Murder in Gatlinburg (13 page)

As I came out of the
restroom and back into the sunlight, Lou was waiting for me. He saw my look and
read my mind. He gave me a look that reminded me that we were on vacation. And
retired. I sighed and nodded, and looked around at some of the beauty God had
created. I was shocked at how flat everything was on the top of the mountain. I
thought all mountains came to a peak and that people with too much time on
their hands and no interest in Facebook climbed a mountain until they reached
the peak, then took in the view for "x" number of minutes, crossed it
off their bucket list,  maybe took a selfie to let others know they were there,
and then started back down to conquer the next item on that list.

But there was no more
time for me to daydream. It was time for the vans to head out. I didn't care
who I sat with when we left. Well, I didn't care as long as I didn't ride with
Sylvia or Inez,  Tom Jenkins, the computer software guy I talked to before we
went in to see the Titanic exhibit, and Bill and Shirley Richardson, whom we
ate with at Mel's Diner. I had already put names with those faces. I needed to
learn all the others in as few van trips as possible.

I had planned it that
Lou and I would take the last two seats in one of the vans. One had already
left. There were two seats left in the second van, and I noticed that I hadn't
met any of the people inside. I started to jump in when a couple of women
showed up. I couldn't take a lady's seat. Besides, what if one of them was the
murderer and taking her seat would set her off to the point where she added me
to her list. Me, so new to total retirement. Me, who wanted to stay retired and
sitting or standing a lot longer.

As it turned out, Lou
and I ended up occupying two of the seats in van number three, along with Bill
and Shirley Richardson, Tom Jenkins, and one person I didn't know. I impressed
those I had met by calling them by name. I didn't tell any of them I had just
looked over the list of suspects five minutes earlier. It turned out that the
person who was new to me was Herbert Atherton, who wasn't all that talkative. 
That was okay. I had a name to go with a face and most murderers don't talk
their victims to death. Atherton looked like a bird watcher or a librarian, but
then John Christie looked much like that and he killed at least eight women at
his home in England. If Lou and I take a trip to England and Atherton is there,
I'm moving him to the top of my list of suspects.  

Our first stop was at a
cabin set back off the road. A sign said it was John Oliver's Cabin. John
Oliver wasn't on our list, but I kept him on my list of suspects. I watched my
step as I walked over uneven ground to get back to my first point of interest.
It was that far of a walk. I think the sign said a quarter of a mile. I saw the
cabin and realized that it was not a recent development. Lincoln might have
built it, but Westgate didn't. Once we arrived at the cabin, I looked inside
just to make sure that Earl and his bus weren't in there. I had a feeling that
he wasn't, because some employee with the National Park Service was staked out
there. It's kind of hard to drive a bus past one of those guys, especially with
this particular guy being a female, meaning she was probably smarter than the
guys. I asked her about John Oliver, just in case he might be our murderer, and
found out he was one of the earlier victims. I crossed off stop number one as a
possible place where the murder was committed or where the body was left. It
was an open area, so it was a bad place to throw a body out unless you are
hoping that it decomposes quickly. I had already looked around without seeing a
wild animal that looked like it had bitten off more than it should have chewed.

"Is this your first
time here?"

"You don't remember
me from yesterday's group? I was the one you had to keep telling not to feed
the bears."

She smiled.

"Are you getting
plenty of exercise on your vacation?"

"The most I've gotten
since my belt buckle got caught on a treadmill."

She smiled again, which
encouraged me.

"Have you been
horseback riding?"

"Not since I almost
fell off that horse in front of K-Mart last year."

"Are you appearing
nightly somewhere down here?"

"Yeah, at Westgate,
but we don't always get back at the same time. It depends if we have to take
any of the old people in our group by the hospital."

"So, you're with a
tour group."

"How could you
tell? Did I rub up against someone and get Ben-Gay on me?"

"You're the hit of
my day so far. Usually people just ask about the cabin and the animals."

"I can already tell
about the cabin. You're asking too much or you'd be able to rent it by now. And
you might want to fix it up a little bit. And I'm allergic to animals, so I
don't talk about them."

I noticed the little boy
and girl in our group walk up with some questions, so I stepped back.

After Lou and I had
looked around the cabin that no one had rented for the weekend we walked back
to a van that was waiting for two more people. This time no old ladies got in
our way and Lou and I made it a full load. I looked at my companions and was relieved
that only Tom Jenkins of Titanic acquaintance was on board, so we played a game
of meet the people. There were two couples, one of whom looked like Grant Wood
had painted them. The American Gothic couple were named Luther and Sarah
Harkness, from Pine Knot, Kentucky, wherever that is. I doubt if either of them
has smiled since they lost their teeth. The other couple, who claimed to be
brother and sister, said their names were Jack and Angel Ripatoe. I finally got
out of them that they were visiting from Chicago. Jack looked like he had
ripped a toe or two from time to time, and Angel didn't look like any angel I'd
ever seen. I pictured them as hired killers, and only the one who completed the
job got paid. I asked Angel if anyone had ever called her Jill, and she didn't
even crack a smile. Obviously, Jack and Angel were not of the smiling
vacationers persuasion. So, at least until the next stop, Lou and I had to
share a van with four of Miss Friendly's relatives.

Our next stop was at the
Primitive Baptist Church. It sounded like a good place to leave Jack and
Angel. Luther and Sarah Harkness, too. No one wanted to get out so soon after
our most recent stop, so we went on to stop number three, the Methodist Church. Everyone got out there, and neither Jack nor Angel smiled until they got to
the cemetery behind the church. Their smiles were the most sinister smiles I
had ever seen. I decided I might have a longer retirement if I didn't continue
to ride with Jack and Angel. I felt my chances were better for survival if I
hooked up with a couple of bear cubs.

We continued on stopping
here and there and trading one group of people for another. When we got to stop
number ten, Abrams Falls Hiking Trail, none of our group wanted to stop and
hike two-and-a-half miles to the falls, and another two-and-a-half miles back,
provided no one slipped and fell over the falls. I would have taken the hike
except for two reasons. There was no promise of a van that would pick me up the
next day, and there was the possibility that Jack and Angel were lurking near
the falls. It was then when I remembered who Jack and Angel reminded me of. It
was Boris and Natasha. And Jack and Angel were Badenov in my opinion.

Things didn't get hairy
until we got to stop number eleven, and not even then until we had been there a
while. Number eleven, known as the Cable Mill Area Visitors Center, has a mill that is still operating, plus restrooms and a gift shop. It was also the
place where a van that carried none of our group arrived with box lunches for
everyone in our group. And the box lunch was a cut above some of the others I
have had. After stopping off at the restroom and partaking of lunch afterward,
I headed inside the gift shop, where I bought a Hershey Almond candy bar in
case we got lost, and a book telling about all those trails at Cade's Cove that
Lou and I had decided to forego.

I had just stepped out
of the gift shop with my purchase, and was on my way to check out the mill when
Sylvia came running up to me. The fact that she didn't attempt mouth to mouth,
or act like she was frisking me before I boarded an airplane, told me that she
had something else on her mind.

"Cy, it's Inez!
She's missing! The last time I saw her she told me she was going to the
restroom, and then down to the old mill."

"Well, have you
looked at the mill?"

"Twice."

"Maybe she took one
of the vans on to wherever we are headed next."

"She wouldn't do
that without me. I'm her crutch. See, Inez is going through a nasty divorce
right now, and her husband has threatened her. That's one of the reasons we
decided to get away for a week."

"You figure that
he'll forget about his threat after a week?"

"No, but we figured
this week will give us a chance to think, decide what she needs to do."

"Is Inez's real
name Mary Ann Evans?"

"Where did that
come from?"

"I heard the name
today, and I don't think there's a Mary Ann Evans in our group."

"Could someone be
talking about
the
Mary Ann Evans?"

"And who might that
be?"

"Didn't you go to
school?"

"Yeah, but as far
as I know there was no Mary Ann Evans in my school."

"Well, more than
likely there was. See, Mary Ann Evans was George Eliot's real name."

"This is beginning
to sound a little more weird than I thought."

"Didn't you ever
read
Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss,
or
Middlemarch?"

"No. Should I
have?  I didn't even catch the movie."

"Focus. I'm talking
about Inez now."

I thought of something.
I took out my phone, and found what I wanted.

"Look at this. Have
you seen these two guys before?"

"Are those the two
you were talking about that I said reminded me of the Blues Brothers?"

"That's them."

"Well, they do
dress like them, but they don't look that much like Dan Ackroyd and John
Belushi."

"Are those two guys
who work for Inez's husband?"

"You don't go to
the movies, do you? Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi were the two actors who played
the Blues Brothers."

"So, you don't
recognize these two guys?"

"No."

"Wait a minute!
I've got one more. Recognize this guy?"

"I'm not
sure."

"What if I told you
he limps?"

"That's it! This is
the guy who was hiding in the shadows at the motel, back when we were leaving Lexington. Are you telling me he's down here, too?"

"He is. And I saw
him when we stopped at the Welcome Center, so he must have followed us."

"Maybe so, but as
far as I know, he doesn't work for Inez's husband. Do you have any more
pictures to show me, because we're wasting time when we should be looking for Inez?"

"No. Just those. Let's
check out the mill again. Maybe Inez is there now. If someone did grab her, maybe
we aren't too late. Let's get there before they drown her."

"And you think I'm
the one who's getting weird."

I took off, with Lou and
Sylvia close behind. It was a good few hundred feet to the mill, but we
arrived, and some guy was talking to a group about what the mill does today. We
looked around and didn't see anyone that looked like Inez. I even looked down
in the water. There was no arm sticking out of the water, but then the old mill
stream looked deeper than the Little Pigeon River.

Most of the area was
open spaces, so we could see a good distance. Sylvia checked each of the
buildings, including the women's restroom. I went into the men's restroom, but
I didn't holler, "Hey, Inez, are you in here?"

Lou and I met up with
Sylvia and compared our failures. I spoke first.

"You know she's not
the first person to go missing?"

"Yeah, I was on the
bus. I heard about the bus driver."

"Well, him, too,
but I was talking about the woman that bopped me good on the bus."

"Well, you did get
right up in her face."

"But that was only
because she looked like she was dead."

"Well, I'll admit
she hadn't had any glamour shots done lately."

"You don't know the
old woman's name, do you?"

"No, but she's
staying in the same building Inez and I are staying in."

"Really? Which one
is that?"

"Don't tell me that
all of a sudden you are interested in me now that Inez is missing."

"No. But if you're
staying close to us, then the old biddy is staying close to us, too. I've just
been wondering what happened to her, since she hasn't done anything with us
since Friday night."

"But this is the
first thing we've done together since Friday night. Remember, yesterday was a
free day."