Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was stuck in traffic. It was not your usual traffic jam as, in this case, it was foot traffic. But still, it was not a pleasant feeling to be chest-to-back-to-chest-to-back with a crowd slowly tramping its way out of a stadium into a parking lot where the foot traffic would be replaced with tire traffic, and then be bumper-to-bumper-to-bumper in a vehicle mass slowly ambling to the highway.

And why was he in traffic in the first place – both foot and tire – at a stadium in Gardner, North Carolina? Because his brother-in-law’s stepson was on the Gardner High School football team, and this was the homecoming game. So, to keep peace in the family – extended as well as consanguineal – Noonan attended the game. His wife had begged out of attending the game and was at a bridge tournament, and, thinking about it, Noonan believed he would be happier at a football game where he knew no one rather than a bridge tournament where he knew nothing of the game being played, none of the players, their spouses, or any of gossip swirling through such gatherings.

He was tempted to go for a beer before he and his wife returned to Sandersonville and negated the idea because, at any age, alcohol can have an unanticipated influence on your body.

And a breathalyzer.

But still, he debated because it was a hot day, he was out of town, and he still had three more hours with relatives before the bridge tournament was over – and the beer would be cold.

He was standing next to his brother-in-law in the parking lot when he was approached by a stranger. The man, in his 60s and thin as an elephant, nodded to Noonan’s brother-in-law and then extended his meaty right hand to Noonan.

“You’re the ‘Bearded Holmes’ I’ve heard so much about.”

“Whatever you’ve heard is probably a lie.”

The man chuckled. “Same with what you’ve probably heard about me. I work with your brother-in-law,” he said as he tilted his head in the brother-in-law’s direction, “and he said you were good at solving unusual crimes.”

“I’ve been lucky.”

“We have an odd problem here in Gardner I was hoping you could help us with. Someone has been stealing light poles.”

“Light poles?”

“Right. You know. The kind of poles along the highway with lights on top.”

“They’re pretty tall, aren’t they?”

“25 feet.”

“How many have been stolen?”

“Three.”

“What do the cops say?”

“We’re small. We only have one. Cop. She said to talk to you. Let’s have a beer and talk about it.”

How could Noonan say no?

* * *

Cabrena Sapp, Chief of Police and sole patrolwoman of Gardner, was more than pleased when Noonan called her the following day to talk about missing light poles. “I was hoping you’d call. I was told you were good at solving odd situations.”

“Sometimes. What can you tell me I haven’t already been told?”

Sapp sighed. “My guess, you know everything I do. Three light poles have gone missing. The State of North Carolina Roadway Commission is in the process of upgrading our highway lighting and is replacing old poles with new ones. Pole by pole, so to speak, the crew is moving down the highway. The old poles are coming down and the new poles are going up.”

“What is usually done with the old poles?”

“Recycled. The money raised goes to United Way. Everyone is happy with the arrangement. State crews pull down the poles and transport them to the recycling center. The money paid goes directly into the bank account of United Way. United Way never touches the poles.”

“Were the missing poles taken down at night? I mean, if you want to steal a lighting pole you could hardly do it during the day.”

“That’s a ‘yes and a no’ answer.”

“I hate those.”

“Yes, they were stolen at night and, no, the poles were not replaced at night. But you are partially correct; the individual poles were taken down during the day. It’s done for several reasons. First, of course, it’s a matter of safety. Second, the publicity. It shows state government in action. Third, it speeds up the process. The old pole is taken down and a new one immediately takes its place. The problem is, one at a time, three old poles have disappeared. They were lying on the ground while the lighting crew was working up the road. When they came back the next morning, the poles were gone.”

“Three of them, right?”

“Yup. Over one night. But the poles were not next to each other.”

“Near to each other?”

“Over two miles apart. If you call that ‘near,’ then yes.”

“Any leads?”

“Not really. The poles never showed up at the recycling yard or, for that matter, any of the recycling companies within a 50-mile radius of Gardner. The only lead we had was a bust. There was a traveling Renaissance Faire – Faire with an ‘e’ – that had some jousting. But they do not use metal jousting poles. It’s too dangerous. We checked them out. No light poles.”

“How about local contractors?”

“A dozen or so. Nothing.”

“OK. Let me think about it. Do you have a pen and a piece of paper?”

She stalled for a moment. “Now I do.”

“I’m going to give you a list of questions. I’ll call back in a few days for the answers. I’ll want them all at once.”

“Fine. Give me the questions.”

“Here goes. Was there anything in common with the three thefts, did all three thefts happen on a road with lots of traffic, how far apart in time, who knows the schedule of pole replacement, how do the new poles get to their replacement spot, how do the old poles get taken to the recycling center, how long do the old poles remain on the ground before being taken to the recycling center, do you believe the recycling center when it says the poles never arrived, how much construction is going on in Gardner, and were there any special events in Gardner when the thefts occurred?”

“And you will call me back the answers?”

“In a few days. After I’ve done some of my research.”

* * *

Whenever Noonan had a loo-loo call, he went to his two tried-and-true sources of information: local history and local newspapers. Though he could not find any information on Gardner, North Carolina, he did find quite a bit on its namesake. Ava Gardner was one of those actors who was a legend in her own time. Not only striking in looks but she was also unsurpassed in her acting ability. Her performance was so good 70 years later her movies, considered classics, were still being watched. Those movies included Show Boat, Mogambo, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and Night of the Iguana. She was a true North Carolinan. She had been born in Grabtown, a town so small even in the present day it had no official population. The nearest town was Smithfield, the county seat of Johnston County, with a booming population of about 12,000. The Gardener family moved to Newport News so the father could get a job – no surprise there – and when he died in 1938, the family moved to Wilson, NC. From there Ava moved to Hollywood where her looks and talent earned her a contract with MGM. Not only did she strike gold on the silver screen, she also married three of the highest-profile entertainers of her day: Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra. She died in England in 1990 but lives on in the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, NC. Gardner, the city, did not have a newspaper and there was not even a mention of it on the internet. This led Noonan to believe it was likely a suburb community rather than an actual city.

The information on light poles was vast and numbing. Light poles came in all lengths and were conflated with flag poles, light posts, vintage streetlights, tapered flutes, swaged, decorative or octagonal pillars as well as wooden poles with single, multiple and/or string lighting and were powered courtesy of streaming electricity, wind, solar or battery power. He had been told the missing poles were 25 feet tall, so he focused on that length. Such poles weighed about ten pounds each.

Police Chief Sapp had clearly done her due diligence by investigating the possibility the light pole could have been used in the Renaissance Faire that had been in town. She clearly had the same initial thought as Noonan. A light pole would make an excellent Renaissance Faire lance. Building on that suspicion was the fact Gardner was so small it was likely the Faire was peripatetic so once it left the Gardner area, it would not be back. A perfect cover for light pole theft.

It was a great thought, Noonan mused, but for three flaws. First, as he discovered from historical research, both in the present day and Renaissance Faire era, lances were not made of metal. They were wood rods about ten feet long and weighed about 15 pounds. Known as jousting sticks, the weapons only had metal at the impact end. The point of the joist was to knock the other contestant off his horse, so the weight of the wood pole was more effective than a metal one. And cheaper. While a light pole lance could suffice for a lance, it was hollow. This made it more durable in windstorms and driving rain when it was a light post. However, Noonan speculated, if a light pole had been converted to a jousting lance, the impact pressure would likely have bent the pole making it unusable after the first joust.

Second, the kind of a Renaissance Faire that would be in the vicinity of Gardner was unlikely to have any mounted contests. It would have been a watered-down version of the show and involve the usual array of dancers, wandering musicians, a few knights who would square off with (most likely) wooden swords, jugglers and the traditional village wenches with rude comments and suggestive clothing. Suggestive, that is, for the 1600s.

Third, the theft would have to have been done by locals. The thieves would have had to have known the replacement routine to have stolen the poles. This was not a casual theft in the sense the thieves were driving down the road, saw an abandoned light pole and snagged it. And certainly not three. Further, the light poles had not shown up in any form. They had not been sold to a metal recycling yard and Gardner was clearly small enough that had the light poles been converted to building material, someone would have noticed. In a small town, everyone notices everything. There are no secrets. But someone, or someones, went to a lot of stealth to snag three, 25-foot light poles.

When Noonan got Police Chief Sapp back on the phone, he had a few more questions.

“Let me guess, you haven’t found my light poles.” Sapp said with a humorous chuckle.

“I’m still working on it. Gardner is pretty small and as I understand it, you are a police department of one.”

“You got it. One of me and so I gave me the title ‘Chief.’”

“Any resentment of the police in town?”

“Are you kidding?! We haven’t had a robbery in ten years and the last murder was during the Civil War.”

“Then why the police department?”

“Three answers: money, money, money. There is grant money from the state and the feds. We need that money for dealing with the homeless, drug addicted, and marijuana growers and we have our share of pedophiles and sex traffickers. We are small but we still have big city problems.”

“Good answer and sound thinking,” Noonan muttered as he wrote in his notebook. “So, if the light poles were used for someone’s home construction, you’d know about it.”

Saff laughed. “We’re a small town. Everyone knows everyone else’s shoe size.”

Noonan chuckled. “Got it. Now, my answers.”

“Not that they will do any good, here’s what I have for you. The only thing in common with the three thefts of the light poles is the light poles vanished. The vanishings happened on the same night and on the same stretch of highway. The highway traffic is heavy but there are two exits to Gardner, four if you consider both directions of travel on the highway. The light poles missing were on both sides of the state highway, not a local road.”

“So, the poles were State of North Carolina property as opposed to City of Gardner property?”

“Correct.  And Garnder is not a city.”

A dull gong chimed in the depths of Noonan’s cerebral cortex.

“Go on.”

She continued. “The thefts were all on the same night. As far as the schedule of light pole replacements, everyone in town knew it was happening but there was no set schedule. The replacements were done by crews from the State of North Carolina Roadway Commission, so the work was scheduled to be done when it was done. So, no, there was no set schedule for light pole replacements. The new light poles were brought to the site on State of North Carolina trailers. The routine was to remove an old light pole, replace it with a new one, and then move down the highway to the next light pole. After the last pole had been erected, the work crew went home and came back for the downed poles the next day. It’s done that way, or so I’ve been told, so the road crew did not have to mix the new poles with the old poles on the same trailers. When the road crew went back for the old poles the next morning, one at a time, the three were missing.”

“Gardner is not that large. Are there a lot of light poles in the area?”

“About six miles worth, three miles on each side of the highway. I don’t know the schedule but, like the rest of the highways in North Carolina, sooner or later, all the old light poles end up in recycling yards.”

“Do you trust the answer the recycling center gave you that the poles never arrived?”

“Don’t know. I didn’t do the asking. The State of North Carolina Roadway Commission did.”

Another gong chimed in the Noonan’s brain, this one louder.

“Is the light pole replacement the only State of North Carolina Roadway Commission project anywhere near Gardner?”

“Yup. Only one for a number of years.”

“And no special events in Gardner during the pole thefts?”

“Other than the Renaissance Faire, none.”

Noonan thought for a moment and then asked, “Any other unusual thefts in Gardner lately.”

Sapp hesitated just a moment too long. “Well, there were some abandoned bicycles that vanished out of our abandoned vehicle yard. There were also some light metal plates and narrow pipes from a State of North Carolina storage yard. That’s about it.”

“Humm,” Noonan said for a moment. “Does Gardner have a public park with a playground?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting for the state funding to come through.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Three years.”

GONG!

* * *

Three days later, Harriet, the office manager and common-sense Tsar, came into Noonan’s office holding a Number 2 Envelope with a bright red stripe across the front.

“Someone is not happy with you, Mein Herr,” she said as she dropped the envelope on the pyramid pile of used notebooks on Noonan’s desk. Then she sat down in the empty chair next to Noonan. “Now, tell me why the North Carolina State Troopers would send you such a nasty letter.”

Noonan did not look up from a cold case file and, with the innocence of a child caught red-handed, he said, “What letter?”

“That letter,” snapped Harriet and pointed to the envelope slowly slipping down the notebook pyramid. “The one telling you to mind your own bloooooooming business and stay out of North Carolina State Trooper cases.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Harriet snapped up the envelope and shook it at Noonan. “I’m sure it’s one of your loo-loo calls. One I didn’t take. About some missing light poles in a town I’ve never heard of. Gardner, I think.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar,” Noonan said flatly concentrating on the cold case file.

Harriet pulled the case file down from Noonan’s eyes with an index finger and waved the envelope. “Do not give me that song and dance. Now, tell momma about the missing light poles.”

“Not much to tell. Just politics,” he said as he gave a faux shudder.

“I’m listening.”

“A con, Harriet. A good one. I was asked to investigate the vanishing of three highway light poles.”

“Vanishing? As someone drove along the highway and said, ‘I think I’ll take that light pole and cut it down?’”

“Close. See, the North Carolina Roadway Commission has been replacing light poles across the state. How many I do not know, but a dozen of them were in the vicinity of Gardner. Gardner is not a town so I can’t say the lights were within its city limits because there is no city and therefore no limits. The Highway Commission’s workers’ modus operandi was to take down an old light pole and install the new one on the foundation. Then they would move on to the next pole. They left the old poles on the ground to be picked up at the end of the job. In the case of the missing poles, the next morning.”

Harriet gave Noonan the ‘are you kidding me’ look.

“My thought too, Harriet. The excuse I was given for leaving the old poles until the next morning was so the new poles would not be mixed with the old ones on their trailer.”

“And some old poles disappeared, right?” Harriet waved the envelope.

“Yup. Three of them. Now it gets politically complicated.”

“What a surprise,” Harriet said flatly.

“The way I figure it, and I have to say I figured because no one has told me what actually happened. I figured Gardner needed a park. I’m betting it has lots of land for a baseball diamond but nothing for the kids. What Gardner needed was some kind of jungle gym and a merry-go-round. I’m betting they had locals who were welders who could make the jungle gym and merry-go-round, but they did not have the metal for the equipment.”

“So, the light poles were needed for the playground equipment.”

“My guess, yes. It’s also my guess they were able to, let us say, acquire, North Carolina metal for the playground equipment. Probably from a State of North Carolina warehouse yard or storage site. Since the debris was going to be turned into a playground equipment for the public, no one was stealing anything. They were just transferring public property from one location to another.”

“If they had all the metal they needed, why steal the light poles?”

“I never said any light poles had been stolen. But you are asking questions ahead of the game. The light poles would be needed to complete the merry-go-round. My guess, again, there was not enough long, light metal in the local junkyard or State of North Carolina warehouse yard for the merry-go-round.”

“So,” Harriet smiled evilly, “when someone saw the light poles for free, they were snagged.”

“Could have happened that way. I don’t know. But it was odd, you know, that the State of North Carolina Roadway Commission would instruct its workers to take down the light poles during the day and leave them on the ground all night. Odd, you know. But what I do know is the State of North Carolina could not let theft go without an investigation. So, the police in Gardner were asked to assist in the investigation.”

Seems logical.”

“But everyone in Gardner knew who had taken the light poles and how they had been used. What the good folks of Gardner wanted was for the State of North Carolina Roadway Commission and the North Carolina State Troopers to not investigate. And, again I’m betting, the State of North Carolina Roadway Commission and the North Carolina State Troopers did not want to investigate. Any investigation would have been a waste of time and, frankly, in Johnston County, everyone already knew who had taken the poles for the playground equipment. There was no illegality here. Just a transfer of public property to a public playground. There was no crime.”

“But,” Harriet shook her head, “there had to be an investigation.”

“Yup. So, the clever folks they were, the one-person police force in Gardner convinced a law enforcement professional from out of the area to do the investigation.”

“Suckered you right in.”

“Harriet! Shame on you. It was simply one police department asking another for assistance.”

“And you assisted.”

“I did.”

“And what did you tell them in your official report?”

“An easy one, actually. I stated my investigation did not turn up any light poles in the Gardner area.”

“True, because they were no longer light poles.”

“Correct. I stated my investigation did not turn up the poles in Gardner and there was no evidence the poles had been recycled. I suggested the poles had probably been brought here, to Sandersonville, where they would be used to bolster aging docks along the Atlantic Coast. Further,” Noonan held up a finger to silence Harriet, “further, further, further, as there were no identifying numbers or codes on the light poles, there would be no way to detect them even if a suspected light pole burglar was found with a light pole. Therefore, the case was closed.”

“They must have loved that.”

Noonan smiled and pointed to the envelope. “Better than that. I’m guessing that letter indicates the unsolved burglary of the light poles is on my unsolved caseload. That way, the State of North Carolina Roadway Commission and the North Carolina State Troopers can say the case is closed.”

“As a matter of fact, it does,” Harriet said as she waved the envelope. “In other words, you got conned and conned them right back. Now everyone’s happy and you are the only one with an open cold case.”

“Works for me. Do you know why streetlights make such good friends?”

“A joke!’

“Because they are pole-lite.”