Murder in Gatlinburg (17 page)

Since my detecting was
at a standstill and I no longer ate a meal every hour, I headed to my room to
rest for an hour or so. By sometime around lunchtime I would check with Lou and
see what he wanted to do.

+++

When I got back to the
room, I saw the light flashing on my room phone. I called to get the message.
When I found out what it was about I called Lou.

"Our concierge
called and left a message."

"I know. She left
one on my phone, too."

"Well, we both like
the place. Do you want to take the tour and see how much a timeshare in this
place will cost? We can always say no."

"We don't know how
much longer either of us will live, but if we live as long as most men we have
another twenty-five years to enjoy this place."

"Yeah, the only
thing is do we want to come back to the same place each year."

"Let's find out
what they are offering. I don't think they will hold us at gunpoint, and like I
said, we can always say no."

Lou agreed and I called
our concierge and told her that Lou and I had some time that afternoon and we'd
be willing to listen to what they had to offer. She gave me a time and told us
where to meet her.

+++

Once again the
temperature wasn't too hot or too cold. At least for one year the weekend that
started the last part of May and ended on one of the first few days in June
included ideal weather conditions. Just right for spending some time on my
balcony. I stood at the railing and looked down. I knew which unit belonged to
Miss Friendly for a week, so I knew she had a balcony similar to mine. It
wouldn't have been hard for someone to toss her over the side and watch her
roll down the hill in the dark. I called the front desk to offer that tidbit to
add to what I'd already shared. Luckily I remembered the name of the person I
talked to the first time. She seemed less than excited that I called her, but
promised me that someone would check on Miss Trueblood and see if she was okay.
At least she remembered the name of the missing person, so maybe someone would
follow through. I knew the resort had security, so I figured they would be the
logical choice. But maybe they might send a maid by first, and then if Miss
Friendly wasn't in her room, or if there were bloodstains on the floor or in
the shower or out on the balcony railing, they would call in security to check
the matter more thoroughly.

I called Lou to see what
he wanted to do about lunch. Since we had an appointment to check on a
timeshare that afternoon, we decided to eat on the premises.  We strolled down
the hill. I looked over at the pool to my right, but there was no vision in a
bikini rising up out it. There were a handful of kids in the pool, and some
parents reclining while keeping an eye on them, but I wasn't going up to stare
at any of them. After eating a relaxing lunch, we checked to see if we could
take a shuttle ride throughout the property. I explained that we came on a tour
bus, so we had no car to tour the grounds. An hour or so later, without
encountering any bodies despite the way some of those people drove, we felt we
had an even greater appreciation for the property. Also, I was impressed at how
much higher the top of the property was than it was down where we checked in.
From there, most everything is up, and even though we had somewhere around a
fifty foot drop-off from our balcony to the bottom of the hill, where we stayed
was a long way from the top. Our driver told Lou and me that we could get out
at the top and enjoy the view, so we took him up on it. He pointed out one
place in the distance and told me that it wasn't in Tennessee, but North Carolina. I would have to share that view with Jennifer sometime. Fifteen minutes
later he was back and we were on our way again. While he was gone I wondered
what I could do if I had a skateboard with me at the top. I knew what I could
do on a skateboard, but I didn't know how good the local hospital was.

There was so much to
Westgate that I was sure I needed a map to find some of the places, and I
wasn't sure that I could find everything even then. When I thought of that, I
wondered how many bodies someone could hide on the property. I was sure it was
many more than came down on our tour bus.

We kept our appointment
with our concierge, who handed us off to someone who answered all of our
questions and gave us all the information we needed to buy a timeshare. He even
took us around to show us the different kind of units, and took us to places we
had been to earlier that day. We didn't let on that he wasn't the first to show
them to us. A couple of hours later, we agreed to buy a week each at Westgate.
One positive was that we could trade our week for another Westgate resort. The
only negative I saw was that the maintenance fee was higher than I liked, but
once we had the place paid for, the maintenance fee was cheaper than a week at
a comparable resort. We signed the papers and headed back to our suites to rest
before heading out with the rest of our group.

+++

Tuesday night included
an early show at the Comedy Barn and a late dinner at The Old Mill. The show at
the Comedy Barn was as funny as most anything I'd seen lately, and it was
comedy the whole family could enjoy. Well, it's possible that watching Lou
wondering if he was going to die before he got off the rollercoaster might have
been funnier, but the show beat everything else for humor. I knew George and
the rest of the guys back home could have had a month of laughs from that. At
the show I particularly liked the segment when they called three men up out of
the audience and had them sit in chairs and told them to do what the man
standing behind them instructed them to do. It was one of the funniest routines
I'd ever seen, even though three of the four people involved weren't in on it.

The Old Mill Restaurant
was just a block off the main road. It was country cooking and there were
plenty of dishes to choose from. After we ate, we still had a few minutes to
look through the nearby shops before heading back to Westgate.

From where I sat at the
Comedy Barn it was hard to see everyone, but I tried to check out those seated
in front of me whose eyes were focused on the show. I was able to see part of
our group at The Old Mill, but some were seated in other places in the
two-story restaurant. I didn't see any of my three friends from breakfast.
Evidently they didn't get the text regarding what we were doing that evening. Regardless,
I didn't see anyone do anything out of the ordinary at either place, but then I
didn't expect that to happen. I merely wanted to watch them to see if I could
learn anything about their personalities.

+++

Once again I went back
to my accommodations and wondered what I'd been missing my last several years.
Both Lou and I had enjoyed ourselves so much that neither of us cracked open
either of the mysteries we had brought with us other than the one hour I read
earlier in the week. Unlike Lou, I had tried to crack a mystery, but I was handicapped
and didn't have enough evidence to solve either disappearance, whether a murder
had been committed or not.

I had a few minutes
before heading to bed, so I pulled out my new toy. I sent a text to Frank.

I have three bodies
for you so far. Will you be sending the wagon, and will it hold all three
bodies?

I knew Frank would get a
chuckle out of that, since he was always complaining about the bodies I
provided so he could do all those autopsies. Next, I texted George.

I understand that you
retired this week and they had to fire four people to replace you.

Jennifer needed more
than a text. She needed to hear my voice, and I needed to hear hers.

"Hello. Hold on a
minute. Armando will you turn down that romantic music. I can't hear who's on
the phone."

"Very funny."

"Cy, is that you?
They sent somebody by the other day to tell me that you fell off a
rollercoaster and didn't make it. I couldn't stand being by myself, and I met
Armando the other day at the grocery. He was so helpful, letting me know how to
tell if a melon was ripe or not."

"I heard about
that. They said he escaped from the psych ward the other day, and they've given
up on finding him. I guess you get to keep him."

"Would you like it
better if I told you that Thelma Lou and I have been crying ourselves to sleep
each night."

"That I can
believe. And I bet Thelma Lou's crying because she realizes that Lou will be
back soon."

"Cy, you know we
miss you. And we've decided not to let the two of you go away again without us.
We worry about you."

"That's better.
That means I won't have to send you a picture of the woman I met the other
day."

"Oh, go ahead and
send it to me. And hurry home!"

I hung up and sent the
picture to Jennifer. If she was to see it, and I could see a few guys I know
sending her a copy, I figured it would be better if the photo came from me.

A few minutes later, I
received a text from Jennifer.

Cy, thanks for
sending me a picture of you and that anorexic creature. And if she invites you
to her high school graduation I won't be upset if you go. But if you bring her
home with you I'll break your neck.

When Lou hurried toward
me as I headed down the steps on my way to breakfast, I knew he had another
clue.

"Okay, Lou, what's
today's message?"

"Is it that
obvious?"

"Yeah, don't ever
murder anyone. I'd figure it out in about two minutes."

"So, you're
improving in your old age."

"Watch that old age
thing. Remember, we're the same age."

"I think you're two
months older."

"And wiser. But
enough of all of this. What's today's message? Even though it's not as if it
will help us clear up this situation, whatever it is."

"I'll tell you if
you promise you won't ask me what it means."

That was tough, but I
was eager for another clue, maybe the clue that would help me solve the murder,
provided there had been one.

"Okay, I
promise."

"Craig Wasson and
Melanie Griffith."

Neither Lou nor I were into
TV programs or  movies that were made after we were born, and neither of us had
ever been interested in sports. So I figured that these two people figured into
one of those areas, because they weren't anyone we learned about in school, and
they weren't part of our tour group.

"Lou, how about if
I ask you a slightly different question?"

He looked suspicious.

"How slightly
different?"

"Have you heard of
either of these people?"

"Of course. Just a
minute ago, when I told you they are our clue. And when their names came to me
a few minutes ago when I got the message, as you call it."

"Okay, well, here's
what I know. They're not anyone in our group, so they're probably not the
murderer or the victim. One sounds male and the other sounds female, so they
probably don't play sports, because they are mentioned together. They have
fairly normal names, so they probably aren't a singing group. So, I think that
narrows it down to TV or movies."

"So, you don't
think they're Nobel Prize winners?"

"No, they both
sound American. And neither of them has ever been a President who pulled troops
out of some country, and the names don't sound like some physicist."

I debated over whether
or not to ask anyone if they knew what Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith
symbolized. I definitely wasn't going to ask anyone in our group.  After a minute
I decided that I would see if I could arrive at a conclusion on my own. If not,
I might ask someone later. I was enjoying my vacation too much to remember at
the time that I could have Googled them. If I had had Google from the beginning
I might have been able to solve some of our murder cases before they happened.
Well, maybe minutes after they happened. I wondered how many victims' lives I
could have saved if I had gotten to them immediately.

We had gotten several
clues since the bus pulled out of Lexington, which told me someone had been
murdered, even though I had no idea who it was and who murdered them. The
obvious answer was either Earl or Miss Friendly, or both, but then it could be
someone I wasn't thinking of. But surely it was someone I had met. But who had
I met other than the people in our group? The victim definitely wasn't the
limping man, or either of the men in sunglasses, unless someone was doing a
good imitation of one of them to make me think they were still alive. And I was
pretty sure it wasn't someone I knew back home. I had texted enough to those I
knew best to know that the messages that came back weren't from some imposter.
Or could it be that the whole thing was some scheme cooked up by George and Lou
to interfere with my vacation? It was time to quit thinking about all of that
and enjoy my vacation.