The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  “Maybe Grandfather took a trip over to Eastatoe Valley,” I said, trying to get past the awkward moment I’d created. “That would explain his presence on highway 178. As you said, the turnout where Grandfather was found is near the Cleo Chapman highway, and that’s the eastern entrance into the valley.”

  “Do you think that’s where this woman lives?” Eloise asked.

  “Or works,” I said. “Maybe Beal has a sales or construction office there. When were you in Eastatoe Valley last?”

  Her eyes widened a bit as she thought about it.

  “Several months ago, I guess. Mackenzie and I were loafing around one Sunday after church and drove over there. But I didn’t see any construction offices or anything like that. The place was the same as always. Peaceful and quiet.”

  She put her head back and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted. I got up, took her hand, and led her to the sofa inside.

  “You need some sleep,” I said, picking up her feet, stretching her legs out, and placing a cushion behind her head. A knitted comforter was folded over an arm of the sofa and I spread it over her.

  “I bet you’re starving,” she said, looking up at me with tired eyes. “There’s food in the fridge. Women from church came by and dropped off some covered dishes. You know southern women, cooking is their way of expressing sympathy. I’ll get you something,” she said, starting to get up.

  I gently pushed her back down. “I can manage Eloise. You get some rest.”

  “But we have so much to do. We have the funeral arrangements to make and . . .”

  I stopped her. “That can wait. Close your eyes.”

  She placed a hand on my arm and kept it there. “I’m glad you’re here, little brother,” she said.

  After a minute passed, her breathing became slow and regular and she was asleep. Grief can be a strong sedative.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was in the kitchen working on a plate of fried chicken, biscuits, and a glass of sweet tea when my niece Mackenzie came down the stairs.

  “Hi sweetheart,” I said, and walked over and hugged her.

  “Where’s mom?” she said, hugging me back.

  “Sleeping.”

  “Good. She needs it.”

  “How are you doing?” I asked her.

  I’m as okay as I can be, I guess. I still can’t believe it. It’s like I’m in a bad dream and I can’t wake up.”

  I wished I knew what to tell her to make her feel better, but anything I could think of would sound sorely inadequate. I tried to convince her to eat a drumstick but she didn’t want it.

  She hugged me a moment longer and said, “I’m going back to my room for a while, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” I kissed her on the forehead. She gave me one last squeeze and then walked over to the fridge, dished out a bowl of banana pudding, and went upstairs. I watched her go. At fifteen, she was already a smart, beautiful, young lady, mature beyond her age. She is my sister’s daughter.

  I heard the sound of tires crunching on the gravel out front and went outside. A white Ford Crown Victoria bearing the insignia of the Pickens County Sheriff’s Department on the side was coming up the drive. When it stopped, Arlen Bagwell got out and made his way up the walk. A second officer remained behind the wheel, the engine idling a throaty rumble beneath the occasional squawk of indecipherable radio traffic.

  It was years since I’d seen him, but other than a brushstroke of gray at the temples, he looked unchanged: he was stick thin, with pale, piercing blue eyes and the deportment of a Marine Corps Drill Sergeant. I walked over to greet him.

  “Mr. Bragg?” he said, obviously recognizing me, “You may not remember me, but I’m Sheriff Arlen Bagwell.”

  “Of course I remember you Sheriff,” I said. “But I think you were a deputy back then.” What I remembered most was the soft voice and deliberate way of speaking, a manner that could easily mislead you into thinking he had a gentle nature. Many a miscreant had made that mistake as the stories went, only to end up sitting on a cell bunk with a large knot behind an ear. Bagwell had the reputation of being a fair man, but one with zero tolerance.

  He took off his hat and came up the steps, a faint odor of Juicy Fruit gum and hair tonic following him.

  “I’m truly sorry about your loss,” he said.

  He offered his hand and I took it. His grip was firm and dry.

  “I want you to know we’re doing everything we can to find whoever did this.”

  Are you making any progress?” I asked.

  “Some,” he said. “But you have to understand we just got started.” He looked over my shoulder at the front door. “Is Eloise at home?” he asked.

  “She’s taking a nap,” I said. “She is absolutely worn out.”

  With a flicker of disappointment that he couldn’t hide, he said, “Well, don’t disturb her. I was by this way and just wanted to see if she was okay. That was hard news I had to bring her this morning.” He put his hat on and adjusted the flat brim ramrod straight across his brow.

  I wondered if he would have been so concerned if not for his fondness for Eloise. His interest in her was no secret. But if she ever showed reciprocal feelings or encouragement, I was unaware of it. Eloise seemed to have lost interest in men after her husband Billy died, and with the way Billy Gibson abused alcohol, drugs, and my sister, maybe she had good reason to do so. As to Sheriff Arlen Bagwell, there were rumors of an unfaithful wife and a divorce in his distant past, but I didn’t know the details.

  “Well, tell her that if there’s anything that either I or the department can do, she just needs to ask.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” I said. “There are a couple of things I’d like to ask. We need to plan the funeral, but we can’t do that until we know when the body will be released. Do you know when that will be?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, the coroner tells me,” he said. “Who’s your funeral home?”

  “Dillard in Pickens.”

  “I suggest you give them a call and tell them we’ll notify them with the exact time they can come and pick him up.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “One more thing. I’d like to hear more about my grandfather’s murder. All I know is what I heard from my sister, and that’s somewhat sketchy.”

  “What would you like to know?” he said, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

  “Everything. The details.”

  He gave me a grim look. “Maybe we should wait until you’ve got the initial shock of this thing behind you,” he said.

  “I appreciate your concern for my feelings, Sheriff, but I’d like to hear about it now.”

  He took a long breath and widened his eyes, as if looking for a starting point.

  “After your sister called,” he began, “I had all units keeping an eye out for him. He really wasn’t gone long enough to file an official missing persons report— but being who he was . . .”

  And who Eloise was . . .

  “I’d no sooner put it out on the radio when we found him. One of my Deputies was doing a routine up Highway 178 to the state line and saw an old Cadillac parked in a turnout. He knew right away whose it was. Only one man in the county drove a car like that. He pulled in to investigate and found Garnet’s body on the ground on the far side of the car, determined him dead on scene, and called it in. I was there within thirty minutes, with the crime scene unit and the coroner not far behind.”

  Bagwell paused and searched my face for a moment. “You sure you want to hear this?” he said.

  I probably didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

  “He was shot in the head with a large caliber weapon,” Bagwell went on. “A .357 magnum or better. Struck him right about here,” he added, touching a finger to a spot over his left eye.

  “He was shot at close range, as there were powder burns on his face. He was probably looking right at whoever did it. The slug exited from the right rear of his head and most likely spun out over the mountainside. We haven
’t found it yet and probably won’t. No brass was found at the scene, so they either picked it up or they were using a revolver. It left a large exit wound, a lot of blood and uh . . . particulate body matter on the ground.”

  I felt bile rise at the back of my throat. I’d asked for it and Bagwell gave it to me.

  “Which way was the car headed?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “South. Like he was on his way home. We don’t know where he’d been, and evidently neither did your sister, but we’re looking into that. We believe he stopped at the turnout to relieve himself. There was a damp spot in the dirt at the tree line near his body. Although the lab is testing it, we don’t need them to tell us it was urine. We could smell it.”

  The thought of Grandfather pissing by the side of the road didn’t fit my image of him, but I guess an eighty-year old bladder sometimes supersedes decorum.

  “He was outside the car when he was shot, probably just moments after he’d relieved himself,” Bagwell continued. “He was robbed while he lay on the ground. We think it was a crime of opportunity: someone came by and saw him there, pulled in and shot and robbed him. Probably some meth-head looking to feed a habit. They stripped him of his watch, which skinned his wrist a bit, took his wallet, cell phone, and whatever cash he had. With your sister’s input we also determined that a shoulder bag containing a camera and photographic accessories were taken from the car. The time of death was between eight and eleven o’clock PM.”

  Something was off here.

  “Are you sure about the time of death?” I asked.

  Bagwell gave me a curious look. “The coroner’s convinced of it. Why do you ask?”

  “Because Grandfather called me in Atlanta at about midnight. You have him dead by then.”

  “You spoke to him?” Bagwell asked, the curious look morphing into one of surprise.

  “No, I was out when he called. Actually, he called twice. He called earlier that evening at about six- thirty, and as I said, later that night. He left a message with the first call, but not with the second one. But the call showed up on caller I.D.”

  “You’re certain about the time?” Bagwell asked, more of a challenge than a question.

  “Positive. To be exact, the first call came in at 6:37 and the second one at 11:51. Both calls were from his cell phone. I recognized the number. Also, I know the time on my phone was correct, because I checked it. So it stands to reason that the times of the calls were correct too.”

  “6:37 and 11:51,” Bagwell repeated. “You have a good memory, Mr. Bragg,” he said.

  The compliment, if that’s what it was, held a false ring, as if he couldn’t help showing irritation at the wrinkle I’d exposed in his investigation.

  After a moment of thought he said, “Have you considered, Mr. Bragg, that since there was no message left with that second call, there’s really no proof that your granddad actually made it? It could have been made by whoever stole the phone.”

  “That’s a chilling thought,” I said. “Why would they be calling me for God’s sake?”

  “Maybe your granddad had you on speed dial and they accidently punched it,” he offered.

  “Believe me,” I said, “my grandfather wouldn’t have me on his speed dial.”

  “Or they could have mistakenly hit the redial button,” he said.

  That was more plausible, but I wondered if Bagwell was just having a problem admitting to an error in the coroner’s stated time of death. However, I wasn’t going to argue. He could believe what he wanted.

  “What was the message he left?” Bagwell asked.

  “Grandfather was helping me locate someone who lives in this area. A woman I need to talk to. I’m a writer for an Atlanta sports magazine and I’m trying to find her for a story I’m working on. His message said he thought he’d found her. He also said he’d turned up something that troubled him.”

  “Troubled?” Bagwell said. “What kind of trouble?”

  “He didn’t say, and I got home too late to call him back to ask. I planned to wait until morning, but by then it really was too late. I think he was calling from a garage or a service station. I heard one of those pneumatic wrenches in the background. Eloise told me he takes his car to a little garage near where he was found, so maybe he was calling from there.”

  Bagwell thought about that for a moment and said. “That’s probably Grady Morton’s garage. I’ll stop by there and talk to him. “Did you erase the message?” he asked.

  I told him that I didn’t, and he asked if I had the kind of voicemail I could dial from out of town. I said yes and he pulled a cell phone from a trouser pocket and handed it to me.

  “Call it,” he said.

  I called the remote number, keyed in the code, let it play down to the message, and handed the phone back to him. He stood for a minute with the phone pressed to his ear, his face bearing no expression. I didn’t know if he was recording it or not. Then he closed the phone and put it back in his pocket.

  “That’s definitely a pneumatic wrench in the background,” he said. “But I think you can read anything you want into that part about him being troubled,” he said.

  I agreed with him, but didn’t say so.

  “This woman you’re looking for. What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know her name or where she lives. Grandfather was helping me to find this out.”

  “What’s the nature of this story?”

  “It involves Barry Beal.”

  “Barry Beal the golfer?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think this woman has some damaging personal information about him. I think he assaulted her. Maybe raped her. Beal wouldn’t want her found.”

  Bagwell stood for a moment, as if digesting what I’d just said, his eyes never leaving my face. Then he said, “So Garnet leaves you this message saying he thinks he’s found her, is troubled about something, and then is killed.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Bagwell stuck out his chin, scratched underneath it with his fingertips, and looked at me as if under less morose circumstances, he might laugh out loud. “Are you saying you think Barry Beal, the famous golfer, may have something to do with your granddad’s death?”

  I felt the temperature in my cheeks rise, realizing how ridiculous the thought sounded when aired. Even I didn’t believe Barry Beal did it, at least not directly, but Bagwell had raised my defensive hackles and damned if I would give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

  “I’m just telling you what I know,” I said. “And until you find whoever did it, maybe you shouldn’t disregard anything—no matter how farfetched it might seem.”

  Bagwell turned his gaze to the lawn, and stood for a moment as if mesmerized by the bees making lazy circles over the jonquils in Eloise’s flowerbed. Then he turned back to me.

  “Mr. Bragg,” he said, “I know it’s hard to understand why someone thought they needed to kill your granddad for what little they got. It makes us want to look for a more complicated, meaningful reason for it. But most of the time, murder isn’t all that complicated. In the case of your granddad, every shred of evidence we have says that this was a case of murder in the course of a simple robbery. I’m afraid Garnet pulled in there to relieve himself and some bad characters happened to come upon him.”

  I let his words sit for a moment. Maybe he was right. Maybe Grandfather’s death was just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But even if that were the case, a nagging, grim voice in my head kept whispering that if not for me, Grandfather wouldn’t have been in that place at that time. Wasn’t it me who sent him on that journey? Didn’t I set it all in motion by asking for his help in finding Barry Beal’s assault victim? Illogical thinking perhaps, but so far, logic was doing damned little to chase these thoughts away. Also, I knew without doubt that I would never get beyond them by standing on the sidelines. I had to be in the game. What did Grandfather find that so troubled him, and did it play a part in his death? Someone needed to look into al
l this, and if Sheriff Bagwell wasn’t going to do it, then I would.

  “Eloise told me you think it was some druggie,” I said. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  “The usual suspects, a list of known users with troubled histories. But we’ve just begun checking them out. Right now, we don’t even know how many suspects were involved. One person or a dozen. The turnout’s paved, so there are no footprints or tire tracks. We’ve got prints from the car, but we don’t know which are Garnet’s and which aren’t yet.

  “No one saw anything?”

  “Nobody has come forward. But I’m not surprised. There are no houses nearby and not much traffic along there after dark.”

  “So you’re telling me you’re nowhere on this.”

  “We’ve got our entire Criminal Investigations Department working on it, and we’ll keep them on it 24-7. There’s nothing significant to report yet, but the investigation is moving forward according to plan.”

  It sounded like a canned press release.

  “What the hell does that mean, Sheriff?” I asked.

  His eyes flashed with the look of a man unaccustomed to challenge, then calmed, but I could tell it took a great conscious effort.

  “It means that we don’t have a single suspect yet,” he said, “and we’ll probably need to catch a break to find one.”

  The sudden candor surprised me, revealing an unexpected human side to the usually officious nature of the man.

  “Our best hope is that they’ll make a mistake,” he added. “Such as try to use a credit card or hock the watch or camera, and we’ll find out about it. In my experience, this type of predator usually isn’t too smart. Most of them steal to buy drugs, and sooner or later they screw up.”

  He waited a beat to see if I had any more questions, and when I didn’t, he gave me a nod, got into the car and drove away, braking only for one of Eloise’s free range chickens that came out of the trees and half-flew half-ran across the drive in front of them.