promise Larry won’t try to fix supper.”
“Having a zero-plus-a-few-days party?”
She frowned. “Nope. You’re the only guest, unless you want to bring your new-best friend Brad Burton.”
“Right. What’s up?”
“Later.”
“I’ll be there, sans Burton.”
I had a couple of hours to ponder Cindy’s invitation. It only took me five minutes to realize that I had no idea what it was about, so I took the remaining time to take a nap, and prepare a healthy supper of peanut butter on Ritz crackers; okay, not healthy, but my refrigerator was plum out of zucchini and parsnip.
Charles wasn’t with me, so I was able to arrive at the LaMonds at seven rather than early. Cindy greeted me and said that Larry was on the patio. We stopped in the kitchen on the way, she grabbed a can of Budweiser, poured me a glass of Chardonnay, and I followed her.
Three patio chairs had been pulled in a tight triangle on the crushed-shell surface and Larry occupied the one facing the marsh. A small glass-topped table beside his chair held an opened pizza box from Woody’s, two beer cans, and Larry’s Pewter Hardware ball cap. He heard the door open and jumped up, turned, and greeted me with a smile. His Pewter Hardware logoed white polo shirt had a dirt stain on the shoulder and was pulled out of his khaki slacks. He wore tennis shoes but they were untied. It looked like
he had spent the day wrestling uncooperative sheets of plywood.
He shook my hand; his smile was intact but seemed forced. “Have a seat. I’ll be back.” He headed into the house.
Cindy pointed to the pizza box and asked if I wanted a slice, glanced at the door, and whispered, “Larry wanted to fire up the grill and fix burgers. You and the fire department should be thankful that I talked him out of it.”
I told her that I had already eaten and thanked her for the offer. Larry returned and flopped down in his chair. The plywood must have won the battle. Cindy took the remaining chair and asked if I was certain that I didn’t want pizza. I again said I was certain, and she said, “Good, more for me.”
Larry took a long draw on his beer, glanced at Cindy, and back at me. “Guess you’re wondering why we asked you over.”
I didn’t want to appear too shocked at the invitation seeing that we’re friends, but I’d only been at their house a few times and they were more spontaneous for gatherings like the zero party.
“Had me wondering.”
“It’s about Abe Pottinger. Have you met him?”
“Yes, in fact Charles and I are now official members of the .5 club. It would have been easier if we tried to drop in on the president at the White House than getting past Chester’s membership requirements.”
Cindy smiled and Larry shook his head.
“Anyway,” I continued, “we took our first walk with the group the other day and spent some time talking to Abe. I think you’re right, Larry, he’s up to something. He was pushing reverse mortgages to a few members. I’m no expert, but he was touting a much higher monthly payment to his ‘clients’ than other companies offer. I don’t know if he’s gotten any of them to sign up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t close.”
“No surprise,” Larry said. “That’s Abe.”
“Do either of you know Theodore Stoll, goes by Theo?” I asked.
“By sight only,” Cindy said.
Larry nodded. “Yeah, he lives up the street; big house facing the marsh.”