by Bill Noel
I glanced at my watch and was surprised that we’d been there three hours—a pleasant trip down memory lane, reconnecting with someone who had only been a bad memory at best for many years, and a good meal to boot. She said we should be going. I don’t think either of us actually had anywhere to go, but I agreed.
She put her arm around my waist as we walked to the car. It felt strange yet almost familiar. She still insisted on driving.
We had just passed the road that veers off Folly Road and leads to Charleston when the car suddenly jerked to the left. The high-pitched sound of steel on steel ripped through my skull. My head banged off the headrest. Joan uttered a profanity, yanked the wheel to the right, and looked in the rearview mirror.
I turned my head and saw a high silver grille on a large black pickup truck fill the rear window. It fell back a few feet and then accelerated. I tightened my grip on the door handle.
“Hang on!” yelled Joan.
I turned back toward the windshield and saw temporary concrete barriers guarding a road construction project. It was directly in front of us. I wonder if air bags really work, rushed through my mind as quickly as we were headed at the massive gray concrete wall.
Joan’s options were limited. The road narrowed because of the construction. Traffic rushed toward us in the left lane, and the barrier loomed in front of us on the right.
We were less than a hundred feet from the concrete wall. The pickup rammed us again. I lost my grip on the door handle and twisted sideways. Instead of trying to stop, Joan stomped on the accelerator and turned the wheel. We were in a controlled skid. Horns from the oncoming traffic blared. Joan muttered, “Calm, calm, calm,” and then the truck rammed us again.
My life did not flash before my eyes. All I saw in front of me was the huge unforgiving concrete barrier.
CHAPTER 35
We were close enough for me to reach out and touch the barrier. There couldn’t have been more than ten feet between the deadly concrete wall and the line of traffic passing us on the other side of the car.
The truck nudged us one more time before catching an opening in the traffic to our left and roaring past us. It’s surprising what one notices in time of crisis. The truck didn’t have a license plate. The other thing I noticed was the Jaguar hitting a glancing blow to the concrete barrier. We scraped it for no more than a couple of seconds.
A heavy dose of luck and Joan’s deceased husband having sprung for high-performance driver training had saved us. Joan had masterfully maneuvered between the oncoming traffic and the concrete barrier and skidded to a stop in a small shopping center on the other side of the construction. The truck that had come precariously close to ramming us into oblivion was nowhere in sight.
A couple of shoppers from a small grocery store in the shopping center rushed out to ask if we were okay. Joan and I were standing by the car and looking at the seven-foot-long gash along my side of the car. Apparently, someone had already called the police. The high-pitched sounds of police sirens rapidly approached.
A middle-aged machine shop owner who was following the pickup had pulled in to see if we were okay. He had been behind the truck for the last quarter mile and thought the driver was drunk because of the way he had weaved across the lanes. The Good Samaritan thought we’d be goners when he saw the pickup hit us before we reached the bridge. He had called 911 and waited to tell the police what he had seen.
Two other Charleston patrol cars arrived almost simultaneously. It was in the lower sixties and sunny, but Joan was shivering. I convinced her to get back in the car with the heater running. Two of the officers came over to the Jaguar and one of them checked out the damage. Chips of concrete from the barrier were imbedded in the side of the car. The third officer talked to the witness and then leaned down to Joan’s window to share what the other witness had said.
“Officer,” said Joan. Her voice crackled, and her hands shook. “It was not a drunk driver. He tried to kill us.”
“Ma’am,” replied the patient officer, “you said you recently moved from Tennessee. Who here would want to kill you?”
She didn’t respond. I pictured wheels turning in her head—how much should she tell the cop? She sighed and then said, “I saw the truck parked beside the restaurant when we came out. It followed us.”
“Ma’am, do you know how many big black pickups there are around here? How do you know it was the same one?”
Joan glared at the cop. “It wasn’t just a large black pickup,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “It was a Ford F-250 Super Duty Crew Cab, probably an oh-eight.”
Being married to a car dealer had its benefits.
The officer remained polite and wrote down the information. He said he would issue a BOLO but stuck to his view that it was a drunk driver. He said that was how the man who had called the police described it.
Joan gave an exasperated sigh, her shoulders slumped, and she mumbled, “Whatever.”
I asked if she wanted me to drive; she said no. For the first time since I had known her, Joan slipped on her lap belt and then pulled back on Folly Road and headed toward the beach.
Her hands clasped the steering wheel; her knuckles were white. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Much more than I did an hour ago, I thought. “I don’t think it was a drunk. He knew what he was doing and waited until we were near the narrowest section of road.”
That was not a yes to her question, but it appeared to satisfy her. “How did he find me?” She accelerated. “How, Chris … how?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I wondered if he had attached some sort of tracking device to her luggage or her car. Could he have simply followed us from Tennessee? If he did, why hadn’t he made an attempt on her life earlier? If he was from Gatlinburg, he had to follow us from Water’s Edge to the restaurant. Had he come in when we were eating? Did I notice anything unusual about the lunch crowd? Clearly, Joan hadn’t seen a familiar face. “I don’t know,” I repeated.
She offered to drop me at the house, but I told her to go home and I’d walk from there. I wanted to make sure everything was okay at her place but didn’t say it. After a quick look, she said that everything was the same as when she had left. She had added some personal touches, and it had a homey feel. She walked around the living area and lit three candles neatly arranged on two tables in the main room. She had added some fresh-cut flowers in a crystal vase on the glass-topped casual dining table. The bag from the grocery store was on the island in the kitchen.
I awkwardly stood in the entry hall, and she leaned against the entry table. She looked in the kitchen and then at the stairs that led to the bedrooms. “Please help find who’s doing this,” she said. “They do want to kill me, you know.”
I nodded. “I’ll do my best, but—”
She put her arms around me and then stepped back. She then hugged me again and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she said. A tear rolled down her face.
I left her at the door and looked around for a black truck. I then inspected as much of her Jaguar as I could see without crawling around under it. How had he found her?
CHAPTER 36
I walked to the gallery instead of home. I fired up the Mr. Coffee, turned on the lights, and took the OPEN WHEN I’M HERE—CLOSED WHEN I’M NOT sign out of the window and hoped customers would wander in. I hadn’t opened on Wednesdays since the summer but thought it might distract me from the day’s events. I was wrong.
I rearranged two large photos displayed on the wall. I even swept the foot-worn floor, something I usually saved for Charles. Then my undistracted mind took over. Could someone really have followed Joan? How could he, or she, have known where she was? Did anyone other than Charlene and her husband know that Joan was here? Could they be involved?
If someone wanted to kill her, why? Who could she be a threat to? Was she keeping something from me?
&nbs
p; I paced, gazed out the front window, and then paced some more. Could Heather’s far-fetched theory that Daniel was still alive be true? If he was alive, would he want to kill his wife? Wouldn’t today’s ramming eliminate Joan as a suspect in Daniel’s death? All I concluded was that the floor was cleaner.
I didn’t believe in coincidences. The recent events—the death of Joan’s husband, the destruction of her house, and now the incident on Folly Road—were beyond any reasonable chance of being random.
If that weren’t bad enough, I started thinking about Amber and Karen. Both were in their early forties and nearly twenty years younger than I was. I knew that Amber’s favorite musicians included Tracy Chapman, George Michael, and two groups I’d never heard of—all whose music was alien to my ears. Talking to Joan about our favorites from the 1960s reminded me that I was from a different world, at least chronologically, than Amber and Karen. Was that chasm too wide to bridge in a relationship? I didn’t want to think so, but …
I shook the thought from my mind and then smiled. The thought of Charles, the budding detective, trying to catch either a mouse or a ghost who had been stealing from Cal’s lightened my mood. I was laughing when the front door opened.
“What be hilarious?” said Dude, bounding in and skipping over to me. His oversized corduroy coat flapped open and his signature tie-dye shirt glowed under it.
“Just thinking about something,” I said, and offered to take his coat. “Who’s manning the surf shop?” I carried his coat to the back room and pointed to the coffeepot. His preference was tea, but he’d stoop to sipping coffee in a pinch.
“Don’t need manning,” he said. “Surfers in short supply the long J month. Stick smiley face on door and scoot.”
Dude made enough the rest of the year, during the busy season, that he didn’t have to unlock the surf shop from Christmas to April if he didn’t want to. He spent most of his downtime sitting in the Dog, reading astronomy magazines and questioning regulars about why business was slow. The regulars used to tell him that it was because no one was here. Now they simply said, “Don’t know.” That satisfied him.
He set his coffee mug on the table, parked his trim body on an old wooden chair, and put his feet on the corner of the table. “Hear your ex-surfer chick be making goo-goo eyes at you.” He had a sly grin on his sunken sun- and seawater-wrinkled face. “Wantin’ to respark, they say.”
Wow, that was the beginning of a conversation that I hadn’t expected. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Here, there,” he said. “Hear she’s a Benny.”
Charles usually served as my translator for Dude-speak. I was on my own. “Benny?” I asked.
“Benny, duh,” said Dude. “Be someone from big city and dissed beach.”
“Oh,” I said. “No, I think she’s having a hard time adjusting to Folly and some of the strange folks around here. She’s okay.”
“Who be strange?” said Dude.
Pots calling kettles black. Still, I understood his warped perspective and ignored the question. “Who said she wanted to respark?” I tried again.
“Peeps at Pup,” he said.
I assumed that he meant the Lost Dog Café, and I knew that was all I’d learn. I got the coffeepot and poured more for my sentence-challenged friend.
“Where’s Chuckster?” he said, his eyes darting around the small office area as if he thought Charles had been standing in the corner the entire time.
I told him Charles had been working nights at Cal’s and was spending less time in the gallery; and besides, there weren’t enough customers for me to need help.
“He be detectin’?” asked Dude.
I nodded.
“Hope he’s better at detectin’ than barkeepin’,” said Dude. “Hear he narrowed thief to peeps, ghosts, and rodents.”
Dude should start a newspaper to compete with the Folly Current. It would have fewer words, but it would be accurate and definitely entertaining.
I laughed. “I think those are his top suspects.”
“Martians added to list?” said Dude with a straight face. “Hear they stopped by last full moon.”
I’d bet he didn’t hear that at the Dog. “I’ll tell Charles,” I deadpanned.
“Me not a detective,” he said. “But if thief not a ghost, or Mickey M., or little green men, could be human.” He nodded, and I responded with a nod. “If human, how be gettin’ in? Figure that out and be catchin’ bad guy.”
Dude suddenly hopped out of the chair, grabbed his coat, and was gone as quickly as he had arrived. I took two seconds to not count my sales, turn out the lights, turn off the coffeemaker, lock the door, and head home.
Dude be right, I thought.
CHAPTER 37
Thursday began as a glorious sunny winter day; it was to reach the midsixties by noon. I had overslept, something I rarely did, and I didn’t start my day until nine. I rationalized that since I’d had fish for lunch yesterday—even if it was fried—I could have something significantly less healthy for breakfast, so I walked next door to Bert’s for a package of powdered sugar doughnuts and coffee. I then walked to the lobby of the Tides and sat at one of the soft, comfortable beige chairs that overlooked the hotel’s pool, the Folly Pier, and the magnificent Atlantic Ocean. A large section of clear etched glass separated my seat from the hotel’s restaurant, so I didn’t think eating doughnuts would bother the management. They didn’t serve sugarcoated doughnuts anyway. Two rationalizations and it wasn’t even noon.
As I was reaching for my phone to call Charles, it rang.
“I saw him. I saw him!” screamed Joan. Her voice trembled, and I couldn’t understand what she said next.
“Where are you?” I said.
“In the car … in front of … oh, what is it … that big real-estate building near the gas station—”
“Avocet Realty?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Can you park on Center Street?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Pull over. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
She inhaled, and then said, “Hurry.”
I made the trek in record time—record time for me, that is. Her Jaguar was on the sloped drive that led to a Kangaroo gas station from the side street next to Avocet. It took her three tries to hit the button to unlock the door.
“Thank God,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
Her hands had a death grip on the leather-trimmed steering wheel, but she nodded.
“Who did you see? Where?”
She took a deep breath and then rubbed her left hand across her face. “I was on the way back from Bert’s. I needed coffee filters and … never mind. I was …” She pointed down Center Street toward the ocean. Her finger shook. “I saw him go around the corner by Avocet. I wasn’t paying attention at first, and then it struck me. I’d seen him before. I thought it was from here, but then I realized it wasn’t.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where did you remember him from?” I asked, reaching out and touching her trembling hand. She grabbed my wrist.
“California, maybe,” she said. “It could be Tennessee.” She took another deep breath. “I’m not certain … not certain. I know I’ve seen him. It had to be the guy in the truck.”
“Did you see where he went?”
“I didn’t see him after he turned that corner.” She again pointed back over her shoulder.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
She didn’t argue but only hurried around to the passenger’s door. I avoided the block where Joan saw him go, instead circling around to the house and parking in front. This was Joan’s first visit. We walked to the front door, and I wondered what condition I had left it in. Company was the last thing I had expected when I le
ft.
It wasn’t too messy, and I picked up the newspaper from the floor by my favorite chair while she looked around. “Nice,” she was kind enough to say. I offered to fix coffee. My old coffee machine had seen better days, and its performance was subpar compared to Bert’s, but it was better than nothing. I didn’t think she’d complain.
Joan seemed calmer, but she still paced the small living room and the most unused room in the house, the kitchen. I called Officer Cindy LaMond’s cell phone. She answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Chris,” she said. I detest caller ID and cringe when someone knows who I am without my telling them.
“Working?” I asked.
“Yep, but go ahead. I’m just sitting at the bridge harassing speeders to have something to do.” She gave a faux yawn to punctuate her excitement.
“Then this is your lucky day,” I said. “If you come by the house, I have something you’ll be interested in.”
She laughed. “You hired a male stripper?”
“Come over and find out.”
“On my way,” she said.
Cindy was as good as her word. In fewer than five minutes, a white City of Folly Beach Department of Public Safety patrol car pulled up behind Joan’s Jaguar.
Cindy looked at me and turned to Joan. “Let me guess: you were going ninety-seven miles an hour down Center Street and want to turn yourself in.” A twinkle of humor appeared in the corner of her eyes.
Joan, to her credit, laughed. Cindy then smiled. And I took a deep breath. Cindy had done more to ease Joan’s fears than I had with comforting words and crappy coffee.
I escorted both women to the kitchen, and the three of us sat around my small table. Cindy accepted a cup of coffee, and I refilled Joan’s mug. I gave Cindy a synopsis of Joan’s recent tragedies and yesterday’s encounter with the truck. She had already heard much of it from Charles and Amber. I then told her about what happened this morning with the mysterious person.