by Ron Fisher
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Let’s go find the girlfriend,” I said. We headed east toward the town of Landrum, just over the Spartanburg County line. Along the way, we passed a huge house that covered an entire wooded and pastured hilltop. The place was a faux castle, built of native granite, with a courtyard and mock turrets. All it needed was a portcullis and a moat. A vulgar example of conspicuous consumption if I ever saw one.
The stables beside it looked like they would house at least twenty horses. A small ornate sign by the long winding drive announced the place as “Hilltop Farms,” with a silhouette of a jumping horse underneath.
“That’s Wilson Kroll’s place,” Natasha said.
“Jesus,” I said. “I hate the man for no other reason than he built that monstrosity.”
“You wouldn’t be alone. I know a couple of Kroll’s neighbors who hate it, too. They call him Baron Von Kroll.”
“This guy must have an ego as big as that place.”
“And the taste of a carnival barker,” Natasha added.
“Does he have a wife and kids?”
“A wife,” she said. “Younger than him. No children by her. I think he may have an ex-wife and a daughter up north somewhere.”
“I can’t wait to meet this guy,” I said. “Will he be at any of these parties you were telling me about?”
She thought a minute. “The one party Wilson Kroll might attend is tomorrow night at USEC, the Upcountry Steeplechase and Equestrian Club. It’s open to anyone who is a member—and he is. Lots of food and an open bar. Most of the other parties are smaller, and friends only. He may not get invited to those.”
“Then let’s make it to the Equestrian Center party.”
“Do you have a jacket? No tie necessary.”
“I actually own two jackets,” I said.
“Stop it,” she said. “I meant did you bring one?”
“I even know which side of the plate the fork and knife go on.”
“Enough. By the way, the Krolls are sure to be at the race Saturday, and we’ll probably run into them there, too.”
“Good,” I said. “It’ll give me two chances to piss him off.”
“You plan to piss him off?”
“The questions I plan to ask him will. He won’t like them.”
“You know, there’s a rumor he’s got connections with the Cleveland mafia, so you might want to be careful. People say his father was in with them, and so is he.”
Natasha found the Pack n’ Sack on the edge of the quaint little town of Landrum. Inside, two women worked the counter, and it wasn’t hard to guess which one was Monique Watkins. She was young and attractive and the color of a mocha latte. The other woman was older; she was white, and had frizzy red hair and a body like a pickle barrel. An old man was buying a carton of cigarettes and a lottery ticket from the barrel lady, and she was ringing him up. The old man appeared to be the only customer in the store.
We walked over to the young girl and introduced ourselves. “We’re helping Millie Johnson try to find Jamal, and we’d like to talk to you about him,” I said.
“Has Mrs. Johnson heard anything from Jamal?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not, Monique, Natasha said. “You haven’t heard from him either, I take it.”
“No ma’am,” the girl said and began to tear-up.
“Do you think you could take a short break and talk to us?” I said.
The girl looked at me.
“Who are you?” she asked. “A policeman? I’ve talked to the police. They didn’t believe me when I told them Jamal wouldn’t kill a fly, much less a horse.”
“No, he’s not a policeman,” Natasha answered for me. “He’s a special friend of mine. He’s a writer with an Atlanta Magazine. He wants to write a story on what’s going on up here.”
“I’m going to take my break now, Louise,” Monique said to the woman at the other register. The woman was still talking to the old man with the cigarettes and lottery tickets and waved a short goodbye in our direction without paying much attention to us.
We followed the girl out the door to a shady spot around the corner of the building. She leaned against the wall and looked at me.
“So, what do you want to know?” she asked.
“Everything you told the police . . . and everything you didn’t,” I said.
She exhaled slowly, glanced at Natasha and then back at me.
“I told the police I didn’t know where Jamal was or why he went missing. I told them he’d never said anything about shooting any horse, and would never do that—or go off without telling anybody where he was going. He wouldn’t do that to his mama, or me. But I don’t think the police cared about what I said. Their minds were made up about Jamal, so I didn’t try to tell them anything else.”
“What else is there to tell?” I asked.
She chewed her lip and thought about it.
“Jamal knew things about the horse that got killed,” she finally said. “Its name was Emperor, and Jamal was always telling me stuff about it. How it would try to go after molasses balls he kept in his pocket, or come when he called it. He loved that horse. Jamal said it couldn’t ‘do it’ anymore, and he felt sorry for it. It was too old to race and he was afraid Mr. Kroll might put it down.”
“Do it? What does that mean?” I asked.
“Emperor was supposed to be this big famous stud horse, but he was, what’s the word? Impotent?”
“And Jamal knew that for a fact?” I said.
“He said he overheard Mr. Kroll talking to someone about it, and said it made sense, since he never saw Mr. Kroll and his vet collecting Emperors’ semen anymore; like they did when he first went to work there.”
“Did Jamal say if Mr. Kroll knew he’d overheard them?”
“He didn’t say,” Monique said.
“How long after that did Kroll let Jamal go?”
“Not too long, I guess. A few days.”
“Jamal didn’t tell you they got into an argument, or that he threatened Mr. Kroll?”
“Jamal wouldn’t threaten anyone,” Monique said. “That just wasn’t him. The police asked me that, too, and I told them the same thing. Jamal knew he would get other stable work. He’s good with horses, just natural born to it, I guess. He can talk to them, and I swear, they understand him. He says if he can’t be a writer someday, he wants to be a trainer. Or maybe both, working as a trainer to pay for his writing until he becomes famous.”
“He wants to be a writer? What kind of writer?” I asked.
“Novels probably,” she said. “Jamal keeps a journal and is always writing things in it.”
A journal. Another interesting bit of news.
“What kind of things did he write in this journal?” I asked.
“Mostly about people and ideas he has, I guess. He wouldn’t let me read it. It was as private to him as a diary would be to me. But he knew things. He said that sometimes, working for these rich people he felt like he was invisible. They ignored him when he was in places where he could see and hear things he probably shouldn’t have. He said he was just ‘the hired help,’ and sometimes they treated him like he wasn’t even there. He told me once he’d heard and seen enough stuff that if he ever wrote a book about it, they’d probably run him and his mama out of the Dark Corner. He said he would call the book Tales of The Invisible Boy.”
“Nobody has said anything about the police finding a journal,” I said. “Do you know where he kept it?”
She didn’t.
“We need to ask Mrs. Johnson about it,” I said to Natasha and held my fist to my ear, thumb and forefinger extended.
Natasha pulled out her cell phone, stepped a few feet away from us, and began dialing.
“Jamal would have hidden it real good,” Monique said. “At least I hope so. There are probably some things in there he wouldn’t want his mama to know. And neither would I.”
I got the feeling Jamal and Monique may be a little closer than Mille Johnson might think. “
Did you see him Friday night?”
“Mama was having a birthday party for my little sister, and I had to stay home for that.”
“Do you know if Jamal stayed home, too, or went out somewhere?” I asked.
“The police asked me that. I told them what Jamal told me. He said his mama was visiting her sister in Charlotte, and he was home alone, watching TV and missing me.” Monique smiled at the thought. “I was going to call him from my sister’s party, but I just didn’t get a chance. I had to help my mama with all the little girls. They about wore me out. After the party, I helped Mama clean up and went to bed. I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. I cry now when I think of him sitting at home by himself.
“So, when did you last talk to him?” I asked.
“Saturday afternoon. He was getting ready to go to work again—his second job of the day. He’d worked moving boxes from someone’s house into their stable that morning. I tried to call him all day Sunday, but he didn’t answer. I finally got his mama in the afternoon, and she told me he wasn’t there and didn’t know where he was. She sounded worried, and that’s when I got worried, too.”
Natasha walked back over, placing her cell phone in her pocket. “Millie knew he wrote things in a book,” she said. “But she doesn’t know where he keeps it. Even if she knew, she said she would never have read it. She respects Jamal’s privacy. The police don’t have it, and Millie said she didn’t tell them about it. She said she would search for it.”
When I turned back to Monique, she was standing there apparently lost in some thought.
“There was something . . .” she finally said, turning her focus to me. “When we talked on Saturday, he said he’d found something ‘weird’ where he was working that morning, but he didn’t say what. I just thought of that.”
“You said he was moving boxes from someone’s house into their stable. Did he say who’s house and stable?” I asked.
“He never said, and I never asked.”
Monique looked at her watch. “I better get back in, or Louise will complain to the Manager about me.”
“One last question,” I said. “When you called Jamal that Saturday, did he know about the horse getting shot?”
“Oh God no," she said. “If he’d known that, it would have been the first thing out of his mouth. I told you, he loved that horse. I didn’t hear about it until the police came and talked to me on Monday.”
Monique probably gave me everything she had to give, but I left her one of my cards just in case she thought or learned of anything else. She was helpful, the information about Emperor’s impotence was big if it proved to be true. With any luck, there might be something more in the journal about that, and maybe there was something relevant about the “weird” thing he found at the stable he worked Saturday morning. Now all I needed to do was find the journal.
As Natasha and I were driving back to her place, she looked across the seat, smiled at me and said, “You’ll be heading back to the lovely Kelly now?”
I looked at her and nodded. “What time do you want me tomorrow?’ I asked.
“Nothing until noon. We’re having lunch with two friends who usually have their fingers on the pulse of the community and are happy to gossip about it. The main thing tomorrow, however, is the party at the Equestrian Center, a celebration for the USEC Steeplechase Saturday. Everyone will be there, and it’s the perfect event to meet them. Cocktails and a buffet about six, and it will go quite late. There will be lots of people and friends from out of town, in for the race. This is a drinking crowd and tongues are bound to get loose.”
“You said jacket, no tie?”
“Smart casual, as they say.”
‘I’ll try to dress up to that,” I said.
“And J.D.,” she said smiling at me again. “If Kelly will let you, you can spend tomorrow night at my place. The party will go late, and you don’t want to drive back at that hour, especially if you’ve had a few drinks.” She grinned at me. “You can tell her my guest bedroom has a lock on the door, so you’ll be safe.”
I laughed at that, but I wasn’t sure why. The look she was giving me was unsettling. Perhaps it was the devilment in her eyes. This was one feisty woman.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From Natasha’s bungalow, I took Hunting Country Road west to Ridge Road, which took me into the town of Tryon. A left turn on Trade Street would put me on my route back to Pickens County, but, I pulled over at the intersection and took out the card Deputy Waldrop gave me with the address of the equine insurance investigator, Brandon Wise. The street numbers on the buildings surrounding me indicated I was close to Wise’s office, so I decided to make a quick side trip before going to Kelly’s. It was a little after five o’clock, but I took the chance he might still be at his office.
I found Olympic Equine Insurance in a small one-story building between a hot wing place and a barber shop, a couple of blocks north on Trade Street. The front door was open and I went in. The receptionist’s desk was vacant, the desk lamp turned off, but the door to an office on the left was open, lights on inside. I walked over and peeked in.
Seated at a desk was a short, middle-aged man with thinning hair and an unusually red face that looked more like high blood pressure than sunburn. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and necktie. He saw me and gave me a puzzled look.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Are you Brandon Wise?”
“Yes I am, how can I help you?”
“I’m sorry for barging in like this, Mr. Wise, but I was driving by and decided to drop in and see if you would talk to me.”
“Well, I might, if I knew who you are, and why you want to talk.”
“My name is J.D. Bragg, and I’d like to talk about who shot Wilson Kroll’s horse.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Who did you say you were?” he asked.
“J.D. Bragg. I’m a friend of Millie Johnson, the mother of Jamal Johnson, the boy accused of shooting the horse. The family doesn’t believe he did it and I’ve agreed to look into it for them.
“Who do they think shot it?” Wise asked.
“Odds are usually on the owner, aren’t they?” I said. “For the insurance money. That’s what you’re looking into, isn’t it? I’d like to compare notes.”
“I don’t know if I can discuss that with you,” he said.
“This meeting would be just between you and me,” I said. “I only want to find the boy— and the truth.”
He sat quietly, sizing me up, then got up and came around the desk. He motioned for me to take a seat in one of two stuffed chairs by a coffee table. He took the other one.
“You wanted to talk,” he said, “so talk.”
At least I’d gotten his attention. “As I said, the authorities have charged the Johnson boy for it, based on little more than the accusations of Wilson Kroll, the dead horse’s owner. The family is convinced Mr. Kroll is lying, and the boy is innocent.”
Wise said, “You left out the rifle they found at the boy’s house, and he is on the lam, as they say.”
“There are no fingerprints on the rifle,” I said, “and the family says he has never owned a gun of any kind. They believe Mr. Kroll, or someone, placed it there to frame the boy. There were no witnesses to the shooting, nor to Kroll’s claim that when he fired Jamal earlier, the boy threatened him. Jamal’s account of that incident, made to family and friends is entirely different. The more I learn about this man Kroll, the more suspicious I become of him. As I see it, he’s the person with the motive—the insurance money. I hear you may believe that, too.”
“Maybe what you heard is just my wishful thinking,” he said. “I’ve got a boss in Louisville, Kentucky who’s not too happy about paying off a claim that large.”
“I heard it is sizable,”
“Well, the horse was worth a lot,” he said. “Emperor—that’s the horse’s name—was one of the top stud horses in this part of the country, and demanded unbelie
vably large fees.”
“How unbelievable?” I said.
“You realize we’re talking about some very rich people here?” he said.
“Of course I do.”
“Well, it's a lot to them. Does that give you some idea?”
I got the picture. We were talking big money.
“Who told you about me?” Wise asked. “I haven’t shared my thoughts with anyone but a Greenville County Sheriff’s dep . . . Ah,” he said. “Deputy Waldrop. I felt that he didn’t completely buy the kid as the culprit. Am I right?”
“Maybe,” I said. “He gave me your card and suggested we talk. That would indicate to me he isn’t completely sold on the kid’s guilt, regardless of the evidence. I think the Deputy has a gut feeling. As do I.”
“Gut feelings don’t help me,” Wise said, “but proof would be good. Do you have any?”
“The horse was impotent,” I said, and let that lay there.
I could tell from Wise’s face I had surprised him.
“We don’t call it impotent,” he said. “We use the word infertile. What would make you think that?”
“Jamal Johnson told someone. They told me.”
“Double hearsay,” Wise said, with a disappointed look. “I can’t use that.”
“What if it were true and the horse was imp—infertile,” I said, “would the amount your company pays out to Wilson Kroll change?”
“Oh, yes,” Wise said. “Infertility would destroy the horse’s value, and we only pay the fair market value at the time of the animal’s death, regardless of the original insured amount.”
“I’ll bet that would make the boss-man in Louisville happy,” I said.
“And Wilson Kroll unhappy,” Wise said. “If he knowingly neglected to report a change in Emperor’s condition to us, he would not get anywhere near the full amount of the insurance on the policy. If he shot the horse himself, he gets nothing.”
Mr. Wise leaned back in his chair and looked at me.
“Unfortunately, whoever told you Emperor was infertile was wrong,” he said. “Kroll’s records show that the horse was fertile up to the very end.”
