Wasted: A Love Story / a Mystery

By Duke Tipton

Lisa Cole never had the love and attention she deserved from a compassionate mother. She never had the fatherly advice that most girls cherish. She never had the little dolls, pretty clothes, and trinkets that most gills take for granted. She was raised in a dysfunctional home with an alcoholic father and a gambling addicted mother
Not all of this turned Lisa bitter, but it did shape the choices that she made in later life. The love she received from an older man satisfied her every wish. Until one stupid moment of infidelity erased it all. Everything was lost, just wasted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781426942136

Duke Tipton

The author was born in Kansas City Kansas. Well actually, he was born in a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, as there was no available maternity facility on the Kansas side of the river at the time of birth. At the age of nine, the family moved to the state of Tennessee. The author attended elementary school and high school in Memphis Tennessee. The author spent a six-year vacation in the Army in the European Theater during WWII. He author attended college at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. After thirty-five years in Quality Control Management, the author retired in 1991. He bought a Motor Home and took a trip that lasted for five years. The author plays the guitar, as does Phil Thompson in the book. The author is the President of a non-profit corporation with a business plan that calls for the fabrication of a stage and restaurant much like the on described in the book. The author took a cruise to Baja; Mexico in 2004.The book describes some of the cruise experiences.

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© Copyright 2010 Duke Tipton.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4269-4212-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-4213-6 (ebk)

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WASTED

A Love Story / A Mystery

Contents

Synopsis

Anna Lee, Clifford, and Roger Cole

Lisa’s Seventeenth Birthday

The Bright Yellow Volkswagen Beetle

The Cora Pitts Foster Home for Girls

Preacher Pepkins and Cora Pitts

Beth, Barbara, and Rebecca Collins

Phillip Thompson

Dressing-Room Trailer

First Cruise: Cancun

First Cruise: On the Way Back Home

Second Cruise: Day One

Second Cruise: Day Two

Second Cruise: Day Three, Cabo San Lucas

Second Cruise: Day Four, Mazatlan

Second Cruise: Day 5, Puerto Vallarta

Second Cruise: Day 6, the Detectives

Second Cruise: The Cunninghams

Second Cruise, Day 6: Conflicting Information

Reader’s Survey

Synopsis

This is a fictional story of a beautiful girl who was raped by her older brother. The Child Protective Agency placed Lisa in a group foster home, where the other female residents abused her.

Lisa took a job at an outdoor restaurant and concert venue (this was against the state laws for foster-home residents) and fell in love with her older boss. The boss took Lisa on a cruise to the Baja peninsula, Mexico. On the cruise, Lisa met a slick, fast-talking gentleman and exposed her breast to him. Lisa’s jealous lover caught them in the act.

The fast-talking man turned out to be married, and Lisa could not go to his room. The jealous lover would not let Lisa return to his room … Lisa was on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean. What could she do?

A little Vietnamese man spotted Lisa in the water as he watched the wake from the back of the ship. When Lisa was discovered in the water, the ship was traveling at a rate of twenty-eight knots.

A search by the ship’s crew had negative results. The U.S. Coast Guard was able to retrieve Lisa’s body. Detectives were flown to the ship from Los Angeles. The detectives conducted a thorough investigation, but they were unable to determine why Lisa was in the water.

Copyright Registration Number TXu 1-639-256, effective 01/28/10

Anna Lee, Clifford, and Roger Cole

This story is about the wasted life of a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl named Lisa Marie Cole.

Lisa had an eighteen-year-old brother, an alcoholic father, and a gambling addict mother. Her brother, Roger, did all the housekeeping, yard work, grocery shopping, meal preparation, and property maintenance. Lisa’s father, Clifford Cole, was a night watchman at a consolidated warehouse on the edge of town.

A computer-device manufacturer used the consolidated warehouse to hold its excess inventory. These memory devices went into very large mainframe computers. These memory devices were extremely fast, as they had to retrieve bits of data from trillions of stored bytes in less than one microsecond. In order to accomplish this task, a large amount of pure gold was used in all of the buss bars.

To feed his alcohol addiction, Cliff would open the sealed shipping containers of memory devices and remove the gold-laden prizes. He would then sell the devices to a gold broker, who melted down the device to retrieve the gold. After removing the device from its shipping carton, Cliff would carefully replace all of the packing material and repair the seal. He would then place the pilfered carton on very the bottom stack of shipping cartons. Cliff’s gold broker would meet him at the warehouse. Many times Cliff would trade the gold-laden device for liquor, without bothering to ask for money.

Every day, Cliff carried the dinner that Lisa’s brother had prepared to work in a metal lunch box. He was able to install a bottle of booze in the lunch box as well. Cliff was always half soused when he arrived home. He had a large La-Z-Boy recliner at the far end of the living room. After dinner, he propped himself up in the chair with a drink in his hand and dozed off. The routine changed somewhat on the weekends: Cliff would read the newspaper in his big reclining chair with a drink in his hand. A reading lamp stood behind the chair. The lamp was a simple pole resting on the floor with a flexible gooseneck that held a single screw-in light socket. No lampshade shielded the reading lamp. The light from the reading lamp eliminated all surrounding objects.

One Saturday evening, the electric bulb in Cliff’s reading lamp burned out. He did a thorough search throughout the house for a replacement lightbulb. He looked high and low, but no replacement lightbulb could be located at the house. In desperation, Cliff went outside to the back patio and unscrewed the large security lightbulb from its fixture. He took the 300-watt lightbulb into the house and screwed it into his reading lamp. This lamp gave much more light than was required for a reading lamp, but who cared? Cliff did not want to waste any more of his drinking time on a piddling reading lamp.

Anna Lee Cole spent most of her conscious life indulging her gambling habit. She probably gambled in her dreams. She belonged to several poker clubs on the Internet. She and her friends found a way to gamble for money using the computer and the World Wide Web. Once every year, a gambling casino in Las Vegas offered free rooms in their luxurious hotel if you gambled for eight hours in their casino. Cliff and Anna would take advantage of the offer each year. Anna was an experienced gambler; she never won big, but she never lost big, either. Her winnings were just enough to keep her playing the game and hoping to win big.

When Cliff and Anna went on their annual gambling safari to Las Vegas, they would leave Lisa and Roger home alone. Roger spent a lot of time in the kitchen, preparing the family meals and cleaning up. A large pass-through window connected the kitchen and the dining room. Roger could serve the prepared food through this window with little effort. The dining room and living area amounted to one large, open space. There was approximately thirty-six feet between the pass-through window and the back of the living area, where Cliff’s chair and reading lamp are located.

Cliff and Anna Lee left for their gambling safari early one Friday morning in December. Although Cliff did not enjoy gambling, he did appreciate the free drinks that came