Murder in Gatlinburg (10 page)

I turned and looked at
Lou, who remained in the background as Brenda and I talked, but was aware of
what was going on.

"Lou, we'd better
get out of here before Sylvia and Inez show up."

"I agree. Otherwise
you'll have more women to pick from than
The Bachelor
."

"What
bachelor?"

"I don't know. I
just know it's some TV show that someone was kidding George about watching. I
don't even know if it's still on. It was a while back when I heard about George
watching it. I don't know why I thought of it just now."

As we walked the short
distance from the trolley stop to the Pancake Pantry, I thought of what Brenda
had said about Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg being different. It definitely
wasn't hard to tell the difference between the two small towns in the mountains.
I already knew that Pigeon Forge is best navigated by car. There was no way I
wanted to walk all the way from one large attraction to the next. But in
Gatlinburg, the buildings were right out on the street, one next to the other,
and from what I could tell, even though Lou and I were walking uphill, we were
going faster than the cars trying to navigate the street. But no one seemed to
mind. I was sure most of those people were on vacation, and might be among the
millions leaving for home the next day. I figured the locals had some kind of
underground passage to get where they wanted to go and they wouldn't share that
information with any out-of-towners.

A few minutes later, it
wasn't just the cars that had come to a standstill. It seemed there were a lot
of other people who had gotten the memo that the Pancake Pantry served delicious
food. Maybe we weren't the first people Brenda met. But she was right about the
line at the Pancake Pantry being out the door and down the street. But the line
moved quickly, and Lou and I were inside before the place closed for the day.

We ordered, and Lou and
I started to talk about what we were going to do that day. By the time our food
arrived, I was glad that most of the rest of our vacation was planned. We still
hadn't come up with anything we were going to do. After a couple bites of the pecan
pancakes I ordered, and after stealing a bite of Lou's chocolate chip pancakes,
I thought about staying at the Pancake Pantry all day. I wondered if it was
like an amusement park ride. Could I stay at my table, or would I have to go
back outside when I finished breakfast and go to the back of the line before
ordering lunch?

One of the places I saw
as we waited to go inside the breakfast haven was an attraction that delighted
many boys growing up, but one I had never experienced. A mirror maze. Ripley's
Marvelous Mirror Maze to be exact.  

When we left the Pancake
Pantry and stepped back out into the world according to Gatlinburg, I mentioned
the mirror maze to Lou. He said he was game to see what navigating a mirror
maze was like. We crossed the street, walked up to the counter, and paid our
money.  The woman handed us some disposable plastic gloves. They must have
figured we were there to do an autopsy. I took them anyway and put them on. Lou
and I stepped into a world of flashing lights of different colors and mirrors
everywhere. I didn't know what to think when we had completed our journey in
ten minutes, so I asked someone else who exited just after us. He didn't think
it was as good or as tough to navigate as others he had experienced. I thought
it was a little pricy for the short time we were inside, but then they told us
we could come back as often as we wanted all day long. I chalked it up to
experience and decided to see a little more of what Gatlinburg had to offer
instead.

One of the attractions
Gatlinburg had to offer was one that Lou and I had discussed briefly at
breakfast, but we hadn't decided whether or not to try it. Miniature golf. After
exiting the mirror maze, Lou and I agreed that a game of miniature golf on a
hillside might be fun. Well, it would be if neither of us fell off that
hillside. The place was called Hillbilly Golf and it was located at the lower
end of Gatlinburg, so Lou and I agreed to chance it. We went back to the only
trolley stop we knew and tried to figure out which trolley would get us to that
miniature golf place. With help from something we read, and confirmation from
someone else waiting for a trolley, it worked. There was even a trolley stop
right next to the miniature golf course. And there were two courses. Lou and I
couldn't remember the last time we had played miniature golf, although we both
thought we had done it once, or had watched someone else play. So, since we had
reverted to the childhood we never had, we played both courses without either
of us losing a ball down the hill. However, we did have one near death
experience, and one we weren't sure about. Lou and I were about halfway through
our second set of holes when I heard a noise above and behind me. I started to turn
around and check out the source of that noise when something went whizzing past
my ear. Lou was slower to react than I was, so I leapt toward him and pushed
him to the ground. He took the fall harder than the times he had fallen back when
he had more padding. I landed on top of Lou, but we weren't through moving. We
both rolled until we hit a tree. Well, I think Lou took the brunt of that, too.
I forgot that I no longer carried a gun, but I turned and tried to assess our
situation, just in case the gunman realized he had missed, or their was a second
gunman somewhere on a grassy knoll. Lou was still assessing whether or not he
should take soprano lessons, so it would be up to me to protect both of us. As
I was turning, I heard someone running toward us. It was the little girl from
our group.

"Sorreee!I told him
not to hit it so hard."

I still wasn't sure what
she was talking about.

"My brother's golf
ball. That was what almost hit you. I didn't realize that it knocked you down.
I hope you won't press charges. He's normally a good kid, but he's a little
more hyper on vacation."

I told her that it was
okay, and that Lou and I wouldn't press charges. But I wasn't sure if Lou would
press charges against me.

"I need his golf
ball back. I think your friend is lying on it."

I didn't want to reach
over Lou and try to locate the golf ball, so I said, "Lou. You okay?"

I think the little girl
being there saved me. Otherwise, I could see him retrieving his putter, hitting
me over the head with it, and saying, "Cy, are you okay? Are you better
now?"

Lou felt around and
found the golf ball. He handed it to me, and I handed it to the little girl.
She apologized again, and turned and headed up the hill. I refrained from
tapping Lou on the shoulder and saying, "I believe it's your turn."
Before the paramedics arrived, Lou stumbled to his feet, climbed back up the
hill after giving me a dirty look, calmly sank his putt, and then smiled at me.

But our troubles weren't
over. A few of minutes later, I looked up the hill again. There were two men in
dark sunglasses looking at us. The hillside course is covered by trees, so
there was no reason for anyone to wear sunglasses there unless they were  celebrities
who didn't want to be noticed, or murderers who didn't want to be identified. When
these two men saw us they both looked down, as if both of them were putting at
the same time. Not knowing who the killer would be, I whipped out my phone and zoomed
in and took their picture. I have no idea if they knew that I had taken it or
not, but they didn't come charging down the hill after us. That was good
because, like I said before, neither Lou nor I had brought a gun, and we had no
idea if the two men were carrying or not. Besides, I doubted if Lou was fully
recovered from his encounter with the ground and the tree. Lou looked over my
shoulder to see if I had gotten both men in the picture. I think he was
disappointed that I hadn't captured a tree branch and a scampering squirrel.

We finished the second
game without any other incident. There were no bodies in the tram when it
arrived, so we took it back down the hill, and waited for the trolley. There
was no way either of us wanted to walk back uphill to the center of town, where
most of what interested us were located.

During a weak moment,
Lou and I decided to play a game that sounded more like something children who
wished to get in trouble with their parents would do. We went back to our
favorite trolley stop and got on the first trolley that stopped by, without having
any idea where it was going. We hadn't been on the trolley ten minutes when the
trolley stopped and I saw someone step out of one of the shops. It was hard to
say, but the guy looked just like the lame man I saw at the motel back in Lexington. The one hiding in the shadows. The traffic light changed and people started
crossing the street a few cars in front of us. I whipped out my camera and
focused in on the guy just as we started going again. I got a good picture of
some bricks. I was  used to taking pictures where I had to put my eye up to the
viewer. Holding the camera phone out in front of me was different. I looked at
the guy again as we started to move. Our eyes met briefly and his seemed to be
full of fear. I'm sure he recognized me, too. And I kept watching him and saw
him limp away. By the time the day was over, Lou and I had visited Pigeon
Forge, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and a few of the area motels,
some of which were located so far up in the hills that you wouldn't be able to find
them in the winter without a Sherpa. We even talked to a few people as we rode,
but we refrained from telling anyone what we were doing, or give out too much
information about ourselves. And I didn't have any other moments that reminded
me of
An Affair to Remember.
I did see two guys in sunglasses that could
have been the two we saw earlier. I snapped their picture, so that I could
compare and see which one was a better image in case we wanted to identify
them. Later, I saw the guy with the limp again. This time I was able to get a
fairly good picture of him.

We got to see a lot of
Gatlinburg, some areas several times. And we traveled as far as Dollywood in
Pigeon Forge. I knew we would be going back to the amusement park for a longer
visit. But the most awesome site we saw was the national park. We were impressed
by how magnificent the park looked, but then not every stretch of land gets to
be a national park. Just a few of the more impressive places garner that
distinction.

On one of the trolleys a
woman got on carrying two of the brightest colored tennis balls I had ever
seen. I was sure they glowed in the dark. Each had a three-foot piece of wire
stuck in it. My curiosity got the best of me.

"Excuse me, but can
you tell me what those balls are used for?"

"A friend
recommended them. They are for when you stay in a strange place."

I wondered if she
thought they warded off evil spirits. I looked confused, so she continued.

"They are for if
you have to get up in the middle of the night. You put them places where you can
see them, places where you might stub your toes in the dark."

I wondered what someone
would come up with next. 

As we rode one trolley
after another, I looked at the people we saw on the street, and quickly checked
out the places where we might want to stop before we left town. I didn't see
anyone I knew, which included Sylvia and Inez, who must have arrived at the
transit center mere minutes after we left it. Maybe they were riding other
trolleys all over town looking for us. And I didn't see Miss Friendly, but then
I wasn't sure if I would recognize her unless she frowned. I didn't see Earl,
either. I wondered if bus drivers ride trolleys. If so, would that be a
busman's holiday? Not only didn't I see any of the strange people in our group,
but I saw no more limping men.  I did see more men in sunglasses, but none of
them looked like the two we saw. Both of the men we saw playing miniature golf stood
out because they were wearing dark suits and ties. Who wears a suit on
vacation? Not too many people wear them anytime anymore. And they both had on
dark hats. Who wears a hat anymore?

On our travels through
trolleyworld, I saw an attraction that I knew Lou and I needed to try. A block
or two uphill from the Pancake Pantry was the chairlift that went to the top of
the mountain. I knew there was one there, because I had seen a picture of it in
a brochure. And it was the place I thought of in my fantasy about Brenda. Neither
Lou nor I had ridden a chairlift in our younger years, and we felt our first
vacation was a good time to start. When we located it again after getting off
the trolley we paid our money and followed the line until we were next. We sat
down as the moving chair met our backsides. I've never been afraid of heights,
but then I've never had the desire to stand on the edge of a cliff, either. In
a matter of minutes, the two retirees had met enough people coming down that we
had arrived at the top. We were warned as we neared the top that a photograph
would be forthcoming, but we had already reached our limit of two photographs,
and didn't bother to see how we looked with the breeze blowing through our
hair. It became obvious how high up we were when we turned around and looked
down at all the ants below. After a few minutes of looking down, and looking
around without spotting a familiar face or one that seemed bent on criminal
intent, we walked over to take the ride down and meet those coming up. As we
got on and I looked at how far down it was, I couldn't help thinking of the me
I used to be, and the former Lou, and wondered whether the bar holding us would
have snapped back then, causing the two of us to tumble to the ground and go bump,
bump, bump all the way down. I was glad I didn't have to find out.