Bud turned to his partner. “Something bothering you, Professor?”
“What makes you think that?” Miller asked.
“Man, I’ve been with you too long. I can tell when something’s bothering you better than I can tell when something’s bothering my ex. So fess up, what’s rollin’ around in that head of yours?”
“I’m just thinking about that crime scene we just left,” Miller said.
“Crime scene? That weren’t no crime scene. That was an accident. The coroner said so, and I believe it too. I swear Miller sometimes I think you got a screw loose. You’re all the time seeing shadows where there ain’t any. Where do you get off calling it a crime scene?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it was an accident.”
“Now don’t go lying to me. You saw something back there that made you say all this so spit it out!” Hammontree would not let his partner off too easy. “You opened the door, now walk through it.”
“Don’t laugh,” said Miller.
“Spit it out,” Hammontree repeated.
“Well, I guess you could call it an intuition. You know how I get when I get these feelings. There was tension back there between those folks. Plus—”
Hammontree interrupted him with a hail of laughter. “Feelings? Intuition? You’re supposed to be a cop, not Madame Violet.” Madame Violet was an old gypsy psychic and palm reader with a shop on the Madison Highway, south of Valdosta.
“Plus,” Miller continued, “the screened porch’s floor had a wet spot. Like someone had put wet clothes there.”
“Maybe, that’s where they laid the little girl when they first brought her in the house, or they tried to give her CPR there,” Hammontree said.
“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed Miller. “I guess it was an accident, but my gut tells me different.”
* * *
Harvey Ridley spent the next two years shuttling back and forth between the house in town and the house at the lake. He went to the lake house every weekend to spend time with Myrtle. Some days he would have lunch, other days he would just come for dinner. He never relaxed when he was at the lake. He was anxious during his visits, always worried that Allen was alone and up to no good. During the week, he called Myrtle every night.
One November day, two years after Dottie’s death, she asked Harvey if he would like her to come and cook Thanksgiving dinner at the house in Valdosta. When Harvey asked her “What about Allen?” she replied with “Let’s have Thanksgiving as a family.”
Some people say that a mother’s love is unconditional, but some conditions are just too hard, too painful. Myrtle came that Thanksgiving and cooked.
She was polite to Allen but not warm. She saw that Allen was becoming a man, and this made her worry. What if his rage caused harm or death to someone else?
She was concerned about Harvey. He was trying to run a company and take care of Allen—the lines and wrinkles on his face showed his fatigue. A week before Christmas that year she moved back to the family home in Azalea Estates. Myrtle didn’t do it for her love for Allen, but rather for her love and concern for Harvey.
From the time she moved back until the day she died she only spoke to Allen when it was necessary. She would keep up appearances and talk about “her son” in public. She bragged about him and his accomplishments. She bent the ears of the ladies at the women’s church auxiliary about her boy, Allen. But behind closed doors she hated Allen and Allen hated her.
CHAPTER THREE
The old man ran his hand over his hairless head and adjusted his glasses. He lifted the stack of papers from his massive wooden desk and tapped the bottom on the desk until the papers aligned to his satisfaction. The man inserted the stack into a file folder and placed the folder in the wooden file cabinet on the wall to his left. He paused for a moment at the coffee table, squatted and checked it for dust. Satisfied, he sat and swiveled his chair to face the three large computer displays on the credenza behind his desk.
He studied the green and red bar charts and the ticker symbols moving across the bottom of each screen. The market was moving once again in his favor.
A record day.
The man pulled the computer keyboard closer and tapped the keys.
A record day indeed.
He swiveled again in his chair and faced the paperwork. Everything on his desk was in stacks. He lifted each stack and thumbed through it, straightened it. The man’s every movement determined and exact.
The phone rang. He focused on the caller ID before lifting the receiver.
“Yes,” he answered. The man’s voice was soft, a little louder than a whisper.
A female voice spoke. “It’s set. The meeting is on for today, in Ashley’s Pub as you requested.”
“The time?” he asked. He pivoted his chair and stared at the monitors again.
“Two o’clock. Jimmy will be on time. Allen will be late. He’s always late, he’ll be late for his own funeral.”
“On that matter, my dear, I assure you he will not be late,” he said, smiling. “And neither suspects your involvement?”
“Nope. No suspicions. I told Allen that Jimmy called and wanted to meet at Ashley’s. I then called Jimmy and told Allen that the meeting is set for Ashley’s. It’s doubtful they will compare notes on how I arranged the location.”
“And the purpose of the meeting?” he asked.
“Pretty much as we suspect, Allen brought in Jimmy’s credit card number earlier and told me to call and cancel it,” she said.
“Good. Thank you,” he said and hung up the phone.
The man stood and gave his desk and credenza one more look. One stack of papers did not suit him, so he tapped it again to straighten the edges. He strolled over to the coat rack and pulled a black, ancient-looking coat from a hanger.
The old man was six-foot tall, his face was oval with large jowls and a double chin. He was heavy but not overweight, a physique built by work, hard work—not from staring at computer screens. His half-opened eyes made him always appear to be squinting. Beneath those half-closed eyelids were penetrating, azure blue eyes.
The man struggled to get the coat on his wide shoulders, but it settled onto his body to a tailored fit. The coat and his white, collarless shirt underneath made him look like an old Amish preacher from Pennsylvania Dutch country. He pulled a white wig from the coat rack and placed it on his bald head. The white hair extended below his ears to his chin line with a part in the middle. On top of the wig he placed a large-brimmed, black hat, the disguise was complete.
After buttoning his coat, he went back to the credenza and watched the computer displays again. The computer recorded his wealth as it grew and shrunk as the other markets opened in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and London. Satisfied with the day’s profits he walked to the door.
He stopped and stared at the photograph of a young woman and girl hanging to the door’s right. The old man pressed his fingers to his lips in a kiss and then transferred the kiss from his fingertips to the photo and smiled.
He walked to the office’s lobby, and out a door to the corridor. The man locked the door and shook the lock several times before walking to the elevator. He had one more stop to make before he could finish for today, another thing to do to set the next phase of his plans in motion.
The elevator stopped on the first floor, and he walked across the foyer to the recently-opened sports bar, Ashley’s Pub. He went straight to the bar and sat on a stool at the far end of the bar. The bartender gave him a small salute with his index finger.
“Wow, I almost didn’t recognize you. Drinking today, Mr. Seiffert?” the bartender asked.
“Part of the act Patrick. You always need to make a good first impression however outlandish it may be,” Seiffert said, smiling. “Now about that drink, you know me better than that. I think soda water with ice would be great.”
“Any news?”
“Yes. Marie called. They will meet here, today at two. Marie believes Allen will be
late, and that’s okay on such short notice. Please give them a booth over on the back wall. I will wait here at the bar until both parties arrive.”
“Will do Mr. Seiffert,” Patrick said and once again gave him the salute with the index finger.
“How much for the soda water?”
“On the house, Mr. Seiffert. Always on the house.” Patrick smiled and poured him another.
CHAPTER FOUR
Life is about relationships. That is unless someone lives alone on a mountain in the Himalayas or has discovered a way to live on a planet somewhere in the outer limits of space. People come and go in our lives. Some stick around while others are freight trains in the middle of the night—just passing through. And each relationship has its feelings and emotions—feelings of love, caring, empathy, sympathy, and for some of these travelers in our lives, feelings of hate.
Jimmy was sure he had run the spectrum of feelings. He had experienced many types of people in his life’s short fifty-one years. But for the “hate” category there was just one person on that list—not hate, but a downright loathing. Others are fortunate, they can go through life and hate no one, much less describe their feelings toward a person as loathing. But for Jimmy there was one such person, and his name was Allen Ridley.
His hate for Allen Ridley had started years ago in high school. Jimmy’s parents had moved from the county to the city so Jimmy could attend the city school. They hoped he would become part of the city school’s famous football program. Jimmy tried out for the team and failed, but the team welcomed Allen without a tryout because of his father’s money and influence.
After Jimmy had failed to get a spot on the team, Allen began bullying and torturing the young “county-boy Jimmy”. Every month more pranks and jokes. Simple pranks like stealing Jimmy’s books had escalated to cutting the tires on his car and putting cow manure in Jimmy’s locker. The attacks were physical too. Allen always took a cheap hit with an elbow to Jimmy’s ribs whenever they passed in the hall.
Jimmy had tried asking girls for dates. Allen and his football buddies, always sabotaged any effort Jimmy made with the girls in school. The girls were in on it too. They agreed to go on a date with Jimmy. Then when Jimmy showed up to their house to pick them up for the date, they would be gone. Their parents told Jimmy that their little sweetheart’s date had already showed up for the night. Many times, their date was none other than Allen Ridley.
In high school, with Allen’s daily torture, Jimmy kept his head down and his mouth shut. But he always swore he would get even, to make Allen pay for the humiliation and physical abuse.
Allen’s abuse of Jimmy became a bigger concern to Jimmy when he went to work for Allen’s father, Harvey, after high school. He was not sure he could handle a work environment that included Allen Ridley, but Allen was off in college and away from the family business.
The years passed, and Allen became an attorney. Jimmy worked hard and became Harvey Ridley’s most trusted employee.
Harvey Ridley was everything that Allen was not, a real gentleman, a great mentor, an astute businessman. Jimmy had revered Harvey and thought of him as a father.
Harvey had fallen ill a year ago, and the illness forced Allen and Jimmy to face each other again, this time as employee and employer instead of classmates.
Allen put his law practice on what he called “autopilot” so he could come back and manage the family business. The family business was a manufacturing and distributing company that manufactured, imported and sold a variety of goods to home centers and hardware stores throughout the country.
“Autopilot” just meant that he was not accepting any new clients in his family law practice. He still had a few cases pending on the court’s docket. Once he finished those his plans were to hang up his shingle and run the company one hundred percent of the time.
Allen was not a boss but a dictator. He was Hitler, and the employees were the Jews. He seemed to hate them as if he belonged to the “master race” of employers and the employees and staff were less than human. In the past six months, he had marched ten of his father’s oldest employees to the gas chamber of unemployment. Nine of the ten were just months away from retirement.
Jimmy moved the last French fry around on his plate while looking at the time on his smartphone. Allen was running late again as usual. Allen’s dad had died three weeks earlier, and Jimmy was sure that today’s meeting had one of two scenarios. He was getting a promotion or was getting fired. The more he pondered it, the more he was sure it was the latter.
The old man had been sick for a year before dying. Congestive heart failure the doctors said, but Jimmy believed it was due to a lifestyle which had known way too many excesses. Harvey Ridley lived life hard and fast, but he died slow and painful. He was in and out of the hospital for the past six months until his heart just gave out.
Allen came to manage the business and oversee his father’s last affairs.
Manage? Ha! He was a buzzard circling the carrion managing to pick at the bones one last time.
Besides the ten fired employees, Allen put another ten on part-time status. He justified this by, “Keeping the company lean. Time to cut out the fat and make money here. The old man allowed this thing to get too bloated—too many folks here on the company teat.”
The firings were ridiculous. Last year’s sales revenue was fifty million dollars, the majority of which came from their biggest customer, Handy Lumber and Home Centers. The company was profitable, so in Jimmy’s mind, there was no need for anyone to lose their job. No one needed to be fired to “keep the company lean.”
No bloat here—no sir.
Jimmy was growing restless waiting on the little weasel. He picked up the French fry, popped it in his mouth. Ten minutes late now. Jimmy decided to give him another fifteen minutes. He didn’t have time to waste. He was returning to China in two days, and he wanted to spend time in Atlanta before flying back.
Jimmy looked around, not a bad place to be waiting. When he was younger, this was the Daniel Ashley Hotel. It was a beautiful seven-story, red brick building with white wainscoting at the top. In the 1920s one of Valdosta’s bankers, Daniel Ashley, built and designed the hotel. He named the hotel after himself. There was a rumor that the hotel was the tallest building between Jacksonville and Atlanta. A mere seven stories but nothing in Valdosta was any taller.
Fifteen years earlier the city had received a government grant to convert the old hotel into elderly apartments. So the city gutted and renovated the hotel rooms and renamed it “The Ashley House Apartments”. The apartment concept never succeeded—the old folks wanted to live near pharmacies, groceries, and shopping—all twenty minutes away if you could drive or find transportation.
After ten years of trying to woo Valdosta’s older citizens to live there, the Ashley House Apartments closed its doors. Six months later a new developer bought the property and converted the building into high-end offices.
The new developer turned half of the bottom floor to a boutique dress store—the other half he renovated into a sports bar, Ashley’s Pub. The sports bar was a place for the downtown office workers to have a quick lunch or to gather after work and share wings, pub grub or a beer. It had all the trappings of a sports bar—forty-inch flat screen televisions hanging from the ceiling every three feet and dark mahogany floors and woodwork. The perimeter seating had big, comfortable, leather booths. At the rear was a massive bar that stretched along the back wall of the pub.
And in one of the overstuffed leather booths sat Jimmy, waiting for the man he hated.
Jimmy motioned to the waitress to bring him his check. At the same time, the front door opened and in walked a man near Jimmy’s age. He wore a tailored business suit. Black, short, curly hair, topped his head. His face featured a trimmed mustache and goatee. It was the always-tardy but well-groomed, Allen Ridley. The suit did not conceal Allen’s athletic build, one of the Wildcat’s best wide receivers back in the good old, high school football days. Allen�
�s face sported a slightly crooked nose, also compliments of the Valdosta Wildcats and the good old, glory days.
Jimmy looked at Allen and his impeccable attire and made a quick comparison of himself. He preferred to dress comfortable and never wore a tie. Jimmy tried to think of the last time he saw Allen without a suit, a company picnic perhaps? Allen’s dad, Harvey, didn’t care for suits either. Golf shirt, khakis, and loafers were good enough for Harvey Ridley and in Jimmy’s mind that was good enough for him. Jimmy didn’t care what this pompous ass wore.
Allen spotted Jimmy and went to the booth. Jimmy stood and shook Allen’s hand. “Allen, how are you doing? I haven’t seen you since your dad’s funeral.” While they were busy handshaking and exchanging pleasantries, an old man from the bar strolled over and sat in the booth behind them. Neither of them noticed.
“Doing well Jimmy. Hope you haven’t been waiting long. Tons of stuff to do at the office today. Mom came in today with her attorney and the accountant—been trying to close the month out and get dad’s estate handled.” He looked around and added, “Not sure why she didn’t just meet here in The Ashley. Her attorney is somewhere in this building.”
Jimmy stifled a laugh as he thought about Allen’s mom using a different attorney to handle her legal affairs and not her own son. Because she doesn’t trust you.
Instead of laughing he clenched his teeth and lied. “No, not waiting a long time. Been enjoying the atmosphere here, just sitting and thinking about this place—lots of history in these walls. You know—”
Jimmy was starting a history lesson. About how this hotel was where the tobacco buyers met every year to kick off tobacco buying season, but Allen held up a hand to stop him.
“Sorry to interrupt Jimmy but I need to get finished with this and get back to the office. As you know, I have been on a crusade to make the company leaner and more profitable. My cost-cutting measures have saved the company a million dollars in the past six months.” He waited as if expecting a response from Jimmy.
Carnies and Wildcats: Ulciscor Page 3