The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  I told him of my plans to sell the Clarion, and use the proceeds to pay off the notes. Hendricks expressed little faith in my ability to quickly find a buyer for the paper, or to keep it running successfully until I did. I guess he was worried that when they got around to repossessing it, it wouldn’t be worth anything.

  However, to show that he was not completely insensitive to my plight, he offered—with great theatricality—to allow me to roll the note over for another ninety days. But I’d need to pay the interest immediately—an amount of three thousand, eight hundred and forty-one dollars and eighty cents.

  I promised to get back to him within forty-eight hours. He looked uneasy with the delay, but agreed. I’d learned that there was enough money in Grandfather’s checking and savings accounts to pay that, but if the loans were called in before we could sell the paper, we were toast. The Bragg clan was in lousy shape, financially speaking.

  “Then there’s the other loan,” Hendricks said. “We might need a new appraisal on the collateral to consider renewing that one.”

  “What other loan?” I asked.

  “The one with the lien on Still Hollow.”

  “Still Hollow?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I could understand Grandfather using the paper as collateral for a loan—but never Still Hollow. He would have lost the Clarion before he ever risked one blade of grass of the property that had been in our family since George Washington was president.

  “I can’t believe he would mortgage Still Hollow,” I said, “regardless of what equipment the paper needed. Now I know the old man had become senile.”

  Hendricks gave me an even stranger look. “This one wasn’t for capital improvements,” he said. “Some years ago he put Still Hollow up as collateral for a rather sizable loan of a personal nature—a hundred thousand dollars. I assumed you knew about it.”

  He looked as if the subject made him uncomfortable.

  “Well, I don’t. How would I? It’s obvious Grandfather didn’t share his finances with me.”

  “I just thought that since you were the reason he borrowed the money . . .”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise. “I was the reason? What are you talking about?”

  He looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible. “Well . . . it’s down on the loan agreement that it was for your college education.”

  “That can’t be,” I said. “I was on full scholarship. All I ever got from him was some spending money every blue moon, and believe me, he didn’t need to take out a loan for that.”

  “Mr. Bragg, I really shouldn’t be talking about this . . .”

  “If you’re still our family bank then, yes you should.”

  Hendricks pursed his lips and looked at me for a second before speaking.

  “You have to understand. Garnet and I were very good friends, and I agreed to keep the real reason for the loan off the books. As I understand it, the money was to extricate you from some sort of trouble you were in.”

  If the bank’s roof had dropped on my head, I couldn’t have been hit any harder. How dumb was I? How naïve? Now I knew why the point-shaving thing went away so easily, and why I was never contacted again. Grandfather bought me out of it. And I knew it cost him more than just money. Having to mortgage Still Hollow would have damn near killed him.

  “I never knew,” I said weakly, and fell into a stunned silence.

  Why didn’t Grandfather tell me? That almost made me angrier than thinking he had turned his back on me. Was this another of his moral lessons that I was just not getting? But, he didn't turn his back on me. And I needed to adjust to that. Christ, who was I going to be mad at now? I’d lived so long with the anger boiling just beneath the surface that I didn’t think I could feel normal without it. It was like I had nothing solid to hang onto anymore, no handle in the ground to keep me from falling off the side of the earth. I told Hendricks I’d be in touch, shook his hand, and left.

  I drove to Melissa Raines’ place and parked in front of her neighbor’s house. I sat in the Jeep still thinking about what I’d learned of Grandfather’s loan to buy me out of trouble. Ten years had gone by, and I never even suspected it. What an idiot I was. Why did he keep it from me? I’d probably never know. I needed to place all of this in some back compartment in my mind to examine later. If I kept thinking about it now, I’d get nothing else done. And I had a murderer to find.

  I walked up on the neighbor’s porch again and found her peering out through the screen door at me. This time she wasn’t holding a screaming baby.

  “How’s the baby?” I asked her.

  “Asleep,” she said. “What do you want?”

  Her reaction to me was one of suspicion, and perhaps a little fear.

  “I told the police about you,” she said. “I gave them your description and told them you came here looking for her just a couple of days before she . . .”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said you didn’t do it. But how do I know they’re right?”

  Something in her tone told me that the screen door was probably locked, and there was a can of mace, or a gun, in the pocket she had her hand in.

  “I’m terribly sorry about what happened to her,” I said, “but I didn’t do it. I was just at the scene when she was found. The reason I’m here is to ask you about the boyfriend you told the police she had.”

  “I told them all I know,” she said. “Melissa was seeing someone, but she never told me his name. I had the feeling he might be a married man. And he spent money on her. She was always wearing a new piece of jewelry or new clothes, and they didn’t come from Walmart.

  “And you never saw him?”

  “I saw him down there, but it was always at night and I never got a good look at him. He’d stay late sometimes, but his truck would always be gone in the morning. I don’t think he ever spent the night. He also came to get her sometimes, mostly on weekends, but he would pull up in front and honk the horn. I never got a good look at him.”

  “The cops told me you said he drove a white pickup truck. Do you know the make?

  “I don’t know things like that,” she said. “It had a grill shaped like a cross. That’s all I can tell you.”

  It sounded like a Dodge Ram to me.

  “Can you think of anything else about him? Was he young, old?”

  “Well, from what I could see from his body shape and movement in the dark, he was a big man, but I couldn’t say how old he was.”

  She seemed to have another thought. “He has a lake house,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Melissa always had a nice tan, and I was curious about it. When I asked, she said it helped to have a boyfriend with a house on the lake.”

  I called Kelly from the car, and caught her as she was heading to the Registrar of Deeds Office to look further into Red Hills Development. She said she had spent the day so far on the computer and had made several calls to knowledgeable sources but had struck out all around.

  I gave her another job to do at the deeds office. I wanted her to find out if Bailey McDaniel owned a lake house, and explained the reason why. We made plans to meet at a Ruby Tuesday’s in the neighboring town of Easley for drinks and dinner. She said it wasn’t exactly très chic, but the drinks and food were okay and it was usually a quiet place to talk. Nothing was said about after-dinner plans, but I kept my hopes up.

  I tried to call Bucky Streeter, but the call went straight to his voicemail. I left a message asking him to call me back. If Bailey McDaniel was Barry Beal’s partner in the Eastatoe Valley development, Bucky would be the best source for that information. The question was, how far was he willing to go to help? Would he ask his father-in-law outright? Or covertly search his office files at the mill? Bucky couldn’t hide his ill feelings toward his father-in-law, or the subservient position he found himself in. I knew Bucky. That wasn’t something he could live with for very long. My guess was that he’d do whatever it took to h
elp me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Before I knew it, it was nearly six o’clock. I went to meet Kelly in the town of Easley, eight miles south of Pickens. The astonishing news that Grandfather bailed me out of my troubles back in college kept invading my thoughts, but thinking about Kelly helped push it into the background—at least for now.

  Ruby Tuesday’s was out on Calhoun Memorial highway, or “the bypass,” as the locals called it, and I found it easily. Kelly was waiting at a table for me when I arrived.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said, as I pecked her on the cheek.

  “Yeah, It’s been almost six hours,” I said, but I had to admit, I’d missed her, too.

  We ordered cocktails and I saw she was no sissy drinker. She asked for a bourbon and branch water like a veteran. I ordered a Macallan on the rocks, which they surprisingly had, and listened as she went right into her efforts to uncover more about Red Hills Developments.

  “I found out very little,” she said, with a disappointed look. “It's a shell company, with invisible owners and no way to tell who they are, or who controls it. But I did find out that the signatory for the account is Arthur Pitt. That connects it to Barry Beal, at least.”

  She continued, “But we already knew that. A woman at the Registrar of Deeds Office told me that the county was way behind in filing transactions, so no recent sales within Eastatoe Valley have yet been recorded. I asked her if I could see any of the unrecorded documents, but she said she couldn’t do that. It’s against regulations, and she wouldn’t budge. My guess is, for a typical golf course and residential development like I think this one is, that the better part of the valley has been sold.”

  “I agree,” I said and asked what she found out about Bailey McDaniel.

  “He owns a lot of Pickens County real estate, but most of it commercial holdings. Again, nothing in his name has been recorded for property in Eastatoe Valley. But if he’s a partner in Red Hills Developments like we think, then his name won’t appear, even when the transactions are officially recorded. It will all be under the company name. The only success I had is finding out that he does own a couple of acres off Crowe Creek Road on Lake Keowee, which includes a sizable lake house.”

  I knew the area. It was a beautiful and expensive part of the large man-made lake. The lake house and Melissa Raines’ comment about how she kept her tan was at least circumstantial evidence for an affair with a man like McDaniel. The part about him driving a white pickup truck—possibly a Dodge Ram—was still a mystery. I could picture a man like McDaniel driving a pickup truck for cover, but could I see him tailing me? I guess I could, if he was desperate enough. I needed to find out if he had access to a truck like that. My next step, however, was to find Bucky Streeter and see what he could tell me about his father-in-law. He should know about the pickup truck too.

  Kelly and I discussed everything a bit longer; the conversation then drifted to her and Eloise’s plans for the Clarion. Other than the fact that she could make an everyday business dress look like a top designer frock, she was no slacker when it came to business acumen. She had new, but sensible ideas, and the grit to make them happen. The more she talked, the less I worried about Eloise and Mackenzie’s future.

  I told her again that the next step should be seeking counsel from Ellis Hagood, and turned that task over to her. She seemed elated that while I didn’t exactly agree to anything, I didn’t disagree, either.

  My stomach suddenly growled loudly enough to interrupt the conversation. Kelly gave forth a burst of laughter and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Are we hungry?” she asked, with a broad smile.

  I could swear I felt heat coming from it. “Actually, I am,” I said. ‘How about you?”

  She thought for a moment, the smile still trained on me.

  “Yes,” she said, “but let’s go to my place. I’ve got a couple of steaks in the fridge and a good bottle of Pinot Noir just waiting to be opened. Let me make you dinner.”

  I paid the drink check, and followed her home.

  After dinner we sat on her sofa working on a second bottle of Pinot Noir.

  “Will you promise not to get mad if I ask you a question?” I said.

  She looked at me for a moment, as if anticipating the worst.

  “Ask, and we’ll see,” she said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “John David Bragg,” she said, obviously hurt. “If you don’t know by now, then you’re an idiot. And an asshole. And no, I won’t promise not to get mad.”

  “Kelly, I didn’t mean it that way. Why are you in Pickens County working at the Clarion? Eloise said you came from the Charlotte Observer. That’s pretty high cotton in the newspaper world. You don’t seem desperate for a paycheck, because the Clarion can’t be paying you anything close to what you made in Charlotte.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She sipped her wine and looked a little embarrassed. But at least, she calmed down. She stared at the floor for what seemed like an eternity.

  “I came here to get away from something,” she finally said. “I admit that it began as a temporary place to hide out until I got my life together again, but I came to love what I was doing here. It may be small-time, but it’s noble. It’s back to the basics of newspapering—simple and worthwhile journalism. Providing a real value to the people in the community. And then, there was your grandfather. I learned to respect and adore him. So, I stayed. Like you said, money isn’t the object.”

  “What were you getting away from?” I asked.

  “Not what,” she said. “Who. I was a fool in Charlotte.”

  “I can’t see you being a fool about anything.”

  “You weren’t there.”

  I remembered my suspicion that she may have left Charlotte for personal reasons.

  “I was involved with my editor for almost a year,” she said, bitterly, “thinking he was separated from his wife and going through a divorce. Believing he loved me. Then I found out that not only was he not divorcing his wife, but he was taking her to a fertility clinic so they could have another child. I seemed to be the only person at the paper who didn’t know that. If that doesn’t make me a fool, I’d love to hear your definition.”

  “You got fooled,” I said. “That doesn’t make you a fool.”

  “But, it left me with some pretty heavy baggage in the trust department. Relationships scare me now.”

  “Is that what Tuesday morning in Atlanta was all about?” I said. “You woke up thinking we were just a one-night stand?” I reached over and placed my hand over hers.

  “You’re special to me, Kelly,” I said. “Atlanta was special to me. You want to talk about fear of relationships, you’re looking at a gold medal winner. I’ve managed to screw up every relationship I ever had. But I’m willing to give this one a chance if you are.”

  “Does that mean you aren’t going to dump me?” she said with a seductive smile.

  We were in her bed without clothes in less than two minutes, replaying our time in Atlanta and even adding a few improvements, which I didn’t think was possible.

  Afterwards, she slept, and I lay awake thinking about my history of relationships. I once dated a psychiatrist and we almost had a serious thing going, until I managed to screw it up just like all my other relationships that came before. My hesitancy to go the extra step became obvious to her and she broke up with me.

  As a parting gift, she gave me a bit of professional analysis. I didn’t want it, but I listened. She said I had a self-fulfilling prophecy, an uncontrollable thing within me that always made me leave someone before they could leave me. She told me that my difficulties stemmed from abandonment issues. Once abandoned, I was afraid of reoccurring incidences. She said it probably started with my parents’ accidental death, which was a form of abandonment, especially in the mind of an orphaned child who begged the question, “Why did they go away and leave me like that?” Maybe she was right, who’s to say?

  I
suppose I felt a similar sense of abandonment when Grandfather turned his back on me. But now that I knew better, would it change me? Would this relationship with the woman sleeping beside me last? Somehow, that question didn’t seem so fearsome anymore. Had Grandfather finally taught his most difficult student a lesson?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I arrived back at Still Hollow early Wednesday morning and found Sheriff Arlen Bagwell in the driveway getting out of his patrol car. He said he had some news for us. He followed me inside and I called out to Eloise.

  “We’ve arrested two suspects for the robbery and murder of your granddad,” he said.

  “Oh my,” Eloise quietly said and sat down.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “They’re pretty much who I said they’d be. A couple of meth-head bikers.”

  Looking at his face, I couldn’t help but think of the cat that ate the canary.

  “Real Einsteins,” he continued. “They tried to sell your granddad’s camera to somebody at a West Greenville beer joint, not three hours after they shot him. Somebody there finally put two and two together and called us yesterday. A search warrant of a house trailer these guys shared in the woods up near the North Carolina line turned up Garnet’s camera and a .357 magnum revolver, recently fired. We also found a meth lab on the premises. We may not be able to match the weapon to your granddad, but it’s about the right caliber. We think we have a solid case here.”

  “You didn’t mention the watch or wallet,” I said. “Or the phone. Did you find those?”

  “No sign of them,” Bagwell said. “Maybe they found a buyer for the watch, and threw the wallet away, and sold or traded the credit cards for dope or whatever. The cards haven’t been used according to the card companies, but when they are, it’ll show up. We’re keeping an eye on that as well. Both suspects have a history of drugs and minor theft. I guess they finally worked up to the big time. That meth will sure put a snake in your soup.”