The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  “You’d have a hard time selling that one to the working class. Not having to work is the ultimate dream for most people.”

  “Without careers to dedicate their lives to, they devote their interests to other things: horses, pedigree dogs, charities, the arts, collecting expensive things. Their interests and conversations are dedicated to those obsessions. People outside their circle with different interests have a hard time joining in, and vice-versa.”

  Abruptly changing the subject, Natasha asked, “Where would you like to start? I’m all yours for the rest of the week. Kelly said she told you Saturday is the Annual Upcountry Steeplechase, and there will be parties all week at various clubs and people’s homes, and a huge hospitality tent at the race itself where anyone who is anyone will gather. This should give you ample opportunity to talk to everyone you want.”

  “I’d like to start with Millie Johnson, and then perhaps talk to a couple of the boy’s friends, if she can tell us who they are. I want to find out as much as I can about Jamal before meeting anyone else.”

  “Kelly said you knew Millie. That’s certainly a coincidence.”

  “I went to college with Jamal’s older brother Taylor.”

  “That poor man,” she said. “It’s just terrible what happened to him. I’ve never met him, but Mrs. Johnson once showed me a picture of him. He was handsome. I thought he looked a lot like Denzel Washington. And now this. Mrs. Johnson must be going out of her mind.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Millie Johnson lived in the middle of the Dark Corner in South Carolina’s Greenville County. Her house was just a few miles south of Tryon and west of the town of Landrum in Spartanburg County. I remembered the house. Small, with white clapboard siding, blue trim and a wide front porch with a couple of rocking chairs on it. It was well-kept and homey, and had changed little.

  Flowers grew around the house in flower beds, and pots of them hung from the porch—all of them full of wildly colored, blooming spring flowers. A large oak shaded the front yard, providing a cool and comfortable space for the wrought iron bench beneath it.

  The storage shed where they found the rifle sat behind the house, with a lean-to stall for a cow or a horse attached to it. There was no livestock in it at present.

  Beside the building, a fenced-in garden grew with verdant rows of what looked like young corn, tomatoes, pole beans, and other vegetables, all looking healthy and well-tended.

  There were two cars parked near the house; an older Ford sedan, tan in color, and a gleaming new black Jaguar XF with Illinois plates.

  “Nice car,” I said, looking at the Jag.

  “The tan one is Millie’s,” Natasha said. “I don’t recognize the other one. She must have company.”

  As we got out of the car, several chickens, loose in the yard, ran around a corner of the house and disappeared in back. Natasha had called and told Mrs. Johnson we were coming, and she met us at the door. She was a short, plump woman, a little grayer than I remembered her, and normally with a pleasant face. It was now spoiled slightly by eyes as red as the comb of the rooster I’d just seen in the yard. She had done some heavy crying, and from the wounded expression she wore as she looked at me, she wasn’t finished.

  “J.D., it’s so good to see you,” she said. “I didn’t know you were friends with Miss Natasha. God certainly works in mysterious ways.”

  I marveled at her because she never seemed to hold me responsible for Taylor’s injury. I think she knew I carried enough guilt, without needing to add to it.

  She and Natasha hugged, and there was a genuine warmth in their embrace.

  “Taylor told me you were coming,” she said. “Are you gonna’ help find my boy?”

  “I’m going to try, Mrs. Johnson.”

  She stood and looked at me for a long probing moment as if she was trying to read the sincerity of my words in my eyes. The grief on her face was intense.

  “He didn’t do this J.D.,” she said, “and nobody is trying to find out the truth of it. They’ve done got him convicted, and they aren’t even looking for him anymore.”

  She led us into her living room, and Natasha and I took a seat on a sofa with doilies on the arms. The room was modestly furnished, but neat and comfortable. Framed photographs lined the mantle of a small fireplace, and on several side tables around the room. There was no sign of who owned the Jag out front.

  Mrs. Johnson took a picture off the mantle and handed it to me. “That’s Jamal last December when he won an award on his high school debate team,” she said.

  Jamal was holding up a small trophy and grinning like he’d just won the Super Bowl. “He grew into a handsome young man,” I said, handing the photo back to Mrs. Johnson.

  “I think something bad has happened to him,” she said. “I pray it isn’t so, but I just can’t help thinking it. Why else would he not let me know where he is?”

  Natasha hugged her again. They stood in that embrace for a while; then Mrs. Johnson seemed to regain her control and stepped away, placing the photo back on the mantle, and wiping her eyes with a tissue she took from a pocket.

  “Where are my manners?” she said. “I’ve got coffee made, and I baked some of those peanut butter cookies you used to like so much, J.D. You remember them?”

  “How could I forget, Mrs. Johnson. They’re the best cookies I have ever eaten.”

  You all just sit right there, and I’ll get us some,” she said.

  We followed her orders and sat while she served us the cookies and coffee. She sat down in an overstuffed chair across from the sofa and joined us. The coffee was excellent, and the cookies were everything I remembered. Even after the hamburger from lunch, I couldn’t help eating three of them. I didn’t know her employers, whom Natasha said were friends, but if Millie Johnson cooked everything this good for them, they must value her enormously.

  A man suddenly entered the room from the back of the house and took a chair against the wall. He was possibly the scariest looking man I’d ever seen, and I had stared into the eyes of the meanest of men; NFL-sized defensive tackles whom I was sure were insane, and who wanted nothing more than to kill me on the next blitz.

  He wasn’t an ugly man, quite the contrary. What made him scary was his eyes, which he had focused on us with a menacing glower. The pupils were dark as midnight, the whites so bright against his black skin they seemed lit with a powerful light from within. It was like you could physically feel his gaze when he settled it on you, and even if you couldn’t describe the feeling, it left you with a vague uneasiness. He telegraphed a primordial warning most males would recognize. His look said, “Fuck with me at your own peril.”

  He was dressed in black from head to toe, with short hair and a large diamond stud in an earlobe—which if real—was at least a couple of carats. He looked several years older than me, almost as tall, and muscled like a gym rat.

  Mrs. Johnson introduced him to us.

  “This is my nephew, Alvin Brown, my late middle sister’s boy,” she said, smiling warmly at him. “He came down from Chicago last night to keep me company and help out for a few days. He lived with us when he was little, and he’s like my third son. Alvin, this is Natasha Ladd, my friend, and another friend, J.D. Bragg. J.D. played football with Taylor.”

  Alvin Brown nodded and fixed those eyes solely on me. I was incapable of returning his stare after a second or two. I wondered if the look he was giving me was his natural expression or something he affected just to frighten the shit out of people. A thin scar dissected one eyebrow giving him the impression of having two eyebrows on one side, but that only gave him character. A thin meticulously shaved goatee added a Satanic touch.

  I knew who he was. Taylor spoke of him many times. He was Taylor’s cousin, but more like an older brother. Taylor said Alvin and his mother lived with them as a child, but his father took them off to Chicago, and later deserted them, leaving Alvin’s mother to turn to prostitution to feed the drug habit that eventually killed her. By then she ha
d already disappeared from Alvin’s life leaving him to grow up on the streets of Southside Chicago.

  Taylor said Alvin had trained in martial arts and boxing and had done a bit of cage fighting in his time. The last time Taylor mentioned him was to say his cousin had started a chain of dōjōs in the Chicago area and was doing well. I guessed the Jaguar proved it, but no matter how successful he’d become, he was still someone you didn’t want to mess with.

  I remembered Taylor saying they called him Alvin “Big Hurt” Brown. “Big Hurt,” like Frank Thomas, the White Sox homerun-hitting Hall of Famer. I didn’t think Alvin’s nickname came from baseball bats, unless he used them to beat people.

  Mrs. Johnson went into the kitchen for more cookies and coffee, and Natasha went with her. They left “Big Hurt” and me sitting there, me avoiding staring at him.

  He finally spoke.

  “Taylor told me about you,” he said, his voice as deep as James Earl Jones doing Darth Vader. It didn’t make his presence any less intimidating.

  “I hope it wasn’t anything too bad,” I said. “Taylor told me about you, too. The martial arts and stuff. I’d just as soon not have somebody like you pissed off at me.”

  I’d tried for a smile from him but didn’t get it.

  “He asked me to help you find Jamal,” he said.

  I wanted to tell him that if I needed somebody maimed or killed, I’d call him, but thought better of it.

  The top button of his shirt was open, revealing a tattoo against his dark skin. It looked almost like a Star of David with crossed tridents and numbers in the middle. “Is that tattoo on your neck something to do with martial arts?” I asked.

  He waited a moment to answer me.

  “Gangster Disciples, Southside Chicago,” he finally said. “It’s a little something from my formative years.”

  “Oh,” I said. Taylor never mentioned anything about him being a member of one of the most vicious street gangs in the country.

  “I outgrew that,” he said.

  I’d take his word for it.

  “I’ll be around for a few days. You can reach me here.”

  The issue of my needing or wanting his help seemed settled to him.

  Mrs. Johnson and Natasha came back with more coffee and cookies, and I used their arrival as an excuse not to respond. If I ever needed a bodyguard, he’d be the first person I’d call, but aside from that, he’d be waiting a long time for the phone to ring from me. I just hoped he wasn’t going to be trouble. I needed a more subtle approach than he would probably bring to the table.

  Alvin “Big Hurt” Brown took neither coffee nor cookies and continued to sit quietly in his chair watching us. He shared his menacing gaze between Natasha and me. I could tell it was making her nervous.

  I decided to ignore the “Big Hurt,” and try to get what I came for. I turned to Millie Johnson and said, “Tell me about Jamal, Mrs. Johnson. Right before he disappeared, was he acting differently, or upset about anything?”

  “Not that I noticed,” she said, “but I was visiting my oldest sister in Charlotte when he disappeared. She’s been down with her back, and my employers were kind enough to give me a couple of days off to go help her look after her kids. She’s got a house full of them.”

  “When was the last time you saw Jamal?” I asked.

  “That Friday morning,” she said. “I sat him down and had a talk with him before he caught the school bus. I wanted to make sure one more time he’d be all right with me gone. He said he wouldn’t be home much, anyway. He had two jobs Saturday, one doing something at somebody’s stable in the morning, the other, waiting tables at a dinner party that night. He works part-time jobs when he can fit it in with school, as a waiter, dishwasher, mowing lawns, stable hand, whatever he can get. That boy is a hard worker, and he saves his money.”

  I’d read in Kelly’s story in the Clarion the horse was killed sometime Friday night. Did he say what his plans were for that night?” I asked her.

  “He said he was going to stay home and watch TV. He grumbled a little about not having a car. He just turned seventeen, and if I sign for him, he can get his driver’s license now. Saving up for a car is the main reason he works so hard. I was surprised he wasn’t planning on spending time with that girl he likes, Monique Watkins. She doesn’t have a car either, but she borrows her older brother’s motor scooter and sometimes comes and gets him. But there was a birthday party for Monique’s younger sister Friday night, and Jamal wasn’t invited. It was an all-girl party.

  “Are you sure he stayed home?” I asked.

  “I called him from my sister’s about eight o’clock, and that’s where he was. Home watching TV. After complaining he wasn’t a little kid anymore and I didn’t need to check up on him, he said he was going to bed. He had a long day coming up on Saturday, with those two jobs to work.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Jamal doesn’t lie to his mama,” she said, flatly.

  He’d be the first kid in the history of the world who didn’t, I thought.

  “I had to ask,” I said. “No offence meant. I was just thinking maybe this Monique Watkins popped over and gave him a ride somewhere on that motor scooter.”

  “Like to Mr. Wilson’s stable, you mean,” she said, frowning at me.

  “Not at all, Mrs. Johnson. I believe Jamal is innocent. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can about his whereabouts at the time of the horse shooting. Maybe he has an alibi we don’t know about.”

  Mrs. Johnson sighed. “I can’t swear she didn’t come over,” she said, “but Jamal told me he wasn’t going to see her and I believed him. But if he was going to Mr. Kroll’s for any reason, he didn’t need her to take him. Mr. Kroll just lives about a half-mile from here. Jamal could walk. That’s one thing he liked about that job. He never needed a ride to work.”

  I hadn’t realized Wilson Kroll lived so close. “So, how was Jamal planning to get to those two Saturday jobs?” I asked.

  “He said the stable owner was picking him up for the morning job, and a boy named Willie Tee Harmon was giving him a ride to the dinner party. Jamal and the Harmon boy worked parties like that together sometimes. The police talked to Willie Tee, and Willie Tee said he gave Jamal a lift to the job, but not home. He told them he didn’t know how Jamal got home, or what happened to him. Evidently, this Willie Tee went off with some girl who also worked the dinner, and left Jamal to find another ride or walk.”

  “Where’s this Willie Tee live at?” Alvin asked.

  He’d been listening quietly to our conversation.

  “He lives in Landrum, somewhere,” Mrs. Johnson said. “The police talked to this girl Willie Tee went off with, too, and she said the last time she saw Jamal, he was helping load things into the back of the caterer’s van after the dinner party.”

  “So, she didn’t know how Jamal got home, either?” I asked.

  “No, she didn’t,” Mrs. Johnson said, “but a guest leaving about eleven-thirty saw Jamal walking down the driveway toward the road.”

  “At least we know he started out walking,” I said.

  “Someone at the dinner could have given him a ride,” Millie Johnson said, more to herself than us, “but they just drove right on by him.”

  I heard Alvin Brown grunt from across the room.

  “Do you think he would walk all the way home?” I asked her.

  She sighed. “It’s a long way, about five miles,” she said, “but if there was no other way, he would. What choice did he have? He might have stopped in Landrum, which is about half-way home, and try to find a ride there. I know he goes to a pizza place there that's open late. Jamal is such a trusting boy. I can’t stop wondering if he got in the car with somebody bad, and they did something terrible to him.”

  “Did the police check out the pizza place?”

  “They said they did,” she said. “But nobody there saw him.”

  “So, you don’t know if he made it home,” I said.

 
; “I don’t believe he did. When I got home Sunday night, his bed didn’t look slept in, and he hadn’t fed the chickens or the cat, which was his job. He wouldn’t have neglected that. The police asked if he might have come in, packed a bag, and left again. He had several gym bags, but I couldn’t tell if one was missing, or any clothes or things, like he was going somewhere. I called him all day Sunday, but never got an answer. His cell phone was dead; it went straight to voice mail.”

  She suddenly sobbed. “I still keep trying to call it.”

  I turned to Natasha “Were you at that dinner party?”

  “Yes, but I left immediately after dinner. I’d been riding and working with my horse most of the day, and I was tired. Had I stayed, I feel sure Jamal would have asked me to give him a lift home and I gladly would have. I’ve felt guilty about that ever since.”

  “Oh no, Miss Natasha,” Mrs. Johnson said, “It wasn’t your fault. If it was anybody’s, it was mine. I should have been home to look after my own child.”

  “It doesn’t sound like either one you were at fault,” I said. “I’d like to speak to a couple of Jamal’s friends. Someone he was likely to talk to if he was bothered by something.”

  “I want to go with you when you see this Willie Tee,” Alvin said. “That boy needs a lesson on keeping his word.”

  “Oh, shush, Alvin, Willie Tee was just being a teenager,” Mrs. Johnson said.

  It was startling to see someone who looked like “Big Hurt” take her reprimand and sit there like an admonished schoolboy. I thought I saw a smile flit across his lips as if her scolding raised an old, fond memory.

  “If you want to talk to Jamal’s friends,” she said, “that wouldn’t be Willie Tee, anyway.” “They weren’t close. Willie Tee was older by a couple of years. The one you need to talk to is Ronnie Dill. The Dills live next door, and their boy Ronnie and my Jamal have been best friends since first grade. They’ve been like two peas in a pod ever since.”