The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  After some small talk, Natasha excused herself and went to take a quick shower and change her clothes. She told me to make myself at home, so I took the opportunity to scope out her bungalow. She wasn’t a girlie girl, I noticed. Dainty knick-knacks and lacy doilies shared no part of the well-appointed, but not overly-done country-rustic décor. Dark wooden furniture with bold colored cushions dominated the room, with a large native-stone fireplace the center focus. The place wasn’t necessarily masculine, but it did give off the air of a bold type-A personality, someone who was probably accustomed to running things her way.

  Pictures of Natasha on horseback, jumping hedges, and hunting foxes formed a gallery on one wall. I went over and studied them. Not one of them showed her with anyone who looked to be an ex-husband. Out of the marriage, off the wall, I suspected. One photo was of her standing with an attractive elderly couple dressed in a lot of tweeds, whom I took to be her parents, the occupants of the big house next door. Her father was a distinguished-looking gentleman wearing a brimmed hat that only needed a feather in it to mark him as the squire of the estate. Her mother would have been attractive at any age. I could see where Natasha got her looks.

  Natasha finally came out wearing brown slacks, with matching belt and shoes, and a beige collared-blouse open at the throat. Small gold studs in her ears seemed to be the only jewelry she wore. She had pinned her hair up in a purposely tangled way that gave her an elegant and an outdoorsy look at the same time. If she’d put on makeup, it didn’t show, but she didn’t need it. She was a naturally beautiful woman.

  “How about some lunch?” she said. “I’m famished.”

  “Sure, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said, thinking of the sensible but unsatisfying breakfast Kelly made.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble, we’re going out,” she answered. “I’m a terrible cook. I have someone to do that, but I gave her a paid vacation this week. If things go as planned, we won’t be here much anyway. I’m going to keep you busy. So, we’ll go to a restaurant in Tryon, have a leisurely lunch, and get acquainted.”

  She handed me an uncorked bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. “The place we’re going is BYOB, and I like a glass of wine with my lunch.”

  The wine was French, and to my untrained eye, looked expensive.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, once we were outside. “I’ll give you a tour of the area after lunch, and we can go meet some people.”

  I followed her out to her car, a dark-blue Chevy Suburban, and climbed in. She smelled as nice as she looked. Not perfumy, but fresh, like a forest after a rain.

  As we pulled out of the drive, she looked at me and grinned. “Kelly sounds like she’s madly in love with you and I can see why. You’re hot.”

  “And she said you were outspoken,” I said, giving her a quick look.

  “I speak my mind. Does that bother you?”

  “It depends on what’s on your mind.”

  She kept her eyes on the road, but a tiny smile curled the corners of her mouth, like she had a comment on that but didn’t make it.

  “I’m excited about this,” she said, instead. “I minored in drama in college, and this will give me a chance to flex my acting chops.”

  “Do you think it’s really necessary for us to pose as a couple?” I said.

  “Absolutely. To get you in with my crowd will take a bit of play-acting. It’s the only way. As I told Kelly, if I just introduce you to everyone as a sportswriter from Atlanta, and the friend of a friend, up to write about the race, no one will give you anything other than horse and steeplechase sound bites. If they think you and I have a thing going on, then they will be intrigued, and even nosey. They will want to talk to you.”

  I still wasn’t sure the charade was necessary, but if she believed it would get her friends to loosen their tongues around me, then I’d go along with it. What did Kelly say? With Natasha, “just go with the flow.”

  Natasha cocked her head and studied me.

  “Kelly doesn’t trust me with you, does she?” she said. “Or, is it you she doesn’t trust?”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “I love Kelly,” she said, “she’s one of the few female friends I have, but she holds grudges. I stole a boy in college she had a crush on, and she’s never forgotten it. She takes things too seriously. He wasn’t for her anyway. She was too good for him. I did her a favor.”

  “She probably doesn’t see it that way,” I said.

  “I know, but I have to be me. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have many female friends. Kelly, as hard as it is to believe, is still one of them. I like men; I’m not ashamed to say it. If I see one I want, I go and get him. That boy deserved someone like me, and I don’t mean that as a compliment to myself. I'm someone who’s heart he couldn’t break. But does that make me an awful person?”

  “You’re just a woman who goes after what she wants. This story actually says as much about him as you. I believe a man who is easily stolen away from his woman doesn’t deserve that woman.”

  “Do you deserve Kelly?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t.” I said, “Like with that guy in college, she’s too good for me, too. But unlike him, if our relationship ends, she’ll have to be the one to do it. Not me.”

  “True blue J.D. Bragg,” she said.

  It was the second time in twenty-four hours someone called me that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Natasha drove us into Tryon, a picturesque little town along the north side of the North and South Carolina state line. Our destination was a restaurant named Huckleberry’s, housed in a small distressed brick building with a steep red roof in a relatively new shopping center called Saint Luke’s Plaza. She found a parking spot near it, and I followed her into the restaurant.

  A hostess showed us to a table with a bright purple-blue tablecloth—the color of a huckleberry was my guess. The walls were a combination of stained wooden planks and the same distressed brick as the exterior, decorated in a random pattern with old tin advertising signs, various other tchotchkes, and potted plants. I wasn’t quite sure what look they were going for, but it was a comfortable place, more contemporary perhaps than the antique advertising signs on the wall suggested. I noticed several diners wearing riding boots and britches. Natasha knew them, waved at them, but didn’t speak. This place was obviously a horse-person hangout.

  A pretty young waitress came and delivered our menus, then uncorked the bottle of wine we brought and filled two glasses for us. It tasted just as expensive as the label looked. We clinked glasses, and I studied the menu. Soups, sandwiches, paninis, and quiche dominated, but Natasha ignored the light fare and ordered the cheeseburger and fries. She was a woman after my own heart. I ordered the same thing.

  “So,” she said when the waitress left. “Are you going to be my boyfriend?”

  I had resigned myself to the idea. “If you insist.”

  “Atta boy,” she said, “but first we’ll have to share a few personal details. Things my friends would expect us to know about each other. These people are the curious sort, they don’t trust those outside our little world, and they are going to ask questions. So, we need to exchange a little history. Character traits. Even some intimate details.”

  “You think your friends would pry into the intimacy of our relationship?”

  “It could happen. An old boyfriend and an ex-husband are still around, and you may meet them. We’re still friends of a sort, but they, if for no other reason than to make a silly men’s game of it, may gig you a bit by letting you know they came before you. Like dogs marking a tree. But don’t let them bother you, it’s just their egos.”

  “Okay, I said. “So, tell me something intimate about you that as a boyfriend, I would know.”

  She thought about it, then smiled. “I have a mole inside my upper right thigh, a crescent scar on my left buttock where a horse stepped on me after a fall, and I’m loud when I make love.”

  “Interesting to know, but if anybody brings up s
omething like that to me, I will punch them in the mouth.”

  “How chivalrous. That would certainly shock them. This is not a ‘punch you in the mouth’ crowd. They might hire someone to do it, but they would rarely dirty their hands resorting to something so base. Many of them are trust-fund babies like me, and when you have several generations of wealth behind you and have never held a real job, you become different, or at least you think you are. Whether we admit it or not, many in our little community like to think of themselves as lords and ladies from another era, where palace intrigues fill our lives, and any subject is fair game for amusement since we have little else to talk about beyond our horses, hounds, charities, and leisure activities.

  I couldn’t tell if she was putting me on or not. “So, the old cliché ‘the rich are different’ is true.”

  “It is, in our minds.”

  “You don’t seem that way.”

  “Thank you. I take that as a compliment, but sometimes I’m just like them. You’ll see. You will be the first man I’ve ever gone out with who has to work for a living. Don’t be surprised if my closest friends comment on that. It will be an oddity to them, and so will you, which will make some of them very curious about us. As I said, curious enough to try to get to know you, which should help you in your task.”

  I told her a few things about me, but none of them so intimate. If she wanted that, she could make it up. Her exes would never know. We decided I’d remain J.D. Bragg, a journalist with SportsWord magazine, and say we’d met in a bar on one of her shopping trips to Atlanta. I told her about my college football history, a few career-related stories, and that I’d never married. She told me about her family, I told her about mine—or the lack of them. I liked country music; she didn’t. We both loved rock and roll, but she didn’t like heavy metal. I was an early morning person; she was a late riser. And so on. By the time we finished, we both knew our lines well enough to take the show on the road.

  “Where did your money come from, or is that a question I shouldn’t ask?”

  “Our money came from my great-grandfather, who was a New York financier with a seat on the stock exchange. No one has worked in my family since him, and unless we have another great depression, no one ever will.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “As Dudley Moore said in the movie Arthur, ‘it doesn’t suck.’ I’m thankful for having it, but I do have something of a guilt complex, which is why I try to give back as much as I can. I’m a supporter of several charities, including a scholarship fund that helps deserving young people who can’t afford it, go to college. In fact, Jamal Johnson is one of our recipients. His mother is a maid and cook for good friends of mine. I know her and Jamal. He is a smart, hard-working kid with good grades and high hopes. That’s why I know he didn’t do what they say he did, and why he wouldn’t ‘run away.”

  It was the same story Kelly got from everyone she interviewed. “But they found the rifle that killed the horse at his house,” I said, to play a little devil’s advocate.

  “Anyone could have put it there.”

  “By anyone, you mean the person who actually shot the horse.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have anyone in mind?”

  She didn’t need to think about it. “Wilson Kroll,” she quickly said. “The horse’s owner. He’s an asshole. Nobody likes him, and I wouldn’t put it past him to kill his horse for the insurance money.”

  It was like she was reading my mind.

  “Jamal worked part-time for Mr. Kroll in his stables until just a few days before the shooting. Kroll fired him on a trumped-up charge. Jamal was a good worker who had his pick of stables for summer jobs when school was out. I think Kroll planned on blaming Jamal from the beginning and set the whole thing up—the firing, the argument he claims he and Jamal had, and the rifle in the shed.”

  “Do you have any proof of that?” I asked.

  “I don’t need proof. I know Jamal didn’t do it. So does everyone else who knows him.”

  “Except Wilson Kroll,” I said.

  “He’s lying.”

  “There’s a slight problem with that, you know,” I said. “Wilson Kroll was out of town when his horse was shot.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. “He’s not a stupid man. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he had it done. Getting someone else to do his dirty work would be his style.”

  It was all what I already believed, but it didn’t hurt to hear her agree with me. “Is Kroll one of your trust-fund babies?’

  “Sort of. Mr. Kroll hasn’t been in the area as long as most of us, but he has one of the bigger horse farms in the area. It isn’t here around Tryon. It’s over in South Carolina where he could pick up a lot of land on the cheap. He tore down an old farmhouse that had been in someone’s family for over a hundred years and built this monstrosity that resembles a Lichtenstein castle. He’s tacky rich. His father was big in scrap iron and shipping barges on Lake Erie and left it all to him. Some call that ‘new money,’ and look down their noses at them.”

  “But not you,” I said.

  “I don’t care about that kind of snobbery. I dislike Wilson Kroll because he’s a crude man, and possibly a criminal. There are rumors he’s connected to organized crime somehow, up north. He’s simply an awful man.”

  The organized crime thing was news. “If Kroll is so rich, why would he need the insurance money?” I asked. “I mean, a couple of million bucks is a lot to me, but to a man like him, it probably doesn’t mean much. Why would he risk going to jail for that?”

  “A few years ago, Atlantic Magazine reported on a study done by Boston College on Wealth and Philanthropy,” Natasha said. “I’ve never forgotten the details because it’s so true. One of the things they found was that the wealthy worry about money as much as anyone. The rich are generally a dissatisfied lot. Money can create deep anxieties. Many of us still don’t consider ourselves financially secure; we think there’s always a need for more. If you’ve got fifty million, a hundred million would be better.”

  “Oh dear. Anxieties, how awful.”

  “Believe me, the pleasures of money wear off over time. Most people spoil themselves with the occasional splurge—an expensive dinner, a new dress, a day at a spa, but to the very wealthy, those things are just everyday choices. The psychological pleasure of it is lost. When special occasions happen every day, they aren’t special anymore.”

  “Poor little trust-fund-baby,” I said.

  “See, just as you’re proving by your snide remarks, we’ve lost the right to complain. If we do, you accuse us of being ungrateful. But we do have our worries. Money is both a blessing and a curse. I read somewhere that money is like fire: it will warm your feet, but it can burn your socks off.”

  Give me one example of how money is a curse,” I said.

  “Children. All wealthy parents worry that their money will ruin their children’s lives. It will make them trust-fund brats if their inheritances are too large, or their children will hate them if any of their money goes to charity and not to them. They also worry that money will rob them of ambition, mess them up—give them a sense of entitlement, and prevent them from developing a strong sense of empathy and compassion.”

  “You don’t seem to be ruined too much by your inheritance,” I said.

  “Three marriages?” she said. “A wasted education? Still living with my parents? Are you kidding, J.D.?”

  “Well, at least you don’t have children,” I said. “You’re spared that worry.” I regretted it the second I said it.

  She gave me a hurt look. “You think I should be happy about that? It isn’t because I didn’t try. Three marriages, two pregnancies, two miscarriages. My parents gave me their fortune. God gave me faulty plumbing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was cruel of me.”

  She waved away my apology. “Oh hell,” she said. “I would probably make a terrible mother, anyway.”

  Somehow, I didn’t belie
ve that.

  “But, great wealth can hurt,” she said, “whether you believe it or not. “Do people love you for your money or yourself? And some non-wealthy people tend to treat the wealthy differently. You can’t just be a normal person around them. It’s hard for the wealthy to have non-wealthy friends. You can’t share the personal problems in your life without getting: ‘Yeah, wouldn’t I like to have your problems.’ The poor-little-rich-kid response is so obvious—and seemingly so sensible—that the rich themselves often internalize it, and as a result become uncomfortable in their interactions with the non-wealthy. Once people cross a certain financial threshold, they have the tendency to hang out with one another, to enjoy the company of people who know that money relieves some burdens but not others. Hence, this little close-knit community of horse people here.

  “I’m still not feeling the sympathy here,” I said. “Some wealthy people glorify their wealth and think it means they’re smarter and wiser than the rest of us. And those children you say their wealthy parents are worried about? They do end up, as Warren Buffet dubbed them, ‘the lucky sperm club,’ displaying the stereotypical arrogance of privilege—the fast cars and excessive lifestyles. Just as many of their own parents did in their time.”

  “You’re ignoring those who do great things with their money: supporting charities, building museums, schools, hospitals, and funding good works for people all over the world.”

  I know,” I said. “In that respect the rich aren’t different. There are good people and bad people, whether rich or poor.”

  “You know,” Natasha said, “we’re often called the ‘idle rich.’ But living an idle life isn’t as much a personal choice as most think. It’s an inevitability brought on by the curse of money. Many of the bright and intelligent attempt jobs out of college, but find themselves moving from one job or career to another. Something would always happen at each job that those who have to work would learn to tolerate, but the super wealthy would just say, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ Eventually, they don’t have a job or a career. In other cases, wealthy workers find their work viewed as a charade, so why bother if no one takes you seriously? That’s what creates the ‘idle rich.’”