Rich and Gone Read online

  PI Red Farlow is on the hunt to find $300 million a Florida insurance executive has bilked out of family and friends.

  Woody Cunningham stashed the money in safe havens around the world before disappearing. Has he been done in by one of his enemies? Or did he skip town with his girlfriend to live off the ill-gotten wealth? If that’s the case, where is he?

  Farlow must quickly learn how and why people hide their money in offshore accounts if he's to find out what happened to Cunningham.

  When a tough guy from Farlow's past resurfaces, wanting to settle an old score, Farlow discovers he also has links to the missing man. Clues lead him across Georgia and Florida, and Europe, to find the answers.

  Is Woody Cunningham dead, or just rich and gone?

  RICH AND GONE

  Red Farlow Mysteries, #1

  W.F. Ranew

  Published by Tirgearr Publishing

  Author Copyright 2019 W.F. Ranew

  Cover Art: Cora Graphics - www.coragraphics.it

  Editor: Sharon Pickrel

  Proofreader: Lucy Felthouse

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not given to you for the purpose of review, then please log into the publisher’s website and purchase your own copy.

  Thank you for respecting our author’s hard work.

  This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, incidents are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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  DEDICATION

  To Lynn

  PART I

  ABDICATION

  No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main…

  And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

  — John Donne

  Chapter 1

  Chadwick Woodrow Cunningham once gave me a fine cigar. Like the man, the smoke looked classy, robust, and expensive, but it left a foul aftertaste I couldn’t shake.

  Born into a wealthy Atlanta family, Cunningham excelled in his education, achieved success beyond imagination, and exuded confidence in everything he did.

  His friends regarded him as outgoing and smooth with the ladies. They hailed him as a moneymaking smart guy. Others saw him as impetuous and unfaithful to his wife. The people who invested in his bogus funds regarded him as a cheat in business.

  What the hell. Chadwick Woodrow Cunningham had life by the ass, everyone agreed. But on a football Friday night near a small South Georgia town, his life changed forever.

  He disappeared.

  Someone hired me to inquire about some missing money—nearly three-hundred million dollars—entrusted to Mr. Cunningham. By happenstance, my investigation started a few weeks before he vanished. I soon learned what transpired that evening and how people who knew him assessed Cunningham’s mood in the days before then.

  One thing became apparent. As influential and exceptional as Cunningham thought of himself, people valued the money he stole far more than the man.

  * * *

  The call came to me the next Wednesday driving from Waycross, Georgia, to my house in Badenville. I favored two-lane back roads through cotton fields and swamps, endless stands of pine trees, and tumbling remnants of farmhouses and outbuildings. Under a radiant blue sky, fall had finally broken the heat of summer, and it felt good. A CD blared out my favorite country songs. I turned down the music and clicked the answer button on my hands-free.

  "Hey, Red. It's Tom.” Despite the curt tone, he sounded a bit nervous.

  Tom Weltner, Maxwell County’s sheriff, often called me about a crime even before he arrived at the scene. Sometimes, instead of contacting my former employer, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, sheriffs would call me first. They knew me, and we trusted each other. Those disinclined to this view never called me at all.

  "Howdy, Tom,” I said. “How's the wind blowing in Badenville?"

  "Breezy, not too hot. Cool, with a chance of rain over the weekend," he said. "Hey, we just got a report about something suspicious at a hunting lodge. I'm not sure where you are. Could you go out there with me?”

  "Perfect timing. I am just west of Valdosta. Coming in for a meeting this afternoon. I can blow it off. Where do I go?"

  When his call ended, the phone signaled a voicemail had come in while Tom was on the line. “Red, this is Gloria. Something’s happened. Please call me.”

  My client. I called Gloria back immediately. She told me Cunningham had not been in the office all week. She seemed concerned, although not overwrought. I needed to get ahead of all this.

  Forty-five minutes later, I stopped behind the Maxwell County courthouse in Badenville. The courthouse square filled two adjoined blocks in the middle of town. The stately building stood large and bright in its glaring whiteness. Gold-colored relief letters on its frieze stated, “Remodeled 1889.”

  Hardwoods shaded the square. A koi pond and disused fountain stood in the front plaza. Under the shade of a large oak tree, several old-timers sat on benches and held their brand of court.

  Tom waited out back. He made a motion, which told me to follow his cruiser. Near the county line, he turned off on a sandy, double-rut pig path into the woods and toward the river. We approached a gate bordered by dog fennel and some nasty looking thorny bushes. Beyond this stood the cabin, a structure overlooking the river near Fat Boy Bend quite suitable for convivial Deep South traditions—quail hunting, fishing, and pig roasting.

  We stopped and got out of our cars. Water oak leaves scattered over the ground. A gentle breeze rustled the fennel, sending its pungent odor into the air. I remembered yanking up the fennel weed from days spent on my uncle’s farm. If the cows ate it, which they rarely did, their milk would taste sour. This day, sunny and mild with fall in the air, made me imagine stomping around the fields with a shotgun.

  "We received a missing person’s report on two people who were headed up here last Friday night," Tom said as we huddled near the gate. “No one has seen them since. We also got a disturbance call in the vicinity of where they visited in town.”

  Tom kicked some rocks. “One caller mentioned Cunningham and a lady traveling with him. She’s Wanda Ramirez. Then we heard from his company. He didn’t show up at his office on Monday, Tuesday, or today. He missed a big meeting with shareholders yesterday morning.”

  “Anything on the disturbance?” I asked.

  “We sent someone over there to check into it. They found nothing out of the ordinary. We confirmed it was at the home of Wanda’s mother, a Mrs. Gonzalez.”

  Tom waved to a deputy, who ambled over. “Willis, this is Red Farlow, a private investigator. We’ve known each other for a few years.” Willis nodded and shook my hand.

  “Tell us about the car,” the sheriff said.

  "Hit’s a Mer-say-deez Benz.”

  "Any signs of any other vehicle?”

  "Nawsir. Nothing. We wus careful not to mess anything up. Just looked’s all. No sign of anybody. We did check out the car."

  "ID in it?" I asked.

  "Yessir. Car's registered to the Oceans South Life Assurance Company. We found an insurance card on the floorboard. Florida.” The deputy held up both documents.

  "Who is he?" Tom asked.

  Willis squinted as he stared at the card. "Name is Woodrow Cunningham of an Ortega Boulevard address down in Jacksonville," he said.

  “Sure confirms the missing person’s name,” Tom said. He wrinkled his brow and looked at me. “Thoughts?”

  "Yep. Two things. Old South, deep pockets, well-heeled,” I told them. “Ortega is a chunk of prime real estate, juts out along the St. Johns River, and upon which sits one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Duval County. No, the wealthiest."

  “And the other?”

  “Cunningham’s wife is my client.”

  Tom nodded. “Quite a coincidence. I want to hear more about it. It appears this was the couple’s last stop. Given what we have or don’t have here, I’m calling in the state crime scene analysts. No telling what those guys can turn up.”

  It's never too early to assume the worst.

  “Do we know anything else about the Wanda woman yet?” I asked.

  “Only that she and Cunningham stopped in Badenville to visit her mother,” Tom said. “I’ll talk with Mrs. Gonzalez when we leave here.”

  We straddled barbed wire in a low-slung section of the fence and tramped toward the cabin pitched above the languid, black-water river, stained dark by tannins of vegetation. Along its banks, the sugar loaf knees of cypress trees rose up out of the water. An idyllic spot, if you loved pines, mossy oaks, solitude, and an occasional water moccasin basking on a stump. Lord, it was quiet out here. A quiet broken only by the gently moving stream, birds chirping, and fish jumping. In the distance, a mourning dove sang its song of lamentation.

  The dark brown chink-log cabin looked rustic enough. Upon closer inspection, modern accouterments stood out. A roof-mou
nted satellite dish turned up to the southwestern sky, and a surveillance camera pointed in our direction. A deck had been added at some point and wrapped around the original structure. One section, with a hot tub, hammock, and rocking chairs, extended over the riverbank.

  Cunningham owned an expensive collection of shotguns for his frequent hunting trips on the property. Had he kept them in this house? Probably not. He was an insurance executive after all.

  The car grabbed my attention. A relatively new, big, executive model Mercedes-Benz S class 550. Its steel-gray exterior complemented dark-blue leather seats. There was no better ride for Cunningham than this German-made automobile, which conveyed luxury and smooth driving—the man’s castle on wheels.

  I stopped short of going any closer to the structure so as not to disturb any possible evidence. There were footprints of more than one person in the sandy soil around the car and the cabin’s front porch.

  At this point, calls to Tom and me indicated people close to Cunningham thought something amiss. One thing for sure, a man had disappeared, and possibly a woman, with no indication what happened to them or where their bodies might be.

  I gazed over at the bank and watched the river winding downstream. Possibly a stretch, but a river search could be in order. I had to remind myself of my unofficial status. All this together posed a mystery. The kind you do not usually get in rural South Georgia.

  Whatever happened to Cunningham on that fall evening differed little from the fate of a lot of people who disappear. Such events raise a lot of questions and concerns. Where did Cunningham go? How did he leave the place, assuming he arrived there as the car’s presence indicated? A planned vanishing act or murder? Did he flee the country after socking away millions of dollars in the Caymans? Or did an enemy orchestrate a plot to get him out of the way? Finally, was he alive or dead?

  Soon enough, some of the answers unfolded, leaving ample room for even more speculation, and revealing more about Wanda, too.

  Crime scenes take time to evaluate and analyze for evidence. As I’d done my share of waiting in my years as a law officer, there was no need for me to remain at the site. Before returning to Badenville, I spoke with Tom, and we agreed to meet at Mrs. Gonzalez’ home in an hour. He gave me her address.

  It wouldn’t take long for word to get around Cunningham had disappeared. Some luck, Gloria’s call, and my good friend Tom Weltner allowed me to stumble onto this early. Of course, a missing person often hasn’t gone missing at all. His family or friends just don't know where he went. Considering it had been only five days, the sheriff and others assumed he might show up in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours. He didn't.

  Driving away, the cabin receded in my rearview mirror. Someone had left on the porch light.

  * * *

  Arriving at Mrs. Gonzalez’ home before Tom, I parked down the street and waited in the truck with a good view of the house. Tom drove up fifteen minutes later. We walked up to the front door. Tom knocked.

  Mrs. Gonzalez answered the door.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gonzalez,” he said. “I’m Sheriff Tom Weltner, and this is Red Farlow.”

  She escorted us into the small front room of the clean and neat house. Three women in the adjoining room worked in Mrs. Gonzalez’ cleaning and laundry service. Two women ironed shirts and the third folded sheets.

  She closed the door to the room, and we sat down. In the next few minutes, she told us, blow by blow, what transpired Friday night when Cunningham and Wanda visited her on the way to his hunting lodge.

  As conversation eased first encounter tensions, Mrs. Gonzalez served wine in plastic cups to Cunningham and her daughter. They toasted the occasion, she told us.

  When someone banged on the front door, Wanda jumped. She rose from her chair by Cunningham and stepped to the door. Slowly, very slowly, she opened it, not at all pleased with what she saw.

  "What do you want, Ernesto?" she asked.

  Ernesto Ramirez pushed his way in. "Wanda! You left me for this flamingo of a man? He's a bad guy."

  Mrs. Gonzalez further described the intrusion. “He paused a moment, his face red with rage, and his body smelled like the sour sweat of alcohol. I’m sure he drank the liquor in great quantity during the afternoon. His bloodshot eyes scowled at Wanda's man. ‘Cunningham! You’ll pay for this.’"

  She said Ernesto then turned to her daughter. “He told Wanda to leave the gringo rico. And he said, ‘I treated you right. You’re cheating on me. Maybe you need some sense beat into your useless brain, beech.’ He raised a hand and was ready to hit her.”

  Cunningham leaped up and, still as fit as in his college boxing days, landed his right fist into Ernesto’s face. Blood splattered from the blow, and Ernesto raised both hands to his nose. Cunningham moved closer for a gut shot. Ernesto backed away. He muttered something else and stumbled out of the house.

  The door remained open. October’s chill swept in and cloaked the room in silence.

  No one else spoke for some minutes until Cunningham spoke to Wanda. “Time to leave,” he said.

  “I begged them to stay and sit back down to no avail,” Mrs. Gonzalez recalled with tears in her eyes.

  She told us they walked outside. Neighbors mingled in the grassless yard where a small pile of leaves smoldered near jagged knots of oak roots. Cunningham might have feared another encounter with the ex and glanced around cautiously. No sign of the man. He and Wanda moved toward his car. She greeted several people she knew.

  Cunningham opened the passenger door for Wanda. An SUV slowed down at the end of the driveway before its driver burned rubber around a corner and sped away. The crowd’s eyes turned toward the car’s noise.

  “I went to the car as Mr. Cunningham jumped into the driver's seat and started the engine,” Mrs. Gonzalez said. “I touched my daughter’s shoulder and assured her everything would be fine.”

  Cunningham slowly backed out of the drive into the street and drove to a highway that led north, dipping up and down toward their destination.

  “Wanda said she would call me when they reached his hunting lodge north of town,” Mrs. Gonzalez said. “She never did.”

  It likely took them about twenty minutes to arrive at the cabin. A haven, far away and private.

  * * *

  “Did Ernesto have a knife or a gun or any type of weapon with him?” Tom asked her after hearing about the Friday evening get-together.

  “No. He just was about to hit Wanda,” Mrs. Gonzalez said. “He was very much with the drink. Mr. Cunningham, he punched Ernesto very hard.”

  “Have you seen Ernesto since last Friday?” the sheriff asked.

  She shook her head. “Don’t know where he went. He has not come back here.”

  She told us how unfortunate the interruption in their evening had been. “I had not seen Wanda since she moved to Jacksonville. She met a nice man who makes her happy. It was sad they left so suddenly.”

  Tom then questioned her about her family.

  Carmelita Gonzalez's husband died before the family immigrated to Georgia from Mexico. A hard-working woman, she raised four children, with the youngest, a girl age sixteen, the only one still living at home. Wanda was the oldest. Of the two boys in between, one studied engineering at Georgia Tech, and the other served in the Marines.

  The family settled in the United States, supported and encouraged by her brother, who owned several Mexican restaurants and an office-cleaning business in Jacksonville. This family’s members, ambitious to the one, worked hard to achieve a better life.

  Thinking of the family’s journey and their new country, why had Wanda chosen to link up with a man as crooked as Cunningham? It may seem obvious. An older, wealthy American man approached a Latina woman of limited means. One might accept that or dismiss it. Either way, he may have offered her something in addition to the good life. Determining what it was, or where it might be, dangled out there as a key to solving the mystery of their disappearance.

  “Do you know what happened to my daughter?” Mrs. Gonzalez asked. She’d spent several sleepless nights wondering and worrying about Wanda. She dabbed tears now and then with a tissue.