by Ron Fisher
As I approached him, his window slid down with a low motorized hum. He looked out at me as if nothing untoward was happening.
“Get in,” he said.
“I’m fine right here. What do you want?”
“We need to talk. I told you that.”
“Great, call me tomorrow.”
“I came to tell you what a big disappointment you are. I was hoping you’d be better at your job.”
“I have no idea what you mean by that,” I said.
“The newspaper called you an investigative reporter. I think they need to do a retraction.”
“I’ll say good night to you, Mr. Hood,” I said, and took a step back toward my apartment.
“I had high hopes for you when you came snooping around daddy’s place.”
I stopped and turned around. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I’ll tell you, but you need to get in the car. I’m getting a fuckin’ crick in my neck looking up at you, we’re both getting wet, and it’s a long story.”
“Then make it a short story,” I said, standing where I was.
“I’m no threat to you, Mr. Bragg,” he said, losing the grin. “And I haven’t done what you think I have. But if you don’t want to hear my side of the story, then go fuck yourself.”
With an invitation like that, how could I refuse? I walked around the car and got in. The interior smelled of new leather, cigarette smoke, and lime aftershave.
“Have you had a nice day, Mr. Bragg?” he said.
“Say what you’ve got to say, Hood, and let me get back to bed.”
“My day hasn’t been so hot,” he went on. “I spent it trying to prove to some cops I never left Atlanta Saturday night—and that I certainly wasn’t down on the South Carolina coast killing a woman that I only met at the closing of my daddy’s property. Thankfully, I’ve got an alibi sworn to by a half-dozen people—otherwise I’d be in a lock-up right now talking to a new cellmate. So, I decided it was time to have a talk with you.”
I realized that if Hood’s alibi was solid, then he wasn’t the one who shot through the window at Still Hollow, either.
“I was hoping you’d be my bird dog,” he was saying, “But the only trail you seem to be on is mine.”
“Your bird dog? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I figured you’d be better than me at finding out who killed my daddy,” he said.
“Meaning it wasn’t you?”
“I ain’t killed nobody,” he said, and smiled a bitter smile. “Not lately, anyway.”
I couldn’t think of an appropriate comment for that.
He thumped his cigarette into the darkness, the butt trailing a shower of red sparks. “You’re just like your granddaddy,” he said. “He thought I killed my old man too. He called out of the blue and practically accused me of it. Not in so many words, but it was there between the lines. And it got me thinking.”
“About what?” I said. “How to stop him from telling anyone else?”
Hood gave me an aggravated look.
“He got me thinking about how fuckin’ convenient everything was,” he said, and stared out the window as if what he wanted to say next was out there somewhere—his grip on the wheel was raising little white circles on his knuckles.
He turned to me with an expression so intense I flinched.
“I guess I done enough in my life to have killed my daddy several times over,” he said, his voice low and guttural. “And I’ll have to answer for that. But what I can’t and won't live with, is thinking that somebody was so cock-sure I’d sell daddy’s land, they killed him to put it in my hands. If they done that, it’s like they made me a party to it. And I will not let them get away with that.”
I heard the guilt beneath his anger, and tried hard not to draw any parallels to my own life, but couldn’t avoid it.
“So I guess you could say I have myself a conundrum,” he continued, and cocked his head at me. “That’s a word I looked up in a dictionary when I didn’t have much else to do but look up words in a dictionary. I need to find out who killed my daddy, Mr. Bragg, and my problem is, even if I could convince the authorities that his death wasn’t an accident, which I can’t, they wouldn’t look any farther than me for who did it. You certainly haven’t. I’m an ex-con. A murderer. I got no alibi for daddy’s time of death—at least not one anybody would believe if they took a mind not to—and being the sole heir gives me the motive.”
He gazed around the interior of the new car as if he were looking at it for the first time.
“You’re sitting in a chunk of it right now.”
Despite myself, I was beginning to believe the guy.
“You know that old song that goes, ‘you got the right string baby, but the wrong yo-yo?” he asked. “That was your granddaddy. He had the right idea, I believe, he just had the wrong guy. When he got killed, I thought that maybe he finally found the right guy, repeated what he said to me, and was killed for it.”
Hood sounded like me talking.
“There’s a sheriff in Pickens County that would disagree with you,” I said. “He’s convinced it’s a case of happenstance. A simple robbery-murder.”
“You don’t believe that,” Hood said. “If you did, you wouldn’t have given the cops my name for the Raines girl’s murder.”
“So what?” I said. “It’s all supposition. I don’t have any proof and it sounds like you don’t either. Neither of us have anything real to back it up.”
“Real?” he said. “What’s real is that even though I begged daddy to sell the place, it wasn’t for me. It was for him. He was too damn old to be working that farm like he did. He needed to start taking it easier, find somewhere to retire, put his feet up. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he was born there and he would die there.”
He paused a long moment, then said, “And that’s exactly what happened, ain’t it? That’s pretty damn real if you ask me.”
Hood fell silent, his eyes searching my face as if he were looking to find empathy. He didn’t know how much I had pondered the implications of his old man’s prophetic words since Eloise first told me about them.
“Who was your dad dealing with?” I asked.
“As far as I know, the same people I dealt with when I sold the place. The actual buyer on the contract is a company named Red Hills Developments. A lawyer named Arthur Pitt and this dead Raines woman, a real estate agent or something, were at the closing.”
“What was it with you and this Raines woman anyway?” he asked. “What were you doing at the beach where she died—when you put the cops on me?”
I told him why I was looking for her, and how I enlisted Grandfather’s help to find her.
After hearing me out, he asked, “Then why didn’t you assume that Barry Beal killed her instead of me? He had a reason to shut her up. I didn’t.”
“I told the police about him too, and it got me fired today. He also had an alibi. So you aren’t the only one who’s had a bad day.”
“Beal could have hired someone to kill her,” Hood said.
“He could have,” I admitted. “But I think she had other things to tell than what an asshole Beal was—maybe things about your daddy and my grandfather. She may have suspected, or even known, who killed them.”
“What’s all this about a pickup truck?” Hood asked. “Crystal said while you were staring at her snatch you were laying down a long line of bullshit about some truck I was going to buy.”
“I’m being followed by someone in a white Dodge Ram pickup,” I said. “I thought it was you. If I’m wrong about that, then I’m back to square one.”
“Then you’re back to square one,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“What else do you know about this Red Hills Developments?” I asked.
He thought about it for a minute. “Barry Beal’s a part of it, obviously,” he said. “Pitt introduced me to him here in Atlanta—I was supposed to be impressed, I guess.
And there’s at least one other partner, but I don’t know who he is.”
“Couldn’t it be the lawyer, Arthur Pitt?” I said.
“No. I know it wasn’t him, it’s somebody local—Pickens County, or nearby.”
“How do you know that?”
“Something the Raines woman said at the closing. There was a question about a document, and she asked Pitt if they shouldn’t at least get the local partner to review it. Pitt seemed annoyed that she brought it up and brushed her off, and we got on with the closing.”
I sat quietly for a moment, digesting what he said. “Do you know a guy named Bobby Paige?” I asked. He's about my age. Looks a lot like a bulldog.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “But if he’s involved, I’d sure like to know him.”
There was a chilling tone to his words, and when I thought of him calling me his bird dog, I wondered if the hunt was all he was interested in. Or did he want to be in on the kill as well? I probably needed to get as far away from this guy as I could.
“I guess I’ve got plenty to look into,” I said, and reached for the door handle.
“So, you believe me?” he asked.
“Why not,” I said.
Bragg?” he said.
I looked back at him.
“Don’t expect me to keep doing your job.”
I let the comment lay and got out of the car.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said, and with something that passed for a grin, he drove away.
Kelly was still asleep when I went back in. I didn’t wake her as I crawled into bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I awoke before Kelly and lay there watching her sleep. Not even the harsh morning sunlight that raked her face from a crack in the blinds could diminish her beauty. Her skin was as flawless as fine china.
She stirred slightly and a feeling of dread swept across me. What was I going to say to her? Something glib? I didn’t feel glib. Something sappy? Not my style . . . or hers. As I lay there fishing the depths of my emotions for the truth of how I really felt about her, she opened her eyes and looked at me. Something she saw in my face killed the beginning of a smile, and she rolled away quickly and started to get up.
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” I said.
Her cheeks colored. “What am I supposed to think? That was one of those ‘I knew I’d hate myself in the morning, and I do looks.’”
“It was nothing of the sort.”
“Leave me alone,” she said, and tried to pull away.
I grabbed her by her shoulders again, forcing her to look at me.
“Maybe that was just the look of somebody struggling to find words to describe how great last night was.”
I reached up and wiped a sprig of hair from her eyes.
“And you’d better tell me you feel the same way or I’ll open a vein.”
I pulled her closer and buried my face in her hair. I felt the tension slowly leave her. There was a fragility about her I hadn’t seen. Someone had hurt this woman. I pressed her down on the pillow and put my arms around her. An hour later we were still in bed, lying together like spoons in a drawer.
“Carl Hood paid us a visit last night,” I said.
She pulled away and sat back. “What are you talking about? Here? He came here?”
I told her about it.
“And you believe him?”
“Yes I do. He’s pretty convincing. He drives a Cadillac Esplanade, by the way, not a pickup truck.” I told her about him saying that there was a local partner in with Beal on the development, and how after thinking about it, I had a candidate, Bailey McDaniel, Bucky Streeter's father-in-law. He was interested in getting in on the development boom in the area, Bucky had said so, and he certainly had the money to do it. And I could tie him to Bobby Paige, who was, as Bucky put it, McDaniel’s “go-to” guy. If that were the case, he might do anything for McDaniel, including trying to scare me back to Atlanta at gunpoint—and perhaps even worse things. Like murder.
Kelly sat quietly for a moment, giving serious thought to what I just said, as if she were trying to decide whether there was anything to my new suspicions, or if, as she had said on the way down, I was a delusional paranoid wacko. She finally said, “So, what do we do now?”
“The first thing is to get up and get going.”
“Maybe breakfast somewhere first?” she said. “I seem to have worked up an appetite for some reason.”
“I’m feeling a bit peckish myself,” I said. “And probably for the same reason.”
“Good,” she said. “You need to keep up your strength if you’re going to come over to my house tonight and prove that this wasn’t a one-night stand.”
“Then get your pretty butt up before I have to prove it to you again now—which could very well put me in traction.”
On the drive back to South Carolina, Kelly and I discussed the next steps, the objective being to prove Bailey McDaniel was Barry Beal’s local partner in Red Hills Developments. But even if he were, we would still have no proof to tie him to any of the murders. We would cross that bridge when we came to it. First, we had to connect him to Barry Beal and the development.
We split up the duties. I would ask my old friend Bucky Streeter to help gather dirt on his father-in-law, which, from what I knew of their relationship, he’d be happy to do, and Kelly would try to break through the corporation firewall of Red Hills Developments and find out if McDaniel’s name appeared there.
The only other decision we made was to have dinner together. I was to call her later for the time and place. I dropped her off at her house, an impressive native rock and redwood ranch on Club Drive near the Pickens Country Club. Eloise said Kelly had money; the house looked expensive. Kelly said she was just leasing it from some guy whose company transferred him somewhere for a couple of years, but he would eventually return. Nevertheless, the lease payments couldn’t have been cheap, at least for someone at my paygrade.
Eloise and Mackenzie were making grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch when I arrived. They threw one on the grill for me. Mackenzie was staying home from school another week, a deal Eloise made, if she kept up with her homework. She had a book open at one end of the kitchen table doing just that. None of us spoke about my night in Atlanta, but both of them kept swapping looks and grinning at each other when they thought I wasn’t looking.
There was a knock on the front door and Eloise went to answer it. A moment later, she called out to me. The two SLED agents from Georgetown stood inside the door waiting for me.
They introduced themselves again which was good, because I didn’t remember their names. They were Detectives Green and Snyder.
“What, you guys change your mind and you’re here to arrest me?” I asked.
Green almost smiled. That was more emotion than I’d seen out of him in Georgetown.
“Nothing like that, Mr. Bragg,” he said. “We’re hoping you can answer a couple more questions for us. Sheriff Bagwell told us where to find you.”
“Fire away,” I said, and then held up my hands. “Wait, I didn’t mean that,” I said.
Now there wasn’t a trace of a smile on either of their faces. My cop humor wasn’t working with these guys or with Eloise. She was looking embarrassed for me.
“We believe the Raines girl has a boyfriend up here.” Snyder said. “Would you know who that might be?”
“I don’t know anything about her personal life,” I said. “You might try her next-door neighbor. She and Raines seemed close.”
“We’ve already talked to the neighbor,” he said. “She says Ms. Raines was seeing someone, but she didn’t know who he was. All she knows is that he drives a pickup truck.”
“So, the boyfriend’s a suspect?” I asked. “I thought you guys were leaning toward a stranger and rape.”
“The hotel maid that saw her hurrying down to the beach around midnight makes us think that she met someone on the beach by prearrangement
. Her cell phone records show quite a few calls to and from the same number, going back for months, with the last call shortly before the maid saw Raines heading for the beach. Unfortunately, the number was unregistered. One of those pre-paid phones they call ‘burners,’ so the caller behind the number can’t be traced. But the general area of the calls can, thanks to the phone company’s cell tower records. All the earlier calls were from this part of the state. They tried sending an electronic pulse or ‘pinging’ to locate the phone, but that didn’t work. Evidently the phone has been destroyed.” Snyder paused a moment. “That last call,” he said, was made from Litchfield beach right before the Raines woman went down to the beach.”
“The caller was there when she was killed.” I said.
They both nodded. “That’s why we’re looking for a boyfriend,” Green said. “But if there is one, they kept it on the ‘down low,’ as they say these days. We haven’t been able to find him.”
A question suddenly came to me. “The pickup truck,” I said. “Did the neighbor say what color it was?”
“White,” Snyder said. “Didn’t know the make.”
Well, knock me down with a feather, I almost said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
After Green and Snyder left, a man named Hendricks called from Grandfather’s bank. After he offered his sympathies for Grandfather’s death, he said he had learned from lawyer Ellis Hagood III that I was now the owner of the Clarion, and therefore the owner of Grandfather’s notes. He said he would like to speak to me about them. I went right away—bad news wouldn’t get any better by postponing it.
The bank was in Pickens, naturally, and Mr. Hendricks, a solemn little man in a grey suit, wasted no time telling me that one of the loans was presently due. The payoff came to over three hundred thousand dollars. It might as well have been three hundred million.
He went on to say that even if refinancing could be arranged—something his tone suggested was about as likely as naming me to the bank’s board of directors—they couldn’t offer me the same terms and rates which they had given to Grandfather. His was a special relationship in deference to his standing in the community. Obviously, I held no similar cards by birthright.
