The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  Gilmore glared at me, probably miffed that the hired help would talk back to him in such a way. “We can’t run the story based on what you’ve got,” Gilmore said. “And that’s a simple fact. You ought to know that, John David.”

  “He’s paid the girl off, I’d stake my life on it,” I said. “I’ll bet she’s driving around right now in a new Mustang. I’m not giving up on this, guys. I’ve never backed off a story in my life.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Burt Lowe answered. “And it’s that kind of attitude that’s hurt you everywhere you’ve worked. We took a chance on you, John David. Everyone said you were trouble, but Joe Dennis stuck up for you. He said your talent far outweighed any difficulties you might present. Don’t prove him wrong. Don’t try to use this publication to settle an old score with Barry Beal. I won’t allow it.”

  “I assure you I have no score to settle,” I said. “Sure, Beal got me fired. But everyone who knows what an asshole he is, also knows that the story was true. Christ Burt, the man hit a duck hook into the crowd at Pebble Beach and knocked a woman stone cold. When he came down the fairway to where she was lying, he asked his caddy if the cameras were on him. When he found out they weren’t, he said, ‘fuck her then, find my ball,’ I was standing right there. I heard him with my own ears.”

  “Unfortunately none of the hundreds of spectators lining that part of the fairway heard it,” Stan Gilmore broke in. “Beal claimed you made it up because you were angry that he’d snubbed you in a press conference earlier that week.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “As I understand it,” Gilmore continued, “you got fired because after the paper killed your story, you leaked it to a late-night TV host. He went on the air and made a joke about it in front of millions of people.”

  I had to smile at that. It was my one fond memory of the entire incident. The late show host did what my insignificant piece could never have done. He made the story famous. For weeks afterwards, the phrase “fuck her then, find my ball,” could be heard on golf courses all across America, uttered by weekend golfers anytime an errant shot was hit, and guaranteed to get a laugh from all who heard it.

  “I can find this woman, Burt,” I said. “I just need a little time. He probably raped her. Her clothes were torn and her face was beaten and bruised. We can't let him get away with this.”

  Burt sat looking at me for a long moment and then said, “I’ll give you 24 hours, John David. After that, I want you working on something else. Check out what our stringers are sending in. Somebody somewhere might be on to something you can pick up on. Or go check out the Braves tonight. The word is there’s already trouble brewing between their front office and a certain highly paid superstar who isn’t pulling his weight. Go look into that.”

  He showed me what I guess was his most stern look and repeated, “24 hours, John David, and I mean it. Otherwise, you will no longer be employed here.”

  There was nothing left to say after that, so I departed. Thankfully Lydia Wells was away from her desk. I was taking this poorly, and the last thing I needed was another disapproving gaze from her. One thing I was sure about though: I wasn’t about to give up on this story, no matter how long it took.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thirty minutes later I pulled under the portico of the Palace Hotel on Peachtree Street in Buckhead, not far from the Ritz-Carlton and two of America’s most exclusive shopping malls: Lenox Square, where the well-to-do shopped, and Phipps Plaza, where the even more well-to-do shopped. I tossed the keys for my aging Jeep Wrangler to a uniformed parking valet. He peered inside the car like he was considering brushing off the seat before climbing in. I was through the revolving doors and into the lobby when he finally climbed into the car.

  The lobby was packed. Apparently, half of the traveling world was checking out of the posh hotel at once. A platoon of bellhops laden with luggage bore down on me, one of them striking my knee with the hard edge of a baggage cart. He didn’t seem to notice and never broke stride as he sailed past. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to my misfortune—as if tall blond men hopping around on one leg were a common sight at the Palace.

  I put my foot down gently and tried some weight on it, then stood and rubbed the pain out. Eventually, I was able to limp my way through the crowd and into the hotel’s cocktail lounge where I saw Tommy Upshaw behind the bar plying his trade. I had called the Palace after the Lowe meeting to see if Upshaw was working tonight, and found out he was on brunch duty today. Upshaw was my source for the Beal story; he had also been my source for a few other stories over the years. A consummate hustler and professional gossip, he seemed to end up behind the bar at hotspots frequented by people who made the news, including many famous athletes. Whether the job was at the latest chic watering hole or a hotel like the Palace, Tommy Upshaw always managed to get close to the action.

  He had called me on Monday morning telling me he had something really prime that he was holding just for me. In Upshaw’s parlance, that meant that if I were to come across with enough cash, he wouldn’t call anyone else about it. A hundred bucks—that I could ill afford—got the story from him; now I was hoping he could add to it in a second telling.

  A half-dozen people sat at the bar, all bearing the look of departing guests who needed a bit of liquid preparation before their flights to Boise, or Baton Rouge, or wherever they came from. I found a vacant stool at the end of the bar and got Upshaw’s attention. He came right over.

  “J.D. my man, how goes it?”

  “Fine Tommy, how are you?”

  “If I was any better they’d want a urine sample,” he said. “How ‘bout a drink?” He shot a glance down the bar. “My Bloody Marys seem to be in demand this morning.”

  I followed his gaze. Tall red drinks were indeed lined up on the bar like fence posts. “Why not?” I said. It was early, but it had been a rough day already, and a drink sounded good. Seconds later a celery-festooned libation was sitting on the bar in front of me, with Upshaw behind it, studying me with his ferret-like eyes.

  “So, you going to nail a certain golfer’s ass to the wall?” he asked.

  “I’m working on it. But I can’t find the girl. I thought you might be able to remember something else about her.”

  A man down the bar thunked a fingernail against a glass to get Upshaw’s attention. I waited as he prepared and served another Bloody Mary.

  When Upshaw returned he said, “I don’t know, J.D., I think I told you everything.”

  “Tell me again,” I said.

  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Like I told you, Barry Beal and this chick showed up around 9:30 on Sunday night. They sat at the bar and ordered drinks.”

  “You said she was a looker.”

  “Oh yeah, a real trophy—and a lot younger than him. I thought about carding her, but seeing as who she was with . . .”

  “Describe her again.”

  Upshaw screwed up his face in thought. “Long dark hair, brown eyes. Average height. Well-built. Went for the girly drinks. Had me slicing goddamn fruit and running the blender forever. In fact, I think she might have even bartended at one time. We got into this discussion about the right way to make a Banana Ivanov. You put both lemon and lime juice in it. Not too many people know that, but she did.”

  “What was Beal doing while you two were discussing the finer points of mixology?”

  “He was working her as hard as he could. Touchy-feely, you know. Kept the drinks stacked up in front of her. He was trying to play a little grab-ass below the bar, and she was fending him off pretty well. But I guess the booze finally got to her because she ended up leaving with him.”

  “Did you see them get into the elevator?”

  “Naw, man. But when they left, Beal was attached to her like a pilot fish. Where else were they going?”

  “You never caught her name?”

  Upshaw shook his head. “He always called her ‘love’ or ‘sweetheart’ in that phony British accent of
his.”

  “South African.” I offered.

  Upshaw gave me a puzzled look.

  “Beal is from South Africa.”

  Upshaw fanned his fingers as if to say “whatever,” and continued.

  “I closed up a little after midnight and that’s when I saw her in the parking lot. She’d spilled her purse all over the pavement and was looking for her car keys. I helped her gather everything up and opened her door for her. Like I told you, she looked like a plane crash survivor. She was sort of bent over, holding her ribs, one eye was swollen closed, her lip was busted, and her blouse was practically torn off. Nice tits, I might add.” Upshaw seemed to lose himself in the vision.

  “Then what happened?” I asked, trying to drag him back to the moment.

  Upshaw shrugged and gave me a blank look. “First thing Monday morning I called you about it. And that’s it.”

  “I mean in the parking lot. Did she say anything to suggest she’d been raped?”

  “She didn’t say that, but she could’ve been. She certainly looked it. I asked her if she needed help and she refused. She jumped into her car and drove off.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Something red and small. Not too fancy. Japanese I think.”

  “Did you get a look at the license plate?”

  “Hell, J.D., I didn’t notice that.”

  “Could she have been a hooker?”

  “I’d say no. I think I know them all and I’ve never seen her before.” Besides, she didn’t look or act like a pro. She was a little too naïve.”

  A customer at the other end of the bar called out and Upshaw left to attend to him. He returned just as I drained the last of the Bloody Mary. The final swallow took my breath away as a generous shot of Tabasco waiting at the bottom of the glass blazed a flaming trail down my esophagus.

  “Ready for another?” Upshaw asked.

  It was a moment before I could speak. “Better not,” I said, “I might need my stomach for later on.”

  Upshaw looked hurt.

  “Did either she or Beal talk to anyone else here?” I asked. I was running out of questions.

  “Not that I saw,” Upshaw said, then turned his head sideways and gave me a look. “There might be something . . .”

  I knew the look. He’d thought of something new to sell me. I picked up the tab and studied it for a moment, then brought out a ten and a twenty and threw them down, waving off the change as if I left tips like that every day.

  Upshaw deftly palmed the twenty and leaned in closer.

  “Beal and this chick may work together,” he said. “When they first came in they talked about real estate and some golf development or resort he’s planning to build. She seemed involved somehow. That was before Beal started hitting on her so hard.” Upshaw made a face. “The man needs to work on his lines. He was downright embarrassing—totally lame repertoire.”

  That Beal was into the golf course design and development business wasn’t exactly big news. A lot of pros were, so why not Barry Beal? However, hearing that the two might be working together was something.

  “Did you happen to hear where he’s building this place?” I asked.

  Upshaw grinned. “Hearing shit is my life, bro. Someplace in South Carolina. East Toe or something. I didn’t quite understand that part.”

  “Eastatoe?” I asked, surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Would I make up a name like East Toe?”

  “Eas-ta-toey,” I pronounced phonetically. Was that it?”

  “Probably. It was something weird like that.”

  “It’s a Cherokee name for a trout stream and the small valley it flows through in the northwestern tip of South Carolina. I grew up around there.”

  “No shit. Small world, huh,” he said, holding up a finger to a woman waving an empty glass at him.

  Before he moved off to attend to her, he added, “Come to think of it, she may even live there. She had a pretty strong hillbilly accent. I used to have a girlfriend from up that way that talked just like her. Sort of twang rather than drawl.”

  It was my first real lead to finding the victim of Beal’s assault, and unexpectedly, it was taking me home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As I left the Palace, I considered my options. I could go to South Carolina to look for Beal’s assault victim—which might turn out to be a wild goose chase—and would certainly eat up the 24 hours Burt Lowe gave me, or I could call my grandfather, the one person who could probably find her easier than I could. But could I swallow my pride and set aside my bitterness to call him? The last time I asked for his help was a dozen years ago, and the stringent old man with his unyielding principles turned his back on me. Since then, we have barely spoken to each other. But if asking for his help again for the sake of expediency proved me more selfish than proud, so be it. He already thought worse things of me anyway.

  I listened as the rings summoned the offices of the Clarion, the small weekly newspaper in Upstate South Carolina that my grandfather, the almighty Garnet Quincy Bragg, had published for all of his adult life. I fought off the urge to hang up before anyone answered by telling myself that this wasn’t a personal call, it was business. Any path the conversation took would likely be away from the troubles that lay like a minefield between us. Besides, once my grandfather learned that a developer was planning to skin the top off of hundreds of acres of pristine countryside in his own backyard, family problems would take a back seat.

  As the self-proclaimed guardian of the environment in all of Upstate South Carolina, Grandfather would have a keen interest in anyone intent on uglifying the landscape. Since Eastatoe Valley was one of the loveliest spots in the county, still untouched by the developer’s blade as far as I knew, he would jump into the fray with fangs and claws bared—and I hoped—locate my missing woman in the process.

  Doris Mozingo, my grandfather’s elderly secretary, answered after the first ring and failed to hide her surprise at hearing my voice. We exchanged brief but awkward pleasantries, then she put me on hold to break the news to Grandfather about who was on the line.

  He picked up and after some hesitation said, “This is Garnet.”

  He sounded tired. Or maybe just old. He was in his eighties now, but it was hard to think of him as that old. I guess I would always see him through ten-year-old eyes, the age I was when my sister Eloise and I went to live with him after both our parents were killed.

  “Hello Grandfather,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Does something have to be wrong for me to call?”

  He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. He seemed to always expect the worst from me.

  “Relax,” I said. “I haven’t been arrested in a month, and I’ve got the coke habit down to a c-note a day.”

  I heard him sigh. I felt a small pang of something like regret for being a smartass. But he always brought that out in me. Or maybe I waited for him to bring it out.

  “What should I think?” he said. “I never hear from you and suddenly you call? I worry about you.”

  The conversation was becoming too personal. As I was more comfortable with small talk, I said, “I’ve never been better. How are you?”

  “Fine,” he answered, a question in his voice as if he were still waiting for me to deliver bad news.

  “How are things at the paper?”

  “Same as always.”

  “That old Cadillac still purring along?”

  I pictured Grandfather’s vintage 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, black as a hearse with tailfins like the Batmobile. It was his toy, his hobby, and his great love, and he took better care of it than he did of himself. Or anyone else, I thought, with some bitterness.

  Having spanned the entire universe of small talk, I decided it was time to get to the point. “A story I’m working on has led me to your neck of the woods, and I need to talk to a young woman who I think lives there. I can’t get away right now, or I’d come up there myself. I was
hoping you could help me out.”

  It was a moment before he spoke, stunned I suppose, that I was actually seeking his help. “What’s this story about?” he asked. “Are you still working for that sports tabloid?”

  He pronounced “tabloid” as if it were a dirty word.

  Garnet Bragg, the quintessential serious journalist.

  “Yes I am,” I said. “The story involves a professional golfer.”

  “I don’t know much about golf.”

  He said it as if he was proud of the fact—and I knew he was. My grandfather believed that the attention given to sports in America was a monumental waste of time and intellect. I’d learned that firsthand. He never missed a school science fair, parent’s day, or speech club debate, but it was a rare event when he came to one of my football games.

  The sports section of the Clarion only covered local events, such as school sports and church softball leagues, and was written by someone with other duties that probably came first. I suspected that the only reason Grandfather ever read his sports page was to check the quality of the writing.

  The Clarion’s hard news was mostly local too, with a large portion of the paper devoted to human-interest pieces, family reunions, obituaries, and wedding announcements. The paper was about the community and for the community, and had been since the day my grandfather bought it over sixty years ago. But I had to admit, when real news did come along, the Clarion would rise above any other dull tome from Hicksville. Grandfather’s tenacious reporting and barbed editorials were the stuff of journalistic legend—and he had the Pulitzer to prove it. As a publisher, he was everything Burt Lowe was not—I would give him that.

  “You want me to interview this person?”

  “I just need you to help me find her, Grandfather. I’ll come up there to talk to her myself if you do.”

  “What is her name?”

  “I don’t know her name, or where she lives. All I know is that she’s young and pretty, and sporting a black eye and a busted lip. I think she works for this golfer named Barry Beal,” I added, and told him what I thought Beal did to her. “She may have met him up there.”