by Ron Fisher
“May I ask who you are?”
She spoke with that aloof nasal quality that sometimes afflicts those who spend a lifetime looking down their noses at the rest of us.
“John David Bragg,” I said.” “I’m an old friend of your husband’s.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” she said. “You’re the one whose grandfather . . .”
“Yes,” I said.
She didn’t offer her sympathies, which after all the gushing condolences of late would have been refreshing—if her face hadn’t shown that she really didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other.
“Bucky is at work,” she said. “You’ll have to try his office.”
So he was playing hooky from her too. From what I saw of her so far, I didn’t blame him.
“Well, when he does come in, can you tell him to call me?” I said.
“I won’t be here. I’m about to leave for the lake house on Keowee.”
“You have a lake house,” I said. “That must be nice.”
“Oh, it isn’t mine, it’s my father’s. But he allows me to use it as if it were.” She gave me a dreamy look. “It’s my special place of solace. I spend more time there than here. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I’ll just get up in the middle of the night and drive over there. Watching the moon and the stars on the water always has a soothing effect on me.”
“Well, if Bucky shows up there, tell him to call me.”
“Oh, he won’t be there. He has this bourgeois thing about accepting gifts from my father, and he considers the use of dad’s lake house a gift. He never goes there.”
I said a hasty goodbye and left feeling sorry for Bucky. As a couple, they weren’t Ozzie and Harriet. Another thought I had was about Bailey McDaniel. How could he get away with having an affair with Melissa Raines at his lake house, when his daughter was likely to show up at any time? Something was wrong here.
I found Bobby Paige’s street with little effort. The problem was getting to his house. It was cordoned off by yellow police tape and surrounded by police cars.
I parked as close as I could and made my way to the police barrier. Sheriff Arlen Bagwell stood in front of the barrier talking to Snyder and Green, the SLED agents who questioned me earlier. Bagwell saw me and motioned me over.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
The SLED agents looked at me like they wanted to know the same thing.
“I was just in the neighborhood and saw all the commotion. What’s going on?”
“You’re not trying to tell me you don’t know who lives here, are you?” Bagwell asked.
“Whatever happened here, I wasn’t part of it,” I said, and looked at them.
Snyder and Green were staring openly at me.
“What did happen here? I asked.
“Paige blew out the back of his head with a shotgun sometime last night,” Bagwell said.
“Suicide?” I said, taken back.
I stood and watched a uniformed cop come out of the house carrying a cardboard box, duck under the tape and head toward a county Crime Scene van. I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around a guy like Paige committing suicide.
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“Remorse, it looks like,” Sheriff Bagwell answered. “He killed the Raines woman.”
“He left a suicide note on his computer that said so,” Green chimed in. “Paige and Raines were obviously in a relationship that went wrong. We have love notes she wrote to him, and a calendar with notations that show the days and times they met over the past few months. We also found her phone numbers—cell and home—along with the address of her hotel at Litchfield Beach.”
“The love notes were actually addressed to Paige?” I asked.
“They weren’t addressed to anyone,” Snyder said, “but they were signed by her, and we found them in the nightstand by his bed. Who else would they be for?”
A good question. I was having almost as much trouble imagining anyone writing love letters to Bobby Paige as I was of him committing suicide over killing someone. But then, perhaps I was prejudiced.
Bagwell dipped his chin at me, and he and the SLED agents went back under the tape and into the house. I turned to go, my path taking me right by the crime scene van. The rear doors were standing open and the cardboard box I saw the cop bring from the house was sitting just inside. I looked at it as I passed, and noticed that it held what appeared to be the contents of a file cabinet or a desk drawer. Envelopes and papers and things, now sealed in clear plastic evidence bags. One bag, in plain view, contained copies of employment checks, the kind a company sends you when your paycheck is deposited electronically to your bank. These were Bobby Paige’s paychecks from McDaniel Mills, and something written on them stopped me in my tracks; I took a closer look. An old memory from my boyhood bloomed in my head like a flower filmed in time-lapse and suddenly everything fell into place. Love letters and confessions, notes my grandfather left, houses on the lake, pickup trucks, and signs that were there all along that I just didn’t want to see. I stood and stared at the checks a moment longer, then headed for my jeep.
CHAPTER FORTY
I let my memory guide me to the Marina on Lake Keowee. The sun was well over the horizon and the lake was dark when I arrived. The name of the marina was new and the place was larger, but I had been there before. I skirted the entrance and drove along the fence line on a small gravel road to the end of the marina property, doused the headlights, and crossed over a steep wooded rise into a narrow cove.
The house was there, nestled into the trees below me, near the water’s edge. It was small by Keowee lake-house standards, but nicer than I remembered, obviously the result of some recent remodeling. A larger deck now spread across the back of the house, with a stepped path that led down to the dock. Moored at the dock was a cabin cruiser of considerable length. The dock lights were ablaze, and I could see a man on the gangway by the boat working over a smoking barbeque grill. It was my old pal, Bucky Streeter.
I left the Jeep where it was and went down the hill, walking around the house on a driveway that led to the back. I picked up the scent of fresh redwood. The deck was new, and there were two vehicles parked underneath it in a carport: Bucky’s silver sedan, and a white Dodge Ram pickup.
I was almost to the dock before Bucky saw me. He didn’t seem surprised. He was smiling when I walked up to him. He held a drink in one hand and a grilling fork in the other.
“You’re just in time, old bud,” he said. “I’ve got a steak on the grill big enough for both us.”
A couple days of stubble darkened his jaw and the jeans and shirt he wore had a slept-in look, the shirt bearing a smear of something mustard-colored on the front. When I got near him I noticed that underneath the smell of booze was a rank sourness, like old sweat.
“I thought you sold this place,” I said.
“I sold the marina, not the cabin,” he said, with a weak smile. “Too much sentimental value.”
“It’s a bit more than a cabin now,” I said.
He stopped what he was doing and gazed up at the house. “Yeah,” he said. “Done some work on it over the years.”
“Nice boat too,” I added.
He turned and looked at the boat.
“She’s the one girl I’m going to miss,” he said.
I gave him a puzzled look.
“Casey’s divorcing me, and the boat belongs to the company. Tax advantages and all that. So—no marriage, no job. No job, no boat.”
He took a long pull of his drink, turned the steak on the grill, and smiled an empty smile. “That shit about easy come, easy go?” he said. “It ain’t true. Nothing comes easy. And it’s even harder when it goes.”
He caught me looking at the back of his boat. The name Good Times was painted on it in blue and gold script.
“Guess you could say I was overly optimistic when I named her,” he said.
“Grandfather called you, didn’t he, Wendell?” I said.
H
e stopped what he was doing and turned to me. “Did you just call me Wendell?”
“Grandfather called you that on the day he died. I saw your initials on a note pad by his phone. WS. Wendell Streeter. I’d forgotten that was your given name until I saw it signed on a paycheck for McDaniel Mills. Only two people ever called you that. Your dad, when he was really pissed off at you, and Grandfather, because he disliked calling anyone by a nickname, another of his irritating eccentricities. Did he say something to you that touched a nerve? Did he insinuate that you killed old man Cecil Hood?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Bucky said, and laughed. But in his eyes, there was no laughter.
“What have you done, Bucky? I asked.
He studied me for a moment, then leaned over and raised the lid to a locker on the dock.
“Bucky . . .” I said, and he stepped over and hit me above the ear with something hard. I took one faulty step toward him, and with a strange sense of removal, watched as he raised his arm and struck me again. The world turned a brilliant white, then went as black as midnight.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but as my faculties came limping back, I realized I was lying on a bunk in Bucky’s boat, rolled up like a burrito from chin to feet in a gasoline soaked bed sheet. It was a discovery that did not portend happy times ahead.
Bucky entered the cabin with a five-gallon fuel can and began dousing gasoline over the walls, the carpet, the curtains, and me again. He went at his work without expression, silent and deliberate, like a man carrying out a routine, boring chore.
“Bucky,” I said quietly. “Whatever it is you’re doing, don’t.”
He stopped and looked at me for a moment, then studied a scuff on his knuckles. The hull rocked beneath us, the chop of the water suggesting we were no longer tied to the dock.
“Explain this to me, Bucky. You owe me that,” I said.
He sat down on the bunk across from me, placed the gas can on his lap and rested his arms over it.
“Things just got out of hand, John David. Waaay the fuck out of hand.”
He looked suddenly older, deflated, like somebody let air out of him. He refocused his eyes on me.
“Developing Eastatoe Valley was my idea,” he began. “My vision. My plan. I set it all up. Lined up all the options and went after Barry Beal and sold him on it. It was the payday I’ve been working for my whole life. And I was so fucking close. Then . . .” He shook his head at a bitter thought.
“Cecil Hood’s death wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“Depends on how you define accident,” he said. “I didn’t go out there to kill him, if that’s what you mean. I was only trying to talk some sense into the stubborn old son of a bitch. He’d been offered twice what his place was worth, and he still wouldn’t sell it. I guess I just lost it. I shoved him, and he went sailing out of the barn loft before I could grab him.”
I lay silent. The revelation of his words an even bigger blow than when he hit me on the head.
He set the can between his feet and wiped his hands on his pants legs.
“Who would ever have thought that old fool would turn down that much money? First he was going to sell, then he changes his mind. He was fucking everything up.”
Bucky seemed to want to explain things to me, as if he thought it could help justify his actions. His voice took on a pleading tone, as if he were the victim here.
“Beal was threatening to pull the plug,” he said. “Cut his losses and move on. But I had my whole life in this thing.”
I felt my teeth grinding and said, “I guess it was just lucky for you that Carl Hood inherited the place and was so eager to sell, huh?”
“What do you think he would do with it? Move in and start growing taters and beans? He wanted his old man to sell.”
“And that wasn’t in your thoughts when you pushed his daddy out of the barn? Sell this somewhere else, Bucky. I’m not buying.”
“Fuck you. I told you I didn’t mean to do it.”
“What about Grandfather? Was that an accident too?”
Bucky glared at me.
“You’re right. He called me. He knew I was the one trying to get old man Hood to sell. I guess Cecil Hood told him that. And he was looking for Melissa Raines. I didn’t know then that he was trying to find her for you. I thought he was after me. I couldn’t let him talk to her, she knew too much. She was a sweetheart, but she wasn’t all that bright. I don’t know what she would have said if Garnet started grilling her. She was already a basket case for what Beal did to her, the stupid prick.”
Bucky sighed, and gave me a remorseful look. “I had to do something,” he said. “I was following Garnet, and when he pulled in that turnout to take a leak, it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. I had to manage the risks.”
“Manage the risks,” I repeated, and stared across at my old friend.
Somewhere along the trail of years, he had become a frightening doppelganger of the guy I grew up with. I tried to gauge my chances of rolling out of the tightly bound sheet and through the open door, or hatch, or whatever it was called, before he could stop me. I came up with some very long odds. It seemed my only course was to try to keep him talking, and hope for a better chance.
“So what happened with Melissa Raines?” I asked. “You and Beal get tired of paying her to keep her mouth shut?”
He sat watching drops of gasoline slide down the cabin wall and puddle onto the floor.
“Nobody had to pay her to keep quiet,” he said. “Beal wanted to, but I told him it wasn’t necessary. I mean, I gave her money to go stay at the beach, but it wasn’t a payoff.”
“So why did she keep quiet about what Beal did to her?”
He looked at me with something he must have thought was a smile, but it came off as a grimace.
“Little thing called love,” John David. “She kept her mouth shut for me. She wanted Beal’s ass fried for what he did to her, but I talked her out of it. It’s not like he raped her, for God’s sake. He just slapped her around a bit when he realized she wasn’t going to put out. But she knew if she tried to hurt him, she would hurt me too.”
“So why make crab bait out of her?”
“Ask yourself that question, old buddy. You get to share the blame for that one.”
I saw that he was serious. It was as if his psychopathy made it impossible to admit fault for anything.
“You had to call her and rile her up. Christ, John David, talking to you would have been worse than talking to your granddad. I couldn’t have that.”
More risk management, I thought. Or was it damage control this time? I was losing track of all of Bucky’s reasons for killing people. “You know the cops have Bobby Paige for it?” I said.
“I hope the hell so. I worked hard enough setting it up to look that way. And Bobby can’t exactly say different now, can he?”
“Sooner or later they’ll discover it wasn’t a suicide, Bucky. There’s bound to be signs. Bobby Paige couldn’t have gone quietly.”
“It was easy. Bobby never thought I’d do something like that to him. He trusted me. Remember when I told you Bobby had this special thing with my father-in-law? I lied. Bobby Paige was my ‘go to guy,’ not his.”
“And you put him on me.”
“He knew about the development. I promised him a part in it as a building contractor. He also knew about me and Melissa and what Beal did to her. I told him you were looking for her to expose Beal for it, and if you did, the publicity would ruin everything. I told him we needed to scare you back to Atlanta, but I should have known it wouldn’t work. All it did was light your fire. As to the cops figuring out that his death isn’t a suicide, it’s hard to detect blunt force trauma to the back of the head when there is no ‘back of the head.”
Bucky went quiet, lost in some thought he was having.
“I guess I ought to be asking you who else knows about this, but you wouldn’t tell me, would
you?” he said.
I knew where this was going and I didn’t like it.
“I’ve kept Eloise out of it, Bucky. She doesn’t know anything.”
“What about the Mayfield woman? And don’t try to tell me you ain’t screwing that.”
“Then you ought to know we don’t spend our time together talking about you.”
He studied me for a moment, his eyes, now expressionless, probing mine.
“When I have time,” he said, “I’ll have to give that some more thought.”
I feared for Eloise and Kelly.
“What about Barry Beal?” I asked. “What does he know?”
I had to keep him talking until I could find a way out of this, even though it looked like it would take a miracle.
“Beal’s like a fucking ostrich,” he said. “Only his head ain’t stuck in the sand, it’s up his own ass. All he gives a shit about is getting what he wants without getting his hands dirty. He don’t ask questions about things he don’t want to know about.”
“The shot through my window?”
Bucky sighed. “Yeah. I was going to kill you, you know. It was either you or Melissa.”
“You shot my image in the mirror, not me.”
Bucky gave me a sheepish look.
“I’m amazed you figured that out. Imagine how dumb I felt when I saw that mirror shatter. Then you turned the lights out, and all I could do was get the hell out of there. Enough of the chit-chat, John David. It ain’t gonna change anything.”
He went over to the galley and did something to the stove. I heard a hissing sound and smelled the rotten-egg odor of propane fuel mingling with the other gas. He then returned to splashing gasoline over the cabin, the fumes rising up and around me, invading my nostrils and making my eyes water.
“You’ve been stupid, Bucky,” I said. “They’re going to catch you.”
“I don’t think so. But whatever happens, you won’t be around to help them. Let’s see, a houseguest taking the boat out alone, a leak in the fuel lines, a malfunction in the safety mechanism of the butane stove, a cigar . . . and kaboom. If I’d been with you I might have been able to prevent such a tragic accident happening to my best buddy.”
