The J D Bragg Mystery Series Box Set

by Ron Fisher

  “You could call me that,” I said.

  “Well, you don’t need to stay here around the clock. We’ll call you the minute there is any change in Ms. Mayfield’s condition.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “If she remains stable, I’ll probably stay tonight with my sister over in Pickens County.” I fished out one of my SportsWord cards and handed it to him. “You can reach me on my cell.”

  He glanced at my card. “Leave one for the nurse at the station in the hall, too, Mr. Bragg. And go get some rest.” He nodded at Kelly. “You’ll wear yourself out staying here, and she wouldn’t want that, would she?”

  I got the message. It was his way of saying my being there was getting in everyone’s way and wasn’t helping Kelly. So, from today on, I decided, I would visit her daily, and sleep in a comfortable bed at Eloise’s at night. I did have other things I could do to help. Even when Kelly awoke, she wouldn’t be going back to work anytime soon. I could help Eloise get the paper out until Kelly could come back. The Clarion was Eloise’s and Mackenzie’s only source of income. I would need to become more than just the absentee publisher for a while.

  I sat with Kelly until mid-morning, and then went to meet Eloise and Bagwell at the Clarion offices in Pickens.

  #

  Sheriff Arlen Bagwell’s cruiser was sitting in one of the parking spaces by the Clarion’s front door when I arrived. Eloise’s Honda Accord was parked next to it. I found Bagwell inside, standing by the reception desk with Eloise and Mackenzie.

  After a couple of unenthusiastic “good mornings,” I asked Bagwell if there was any progress in identifying Kelly’s attacker.

  “Not from what we’ve found at the house,” he said. “But we did catch a break. A couple of teenagers came forward and said they may have seen the assailants—and notice I said, assailants. Looks like there were two of them. These kids, both from the neighborhood—a girl and her boyfriend—were out on the golf course last night at about the time it happened. They saw a dark SUV come up the street and pull in behind a maintenance shed, like whoever it was didn’t want to be seen by any passers-by. The kids found that suspicious, so they hid to keep from being seen. My guess is, they were already there, lying on the grass, involved in a little teenage hanky-panky.

  “We’re lucky they contacted us,” he added. “Seems the girl’s dad ain’t too happy about them being out there together, but when the kids heard what had happened to Ms. Mayfield, they did the right thing and called us, despite the dad finding out about it.

  “They say they saw two men get out of the SUV and go across the street and into the trees behind the houses that line the fairway there—Ms. Mayfield’s house is one of them. They said the men were walking fast like they knew where they were going. They described one of them as a big guy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Too dark to tell the color. He was wearing a T-shirt under a vest of some kind, either denim or leather. His arms were covered in tattoos, but it was too dark to make them out. All they could say about the other man was that he was a little shorter, stocky, and dressed in dark colors that sort of blended in with the shadows. They couldn’t offer anything on the ages of either one other than they weren’t really young or really old. That’s the best I could get out of them.

  “They say the men were gone probably twenty to thirty minutes, then returned and left the way they came. They didn’t get the make or model of the SUV, or the plate number. My guys are canvassing the area to see if any of the neighbors saw or heard anything.”

  “This doesn’t sound random to me,” I said, “As if these guys knew where they were going.”

  “I agree,” Bagwell said. “Which says Ms. Mayfield was targeted. By the way, we found the pizza delivery guy. When he learned that Ms. Mayfield was probably inside and being attacked when he showed up at her door, the only thing he seemed to care about was her stiffing him for a pizza, and him skinning his knuckles banging on her door. The guy was a real self-centered little shit—pardon the French, ladies—but he didn’t see or hear anything going on inside. He had nothing else to offer.”

  I said, “Could his banging on the door have scared these guys off?”

  Bagwell considered it. “Well, it does look like her attacker was trying to kill her, but didn’t finish the job for some reason. So, maybe the kid might have helped in spite of his self-serving manner.”

  “Maybe the Dixie Demons did it?” Mackenzie said.

  We all stopped and looked at her. She didn’t seem to be joking.

  “Ponytail, T-shirt and vest, tattoos?” she said. “The one guy was dressed like a biker.”

  “Dixie Demons?” I said and gave her a puzzled look.

  “It’s a biker gang, J.D..”

  “I know who they are, but what do they have to do with Kelly?”

  “Kelly saw some of them. She went to a biker bar on Tiger Boulevard in Clemson, and there was a bunch of them there. She said they were rough-looking characters, and warned me to stay out of Clemson when they have their big gathering. As if I’d hang with outlaw bikers,” Mackenzie added, and rolled her eyes.

  “Gathering?” I said.

  Eloise explained. “The Dixie Demons are having their annual get-together, or reunion, or whatever they call it, in Clemson later this summer. There’s a few of them in town this week making plans and arranging things. We covered this months ago when the city agreed to let them come. There could be five or six hundred of them in Clemson for several days. It’s the biggest thing to happen there since the parade for Coach Swinney and the boys when they won this last national championship.”

  Another example of how little attention I paid to the newspaper that listed me as the publisher. Grandfather would be rolling over in his grave.

  “Was Kelly doing another story on these bikers?” I asked. “She wouldn’t just stop by a biker bar for a happy-hour cocktail—unless she’s leading a double life that I don’t know about.”

  “She didn’t say anything about it to me,” Eloise said. “But as I said, she never tells anyone what she’s working on until she’s ready to go to press with it.”

  “Where is this biker outfit based?” I asked.

  “Some little town in North Carolina close to the Virginia line,” Bagwell said. “Mt. Airy,

  Yadkinville, someplace like that. But they have chapters in other Southern states.”

  “Mt. Airy,” I said. “Wasn’t the fictional town of Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show based on Mt. Airy, or shot there, or something? It’s hard to imagine an outlaw biker gang coming out of there. Reminds me of a story a guy I know named Tom Monroe told me. He grew up in Iowa and said biker gangs in the Midwest weren’t all that tough. Instead of ‘Born to raise hell,’ the tattoos on their arms read, ‘Born to raise corn.’ Are these Dixie Demons really dangerous?”

  “Around the South, they might even be worse than the Hells Angels,” Bagwell said. “They add hate crimes to their list of criminal activities.”

  “And the people who live in Clemson are okay with hundreds of them coming to town all at once?”

  “They had a public vote on it,” Bagwell said. “A majority voted to let them come, which surprised me. I was against it. I think they’re just asking for trouble. But Larry Watson, the Clemson Chief of police, checked with other towns that have hosted this thing in past years and there’s never been any trouble to speak of. The tourism director for the Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce said it’s almost like a family reunion for them—and they don’t come looking for trouble.”

  “When was Kelly at that bar?” I asked Mackenzie. “Maybe one them of followed her when she left there or found out where she lived.”

  “Thursday night,” Mackenzie said. “She told me about it yesterday when I got to work.”

  Bagwell said, “I’ll get with Larry Watson and see if he can talk to these bikers, or stop by this bar to see if anyone there remembers Ms. Mayfield and if she was seen talking to any Dixie Demons.”

  I gave him
a look.

  “Hey, I would do it myself,” Bagwell added. “But I don’t want to step on Larry’s toes. Clemson is his jurisdiction, and he’s probably sensitive about hearing that these bikers may not be behaving. He came out strongly in favor of hosting their gathering. But my thinking is, just because they show up with their women and kids somewhere for four days every year and play family reunion, it don’t change the fact that for the other three-hundred and sixty-one days of the year they’re into things like drug dealing and trafficking in stolen goods. The Department of Justice classifies the Dixie Demons as an outlaw motorcycle gang, and I happen to agree with them. We don’t need these kinds of people in Pickens County. A leopard ain’t gonna’ change its spots just because he’s bringing his family with him.”

  “So, why did the town throw out the welcome mat?” I asked.

  Bagwell sighed. “I hate to say it, but money. Plain and simple. Students are not in town, and business can be slow in the summer. The town fathers and local merchants estimated that this reunion will have an economic impact of over a million dollars on the Clemson community. They put pressure on Chief Watson. I doubt he had a choice if he wanted to keep his job.”

  “Wow,” I said. I wouldn’t have thought a bunch like this would spend that much money. A million dollars. That’s a lot of fried chicken and beer.”

  Eloise said, “We interviewed one manager of a Clemson restaurant and bar and she said their business will be welcoming the riders with open arms. She said with the experiences she’s had bartending for fans on football game-days, she can put up with anything the Dixie Demons can dish out.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Changing the subject, let’s see if we can find anything here that might help.” I motioned for Eloise to open the loose-leaf notebook on the reception desk.

  “This is our sign-in-sign-out book,” Eloise said to Bagwell. “If we leave during the workday, we must sign out with the time of our departure, and our destination. That’s so we can be reached if necessary. Then we sign back in on our return. Mrs. Mozingo, our receptionist, jack of all trades, and mother hen, makes sure she always knows where everyone is, and you know her,” Eloise said to me. “She enforces this company policy like a guard on a gate.”

  We went through the pages one by one, starting with the latest. The first that caught my eye was an entry by Kelly. It was a sign-out at two-fifteen the previous Monday afternoon, the destination, a Doctor Stefans. No address was given.

  Eloise saw it too. “This isn’t Kelly’s regular doctor, Doctor Jamison is. I’ve never even heard of this doctor.”

  Neither had I, nor had I knowledge that she’d seen any doctor lately.

  “Has Kelly been sick?” I asked Eloise.

  “I don’t think so. If she was, she didn’t tell me.”

  She didn’t tell me either, I thought, and suddenly the word “pregnant” popped into my mind, followed by a scattered mix of emotions. But wouldn’t that appointment still be with her regular doctor? And wouldn’t Doctor Mathis at the hospital have found that out and said something about it last night?

  “Maybe he’s a specialist of some kind that Doctor Jamison referred her to,” Eloise said. “But I can’t believe Kelly wouldn’t have told me.”

  “There’s a Doctor Stefans in Clemson that I know of,” Bagwell offered. “If this is him, he’s a general practitioner. A family doctor, not a specialist.”

  “Why would Kelly see a doctor in Clemson?” Eloise asked.

  I wondered the same thing. The college town of Clemson was on the southwest corner of the county and a long way to go to see a doctor for someone who lived here. I took out my cell phone and Googled, “Doctor Stefans in Pickens County.” Bagwell was right. I found a Doctor Michael Stefans on Highway 123, in Clemson.

  Bagwell looked like he didn’t think the doctor held any pertinence to the case and was ready to ignore him. My thoughts lingered on. I wanted to find out if this Doctor Stefans was treating Kelly for something I didn’t know about. I saved his information on my phone.

  Eloise could explain most of the remaining entries in the book: routine business, people, and places that were well known, easy to figure out, and beyond suspicion.

  We finished looking at the sign-out book and went into Kelly’s office, searching for any story notes, telephone scratch pads, or anything of interest, but found nothing suspicious or unexplainable. If Kelly had notes on some story, they would probably be on her missing laptop, as would her emails.

  Bagwell had brought Kelly’s laptop and cell phone and said they’d found nothing suspicious or enlightening on them. Eloise and I sat down and looked for ourselves. We didn’t find anything either. No revealing emails or texts, and no files or documents that looked like story notes. If Kelly were working on something, she wasn’t keeping notes on her computer about it.

  We searched Kelly’s office and desk, and found nothing there either. We still didn’t know what Kelly was working on—if anything—or who her attacker might have been, or why she had been attacked in the first place. As unlikely as it was, Mackenzie’s news that Kelly had visited a biker’s bar was the only thing we had to go on.

  Bagwell told us he would be in touch with Kelly’s phone records when he got them, probably not until Monday. The phone company’s priorities didn’t always coincide with his.

  I thought about the idea of Kelly attracting the attention of someone dangerous. From what I was just told about the Dixie Demons, they were definitely dangerous. So, whether or not there was merit to it, and regardless of how much Sheriff Bagwell and the Clemson Police Chief would look into Kelly’s visit to the Tiger’s Tail, I would pay the place a visit too. To Chief Watson and Sheriff Bagwell, it might be just a job.

  But to me, it was personal.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We were right behind Bagwell leaving the Clarion offices, and as I passed through the lobby on the way out, I spotted a stack of back issues of the Clarion on a coffee table and picked up a few to read later. I threw them in the back seat of my time-worn Jeep Wrangler, and from there, Eloise, Mackenzie, and I went to the Gatehouse Restaurant in Pickens for lunch.

  We ordered soup and sandwiches, and spent our time rehashing the subject of the Dixie Demons, why Kelly would go to a biker bar, or why she visited this Doctor Stefans. I didn’t mention my thought about pregnancy. I planned to ask the doctor at the hospital.

  Afterward, we went our separate ways. Mackenzie and Eloise went to the hospital to look in on Kelly, and I went to Still Hollow to crash for a couple of hours. After spending the night in a chair at the hospital, I was exhausted. I’d found myself almost drooping my chin into my tomato soup a couple of times during lunch and realized that the best thing I could do for my efforts to help track down Kelly’s assailant was to get some sleep.

  #

  In my old boyhood bedroom at Still Hollow, which Eloise always kept available for me, I set a bedside alarm clock for three hours, stripped down to my underwear, and climbed into bed.

  But while my body was tired, my brain was restless. I lay there for the longest time, eyes wide open, thinking about everything that had happened since arriving at Kelly’s, and looking back on it like watching a nightmarish slide-show.

  I was up and about to leave for the hospital when Eloise and Mackenzie returned from their visit there. I’d slept only an hour or so out of the three that I lay in my old bed. Just being comfortable and quiet for a while had charged my batteries some. I seemed to have a bit of a second wind.

  Eloise said that some of the Clarion staff had come by to see Kelly and brought flowers. They didn’t stay long, and neither did Eloise and Mackenzie. We were all starting to get the picture that there was nothing any of us could do for Kelly, although I guess we all felt the need to be there by her side. As I left, I told Eloise not to wait up for me. I would probably stay out quite late. I didn’t tell them that the real reason was that I planned to pay a visit to the Tigers Tail bikers bar.

  #

&nbs
p; At the hospital, Kelly was still hooked up to wires, tubes, and monitors. They had her lying on her side with one arm moved aside and supported to allow for lung expansion, and her legs crossed. According to a nurse, this afforded the unconscious, breathing patient the best protection from airway occlusion or aspiration of fluids into the lungs. My emotions continued to swing like a pendulum between worry and rage as I looked at her.

  There was a colorful bouquet of flowers by her bed, and the card revealed they were from the Clarion staff. They were beautiful, but they gave the room a heavy floral smell and reminded me of a funeral. I thought about removing them and decided against it. Maybe the cloying odor would bring Kelly back to life just to get rid of them herself.

  I stood and held her hand for a long time, looking at her. The bruises on her face were already going from reddish-brown to yellow and green. Her eye was still swollen shut but somehow seemed a little better. That she had begun to heal externally was clear, It was the inside of her head I was worried about. Was that healing too?

  I sat by her bedside until darkness began to settle on the landscape outside the hospital windows. Then I left for the Tiger’s Tail Bar and Grill in Clemson.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Tiger’s Tail sat along Highway 123, or Tiger Boulevard, just north of the small college downtown and the sprawling campus of Clemson University.

  The bar was a cinder block building painted blue and with few windows and a flat-topped roof. A large neon sign hung over the front door with a bright orange cartoon image of a tiger riding a motorcycle and trailing a large curled tail. What windows there were, all displayed brightly lit beer signs.

  The place sat back off the highway, fronted by a large cracked asphalt parking lot scattered with Harley hogs and tricked-out pickup trucks. I could hear an old Lynyrd Skynyrd rocker coming from inside when I got out of the Jeep.

  I parked and went inside. The place was smoky and noisy. I didn’t think the customers were ignorant of the smoking laws, they just didn’t give a shit. There were a lot of steel-toed boots and jeans and leathers, along with shaved heads or long hair, and a majority of shaggy beards. This was no place for the mild-mannered and meek. I couldn’t picture Kelly ever coming here without an excellent reason.