The Conch Shell of Doom (10 page)

Alexis parked in front of Bailey’s house in her Jeep Cherokee. He’d been sitting on the front steps, waiting for her. He hopped up and jogged across the grass. Alexis motioned for him to get in.

Bailey opened the door. “This is my deal. I’ll drive.”

“What if you forget how to on the way?” Alexis said. “Lord only knows with you.”

“Ouch.” Bailey climbed into the passenger seat.

Alexis held out her hand. “I’m Alexis Carrington. You’re friends with me and my brother Tim?”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” Bailey deadpanned.
 

“I’m only trying to be helpful. What if you just got in a car with a total stranger?”

“I’d never forget you.” Bailey didn’t realize until too late what he’d said. He bit the inside of his lips, hoping she wouldn’t press for an explanation.

“You say that, but you never know.”

“Wait. Who are you, again?”

“Hush, you.” Alexis smiled and smacked him on the arm.
 

They went to Crabapple’s, a popular seafood joint in Mooresville next to the ocean. Neither of them could figure out why a seafood restaurant would go by Crabapple’s, instead of Filet O’ Fish, Catch O’ the Day, or anything else with an O’ in the name, but that didn’t stop them from eating there. The pair sat outside under an umbrella at a picnic table, eating fried flounder. The salty air made the food taste more authentic. Plus, there were fewer people to deal with since the tourists eating there preferred to sit inside and enjoy the air conditioning.

“I don’t understand how you can’t remember anything from last night,” Alexis said. “Did you get dropped on your head? Have an acid flashback?”

Bailey raised his eyebrows. “I don’t remember.”

“Bailey Southwick, you are just the sharpest tack in the box.” Alexis exaggerated her Southern accent to sound like an old-fashioned belle. She even batted her eyes. “Would you like to join me on the promenade for some afternoon tea?”

“You think you’re cute, don’t you?”

“I know I am. But that’s not the point. Can you remember anything?”

“It’s like I have bits and pieces of things, but I’m missing the glue that holds everything together.” Bailey stuck a piece of flounder in his mouth.

“That’s so strange. If you were a girl, I’d say you got roofied.”

“Maybe I was. Your brother has been looking at me funny lately.”
 

“He’s not the only one.”

Bailey got nervous. Was she joking? Her tone was too deadpan to tell. He really needed to know what happened. The idea of knowing scared him, but
not
knowing scared him even more. He forced himself to keep the banter going. “Are you saying you roofied me? I hope I’m not mean when I’ve been roofied.”

Alexis covered her mouth with her hand. It was rude to speak with food in your mouth. “You mean when you pinched my boob like some dirty old man?”

Bailey froze under a tidal wave of shame. “Oh, no. I’m so, so, sorry. I don’t know what I—”

“Kidding!” Alexis laughed.
 

Bailey exhaled. “Thank God. Don’t do that to me.”

“Sorry.” Alexis glanced down at her lunch. “Actually, you were quite the gentleman.”

“Good. It would’ve been awful if I really did that.”

Alexis stabbed her flounder with the fork, glaring at Bailey with narrowed eyes. Did he say something wrong? She looked down. “You don’t think they’re worth pinching?”

Argh
. Bailey loved going back and forth with Alexis, but they always wound up in a place where he couldn’t figure out if she was mad. Bailey felt like he’d walked straight into a buzz saw of female insecurity. The anxiety of trying to remember what happened didn’t help matters.

“I just, um, I didn’t mean it like that. They’re very pinchable.”

“So you
imagine
pinching my boobs?” Alexis sounded a little insulted.

Shit on a stick!
 

“God no!” Bailey didn’t want her thinking he was some kind of pervert. He was a nice guy.

“You seem very confused.” Joking or not, Alexis had Bailey cornered. She rested her elbows on the table, propping her chin up with her hands. “Care to talk about those confused feelings?”

Oh, man
.

Bailey wasn’t prepared to talk about any feelings, good or bad. He could’ve talked to women for another twenty years and still been out of his depth. The only thing left to do was admit defeat and move forward, head held low.
 

“All I’m saying is if we did do something and I forgot, wouldn’t that make you mad?” Bailey prayed that would be enough of an answer to get him out of trouble. “It would make me mad.”
 

Alexis didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. The spotlight was making Bailey melt.
 

“How uncomfortable are you right now?” she asked. “Scale of one to ten.”
 

“Nine.”

Alexis leaned back, looking slightly disappointed. “I was sure I had you at ten.”

Whew. She was only joking.
 

“That’s so not cool. Can you just tell me what happened last night? Please?”
 

Alexis filled Bailey in on the details, from Mr. Lovell and Trenton Maroney to being afraid of his parents. None of it kick-started his memory. The particulars felt so heavy to Bailey. It was like the information sank straight through his brain and onto the ground.

“Why would I be scared of my parents?” Bailey asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what she said. She, of course, being me.”

Bailey tried to work through everything. Alexis had no reason to lie, so why did his parents scare him? Maybe it had something to do with Mr. Lovell or Trenton. “Did I say anything else about those two guys?”

“Nope.” Alexis took a sip of her water. “And they didn’t show up on Google either. We were going to check out UNC-W’s library today to see if they had anything, because our lives are so exciting we’re going to a library. On a Saturday.”

Bailey smiled without realizing. A thought quickly erased it. What if he wasn’t drugged last night? Maybe it was so traumatic his brain blocked it out. He’d read about abuse victims doing that, but there wasn’t a scratch on his body, save the burnt tongue and throat he had that morning.

“Like you said. What else are we going to do today?”

A man with an eye patch keeping a large bandage in place walked by, taking small steps. He moved down the boardwalk in a daze.

“Weird,” Bailey said.

Alexis drank from her soda. “What is? That guy?”

Bailey nodded. “Yeah. He looked like he got stabbed in the eye with a toothpick.”

“Disgusting visual, but all I see is his back.”

The man stopped and turned around. Bailey stiffened and all kinds of brutal ways to die raced through his mind. Had the guy overheard the toothpick joke? Did he have something to do with what happened? Bailey took a deep breath, trying to calm his mind before it drove him up the wall.

“Hey. Where’s the oceanic museum?” the man asked.

Bailey tried to speak but only managed a mumble.

Alexis turned toward him. “Keep going for another half mile or so. It’ll be on your left.”
 

“They have shells there?”

“Say what?” Bailey blurted out.

“Shells. Like conch shells? I heard they have a sweet collection.”

“I guess so,” Alexis said.

“Good. Thanks.” The man continued down the boardwalk, toward the museum.

“You were right,” Alexis whispered. “I bet he did take a toothpick in the eye.”

“Right?” Bailey took a bite out of his flounder. Something sparked in his brain. He stopped chewing and stared absentmindedly out at the ocean, its gentle waves lulling him into a daydream.

A seagull landed on the table next to them. Alexis tossed a piece of flounder at the bird. The seagull snatched the food out of the air and took off.

Alexis waved her hands. “You alive in there?”

He swallowed his now tasteless bite. “Something about that guy saying conch shell. I almost had something, but I don’t know. This sucks.”

“I hate that, when you almost have something, then your brain says psyche!” Alexis picked up her plate and underhanded it in the trashcan. “Let’s follow him. Maybe something will jog your memory.”

Bailey glanced out at the ocean. “What about the library?”

“Do you want to spend the day driving an hour to Wilmington and an hour back, on top of going to the
library
, or do you want to see if this is an actual lead?”

Bailey popped a hush puppy in his mouth. “What if we get caught?”

“I’ll think about the leukemia, my bald head, and almost dying,” Alexis said. “Makes me cry every time.”

Bailey didn’t know how to respond to that. He worried she’d start crying right then. “Do you even know how to follow somebody?”

Alexis shook her head. “How hard can it be? We keep our distance, stay in his blind spots, easy as pie.”
 

“You’ve put entirely too much thought into this.”

“Spend a month in a hospital, see what you think about.” She clapped her hands together. “I feel just like Sherlock Holmes.”

“Shouldn’t I be Holmes?”

Alexis frowned. “No, you complain too much. Now chop chop, Watson!”

Bailey and Alexis kept several yards between them and the guy. Not a lot of people were on the boardwalk, especially for a Saturday, so they had no trouble keeping an eye on him. The ugly plaid hat on his head made spying even easier. The man veered to his left, crossed the street, and then entered the Mooresville Nautical and Oceanic Museum.

“I don’t know about this,” Bailey said. “What if we get caught? Is this guy going to go insane on us?

“Come on, this is exciting,” Alexis said, her aviator sunglasses showing Bailey’s reflection.
 

He could see her eyes through the aviator’s lenses. They were wild with excitement. How could he say no to that?

“It’s like some book.” A breeze blew her brown hair across her face, which she casually tucked behind her ears. “
Alexis Carrington and the Haunted Sea Shell
. That has a nice ring to it, I think.”

“Who would read a book about a sea shell?” Bailey couldn’t have been more serious. It sounded ridiculous.

“Are you afraid?”

Bailey let out a
ha!
“I laugh in the face of danger. I slap it across the face and then walk the other way.”

Alexis dipped her head down so she could see him through the opening in the aviators. “That so, Danger Mouse?”

“Course not.” He squeezed the fingers on his right hand, trying to stave off the anxiety building up inside. Hopefully, Alexis wouldn’t notice if it got bad. Marshall once asked Bailey if he was afraid of his own shadow. The question pissed him off. At the time, he thought his friend was being an ass, but Marshall made a good point. Pretty much everything did frighten Bailey.

They walked inside the museum. The lobby gave off the vibe of a frigate from the nineteenth century, complete with barnacles, fake birds, and fishing nets hanging from the ceiling for decoration. The museum also sometimes left the front door open to let the salt air in. Mixed with all the wood, it made the museum almost smell like a ship at sea. Bailey and Alexis didn’t see the man.

“What do we do?” Alexis asked. “Get on the PA system and ask for him by hat?”

“Let’s just act like we’re tourists but move fast. Like fast tourists.”

“What?” Alexis squinted at him. “Fat tourists?”

“No,
fast
.” He made a walking motion with his fingers. “Like we move quicker than everybody else?”

Alexis let out an understanding
oh
. “Okay. I was about to say.”

Bailey didn’t give the museum’s donation box a second glance as he moved into the first exhibit, which focused on the somewhat sordid nautical history of Mooresville. A sign mentioned that the town began as a sort of rest stop for souls tired of the sea and then went on to become a hiding place for a few well-known pirates.
 

Bailey gazed at the statue of one of these pirates, the sadistic Graybeard. The description below the pirate read, among other things, that he’d made a deal with the devil that granted him special powers. Considering he got his head lopped off in battle and was never heard from again, Bailey figured that probably wasn’t true. The description went on to state that Graybeard raped nearly half the women in Mooresville at the time. Even though half at that time meant six or seven, historians estimated roughly five percent of the town’s population was still related to him.

“I actually didn’t know that.” Bailey gestured toward the sign.

“I did. Graybeard was so bad all the other pirates hated him,” Alexis said. “It’s why I prefer Anne Bonney. Or Blackbeard. Pirates aren’t supposed to be nice, but this guy? I’d rather get sick again than deal with him.”

Damn.
 

“Message received,” Bailey said.

They moved past the exhibit and into a different area about all the ships that sank off the coast of North Carolina over time. It got so bad that people called the stretch of ocean the Graveyard of the Atlantic. The main exhibit had some broken pieces of wood, an old treasure chest full of plastic coins, and some netting.
 

“They really broke the bank with these exhibits.” Bailey knocked on the wooden railing separating them from the exhibit. It made a hollow sound, like it wasn’t made of wood. “I think you can buy the treasure at the dollar store.”

“I knew there was a reason I hadn’t been here since third grade,” Alexis said.

On the far wall hung a board with names of the nearly two hundred Mooresville residents lost at sea carved into it. Bailey and Alexis didn’t bother to read the names. With no sign of their mark, the pair hustled to the next part of the museum.

Rounding the corner into the sea life exhibit, the pair almost bumped into the man’s back. He stood at the first part of the exhibit, which featured all sorts of sea shells. Bailey stopped, his shoes squeaking on the floor. Alexis squealed and quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. Bailey pulled her behind the corner before the man turned around.