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The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

Page 44

by Ron Fisher

“This him?” Smoke said to the tall guy with the gauze in his nose.

  “He’s the one hit Randall,” gauze-nose said.

  “Is the other one here?” Smoke asked me. “The black dude?”

  Eddie Smoke was even more wide-bodied up close. He was built like a stump.

  “What do you want?” I said, not answering his question.

  “So, you’re Bragg,” Smoke said. “We didn’t actually meet the other day. I’m Eddie Smoke.” He didn’t offer to shake hands; he kept them in his pockets.

  I wondered what he had in there. A knife? A gun? He didn’t strike me as a guy who would go anywhere unarmed.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I have two problems I hope you can help me with,” he said. “The second one depends on the first.”

  He seemed to be working very hard on his speech patterns as if he were trying not to sound like a redneck street thug, but his eyes contradicted it. They were solid black and held the all the compassion of a barracuda. I let him talk.

  “We have a mutual acquaintance I occasionally do business with,” he said. “My first problem is what to do about that acquaintance if he talks too much to you about that business.”

  “What’s the second problem?” I asked.

  He studied my face for a long moment, then said, “You. I’m wondering how much of that business you’re going to put in that story I hear you’re planning to write.”

  I motioned at the papers scattered on the floor and the desk with the drawers that stood open. “This isn’t your first visit tonight, is it? I asked.

  He looked around at the open desk drawers and the scattered papers on the floor, then got what I meant.

  “You think I tossed this place? Fuck you. Whatever this is, I didn’t have a thing to do with it, and anybody says I did, I’ll put a cap in their ass.”

  His thug side had shown up, but, unless he had Oscar-winning acting talent, he was telling the truth. He’d been genuinely surprised and angered when I accused him of it. When he calmed down, he asked, “So, what’s it gonna be? You helping me out here or not?”

  “What if I said not?”

  He gave me the full effect of his emotionally void eyes for a second.

  “Believe me,” he finally said, “That’s not the right answer.”

  “Have you heard about this kid Jamal Johnson who went missing up here?” I asked him.

  He looked at me as if I’d completely missed the point of the conversation.

  “The kid who shot the horse?” he said. “Yeah, I read about it in the papers. So, what?”

  “He didn’t shoot it,” I said.

  “I’ll say it again, so fucking what?”

  “Since the boy didn’t kill the horse, he wouldn’t have run away. But, he’s still missing, and I’m trying to find him. I’m not interested in your business. I couldn’t care less. I’m only interested in finding out what happened to the boy, and who was responsible for his disappearance. If it turns out it’s this acquaintance of ours—let’s call him Teddy—had nothing to do with the boy’s disappearance, then I’m not interested in him, either. But if he did, I’m going to do everything I can to bring him down. What happens between you two is up to you.”

  “So, you wasn’t watching me?”

  “We were watching Teddy.”

  He stared into my eyes a long time, his face emotionless as if he were trying to read my compass as a man. Could he trust me to keep my word? I knew that was the thought running through his head.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “We’ve got a deal.”

  “What deal?” I said. “I told you what I was going to do. How is that a deal?”

  Eddie Smoke grinned at me for the first time.

  “Let me explain it to you,” he said. “You stay out of my business, and don’t mention my name anywhere, anytime, and I won’t blow your fucking head off. How about that as a deal?” He looked at me a moment longer, then turned around and went to his car. Gauze-nose and the other guy, who'd yet to speak a single word, followed him out. They got into the BMW and drove away.

  Eddie Smoke wasn’t even out of sight before I called Alvin to ask about Kelly. He said he’d rented her a room two doors down from his and gave me her room number. He advised me to leave her alone tonight, and give her time to get over it. He said she was bummed out, and angry she’d let Natasha get to her. But she brightened up, he said, when he told her to put her room on Natasha’s tab. Natasha had insisted on paying for Alvin’s room, and had left him an open tab.

  I laughed at Kelly’s reaction. Maybe Alvin was right, and by morning we would all be laughing at tonight’s episode. I hoped so. I might not know where my relationship with Kelly was eventually going, but I knew I didn’t want it harmed by something as silly as this.

  I gave Alvin a condensed version of the break-in, my missing laptop, and Eddie Smoke’s visit. He got a kick out the tall guy’s broken nose. He, like me, believed it was Teddy who had tossed the place, looking for Jamal’s journal, and stealing my computer to see if I was writing about him.

  Alvin said he’d bring breakfast in the morning and hopefully deliver Kelly along with it. That was good because I doubted Natasha would be able to handle cooking breakfast or even eating it. My guess was she’d be suffering a world-class hangover, which would serve her right for causing the crap between Kelly and me.

  I took Alvin’s advice and didn’t call Kelly. I went to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Daybreak was barely glowing through the bedroom window curtains when I awoke to someone snoring softly beside me, an arm and a hand with red painted nails draped over my shoulder. I turned to find Natasha sound asleep, and as naked as the day she was born. Sometime during the night, still inebriated, she must have undressed and slipped into bed with me.

  I sensed a shape in the doorway and looked up to see Kelly standing there staring at us, slowly shaking her head in disbelief.

  “The front door was open . . .” she said. “I’ll be out on the sofa. As Desi Arnaz says to Lucy on their old TV show reruns, ‘you got some ‘splainin’ to do.’”

  This time, the unlocked front door was on me. I forgot to lock it after Eddie Smoke left. I pushed Natasha’s arm off my shoulder, untangled the sheets from around me, pulled on my pants and went after Kelly. She was sitting on the sofa, calmly waiting.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I said. “You’ve got to believe me. I just woke up two seconds before you came in and discovered Natasha in my bed. Absolutely nothing happened. I found her sick again after you guys left and passed out on the toilet. I put her in her bed—fully clothed. She must have awoken in the night, still drunk, and took off her clothes and climbed into my bed. I swear to God I never touched her.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, then smiled and placed a palm on my cheek. “I believe you,” she said. “This sounds too much like Natasha not to be true. You’re also a terrible liar, and I can tell when you’re telling the truth. Lying just isn’t in your tenet. You have your grandfather to thank for that. Principles, code of honor, and all that. But it doesn't mean I have to like it. So, I’m going home before Natasha comes out and I have to listen to her embarrassing explanation—or lack thereof. I don’t think we’re friends anymore.”

  “You are a wise and understanding woman,” I said. “A goddess among mortals and I’m the luckiest guy on the earth to have your trust.”

  “Don’t push it,” she said, grinning. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll pack your bag and come home. Tonight.” She gave me a quick kiss, a last look, and left.

  Ten minutes later, Natasha came out of the bedroom with a sheet wrapped around her. “What was I doing naked in your bed, J.D.?” she asked, with a bewildered look.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You must have come visiting during the night. I didn’t even know you were there until I woke up.”

  “So we didn't . . .”

  “No,” I said. “We didn't.”

/>   “I guess you noticed I can't hold my liquor,” she said, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Everybody noticed,” I said. “Especially Kelly, when she came in and saw us in bed together a little while ago.”

  “Oh, God, she saw us?” Natasha said.

  “She saw all of you. I still had my underwear on.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She forgave me. But I can’t say the same for you. You two will have to work that one out. She’s gone home.”

  “I’m so, so, embarrassed. I can’t remember anything that happened last night. I’ll make this right with Kelly somehow,” she said. “But not now. Now I have to go back to bed.” She went to her bedroom holding her head and walking like she was stepping on broken glass.

  I went in and got dressed. When I came out, Alvin was at the kitchen table laying out several kinds of fresh fruit, some granola bars, and a bag of Hardee’s sausage biscuits.

  “The sausage biscuits are for you,” he said.

  “Kelly was here earlier,” I said.

  “She checked out early this morning before I woke up. She go home?”

  “Yes,” I said. “After she saw Natasha in bed with me, naked.”

  That stopped him. He looked at me like he was waiting for the punchline. Finally, he realized I was serious.

  “Damn,” he said. “You surprise me, brother. I don’t know whether to think less of you or envy you.”

  “Nothing happened, Alvin,” I said, and told him how Natasha got there.

  I talked while he made coffee. When the coffee was ready, he brought me a cup.

  “You must be so fucked,” he said. “I mean, you didn’t get fucked, but you are fucked. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I would have thought that, too,” I said. “But Kelly believed me. She trusts me. She’s angry at Natasha, not me. She wants me home tonight.”

  Alvin stood with a cup of coffee in his hand and stared at me. “A trusting and forgiving woman,” he said with amazement. “Now, I do envy you. Where can I find me one of them?”

  “Sorry, bud. Kelly’s one of a kind.”

  We sat and ate. Alvin ate a banana, an apple, and a granola bar; I wolfed down a couple of sausage biscuits. I talked to Natasha through her bedroom door and told her we had food. A weak voice announced she didn’t feel like eating anything and she just needed to go back to bed. She said for Alvin and me to make ourselves at home.

  “What now?” Alvin asked.

  “I want to talk to Sam Squires to see what else he can tell us. After that, I’m out of ideas. Like I said yesterday, we’ll just have to wait and see what transpires.”

  I sipped another cup of coffee and thought about Kelly. She was one of a kind, as I’d said to Alvin, and trusted me completely. I don’t know if I could ever trust anyone that much. I brought that baggage to every relationship I’d ever had.

  It wasn’t like she’d never been hurt. She had. She told me that before she came to work for my grandfather, she’d lived in Charlotte and worked at the Charlotte Observer. She'd fallen in love with her boss, a married man whom she thought was separated from his wife and headed for divorce. But that turned out to be a lie. She found out that he and his wife were trying to have another child, and the whole newspaper staff knew that before she did. It broke her heart. The experience should have left her with trust issues, but it didn’t. She got over it. She didn’t let it cripple her and become a disabled veteran of relationships like I was. Why were the two women in my life, my sister Eloise, and Kelly, more emotionally secure than me?

  Until Kelly, I was someone who never allowed a relationship to go too far. A shrink I once dated said I had abandonment issues, caused by my parents dying before their time. In the mind of a kid, she said that was taken as abandonment, and I’d built a wall around me to keep that from ever happening again. It was the reason, she said, I jumped ship when any relationship started to get too heavy. I broke it off before they could do it to me. That was probably just so much psycho-babble, but all I knew right now, at this moment, was that I didn’t want to lose Kelly. And that was a first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  My cell phone rang, and I answered quickly, thinking it might be Kelly. It wasn’t. It was Brandon Wise, the insurance investigator.

  “Mr. Bragg, I have terrible news. I went to Sam Squires house last night and found him dead. He killed himself. He didn’t answer his door when I knocked, so I went around and peeked into the little windows in his garage door to see if his car was there. That’s when I saw him, hanging from a rafter by one of those orange heavy-duty extension cords. I called the police right away. They said he’d done it about eight o’clock last night.”

  He paused a moment, then said, “I wanted to tell you I may not be able to keep you out of this. I showed the police the document Squires slipped through my mail slot. They grilled me about it last night, and want to talk to me again today. I’m on my way there now. If they ask who else knows about his confession, I won’t lie to them, Mr. Bragg. You must understand that.”

  “Do what you have to do, Mr. Wise,” I said.

  “The man had to be terribly despondent to do a thing like this,” he said.

  He was right, and I felt partly to blame. I saw what an emotional state Squires was in when I approached him at the bar. I knew about him losing his wife and his son, and I took advantage of his despair to get him to confess.

  Then my suspicious side flared up.

  “Are the police positive it was a suicide?” I asked. Squires could have told Kroll he was going to rat him out. And I told Teddy Crane about Squires’ confession yesterday mid-afternoon, plenty of time for him to pass it along to Wilson Kroll—or go to Squires' house himself and confront him about it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d come across a murder made to look like a suicide. It happened just a year ago over in Pickens County.

  “The Police are convinced,” Wise was saying. “He left a suicide note. I don’t know what he wrote exactly, but they said it was in his handwriting. They authenticated that. All they told me was that it was an apology for what he’d become. Why, do you think someone may have murdered him and made it look like a suicide?”

  Was I just trying to blame everything bad that happens on Wilson Kroll and Teddy Crane? Probably. I couldn’t deny my prejudices when it came to them. But I didn’t know where to go with it unless the police found proof—or Kroll or Crane confessed—which wasn’t likely.

  “I guess not,” I said to Wise. “If the suicide note is legit.”

  “Everything indicates that,” he said.

  Alvin was watching me with questioning eyes when I hung up, having heard my end of the conversation.

  “Sam Squires hanged himself,” I said.

  I contemplated where Squires’ death left us. Alvin seemed to be doing the same thing. Squires swore he didn’t shoot Kroll’s horse and said we should talk to Teddy Crane. I’d wanted to know why Squires said that, but now, that opportunity was dead. Literally.

  “Let’s go look for Jamal,” I finally said. “I’ve got a hunch I want to check out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  We took my Jeep, and I drove the route again that I thought Jamal Johnson would have most likely taken if he walked home the night he disappeared. When I came to the house with the dog, I pulled in and parked near the front door. This time a slightly newer pickup that looked like it might be drivable sat next to the older one on blocks. Someone was home.

  The dog came out from under the porch barking and snarling like he was going to chew my tires off the rims. I honked the horn, and we sat until a man came out, glared at us, and ordered the dog back under the porch. The dog begrudgingly slinked away and lay down in a space hollowed out in the dirt, keeping his eyes on us.

  The man wore a stained white wife beater, jeans, and combat boots with the laces untied. He was either growing a beard or hadn't gotten around to shaving for a few days. It made me wonder who was rougher looking, the dog or the man. />
  He came down the steps, and Alvin and I got out of the car. The dog growled from under the porch but stayed put.

  “Can I help you?" The man asked in an unfriendly tone, his eyes shifting back and forth between us.

  “That dog run out at everybody like that?” I said.

  “What's it to you?” the man said.

  “Do you remember if he happened to bark at a kid walking down the road about midnight, a couple of weeks ago?”

  The man took his time as if thinking about it, but more likely he was deciding whether to tell us or not.

  "Yeah, a nig . . . black boy,” he said, glancing at Alvin. “It woke me up.”

  “Did you respond to the dog’s barking in any way?”

  “I got my twelve gauge and went outside. Then I called Merle off.”

  “Merle?” I said.

  “Named him after Merle Haggard.”

  “Perfect,” Alvin said.

  “Did you speak to the boy?” I asked the man.

  “No, I didn’t speak to him. But I stayed out in the yard and kept my eyes on him until he went around the bend. Anybody coming down the road at that time of night is probably looking to steal something.”

  “Especially if he’s black,” Alvin said.

  The man looked at Alvin but didn’t comment.

  “He's gone missing,” I said. “A lot of people have been looking for him.”

  He stared at my old jeep. “You’re not the law. Who are you?”

  “A friend of the family, I said. “And this is the boy’s cousin,” I added and nodded over my shoulder at Alvin.

  “Maybe he went off with the people in the car,” the man said.

  “What car?” I asked, and Alvin and I exchanged glances.

  “The one that come along right behind him,” the man answered. “They must of stopped for him because I heard them racing their engine after they went around the bend. It was a still night and sound carries out here.”

  “Do you remember the make of the car?”

  “One of them big SUVs. They all look alike to me. It was a dark color. That’s all I seen.”

 

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