The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  I signed the papers. I needed all the severance I could get.

  Joe Dennis acted genuinely sorry, and I guess I didn’t blame him too much for his impotency to affect the outcome. He had a wife, a mortgage, and three school-age kids to look out for, while trying to survive in an industry where cable TV, talk radio, and the Internet outdistanced the printed word by volumes every day.

  When I returned to the lobby, Kelly surveyed the box of personal things I’d gathered from my office, examined my face for a moment, and said, “Bad day at the office, dear?”

  I was beginning to really like this woman.

  There are seventy-one streets in Atlanta with a variant of “Peachtree” in their name, which drives out-of-towners nuts and manages to confuse locals on a regular basis. This turned out to be one of those times for the locals, namely me, and was made worse by a thundering downpour that came out of nowhere, the sky suddenly darkening and unleashing torrents that beat down on the roof of the Jeep in a loud, drum roll. After crossing back and forth between Peachtree Street, Peachtree Street NE, and Peachtree Street NW a few times, we finally found the apartment complex.

  The Peachtree Villa was a sprawling compound of two-story spiritless brown brick buildings that began at the street, and ran back about a hundred yards through a maze of drives and parking lots, to border a small muddy creek in the rear. Each building carried a letter of the alphabet, and each apartment was numbered. Accordingly, 3C was the third apartment in the third building. Parking spaces weren’t designated, so residents were left to park anywhere they found a vacant spot. I checked the lot for a white Dodge Ram pickup, but didn’t see one. I pulled into a space by Hood’s apartment, and shut off the engine.

  The rain stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving water dripping from the trees, streaming off the roofs and running across the lot in a hundred miniature rivers. The windows inside the Jeep fogged up immediately. Kelly took a tissue from her purse, wiped a spot clear, and we sat looking through it at apartment 3-C. A middle-aged man wearing a wife beater and a pair of plaid Bermuda shorts came out of the apartment next door to Hood’s, stood on the stoop, and gazed at the sky. I could see the food stains on his sleeveless shirt even from where I sat. After a moment, he went back in and closed the door behind him.

  “What now?” Kelly asked.

  “We’ll wait a while. If he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll come back later.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the suggestion.

  “You have a better idea?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said opening the door.

  She headed toward the apartment where the man with the dirty shirt lived, and I started to follow, but she waved me back. I sat and watched as she banged on his door until he appeared in the doorway. They chatted for a minute. I was too far away to hear their words, but they seemed to be getting along well. She laughed out loud at something he said, and his face reflected how pleased he was with himself for it. She could be a charmer when she wanted to be. When she returned to the car, he stood in the doorway smiling and watching her.

  I leaned over and held the door open. “Looks like you made a new friend.”

  “I thought he’d be more willing to talk to me without you along,” she said as she got in.

  She was probably right. “Well?” I said.

  “He said he isn’t sure what kind of car Carl Hood drives now. He did have an old clunker that, to quote him, ‘had more rust on it than paint.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “You aren’t listening. He said ‘did have an old clunker.’ After recently coming into an inheritance, it seems our Mr. Hood has not only quit his job as a welder at a machine shop, he’s been shopping for a new automobile. But his neighbor hasn’t been kept in the loop regarding any purchase.”

  “Does he know where we can find him?”

  “He said to try a bar over on—you’ll never guess—Peachtree Industrial Boulevard. Hood has a girlfriend who dances there. The place is called the Bareback Rider, and I think the name suggests what kind of dancing she actually does. My new friend in 4-C was kind enough to offer to escort me there, but I respectfully declined.”

  The Bareback Rider was just south of the I-285 loop, in the middle of a row of automobile dealerships. We couldn’t have missed it if we’d tried. The windowless one story building was painted hot pink and sat under a tall neon sign that pictured a nude woman astride a rearing horse. A dozen cars sat in the parking lot, several of them pickups, but none of them white Dodge Rams.

  I parked the car and we sat for a moment watching the place. A truck laden with lawn mowers and leaf-blowers pulled in, and several shaggy-haired workers in sweat-stained clothes hopped out and went inside.

  “Sit tight and I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I said, opening the door. “This one looks like man’s work.”

  “Women don’t go in these places?” Kelly said.

  “Sure they do. But most of them are there to take off their clothes. If we go in together, we’ll draw attention. It’s best if we do this as inconspicuously as possible.”

  She didn’t like it, but she agreed. As I got out of the car, a carload of guys who looked like auto mechanics pulled in, already whistling and jeering. Behind me, I heard Kelly hit the door’s auto-lock button.

  The Bareback Rider was dark and loud, and the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke lingered in the air. A bar ran the length of one wall, a single bartender behind it. Up on a runway that dissected the room, two girls were bumping and grinding to the music, wearing nothing but garter belts. Strips of bikini-waxed pubic hair rode atop their swaying pudendas like small furry caterpillars. In the back, several pool tables were attracting almost as many people as the dancers. I didn't see Carl Hood anywhere.

  I walked over to the bar and spun a stool around to watch the girls. Both were striking blondes, prettier than I expected for a joint like this, which was a couple of steps down from some of the more infamous places around town. Atlanta’s nude bars drew more convention business to the city than the Chamber of Commerce's PR department was willing to admit, and a hot dancer could make more money than a bank vice-president. If the wad of bills stuffed beneath these girl’s garter belts was any indication, they did well here too, even though the clientele were mostly landscape workers from Chihuahua, instead of computer salesmen from Toledo.

  The bartender slapped a coaster down on the bar behind me and I ordered a beer. When he brought it, I proffered a generous tip and asked him if Carl Hood had been around.

  “Don’t know him,” he said flatly, and walked away.

  “I don't think Carl will be too happy when he learns I was in town and missed him because of an unaccommodating dickhead bartender.”

  He turned around, stared at me for a moment, and came back. “You a friend of his?”

  “We go way back.”

  “Ain’t seen him for a few days,” he said, his eyes flicking over my shoulder at the dancers. “You might ask his girlfriend. Up there behind you. The blonde.”

  I looked. “They’re both blondes,” I said.

  “The real blonde,” he offered, without expression.

  I saw what he meant. According to the caterpillars, one of them was actually a brunette.

  “Think she knows where I can find him?”

  “No fucking idea,” he said.

  “Any problem with me asking her?”

  “As long as you got five bucks for a table dance, you can ask her anything you want. She ain’t on her own time right now.”

  The music ended and the girls stooped to pick up their clothes, re-hooking sequined bras, stepping ungracefully into panties that were barely more than strings. They made their way down a narrow set of stairs, passing two other girls on the way up, the music already blasting another driving bass line that rattled the glasses behind the bar.

  I waved a five-dollar bill at the real blonde and felt the bartender staring at me.

  “The best place to get a table dance, Hoss,
is to actually be at a table,” the bartender said.

  I picked a table on the far side of the room. The bartender watched as I walked toward it as if I was severely retarded. I caught the girl’s eye and waved her over.

  “Table dance, Hon?” she asked.

  “You bet,” I said, and offered her a hand as she stepped on a chair and climbed atop the small round table.

  “You look like a man who likes to get straight to the point,” she said, and re-shed her sequined top and stringed bottoms, dropping them on the chair and leaving me staring straight up into the caterpillar’s very nest.

  She began to move to the music, a vacant look on her face, the situation obviously more awkward for me than for her.

  I inserted a five spot under her garter belt and she knelt down and kissed the top of my head, bringing a pink nipple within inches of my nose.

  “The bartender says you know Carl Hood,” I said.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “I need to get in touch with him.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m trying to trade him out of that old rust bucket he drives.”

  “You a car salesman?”

  “The best there is.”

  “Well, you’re second best now, honey, cause he already traded it.”

  “He took his business to somebody else?” I tried to sound disappointed. “Did he get a Dodge Ram pickup like I was showing him?”

  She gave me a look I couldn’t decipher and with a gliding move, turned her back to me. She placed her hands on her knees, and went into what the rappers call a tip drill, rocking her butt side to side to the rhythm of the music. I watched for a moment like a guy watching a tennis volley. When I looked up, she was staring around a shoulder, her face expressionless.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  If I was going to shake Carl Hood’s tree, I had to start somewhere.

  “John David Bragg,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Crystal,” she said, her eyes suddenly less vacant.

  “So, did he get the truck or not?” I asked.

  She stepped down off the table and took the five-dollar bill from her garter and tossed it next to my beer.

  “Carl wouldn’t be caught dead in a fucking pickup truck,” she said, as she gathered up her costume and walked away.

  Kelly greeted me with an expectant look when I came out.

  “Well?” she said.

  “No Carl Hood. But I did talk to his girlfriend.”

  “I’ll bet that was a treat.”

  “It was different.”

  “You’re blushing,” she said, laughing. “What did she say?”

  “I think she said Hood doesn’t drive a white Dodge Ram pickup. But she tipped to my bullshit, so I’m not sure whether to believe her or not.”

  “She knew who you were?”

  I thought about the look she gave me when I said my name. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe she just didn’t like having her chain pulled.”

  “It looks like we struck out,” I said, “so how about we stop for something to eat before we head back? It’s early enough to get in almost anywhere.”

  “Thai food?” she asked, and smiled. “I love it and haven’t found a Thai restaurant I like since Charlotte.”

  “Have I got a place for you,” I said

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I drove to Cheshire Bridge Road and Little Bangkok, a hole in the wall at first glance, but actually, one of the best Thai restaurants in Atlanta. I got the feeling that Kelly wasn’t looking for show, she was looking for substance, and if that was the case, this was the place.

  It felt like we were on a date, and I found myself liking the feeling. We were early enough to find a rare parking spot out front, and found the entire wait staff inside waiting for us like a hospitality line at a wedding reception. I caught Kelly surveying the empty dining room behind them with suspicion. I assured her that the lack of business was due to the early hour, not the quality of the food.

  It didn’t take long to prove me right as the small place began to fill up. We sat and studied our menus over a glass of Thai tea, and finally ordered the Tom Kha (coconut soup to me) and Pad Thai, and then experimented with a couple of specialties, resulting in a table laden with more food than we could ever eat. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. For someone so thin, Kelly attacked the food like a lumberjack, her face morphing into various expressions of pure joy as she sampled each dish. I sat drinking in the sight of her. We ate leisurely and never ran out of things to talk about, although we avoided the subject of Grandfather’s death, Carl Hood, or any other unpleasant recent event.

  Finally, I reluctantly said, “It’s getting late and we need to hit the road.”

  She looked at me for a moment, her face expressionless. “I could go back in the morning,” she said.

  “Well . . . yeah, you could do that,” I said, wondering if I was succeeding at all in covering up the fact that she was causing my shameless imagination to run amok.

  “I can pile up on your sofa if you don’t have room,” she said. “If I can find a toothbrush somewhere.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” she said. Looking me dead in the eye.

  What I saw there made me giddy. I caught the attention of our waiter and signaled for the check. When I turned back she was grinning at me.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “I’m happy to amuse you.”

  “I would never have expected it.”

  “Expected what?”

  “You’re a gentleman.”

  “I think you have mistaken me for someone else.”

  “I think not,” she said, still smiling.

  “And what leads you to this revelation?”

  “You blushed when I suggested I stay over. I almost expected you to offer to put me up in a hotel.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t blushing at my own disgustingly obscene thoughts?”

  “I didn’t say you were a saint. I said you were a gentleman.”

  “Don’t go creating expectations I’ll fail to live up to.”

  “Well, we’ve got the rest of the night to see, don’t we?” she said, and fluttered her eyelids at me.

  She gathered up her purse and left me to pay the check. I couldn’t get the credit card out of my wallet fast enough.

  She came into my arms before the door was closed. I kicked it shut behind me and without speaking, led her to my bed.

  We unbuttoned, unzipped, and unpeeled, throwing off clothes in all directions until flesh pressed against flesh, the touch of her silky skin hot against mine. I explored her with my lips and hands and fingers, loosing myself in the lushness of her.

  She suddenly chuckled, and I rose up on my elbows and looked at her.

  “Gentleman J.D.,” she said, giggling.

  “You’re not going to laugh all through this, are you?” I said. “Because if you are, it’s not going to be real good for my ego.”

  “I just might,” she said. “I’m having a lot of fun.”

  I leaned down and traced a slow circle around her navel with my tongue, then moved south. I noticed she stopped giggling. She moaned and arched her back, her fingers in my hair. My tongue found her and she rose to meet me with a small cry. She tasted like some exotic, sweet fruit.

  I moved up her body as she wrapped her legs around me, placed her hands in the small of my back, and guided me inside her. We made love with urgency and desperation as she thrust her hips against me with a fury that I responded to with equal vigor. I climaxed almost immediately.

  “I stand corrected,” she whispered hoarsely into my ear. “You are not a gentleman.”

  I barely found the breath to talk.

  “Just sticking a toe in the water, so to speak.”

  We made love again, this time slowly and deliciously, like swimming in molasses. Afterwards, we lay clinched together, perspiration cooling on our bodies, our hearts
settling to a normal beat.

  “You’re forgiven,” she said, soft and purring.

  Outside, rain was falling again, as thunder rumbled somewhere over the earth’s curve. Water tumbled down a drain-spout near the window, creating a soothing, comfortable background. The words to an old Dylan song about “shelter from the storm” played through my head. Kelly rolled into the crook of my arm, breathing deeply. Her presence there felt alarmingly natural.

  “If I smoked, I’d have a cigarette about now,” I said.

  “Too cliché,” she offered.

  “That was so incredibly . . . stupendous, I have the urge to do something cliché to help me back to the normal world.”

  She kissed me in the hollow of my neck.

  “Oh, we can do better,” she said, and slid a warm hand over my stomach, her fingers touching me lightly. As impossible as I thought it might be, I felt myself stir again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Later, while Kelly slept, I crawled out of bed on weary legs and went into the living room, sat naked in the dark, and called Eloise to tell her I wouldn’t be home tonight. I didn’t tell her that due to pleasant mitigating circumstances, the opportunity to call earlier didn’t present itself. She probably already guessed as much, but I knew she would still worry. When I got her on the line, she was almost too forgiving at the late hour of the call, and I heard a trace of humor in her voice as she said she hoped Kelly and I were “getting to know one another.”

  The phone rang in my hand the second I placed it in the cradle. I picked it back up quickly hoping it didn’t wake Kelly.

  A male voice said, “We need to talk.”

  “Who is this? I asked.

  “Carl Hood. I’m outside. Come on out and let’s chew the fat awhile.”

  I walked over and cracked the blinds and looked out. The rain had diminished to a mist.

  A late model Cadillac Esplanade was parked directly in front of my apartment. Cigarette smoke curled through the crack of a driver’s side window and trailed off into the damp night. The interior lights came on to show Carl Hood behind the wheel, bathed in the glow of the overhead dome as if he’d spotlighted himself for me to see. I made sure Kelly was still asleep—which she was—put on my clothes, and went outside.