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Flying
Blind
by R.P. Dahlke
Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Chapter One
I
like having a man at my feet. Tough guys who grovel are my favorite,
though I m not adverse to a little toe kissing when appropriate. I leave
the toe kissing for those uneven date nights when my sweety, Caleb Stone,
is not on duty, and I'm not in neck deep in summer time work. Summer
is hell for a girl crop-duster, or lady aerial applicator, to be PC.
That's when farmers beg, whine and threaten so they can be first in
line to have their fields sprayed or dusted before the next rain or
blight or bug infestation hits.
All of which had nothing to do with the
man who was presently draped across my feet. Dead drunk, I figured,
looking down at the disheveled lump who had lately caused me so much
embarrassment, the evidence of our disagreement spilling out of his
lap. In the gusty twilight the intricately cut pieces of paper swirled
and danced along the floor of the grimy alley and then flattened themselves
against a mismatched assortment of dented garbage cans.
Billy Wayne Dobson wasn't homeless, as
his long suffering mother would tell you, should you be so inclined
to listen. He had a room into which he crept at night. But during the
day, regardless of the weather, Billy Wayne pushed his loaded shopping
cart through the streets of Modesto, California. He had a preference
for brightly colored toy whirly-gigs and tacked them onto a pole of
his cart, and together they sailed through the down town streets. I
once slowed in my rush to somewhere just so I could count the whirly
parts, there were fifteen. At the time, I smiled, but not now.
Now I had to call him twice before he
looked up. The red, white and blue ribbons that held his long, graying
ponytail had fallen out and now hung over his eyes "The more there is
the less you see," he whispered. Then Billy Wayne Dobson, troubled soul
that he was, fell over and lay across my feet.
So you see, that's why I wasn't so keen
on having a man at my feet at this exact moment. "Billy Wayne? Wake
up! Come on now," I said in disgust. "This is getting out of hand. You've
got to stop this nonsense," I waved my hand at the white paper trailing
out of his lap. "Billy Wayne?" I knelt down and shook his shoulder,
rolling him off my feet and onto his back. That's when I saw that he
was clutching the blue handle of his paper cutting scissors to his chest.
The same scissors he used to make the offending snowflakes.
The snowflakes were Billy Wayne's odd
way around Caleb's gentle, and unofficial, visit to an ex-fellow marine.
Caleb warned his old friend that any poetry left on the windshields
either my classic '58 Caddy or my farm truck were not appropriate, and
to persist in this behavior would be ill advised and considered harassment.
And to make his point crystal clear, he told Billy Wayne that the next
visit would come with a restraining order. Caleb could talk like that
all day since he was the Sheriff of Stanislaus county.
Since Caleb and I had been an item for
almost a year now everyone in town, my dad included, expected a wedding
in the near future. Not that I wanted to go down that merry path again.
I'd already been chewed up and spit out twice in. Gun shy, my dad called
me. Nervous ninny, my friend Roxanne said. Sensible, I told them all.
His poetry stopped for about a week. Then
in the SaveMart parking lot I came out of the store with a load of groceries
to find my candy apple red El Dorado surrounded by curious shoppers.
I shoved through the crowd and stood open-mouthed in front of the Caddy.
Most of the red paint was covered with white snowflakes. The symbol
of winter appeared a tad bizarre since it was August. Upon closer inspection
I could see that the paper cut outs were as unique as the real ones.
Indeed, there were no two exactly alike. Only these had something written
in tightly printed words around the edges.
I leaned forward. Poetry.
Billy Wayne.
I groaned, then shooed off the curious
spectators with a grin, "Practical joke, folks, nothing special."
I didn't have the heart to report this
latest infraction to Caleb. Billy Wayne I knew, was shy, easily startled
and would panic and run if Caleb should angrily make good on his threat
to cart him off to jail. So, I decided that I would confront the neurotic,
but harmless man. Make him understand that his attraction to me, though
flattering, was never going to go anywhere.
I was too late. The blue scissors that
Billy Wayne clutched were sticking out of his chest and a dark stain
was spreading across his nearly new blue T-shirt.
Coming Soon!
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