by DOUG KEELER
Next I worked the speed bag. Timing and reflexes. Cross over jab and a quick back-fist. Same drill with the other hand. A flurry of leather echoing off the walls...rat-a-tat-tat.
I peeled off the gloves and banged out a series of push-ups and sit-ups. Spent, I lay on the concrete floor drenched in sweat, staring at the ceiling and catching my breath.
I dragged myself upstairs and chugged a glass of OJ. It tasted like liquid sunshine, so I downed another. I sat at the kitchen counter, perusing the paper for a minute or so, and began to feel myself recover. I realize most people no longer read the newspaper, choosing instead to get their news from the internet, or from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. But I’m an ex-newspaper man and a bit of a throwback, so I continue to support this dying industry.
I put the paper aside, wandered down the hall, hopped in the shower, and soaped up till I was squeaky clean. I toweled off, wiped the steam from the mirror, and finger-combed my hair. I tell you, I felt like a new man. I threw on a comfortable pair of jeans and a blue polo shirt, sans horse. I don’t do the horse.
Later that morning I whipped up a longshoreman’s breakfast: fried eggs, French toast, home fries, and four of strips of bacon. I know some people won’t eat bacon for religious reasons. But I’ll bet those folks dream about it at night, the smell of sizzling pork secretly winding its way into their cerebral cortex.
Anyway, with nothing to hold us back, Megan and I stuffed ourselves. When we finished eating, I dumped everything into the dishwasher, then dropped her off at tennis camp before returning home.
Upstairs in my third-floor office, I tried reaching Olivia Anderson at her real estate office. She hadn’t made it in yet, so I left a message with the receptionist. Next, I went over the notes from my meeting with the Robertsons. I needed to start interviewing people, and first up on my list, Bill Taylor, Claire’s ex-fiancé.
Taylor lived in Hardeeville, a small town in Jasper County South Carolina. It’s located approximately twenty miles north of Savannah. I had the name of Taylor’s bank, but I wasn’t about to ring him up. I wanted to show up unannounced and catch him unaware.
I pulled up the bank’s website on my laptop, then found a link that said meet our team. I clicked the link, and then another link that said Bank President Bill Taylor. A photo showed him standing and smiling.
I studied his picture. Somewhere in his late thirties, Taylor wore a conservative blue suit, starched white button-down, and a black and gold striped tie. Thinning brown hair receded from a high forehead, and he looked a little puffy around the gills.
He also liked to hit women and I wanted to drill him. On the scumbag ladder, there aren’t many rungs lower in my opinion.
~ ~ ~
I left the house at a quarter past nine and headed downtown. Motoring north on Drayton, I passed The DeSoto Hotel on my left just as the traffic light turned yellow. I hit the gas, lit up the tires, and two-wheeled it onto Liberty.
Ten minutes later I crossed the Talmadge Bridge on another picture postcard day: clear skies, a warm breeze, and the sun glinting off the Savannah River like a row of shimmering diamonds in a jewelry store display case.
I left Georgia and entered South Carolina. I was now in Jasper County, racing north on Highway 17, the old coastal Highway that preceded the construction of I-95. If you haven’t driven it, this stretch of Highway 17 is beautiful, with fascinating things on both sides of the road to hold your attention, but only if you cross your eyes and pretend you’re someplace else. Actually, it’s not that bad. I had the window down, breathing in the fertile smell of the marsh, hauling ass in the GTO.
As I drove, I fiddled with the car radio until I heard Bob Seger singing “Fire Lake.” Great song. I remember reading somewhere that Seger always performed barefoot because he wanted to feel the music from the ground up. Working an investigation is sort of like that. You start off at street level, burning shoe leather and asking a lot of questions. And hopefully, one thing leads to another until finally you arrive at a solution. Whatever.
Anyway, it was a beautiful lowcountry morning. No traffic jams slowing me down, and no ticket happy cops pointing a radar gun at me. The road ahead curved gently to the east as I thundered past a roadside stand selling some veggies. I jacked up the volume and settled in for the tedious ride to Hardeeville.
After the Seger song, a new DJ took over, some guy who called himself Reggae Randy. I listened to him ramble on for a little while, and then he put on Bob Marley’s “Stir it up.” I made good time, grooving to the song’s syncopated riffs.
At approximately 9:35 A.M. I parked in front of Bill Taylor’s Hardeeville Bank and Trust.
I hoofed-it inside and stood in the bank’s lobby, getting myself oriented. Directly in front of me, two bank tellers serviced a sparse line of customers. On my left, a wrinkled old bird with a steel wool beehive roosted behind her desk. She was occupied with a customer and didn’t seem to notice me. To my right, a hallway led to a series of glass fronted offices. Jackpot.
I wandered down the hall searching for Taylor and found him in the last office on the left. His door was open, and he sat behind his desk jabbering away on the phone. I stepped inside, closed the door, and grabbed a seat across from him.
Taylor stayed on the phone, and I used the time to check out his office. On the walls, I spotted his Clemson diploma, some various civic awards, a silly golf plaque, and an 8x10 photo of Taylor and some chums deep sea fishing.
Worth noting, most people would rather cough up a lung than give away information. And if they suspect they’re being interrogated, they clam up faster than Rush Limbaugh’s wallet at a Democratic fundraiser. Therefore, a skilled interrogator will attempt to extract information in subtle ways: showing empathy, gaining trust, finding things in common, or even lending a sympathetic ear.
I’m pretty good at reading people, priding myself on knowing which method to employ.
With Taylor though, I opted for a slightly less delicate approach. I shanghaied a felt-tipped pen and a piece of bank letterhead off his desk. In big block letters I scrawled, WHERE’S CLAIRE ROBERTSON? I slid the sheet of paper across the desk in front of him.
“Let me call you back,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got someone in my office.” He hung up and eyed me like I was a piece of rotting fish.
“Morning Bill,” I said. “How’s your day going?” Because it’s about to be a whole lot less than great.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding pissed. “Have we met?”
“I’m Ray Fontaine. I’d like to ask you some questions about Claire Robertson.”
“What about her?”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
He sneered at me. “What did you say your name was?”
“Ray Fontaine.” I held up his pen. “Why don’t you write it down so you don’t forget?”
“Look, Mister, I don’t know who you think you are, barging in here like this and bothering me about Claire.”
“Easy, Bill. Don’t be so touchy. We’re just having ourselves a friendly little chat.”
“No, we’re not. You burst into my office without an appointment and interrupted my phone call. Give me one good reason why I don’t have you removed from the premises.”
“Just one? How’s this? Claire dumped you. Word on the street is you didn’t take it very well.”
His eyes bugged out as he snatched up the phone. “I’m having you tossed out of my bank.” He started punching numbers into the phone.
“Don’t you mean your Daddy’s bank?” I paused and looked at him, and I could feel my anger rise. “Claire’s missing and you’re a prime suspect. I know you smacked her around when she called off the wedding. Unless you start answering my questions, I’m gonna make sure everyone in this state hears about it.”
He hesitated, then set the phone back in the cradle. “You don’t look like a cop. I wanna see some identification.”
He was right. I’m
not a cop. Therefore, I had no Fifth Amendment obligation to read the asshole his rights. Instead, I was free to squeeze him.
“I’ve been hired to find Claire. I know she humiliated you when she left you standing at the altar with your dick in your hand.”
Taylor narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. Now get the hell out of my office before I have you arrested.”
“I know exactly who I’m dealing with, a coward who likes hitting women. Trust me, you’ll cooperate and answer my questions. Or maybe you’d rather see your name splashed across the front page of tomorrow's paper?” In case he was having trouble picturing it, I said, “What do you think of this headline: Jilted groom beat up missing woman. Casino deal in peril.”
Everyone loves a scandal. And the news jocks turn rabid when reporting on a missing woman. Factor in that Claire is beautiful, comes from money, and works on some mysterious island. Shit. The minute this story broke, the media would descend on Taylor like the Roman senate on Caesar. News vans with satellite dishes would park twelve deep outside the bank, as roving packs of talking heads jostled for the inside scoop. In the end, guilty or not, they’d carve him to the bone in an all-out effort to feed the twenty-four-hour news cycle.
“Listen,” he said, “I didn’t even know she was missing until you walked in here a minute ago. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Attaboy. Now we’re getting somewhere.” I gave him a hard-eyed stare. “When was the last time you saw her?”
They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but I don’t buy it. During my time as a CID agent, I had suspects stare straight into my eyes and lie all the time. Liars don’t always falter. They don’t always look away. Self- preservation trumps everything, especially the truth.
“I haven’t seen her since we broke up,” he said
“So you haven’t had any contact with her at all since she called off the wedding?”
He rubbed his jaw like it itched. “I phoned her a couple times, but she wouldn’t return any of my calls.”
“Drive by her townhouse at night? Hide around the corner? Watching? Waiting?”
Taylor sat there looking sullen. “No,” he said at last. “I never did any of that.”
“Where were you Friday night?”
He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Having dinner with friends in Savannah at Leoci’s.”
Leoci’s is an Italian Restaurant located on Abercorn Street, a block from Forsyth Park.
“Interesting. What’s that...a five-minute walk from Claire’s place?”
He nodded solemnly but kept his mouth shut.
“Who’d you have dinner with?”
“Tim Woodson. He’s my attorney.”
“I don’t care if he’s the last Emperor of China. Plus you said you had dinner with friends. Who else besides the two of you?”
“Tim’s wife Beth.”
“So just the three of you having a pity party for poor little Bill?”
He shook his head. “No, I had a date.”
“Good for you Bill,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “Back in the saddle so soon after being dumped. What’s her name?”
“Look,” he said, stonewalling me, “I don’t want to involve her.”
The whiny little toad was starting to get to me. I wanted to swat him a few times, before knocking him straight into next week.
“Listen, and listen close,” I said. “You're on thin ice and I’m standing below you with a blowtorch. That Indian tribe you're trying to do this casino deal with, any idea how fast they’re gonna beat feet once this gets out? So I’m gonna ask you one last time, what’s her name?”
He lowered his head and muttered, “Jill Sullivan.”
“So the four of you drove down to Savannah together Friday night. Do I have that right?”
“No. The Woodsons and Jill live in Savannah. I drove down alone and met them at the restaurant.”
“You didn’t pick your date up at her place Bill? Why not?”
“Beth fixed me up,” he said, sounding sheepish. “It was kind of a blind date.”
“What about after dinner? Did the four of you go anywhere else for a drink?”
“No. We just had dinner and called it a night.”
“And afterward, did you drive your blind date home?”
“She caught a ride with the Tim and Beth.”
“And what about you...what did you do then?”
Taylor fidgeted, running his fingers through his hair. “I was tired. It had been a long week. I got in the car and headed for home.”
I shook my head. “So after having dinner five minutes from where your ex lives, on the night she disappeared, you got in your car and drove home alone.” I locked eyes with him. “What do prosecutors call that? Oh, I remember...motive and opportunity.”
He looked off to the side and avoided my stare.
“I need Jill’s phone number. You wanna be a good boy and give it to me, or should I get it from Tim Woodson?”
“I didn’t ask for her number,” he said, smirking. “She wasn’t my type.”
The smirk was the scale tipper. I had his balls in my hand and it was time to squeeze. “Let me ask you something Tenderloin. How do you feel about a steady diet of prison dick, cold shower gang bangs, and being some lifer’s yard bitch?”
He looked like I’d slapped him. “You can’t talk to me like that. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Over the years, people tend to mellow. Our rough edges dissipate like a stone smoothed by the river's current. We put up with what we can’t change. But domestic violence, a man hitting a woman, that’s something I’ll never accept. Sitting in that office, breathing the same air as Taylor, sickened me.
“What do you call hitting a defenseless woman you gutless dung beetle?” I rose out of the chair, put my hands on his desk, and glared at him. “Stop jerking me around, or I’ll throw you right through the wall. Now how do I get in touch with your date from Friday night?”
“She owns a children’s clothing store on Broughton Street,” he said, reedy voice stretched thin. “It’s called Sugar and Spice. That’s all I know.”
“You see Billy-Boy, that wasn’t so hard. Now fill me in on what you did Saturday.”
He thought about it for a moment, then looked at me and said, “I played golf at my club in the morning with three buddies and spent the afternoon doing typical weekend chores.” Adding, “I stopped by Ace Hardware for a couple of items, bought a bottle of bourbon and some beer at the liquor store, and picked up some steaks at Publix. Later I watched the Braves beat the Cubs on TV at home.”
I wrote down the name of his golf buds. “Were you in Savannah anytime over the weekend after Friday night?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I stayed close to home.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t cross the Talmadge Bridge once after Friday night?” Before he had a chance to answer, I said, “Let me make it easier. Were you anywhere in the state of Georgia last Saturday or Sunday?”
“I never left South Carolina,” he said.
At this point, Bill Taylor wasn’t looking to good. Red blotches bloomed on his face and rings of armpit sweat seeped through his suit coat. Even if he had nothing to do with Claire’s disappearance, in my book the craven needed a kick in the teeth.
“Why’d Claire call off the wedding?”
He let out a pitiful sigh. “She said she met someone else.”
“What’d that feel like?” I asked, grinding a little salt in the wound.
“What do you think it felt like? Look, I don’t know where Claire is. I had nothing to do with—.” Taylor’s voice faltered. He looked at me and shrugged. I waited for him to continue, but he stayed silent.
“Did Claire tell you the other guy’s name?”
“No. She never did. When you find out who it is, maybe you should ask him where Claire is.”
Taylor sl
umped in his chair. His eyes glazed over as a mountain of humiliation sagged his bony shoulders. The dim-witted dolt was one of those weird mouth-breathers. The way his slack jaw hung open, he reminded me of a baby sparrow waiting for a worm from its mother.
“Did Claire ever talk about wanting to get away?”
“Not to me, but obviously I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”
We both stayed silent then. I could hear the seconds ticking from his wall clock, and it felt like the oxygen had been sucked from the room. In my mind, I pictured the twitchy little prick waltzing through the casino, playing big shot.
I stood up and started out the door, then turned to him and said, “Hey Sport. Just thought of a great name for the casino...what do you think of The Busted Flush?”
Chapter Seven
Back in the car, I drove around Hardeeville for a while. I had no plan or particular destination in mind. I just sort of wandered around while my festering anger for Bill Taylor grew.
After about ten aimless minutes, I pulled into a small shopping plaza and spotted a bakery called Rollin in Dough. I parked out front, got out of the car and stepped inside. Rollin in Desperation was more like it. The only person in the place beside myself was a college kid standing behind the counter playing with his phone.
I ordered a large coffee to go. As college kid rang me up, I said, “You know a guy named Bill Taylor?”
“Hardeeville Bank and Trust Bill Taylor?” he asked, placing the coffee on the counter.
I nodded and smiled.
“Sure,” he said. “Doesn’t everybody?”
I love small town gossip. “Did you hear his bank was seized by the Feds? They say Taylor was laundering money for terrorists and drug smugglers. When I drove by this morning, a couple of FBI agents were frog-walking him out the door.”
He gave me a funny look but didn’t respond. I paid for the coffee, walked outside and climbed back in the GTO. I sat there for two or three minutes drinking my coffee. Then I cranked the motor, threw it in gear, and got back on Highway 17, this time heading south toward Savannah.