Murder in Gatlinburg (12 page)

Harlan told me that we
needed to go, so I stepped up into the bus. I headed back to the  seat Lou had
saved for me, grateful that it was next to him instead of one of our traveling
companions who was likely to cause trouble. I was unsure whether to engage Lou in
a game of name the trolley route, or talk about the possible murder(s). I knew
that Lou would know that the purple trolley stopped by Westgate, and the yellow
and green trolleys explored places where man had not gone before, but could I
trick him and ask him where the black trolley goes? No, Lou would probably know
that there was no black trolley, and that the tan trolley was the one we rode
the day before into the Smokies. Besides, I didn't want anyone to overhear us
talking about our trolley travels. I didn't want them to hear us talking murder
either, but the light bulb in my head alerted me that Lou and I could text each
other without anyone reading what we had texted.

But I couldn't help
myself when I got to my seat, so I had to send Lou a trolley message before I
got serious.

Okay, Lou, where does
the pink trolley go?

From  Barbie's
townhouse to the Mary Kay convention.

I laughed at Lou's
humor. I already knew that I wasn't the only retired cop on the bus who could
have a second career as a stand-up comedian in a nursing home.

I looked at my text, and
at Lou's return message. I knew there was a pink trolley. I knew we were on it
the day before, but I couldn't remember where it went. And since I didn't know,
I couldn't ask Lou again to see if he really knew where it went or not. So, I
changed the subject.

What do you think
about these two missing people?

That they're missing
the trip to the park.

After our initial folderol
we got serious. Lou reminded me that solving a murder is no longer our
business, and that no one had yet found a body. Then we got a little less than
serious as we wondered whether or not Earl and Miss Friendly had run away
together, or if maybe Miss Friendly was actually Mrs. Earl. If so, their
children probably ran away from home when they got old enough.

When it came to the
whereabouts of Earl, the bus driver, and Miss Not So Friendly, we had little to
go on. One who was supposed to be there hadn't shown up with his bus. One who
could have chosen to go or not to go could be hiding out in her room. So, either
of them could be dead or alive. And either could be the murderer I wasn't
supposed to seek. Or maybe there wasn't a murder, or at least there wasn't a
murder yet.

Earl was the one I
thought about the most. Not only was Earl missing. His bus was missing, too. Give
or take a few million, there were twenty million people in Gatlinburg for Memorial
Day weekend. Surely one of them could have spotted a tour bus. Maybe Earl would
be waiting for us in the Smokies, with an excuse as to why he was late. I
thought it was more likely that Earl wouldn't be there. So, it was back to
finding the bus. We had two scenarios. Either Earl hid the bus, or someone else
hid Earl and the bus. And it wasn't like you could sink the bus in Little Pigeon
Creek. I mean River.

I thought of where I
would hide a bus in the area we were in. But then, Earl had been missing since
Friday night. He could be in Texas by now, and in Texas he wouldn't have to
hide the bus, just change the license plate. That is if Earl is the one
responsible for the missing bus.

I texted Lou and asked
him to ponder the situation of the missing bus. He texted back and told me the
bus wasn't missing, that we were riding in it. I gave him a look, and he
changed his expression to a pondering one.

I pondered, too. If Earl
was responsible for the bus being missing, my guess was that Earl had left Tennessee behind. I hoped George didn't find him in Hilldale. I would never hear the end of
it. So, what other possibilities did I have to ponder. Well, Earl could have
developed amnesia. I put that one in the fat chance, slim chance category. Earl
could have been kidnapped. One of the books I read told about someone being
kidnapped in the Smokies. It could have happened to Earl. Another scenario was
that Earl has found his final resting place. Well, maybe not his final one, but
he was no longer of this world, in the fact that he could no longer enjoy it.
If so, Earl would be easier to hide than a bus. True, the Little Pigeon River
wasn't a much better place to deposit Earl than it would be a bus, but there
was a lot of dirt and a lot of trees near where we were, and Earl could be
underneath both of them. But I didn't think anyone would take the time to bury
a bus.

So, where does a person,
Earl or someone unknown, hide a bus. Most people would think you should drive
it to the most obscure place in the Smokies, but maybe the best place to hide a
bus would be at an attraction next to a lot of other tour buses. All tour buses
don't look alike, but they don't look out of place next to another tour bus.

+++

I was getting nowhere
wondering where our missing persons were, but all of a sudden I got something.
It turned out to be a text from George.

Getting ready to walk
into church. I'll say a little prayer that you haven't stumbled onto more
murders than you can handle.

Mere seconds later, I
received a second text from George. That one told me that George could
certainly text faster than I could, even though it consisted of only a few
words.

Remember, Big Brother
is watching you.

I was in no position to
look around and see if any of my traveling companions looked like a guilty Big
Brother. Was one of our fellow travelers a snoop for George? I couldn't figure
out how George always knew what was going on. Well, he didn't mention the Smokies,
but if he memorized our itinerary he knew we should be headed there. I turned
and looked at Lou, wondered if he had kept George abreast of everything that
was going on. I couldn't see him doing that, so I answered George's text.

Having a great time.
Received the key to the city of two different towns. No murders yet. Just two
MIAs.

Evidently George had put
his phone on silent, because he didn't reply to my text. I gave him a couple of
minutes, and then returned to pondering the possible murders. By the time I had
mulled all of this over, the bus we were on, Harlan's bus, had turned off the
road that headed to Cherokee, North Carolina, and begun its climb to Cade's
Cove. It didn't take me long to forget about Earl. We were on a bus that was
just a little wider than the road we were traveling on. If anyone was to come
down that mountain toward us on a bicycle, which was the only mode of
transportation I could think of that might be able to pass us without wiping
out a few trees, I prayed that that person came with a change of clothes. And I
had seen other tour buses at Dixie Stampede. Who was I to think we had the only
tour bus prepared to tackle the national park that day? Now that wouldn't
present a problem if they were traveling the same direction we were. But what
if one of those tour buses got started early and was ready to make its descent.
That was not a pleasant thought. Maybe Earl had already thought about this and
had chosen suicide instead.

I raised up in my seat,
just to make sure that Harlan was still driving the bus. I didn't think the bus
was equipped with something similar to automatic pilot, or that the bus had
been taken over by terrorists. None of our bunch reminded me of terrorists. They
looked more like criminals, with a few engineers thrown in for good measure. I
was relieved to see that Harlan was still in charge and that he didn't look as
nervous as I felt.

On the trip down from Lexington Lou and I sat on the left-hand side of the bus, behind Earl, the driver. But
this time we chose the right side, which was closer to sliding off the mountain
and farther from someone who would bump into the other side of the bus. Maybe
Miss Friendly knew about this and had chosen to live to frown another day.

I contemplated my will, which
I had yet to make out. I had no next of kin. I didn't even have a least of kin.
To whom would I leave Lightning? Not George or Frank. Neither of them
appreciated her. And I didn't envision Lou living through this if I didn't. I
thought of everyone I knew, and came up with a solution. I contemplated texting
Mrs. E. at the bookstore to let her know that Lightning was hers if I didn't
make it back. I looked at the list of numbers I had. Lou. George. Frank. And
Jennifer. I wasn't about to text George or Frank to let them know that John
Jacob Astor from Friday survived the Titanic, but not the bus ride. And I
didn't want Jennifer to think that her Cy was scared of riding on a bus. And we
hadn't encountered any bumps in the road, like a bus would make if it plowed on
over scattered bodies from a previous disaster. I looked down upon the Little
Pigeon waterway. I felt better when I didn't see any arms or legs sticking up
out of the water after being pushed aside by a street sweeper.

It seemed to take
forever to get to Cade's Cove. Maybe Harlan wasn't really a bus driver, but the
murderer, and all of us were to become his victims. Or maybe he was only going
to hold us for ransom. I wondered who would be willing to pay to get me back,
and how much they thought I was worth. I knew that Jennifer thought I was worth
a lot, but I doubted that she had that many millions to spare. Again I thought
of how long it was taking us to get to Cade's Cove. Surely we had crossed over
into a different time zone, and maybe even another state. No wonder Harlan
planned to give me the list of passengers at Cade's Cove. We were never going
to get there. I wondered if some day people would pay to visit the attraction
of the bus that skidded off the narrow road into the Little Pigeon Creek, and
if each day a different person would receive a card with "Cy Dekker"
written on it, only to find out that after they walked through the bus replica
that Cy didn't survive the bus ride.

I was about to discuss all
of this with Lou by text when someone in the front shouted that Cade's Cove was
just ahead. I knew it all the time. And I was sure that when I got out of the
bus the road would be wider than I thought.

+++

Some things don't make a
lot of sense. Like any decision made by someone who works for the government.
But someone had decided that it was okay for a big, wide bus to travel on a
curvy, two-way road up a mountain, but we had to resort to traveling by van
once we got to the flat, one-way road at the top of the mountain. And then I
remembered that national parks are run by the federal government, so it all
made sense, in a nonsense kind of way.

Well, we arrived at the
top and Harlan parked the bus and informed us that we would take the Cade's
Cove Loop Trail in vans. Each van would stop at each of the points of interest
along the loop. All the passengers would get out and take an appropriate amount
of time checking out that particular point of interest and return to the first
van on the left, which may or may not have been the one they had previously
ridden in. Once a van filled up, that van would take off for the next point of
interest. That way each person could take as long as he or she wanted at each
place, as long as we were back to the parking lot by the time the bus needed to
leave. The last couple of stragglers could linger at their own risk. That
seemed easy enough to understand, which told me someone wouldn't understand.
Maybe someone would get left at Cade's Cove, or someone might get murdered there
before we left. If so, would Cade's Cove add another point of interest?
Probably not, since more than likely they would be murdered at one of the
already designated points of interest. Imagine, the next group driving by might
be the one to find a body above ground at one of the church cemeteries. Would
Lou and I be called back to solve that murder? Probably not.

The two guys slipping
into retirement waited for the others to get off the bus, and Harlan slipped me
a list of the passengers as we got off. I slid it into my pocket and planned to
pull it out when the opportunity arose. It arose immediately. We were given a
few minutes to head to the facilities before the first van took off.  I headed
to the restroom, walked into one of the stalls, and sat down to read the list.
There were twenty-three of us. I knew exactly seven of us by name. I tried to
guess which one of the others was Miss Friendly. I considered Max Huffington. Miss
Friendly looked like a Max. I looked at all of the names. I remembered Lou's
clue of the day. There wasn't a Mary Ann Evans on the list. Maybe someone was
traveling using an alias. If so, was Mary Ann Evans more likely to be the
murderer or the victim? There was one Jack but no Jill in our group. And since
there was only one Sylvia and one Inez, I took it that our two newfound friends
were formally known as Sylvia DuBois and Inez Weddle.

I slipped the list back
into my pocket and hurried off to join the others. My plan was to put a name
with each face as quickly as possible, which meant that I didn't plan to ride
in the same van with the same people all the way around Cade's Cove.