by Bill Noel
The second responder rolled a yellow stretcher into Cal’s. He couldn’t maneuver it behind the bar and into the storeroom, but he lowered it so he and I could lift it over the bar and near the storeroom entry.
Cal barged in the door like a tornado looking for a mobile home park. We were still trying to figure out how to get Charles out without causing further harm. Cal appeared drastically different from how he’d been the night before. He wore threadbare robin’s-egg blue sweats, and his mane of gray hair flowed in unintended directions. He could easily have spent the night in a Dumpster. There wasn’t room for him behind the bar, but it didn’t stop him from jumping on a bar stool and yelling, “Yo, Michigan, you okay?”
Charles laughed and said, “No!”
The female EMT worked to keep Charles calm while her partner, Cal, and I concentrated on how to get him out of the bar once they got him on the stretcher.
Amazingly, our plan worked, and the two EMTs carefully lifted Charles onto the stretcher. The four of us grunted, turned, and wiggled until we were able to lift the stretcher over the bar so they could extend its legs and roll it to the ambulance. We were across the street from the fire and police stations, and a couple of officers I didn’t know walked over to see what had happened. They knew Charles and wished him well as he was loaded into the ambulance. He gave them a thumbs-up.
I followed the ambulance to Roper Hospital in Charleston. I realized how much quicker the ride was when I stayed close to the ambulance and didn’t stop for red lights. Additionally, because it was New Year’s Day, traffic was unusually light. I parked behind the ambulance at the emergency entrance and followed the gurney into an attractive emergency area. The EMTs took Charles directly to an exam room, and a triage nurse was at his side in seconds. It took her five minutes to assess his problem and administer a painkiller through an IV. She said that she was sure the ankle was broken, adding that they would send him to radiology for X-rays and then figure out what to do.
For the next three hours, I sat in the waiting room and watched a steady stream of suffering humanity. Happy New Year, I thought.
Between listening to moaning patients, an occasional scream, and the sound of sirens arriving at the emergency room, I kept thinking about the wine box. How could it have fallen? Could Charles have pulled it? He said that when he opened the door, it tumbled down. Could the door have been booby-trapped? If someone placed it to fall, was Charles the intended recipient? If he was, who knew that he would be the first person in the storage room? Didn’t Charles say all the employees were around when Cal asked him to come in early? Did the thief know that Cal had hired Charles to find him or her?
Cindy had hinted that others who worked at Cal’s probably knew the real reason he was there. If the box was supposed to fall when Charles opened the door, why? Was he getting too close to solving the crime? Were Charles’s stumbling, bumbling, crude, unorthodox efforts at detecting actually working? And why would someone go to so much trouble to hurt Charles over the theft of some whiskey and some cash? Was there more to it than met the eye?
That was too many “ifs” for one New Year’s Day morning in the emergency room. Fortunately, a nurse came to take me to the exam room where Charles was holding court.
“Good news, bad news,” said the doctor. He stood over Charles’s bed in the exam room. The doctor’s shoulders sagged, and his salt-and-pepper hair was nearly as mussed as Cal’s. I guessed that his shift had begun before many of the parties started the night before. I was a couple of feet behind Charles.
“The bad news is that your ankle’s broken,” he said.
No surprise there. He didn’t have to spend years in medical school to figure that out.
“Bring on the good news,” said Charles.
The pain meds had done their job; my friend was in excellent spirits.
“There are three bones that come together at the ankle—the tibia, fibula, and the talus.” He nodded as if he knew that we understood. “The tibia and the fibula wrap around the talus and form the ankle joint. Those bony prominences at the ankle are the medial malleolus and the lateral malleolus.”
Now he’s showing off, I thought.
“Have we gotten to the good news yet?” said Charles.
The doc almost smiled before continuing. “The tibia is the larger weight-bearing bone in the lower leg—it carries nearly ninety percent of the weight. The fibula supports the remaining ten percent. You very wisely chose to fracture the fibula.”
“So when will I be able to run a marathon?” asked my drugged friend.
“Ever run one?” asked the perceptive doctor.
“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought,” said the doctor. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. Here’s more good news. I won’t have to operate. We’ll splint the ankle. You’ll need to keep it on for a few days until the swelling goes down.”
“And then the marathon?” asked Charles. He and his meds were enjoying this way too much.
The doctor rolled his bloodshot eyes and shook his head at the same time—multitasking. “And then you’ll get a cast. It looks like the fracture is fairly stable, so we should be able to use a fiberglass cast rather than a heavy, awkward plaster one.”
“Will my fans be able to sign a fiberglass cast?” asked Charles.
The doctor finally smiled, but I had a hunch that he was ready to kick Charles in his other leg. “I’m sure they will,” he said diplomatically. Before Charles could interrupt again, the doc continued. “I know it didn’t feel like it, but the fracture is relatively minor. I doubt you’ll need the cast for more than a week or so. Oh, and you’ll need crutches the entire time. If your job requires a lot of standing, you’ll have to be off for a while. Sorry. We’ll get you taken care of.” He then pirouetted and quickly left the room.
I spent the rest of the day playing nurse and chauffeur. We were at the hospital for three more hours, waiting for the splinting process and the paperwork maze that Charles had to wade through. No, he didn’t have health insurance; yes, it was work-related and workers’ comp would take care of it; yes, if anything was not covered by workers’ comp, Charles would be responsible; no, he did not have any credit cards; yes, he would be paying with cash; and on and on.
After we escaped from the hospital, Charles announced that he was starved, so we had to go to McDonald’s. And then we had to practice with his new set of crutches for an hour. And then the drugs wore off, and bed was the only place he wanted to go. I then turned his care and feeding over to Heather, who gave it her best shot, but her best shot did not include grocery shopping and other errands he wanted run. There went two more hours.
We went to Cal’s before it opened the next day and tried to figure out how the box could have fallen on its own. No matter how we looked at it, we couldn’t see how it was possible. What was possible was that the box had been propped against the top of the door and the door carefully closed. When Charles opened it, the precarious balance was upset and the case fell. Other than the logical conclusion that whoever set it to fall worked at Cal’s, all we ran into—or hobbled into—were dead ends.
The next morning, I walked two blocks to the Tides hotel for a hearty breakfast. I had done a lot the last two days, but other than the trip to McDonald’s, eating wasn’t one of the activities. The hotel’s restaurant was empty except for an elderly couple sitting near the window, looking out on the ocean and the Folly Pier. I was exhausted and looked forward to a silent, peaceful breakfast.
My cell phone vibrated and royally screwed up that plan.
CHAPTER 20
“Thank God I got you,” came a tinny voice over the phone.
This time I recognized my ex-wife. I hadn’t talked to her since we’d left Gatlinburg five days earlier.
“They tried to kill me!” she said. The words caught in her throat; the volume increased. “Chris, my God, they tried t
o kill me.”
“Slow down. Who tried to kill you? What happened?”
“My house … my house. They blew it up.”
“You okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. But it was luck.” She cleared her throat. I heard her inhale. “I spent the night at Charlene’s … It was late … didn’t want to drive … Didn’t know about the explosion until I went home this morning. Fire engines were everywhere; ice was all over the place; and … half the house is gone … no roof … two walls standing. My God, Chris, they tried to kill me.” She started sobbing.
I paused a few seconds and then asked, “Where are you?”
The server set a plate of bacon and eggs in front of me. The bacon smelled good, but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it.
“Charlene’s,” she said after another sob. She said something else, but it wasn’t to me. I heard a second voice in the background, and there was another pause.
“Chris?” said a different and calmer voice.
“Yes,” I said.
“This is Charlene. Joan handed me the phone and went in the bathroom.”
“What happened?”
“All I know,” said Charlene, “is there was an explosion—sometime overnight. She was at my house last night, and we’d … been drinking. She was in no condition to drive, and I insisted that she stay.”
I knew this was a delicate subject but asked while I could. “She said someone tried to kill her. Who? Why? How does she know?”
“She called a half hour after she left,” Charlene whispered. “She screamed that they destroyed her house and were trying to kill her. I rushed over. It was terrible. Two of the firefighters had wrapped a blanket around her and helped get her back in her car. The heater was blowing full blast, but she was shivering. I thought I’d have to take her to the hospital. I told them I’d take care of her, and they went back to loading their trucks. The fire was out.”
“Any idea what happened? Who she thinks is trying to kill her?” I repeated.
“Daniel’s killer, she says.”
“Was it intentional?” I asked.
“The guys I talked to didn’t think so,” said Charlene. “They thought there was a gas leak and a spark set it off. Apparently, it happened around three in the morning.”
“Does Joan have reason to think it wasn’t accidental?”
“To be honest, I don’t know why she thinks it was an attempt on her life.” She was now whispering, and I pressed the phone to my ear to hear. “She’s being paranoid about all this, if you ask me. I hate to say that, but we’ve been friends ever since she moved here. She’s generous to a fault. A great lady. But I think sometimes she wants to believe the worst.”
I heard a hand scraping the mouthpiece, muffled voices, and then Joan. “I’m back,” she said. “Could you please come? Please?”
I could think of a hundred reasons to say no, but “Auld Lang Syne” reverberated in my head.
I closed my eyes and said yes.
Karen and I had planned to go to supper, so after I kicked myself a few times for telling Joan that I’d return to Gatlinburg, I called Karen to postpone. I never knew where she would be when I called. Several times she was at horrific murder scenes. I got lucky this time. She was in her office catching up on paperwork, and I told her about the call.
“Want me to go with you?” she said.
Of her possible responses, I never would have anticipated that one.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Can you get away?”
“You don’t seem thrilled.” I could tell she was smiling.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was surprised.”
“I have vacation time, and to everyone’s delight, the year has started off slow on the murder front.”
I told her that I planned to leave early in the afternoon so I could get to Gatlinburg early evening. She would check with her boss but didn’t think that was a problem. I could pick her up at her house around one o’clock.
How had my peaceful breakfast gone so wrong so quickly? Was someone really out to kill Joan? Or was the paranoia that I had suspected many years ago real and living in the mind of my ex-wife? And did Karen really want to go to Gatlinburg?
And most importantly, how was I going to tell Charles that I was going on a road trip, and that Karen was replacing him?
CHAPTER 21
I got up the nerve to call Charles when we were three hours from Folly Beach—I waited until I was too far along to be chided enough to return for him. I had hoped he would answer and tell me that he was in terrible pain and ready to take more pain meds. He had no business making the long ride with his broken ankle, regardless of how he would argue.
Charles answered on the second ring and said that the ankle hurt every time he stood, and that he felt best when he was in bed. The wisest thing he could do, I suggested, would be to stay there for a few days. He reluctantly agreed.
He said that it sounded like I was in the car and asked where I was. The road was level, but the conversation went downhill quickly. I told him where I was going, and why, and who was with me. His silence was much louder than if he had blown a referee’s whistle in my ear. He then proceeded to tell me how comfortable the backseat of my new vehicle would have been, and how he would have been quite content, and how he could have helped me reassure Joan. He sighed and asked if Karen was really with me.
I limited most of my responses to “Uh-huh.”
My friend rambled on for ten miles and finally mumbled, “You’re right, I suppose. I don’t need to be bumping around in your car. Got to take a pill. Have fun.”
He didn’t really mean to have fun.
“Tell me about Joan,” said Karen.
I suspected that she was asking to find out more about my ex and to get my mind off leaving Charles behind. I shared how we had met in high school and had gone to college together. I felt awkward talking about it, but I elaborated some on our lengthy courtship; her family, which only consisted of her parents and a sister; our first few years of marriage, when we were both starting careers and made the decision not to have children right away—right away drifted to never. I shared details about how she’d come home from work one day and told me that she was tired of life with me. She wanted a divorce and planned to move to California. A handful of others knew the bare bones facts of what happened, but I told Karen more details about how I felt, how Joan had reacted the day she left, and other things that I had never shared with anyone. I didn’t share that I felt responsible for the divorce; perhaps I’d tell her someday—not now.
Karen was an exceptional listener. Her years as a detective and her ability to put together seemingly random bits of information into a coherent story allowed her to listen without interrupting and then ask questions that glued the random parts together. I had talked for almost two straight hours and didn’t realize it until she asked if we needed gas. We were following the curve of the mountains on I-40, and we were almost to the Gatlinburg exit. Drifts of post-Christmas snow were plowed to two and three feet high on the sides of the interstate. Grass in the fields was blanketed with the white stuff. The temperature loomed below freezing, but the pavement was dry.
A large hotel billboard loomed on the right as we exited the interstate. We were more than thirty miles from our destination, but the sign yanked me away from an ancient history lesson to a dilemma. I wanted to stay at the familiar Hampton Inn—but how many rooms to get? Should I assume we wanted two? Should I ask Karen?
The amazing array of festive holiday lights illuminated the sky, sidewalks, vacant lots, and every structure in the city as we entered the Gatlinburg city limits. I was almost used to the abundance of holiday lights, but Karen kept saying “amazing,” and “spectacular” every few hundred yards. Her enthusiasm was contagious.
How to address the room problem was foremost on my mind as I pulled into the Hampton Inn’s
parking lot. Either Karen had read my mind, or she was thinking the same thing.
“One room,” she said.
I looked at her. “Sure?”
She nodded. Neither of us said anything as I parked. She stayed in the car, and I went to the office.
There weren’t any large groups in the resort community, so the hotel had several vacancies. Ours was on the first floor and only a few doors from the office. Each of us grabbed a suitcase and quietly entered the room. It was chilly, so I adjusted the thermostat.
“Where’s Joan?” asked Karen.
“She should be at Charlene’s,” I said. “I’m supposed to call and get directions.”
It was past seven, and we were hungry. We decided that I would call and tell Charlene we could be there in a couple of hours. Karen and I could eat first—we had no idea what the night would bring. We also decided not to tell Joan that Karen was a detective, playing that card only if it seemed appropriate. I didn’t want to feed Joan’s paranoia.
Charlene gave me directions and said Joan was with her. Karen and I then walked the short distance to Maxwell’s Steak and Seafood, one of the area’s many nice restaurants, and had a peaceful prime rib supper. I joked that we would need full stomachs before seeing Joan. I joked but was certain that it wouldn’t be a joking matter.
The walk back to the hotel was filled with the soothing aroma of smoke from the many wood-burning fireplaces in the resort community and the anxiety of what was to come next.
CHAPTER 22
Charlene’s house was on a narrow lane in a hilly, wooded area off the scenic road that connected Gatlinburg to its neighboring community, Pigeon Forge. The house appeared smaller than Joan’s and as different as possible. It was a sprawling native stone ranch with a wide drive that ended at a four-car garage. Her husband was an attorney with a well-respected Knoxville firm, and Charlene was active in numerous civic groups. The house reflected their status.