The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  CHAPTER NINE

  After Sheriff Bagwell left, I sat in the kitchen staring out the windows at nothing in particular. Grandfather got on the trail of my missing woman quickly. Whether that in some way led to his death, or he just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time as Bagwell suggested, it didn’t change the fact that I still needed to find her. And the best way to do that, I decided, was to try to retrace Grandfather’s footsteps on the last day of his life. I might not know where he began, but I did know where he ended. I would start there.

  I climbed into the Jeep; at the end of the driveway, I turned north up highway 178. After about a mile, Morton’s Garage came into view. At the sight of it, I wondered if Eloise knew what she was talking about when she said this was where Grandfather took his car for service.

  Morton’s Garage didn’t look like a place he would trust with his precious Caddy. It was a dump, literally. An unpainted, cinder block building with two service bays and a couple of aging gas pumps out front; it was surrounded by a plethora of vehicles in various states of disrepair, auto appendages long past any usefulness, rusty engine blocks, bent tailpipes, burnt-out mufflers, used tires, and battered car shells punched through with weeds and morning glory vines.

  I pulled in next to the service bays, got out of my car, and looked around. The garage was an eyesore along what would otherwise be a picturesque stretch of mountain highway. Across the road, a rusty sign nailed to a tree read “Jesus Is Coming,” adding a bit of down-south embellishment to the setting. If you stood with your back to the garage, it was a pleasant view.

  A man was in one of the bays working under the hood of a car that straddled the grease pit. I walked inside and he looked up, stopped what he was doing, and came lumbering over to me wiping his greasy hands on an even greasier rag. He was the approximate size of a mature black bear, and about as wooly, with a mop of shaggy dark hair and a full beard. The name Grady was stitched over the left breast of his grimy coveralls.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “You can tell me if Garnet Bragg stopped by here yesterday,” I said.

  His expression turned somber. “Garnet? Yeah, he was here. Who might you be?”

  “I’m his grandson, John David.”

  “You live in Atlanta,” he said. “Garnet talked about you.”

  I wish I had been a fly on the wall during those conversations.

  “I’m Grady Morton,” the man offered, thrusting out a large greasy paw then pulling it back and wiping it on his pants leg when he realized how filthy it was.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened to him,” he said. “That’s all they been talking about around here today. He was a damn good man. I hope they find the sum-bitch who did it and fry his ass ‘til he’s as crispy as a store-bought pork skin.”

  I nodded in appreciation for his colorful condolences and said, “I’d like to talk to you about his visit here, if you’re not too busy.”

  “Hell, I ain’t busy,” he said. “Be glad to.”

  He must have noticed my glance over his shoulder at the car with the hood up.

  “That’s my wife’s car and she ain’t in no hurry for it,” he said. “Can’t drive worth a damn anyway. I’m doing everybody a favor keeping her off the road. What’d you want to talk to me about?”

  “What was my grandfather’s business here?”

  “He wanted the oil changed in that old Cadillac of his.”

  “About what time was that?” I asked.

  Morton stared at the grease pit for a moment as if he could still see the Caddy sitting there.

  “He came in about six-fifteen, six-thirty, I guess. It only took about thirty minutes, so he was in and out. Gone by seven at the latest. I closed up right after that.”

  That was about the time of grandfather’s first voicemail.

  “Was anyone else here? Any suspicious characters?”

  He thought for a moment and then chuckled.

  “My nephew Albert was in here changing a tire on that old pickup of his, borrowing my tools as usual, but I don’t know if you’d call him suspicious. A pain in the ass and a mooch, maybe. I don’t think I had any other customers the whole time your granddaddy was here. That place down at the highway 11 intersection has taken most of my through business, so about the only people I get these days are local folks like your granddaddy.”

  “Did Grandfather make any phone calls while he was here?”

  Morton nodded. “Yeah. I remember it because Albert was making so much racket with the air wrench that Garnet had to go outside to hear.”

  One small mystery solved.

  “He could have made another call when he went back out with his camera a few minutes later,” Morton added, “but I was in the pit under the car, and didn’t see what he did. I don’t know why he took his camera, ain’t nothing out there to photograph but junk.”

  I thought about grandfather’s ability to find an artful composition in about anything. “Did he say where he was planning to go when he left here?”

  “Nope,” Morton said. “All I know is he headed north, up toward where I heard they found him.”

  Morton seemed to lose himself inside a thought for a second and then added, “If they found your grandfather where I heard they did, and he was killed later on last night like they say, then he had to go somewhere else first. It don’t take two minutes to get there from here.”

  “Has anyone from the sheriff’s office been by to see you yet?” I asked.

  “They’ve been racing up and down the highway all day, but nobody’s stopped.”

  “They will,” I said. “When they do, tell them everything we’ve talked about here.”

  “You think it will help?” he asked, his face full of concern.

  “Maybe. At the least it will help them build a time frame leading up to the murder.”

  I thought again of the Cleo Chapman Highway and Eastatoe Valley. Maybe he did go there and was on his way back when he stopped at the turn out. A box of blank oil-change stickers was attached to the wall near where I was standing. I picked one up and held it out for Morton to see.

  “Did you put one of these on the Caddy?” I asked.

  “Always do,” he said. “Inside the door-jamb on the driver side.”

  What I was more interested in was the odometer reading that usually went on one of those stickers, and if the difference between that and the current mileage on the Caddy would offer a clue as to where Grandfather went after leaving the garage.

  “Do you keep a record of the odometer reading at the time of the oil change?”

  “I don’t keep a record,” he said, “but I do add three thousand miles to the current reading and put that on the sticker. It’s supposed to remind the customer when he’s due for another oil change, but these days with them synthetic oils, most people are waiting a lot longer than that.”

  I wondered if they had removed the car from the crime scene by now. Surely they had. “Where would the police take Grandfather’s car?” I asked Morton. “Is there a county impound lot or someplace like that?”

  He thought about it for a minute. “Usually, cars involved in accidents, traffic violations, and such, are taken to one of a couple of private-owned lots. I buy parts from them sometimes. But something like your granddaddy’s Cadillac, involved in a murder and all, they would probably keep in the lot out back of the sheriff’s office in Pickens. At least while the investigation is going on. When that’s done, they’ll either move it to one of the private lots, or let you come and get it.”

  I thought about that last thing he said for a minute. Bringing Grandfather’s Cadillac home would be a cheerless task. He never allowed me to drive it growing up, and I didn’t want to drive it now. I couldn’t see Eloise wanting it either. For me, it would be like wearing his clothes—too personal and too much of a constant reminder of him. Maybe I could talk her into selling it straight from the impound lot.

  I thanked Grady Morton for his h
elp and headed north again.

  A strip of yellow police tape came into view along the left-hand side of the road, vivid against a verdant background of trees. I crossed over the double line, parked, and got out of the car. Grandfather’s old Caddy was gone and there was no one around. However, police tape was still strung from a tree at one end of the short strip of tarmac to a tree at the other end. A weathered picnic table and a rusted open-ended oil drum sat just inside the barrier, the drum for picnic refuse: paper cups and plates, soda cans, and watermelon rinds. There was no sign of human habitation in either direction along this stretch of highway. I wondered again what caused Grandfather to end up here. Was it really to take a leak as Sheriff Bagwell suggested?

  Maybe so. I didn’t think it was for a picnic. Whatever it was, the thought remained that I had set it all in motion when I asked him for his help. Guilt trips suck.

  I ducked under the tape and made my way toward the table, the mountainside beyond dropping away into a forest of thick hardwoods. I could smell the fecund odor of the forest floor, covered with ages of rotting leaves. Somewhere below a crow cackled and cawed.

  At first, I thought that the band of police tape was the only sign that a tragedy occurred here, but a few feet from the tree line, I noticed a patch of white sand on the ground, starkly bright against the black asphalt. No one had to tell me what purpose it served. It was spread there to cover up my grandfather’s blood and whatever else had spilled from his body.

  I looked at the fluffy white clouds that dotted the perfect blue sky above, thinking that if I stared at them long enough, they would replace the vision of that patch of sand. It didn’t work.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When I returned to Still Hollow, Eloise was still asleep on the sofa and Mackenzie was still in her room. I made a fresh pot of coffee and quietly wandered about the house with a cup, reacquainting myself with the old place. A copy of the Clarion lay on a side table, and I saw from the date that it must be Grandfather’s final edition. I took it into the kitchen, spread it out on the table, and sat down to read it.

  The paper looked unchanged, still heavily weighted toward local news and events with little coverage of anything that didn’t happen in Pickens County. I was thinking that Grandfather wasn’t a man to be driven from a course once set, when I saw something new. And surprising. The paper’s editorial wasn’t written by Grandfather—but by someone named Kelly Mayfield. That was definitely a change. Editorials were Grandfather’s soapbox, his weapon to bludgeon readers with the truth as he saw it, and I never thought he’d give that up, or share it with anyone.

  I read it, finding it a poignant observance on the indifferent treatment of the elderly in some nursing homes in the county. Whoever this Kelly Mayfield was, she was good. The piece was thoughtful, gutsy, and well written. I found the block that listed the paper’s staff, their titles and job functions, and received my second surprise. Kelly Mayfield was listed as the Clarion’s Editor. Nobody but my grandfather had ever held that title. He had been both publisher and editor of the paper from the beginning, and for him to relinquish either of those titles to anyone with less stature than a Horace Greeley, was astounding. I found other examples of her work and saw that she wasn’t a bad hand at straight news, either. I had to ask Eloise about this. It was so unlike Grandfather.

  I put the paper down and let my mind drift to the next couple of days, wishing I could fast-forward past them. I dreaded the funeral. Funerals were ceremonies that made mourning a public thing, while to me, grief, unlike joy, was an emotion best dealt with in private.

  Suddenly the phone rang and I hurried to answer it before it woke Eloise.

  “Is this the Bragg residence?” a female voice asked.

  I heard an underlying southern accent, but with a trace of something else—the affects of an up-east education, perhaps.

  “Yes it is,” I answered.

  “This is Kelly Mayfield,” the voice said.

  Speak of the devil. I was just reading about her, and now here she was.

  “Is it an appropriate time to speak to Eloise?” she said. “I wanted to check if there’s anything I could do for her.”

  “She’s asleep right now,” I said. “But I’ll tell her you called.”

  A moment passed before she spoke again. “Is this John David?” She asked.

  I thought I detected a slight change in her tone, an almost imperceptible chill.

  “Yes it is,” I answered. “I was just reading something you wrote. You’re good.”

  “That would probably be more of a compliment if you didn’t sound so surprised.”

  Now, there was no mistaking the chill. An icicle hung from each word. “I didn’t mean anything—”

  “Please tell Eloise I called,” she said and hung up.

  My instincts are finely tuned when it comes to recognizing women who don’t like me, probably because there have been so many of them. This woman definitely did not like me, but I had no idea why. As far as I knew, we were total strangers. I replaced the phone and tried to envision what Kelly Mayfield would look like. She was probably a thin, bookish woman with short hair and sensible shoes, sharp features, no makeup, and eyeglasses on a chain. Someone who would prefer attending a library lecture on Elizabethan literature to a night on the town. I knew the type.

  From the other room I heard Eloise call my name. The phone must have awakened her after all. I walked to the doorway and looked in on her. She was still on the sofa, the comforter up around her chin.

  “Was that the phone?” she asked.

  “It was Kelly Mayfield. She offered her help if you need it.”

  “Kelly,” Eloise said sleepily. “She’s nice.”

  Eloise thought everyone was nice. “I made coffee,” I said. “Want a cup?”

  “I’d love one,” she said and we made our way to the kitchen.

  The circles under her eyes were a shade lighter and her face wasn’t quite as puffy. She smiled a real smile for the first time since I arrived, and it was comforting to see a glimpse of the old Eloise.

  She took some kind of salad out of the fridge and ate it with her coffee. I ate another chicken leg, and told her about Sheriff Bagwell’s visit, saying he thought the killer, or killers, were probably meth-heads who came upon Grandfather when he stopped there to relieve himself, and saw an opportunity to rob a helpless old man for drug money. Killing him was just a senseless side effect of an addled doper’s brain. I kept the real reason he came—to check on her—to myself, and didn’t mention my trip to Morton’s garage and the murder site, either. The former, because I’d kidded her enough about Arlen Bagwell’s amorous intentions already, and the latter, to keep from having to think about that little patch of white sand.

  “I guess we need to make funeral arrangements,” she said. “Will you help with them?”

  “Of course I will,” I said. “Or I can handle them myself.”

  “No, we can do it together,” she quickly added.

  I agreed with her and said so. “But we’ll need the medical examiner to release him. According to Sheriff Bagwell, we can expect that to happen tomorrow afternoon. So, how about we try for Saturday or Sunday?”

  “Saturday, if we can,” she said. “I want the funeral to be as soon as possible. It may be weak of me, but I’d rather not linger with . . .”

  She searched for the right words and seemed to fail. “This,” was all she came up with. “What about a visitation at the funeral home?” she asked. “That would have to be Friday evening.”

  “Why do we have to do that at all?” I asked.

  “But John David, people want to offer their condolences and pay their respects and we have to let them.”

  “You know I’m not good at things like that, Eloise. If it were up to me, I’d shut all the doors, pull all the drapes, turn off all the lights and wait for the funeral. I appreciate the fact that so many people admired Grandfather and mourn his loss, but I don’t like it. That probably makes me an insensitiv
e, unappreciative bastard, but he’s gone. It’s the family that hears the sentiments at those kinds of gatherings, and I believe that it only serves to stir grief anew, with the remaining family required to display brave faces and be gracious hosts for a cheerless party that none of us desire to attend. I think we’d be better off skipping it. If you want to do something, you can invite your closest friends over here after the funeral. At least we won’t have to make small talk to a bunch of strangers across the room from an open casket. Let those people pay their respects at the funeral.”

  She smiled at me. “You can be so dark sometimes, little brother. “And way too philosophical. But okay. Let’s have a closed casket at the funeral service. I’d rather not have that be my last memory of him.”

  I gave her a squeeze. “Then we’d better get busy,” I said.

  Eloise got on the phone with the funeral home and made the arrangements. The funeral would be at 1 PM on Saturday at Holly Springs Baptist Church, with burial in the church cemetery. I sat down and wrote an obituary, with Eloise’s suggestion that in lieu of flowers, people instead donate money to a local charity that helps the environment. Eloise approved it, and I called the Greenville Newspaper and dictated it to them. They promised it would make tomorrow’s newspaper.

  “How long are you staying, John David?” Eloise asked when we’d finished with the arrangements and the obituary.

  “As long as you need me,” I said.

  “Why don’t you just stay for good?”

  “There’s nothing here for me, Eloise. You belong here, I don’t.”

  “You could take over the paper. You know you could do it.”

  The subject was a tiresome road, overly traveled.

  “You know I’m not interested in that, Eloise.”

  “I know. I’m just being selfish. I guess I’m worried about what’s going to happen to Mackenzie and me. The last job I held was at Finley’s Drug Store in the tenth grade.”