Rich and Gone Read online

  "We want to do everything we can to find out, Mrs. Gonzalez,” Tom said.

  I explained my presence, telling her my client wanted to make sure Wanda and Mr. Cunningham were alive, well, and found soon.

  "I am so worried,” she said. “What if she is dead?”

  "A tragic outcome, Mrs. Gonzalez, and possible,” Tom said. “It’s too early for us to assume she is dead or alive. It’s only been a few days. A lot of the time, a missing person turns up. We must wait and hope.”

  Her eyes brightened. "You mean Wanda may be alive?"

  "We do not know this,” Tom said. “You can help by telling me all about her."

  "Oh, sure. A moment please." She left the room and returned in a few minutes with a carafe and three coffee cups. She poured the steaming liquid and handed a cup to the sheriff and another to me. With a cup for herself, she sat down and sipped.

  "Tell me. When did Wanda marry Ernesto?" Tom asked.

  "Oh, she married him three years ago."

  "Why did she leave him?"

  "Ernesto drinks the liquor too much,” she said. She bowed her head a moment. “He beat my daughter two, three times. The last time he did, she left to get away from him."

  I listened and looked around the room. On a corner cabinet stood a small, framed photo of a wedding couple at the altar. With them were a groomsman, a priest, and a bridesmaid.

  "When did she go to Jacksonville?" Tom asked.

  "Several months ago."

  "Mrs. Gonzalez, did Wanda tell you why she decided to move there?" I asked and set my cup aside after downing the last of the coffee.

  "Yes, she had a cousin in Jacksonville, my niece,” Mrs. Gonzalez said. “She has a restaurant and got Wanda a job."

  "Was this at the restaurant?" I asked.

  Mrs. Gonzalez rose and picked up the coffee urn. She walked over to fill my cup and refresh Tom’s. "No, she mostly worked at a cleaning company. For offices. She also helped the restaurant with parties."

  "Do you know the name of the restaurant?" This bit of information could lead to something or nothing. But talking with her cousin was necessary.

  "Just a minute." Mrs. Gonzalez set the coffee urn down and stepped over to the cabinet with the wedding photo and picked up a notebook. She came back and thumbed through its pages.

  "This is it," she said. "The Florida del Sol. My niece is Fernanda Alvarez."

  Tom noted this. "Do you have a phone number for Fernanda? We may need to speak with her."

  She gave it to Tom.

  "You have been very helpful, Mrs. Gonzalez," Tom said.

  We rose to leave.

  "One more thing,” I said. “When did Wanda tell you about her and Mr. Cunningham? Did she say to you anything about their travel plans to someplace else?"

  "She called me a few days before they came here," she said. "Plans? No plans about going away, no. Except for the hunting lodge."

  "Also, is there anywhere Wanda may know someone? Another city or another country?"

  She thought for a moment. “No. Most of our family members live in Florida. Fernanda has been one of her best friends."

  "Good to know. Thank you, Mrs. Gonzalez," I said. Tom thanked her, and we headed toward the door.

  She put a hand on my right arm and motioned us to sit back down. She sobbed as she did this.

  "Mr. Red and Mr. Tom, my Wanda sometimes doesn't make the best decisions,” she said. “However, she is my oldest daughter. I want her to be alive, and back with me. She belongs here, at home. Please find her."

  "Mrs. Gonzalez. I will do everything possible to locate Wanda. I believe she may be alive. If she is, I’ll try to find her."

  "Gracias, gracias, gracias," she said as we left her house.

  * * *

  On the October night when Cunningham went missing, I visited a friend in Savannah from way back in my past. She is beautiful, charming, intelligent, sexy as hell—and the girl who got away.

  More about her in due course.

  I’m a former cop turned private investigator. As did the kid in the movie, I see dead people. Only, I see their bodies, in the most literal sense, after they’ve been slain by one manner or another. None by my hand, but they died in a violent way—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

  News of Cunningham's disappearance shocked me as much as anyone. Plenty of people disliked the man, but who would kill him? Most wished him gone and out of their lives, although not necessarily dead.

  Cunningham stood five-feet seven-inches and weighed two-hundred pounds. His head of dark, wavy hair had receded into a respectable widow's peak by the time he turned up missing. He had a thick neck, broad shoulders, and a trim waist. The one time we met, he struck me as healthy in later years as his boxing days at Virginia Military Institute. There he excelled in the ring and distinguished himself in other ways, too. He studied finance and became a scholar in the discipline. He also chased women.

  For business he dressed in tailored suits, usually oxford gray, with custom-made Windsor collar shirts in a variety of colors, mostly pale pink, yellow, or lime. The casual Cunningham preferred polo shirts, khakis, and loafers sans socks. A man of the world. A boy of the South.

  There were two things to solve for my client. These consisted of missing money and now a missing man behind the missing money. I tackled these in the coming weeks and months, with little to go on at first. No blood at the hunting lodge to analyze and no discernable tracks to follow, according to the state crime scene specialists. A search at the cabin yielded no indication of what might have transpired. The security camera showed zero. Nothing indicated foul play. No hints of a well-planned scheme.

  So, building the story of Woodrow Cunningham, a rich man gone missing, required talking to people and asking what they observed about him before he vanished. The answers would follow. They always did.

  * * *

  When my phone rings late at night or early in the morning, several things pop into my head. If it's in the wee hours, it's likely a murder, and I’m asked to go to someplace specific. On the personal side, it could be my cousin in Atlanta calling to say yet another relative had passed away.

  Expecting something along these lines, I answered the mobile phone early Thursday. "Hello."

  "Is this, ah, Red?" the female voice inquired. She sounded familiar.

  “Who is calling?"

  "Red, this is Julie Cezanne, in Jacksonville. Remember me? Jake Winslow told me to call you."

  I couldn't immediately place the name. Bells tolled somewhere in a far corner of my brain.

  "I met you once at one of Jake and Elsie's parties in Atlanta,” she said. “I used to work for him in New York."

  Ding-dong. "Well damn, Julie! Good to hear your voice. How long has it been?" I eased up out of bed and stepped into my study to sit at the desk. I opened a drawer and took out a notepad and pen.

  "Too long, it seems.”

  I did remember this young lady. A reporter and quite a charmer. Smart, sweet, and tough. She’s the kind of reporter you didn't want to give a stupid answer to. She'd honed her newsgathering skills at The New York Times, where she learned to build fact upon fact until she had an unassailable story. She knew how to ask the right questions, follow up on incomplete or shaky answers, and read the faces and minds of people she interviewed.

  The Times hired her after she received a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. An honors student, she'd excelled in literature studies and cross-country. Imagine running cross-country in that part of Manhattan.

  "What are you up to these days?"

  "Exactly the reason for my call," she said. "I’m a reporter at the Union-Journal in Jacksonville. Want to ask you about an incident up in Badenville over the weekend."

  “A step down from the Times, isn't it?"

  "I downshifted for the right reasons,” she told me. “The city was no place to raise teenage girls. Florida suits me better. I am calling about a missing person.”

  "Do you mean Chadwick Woodrow Cunningham?”

  "Known across the South as Woody,” she said. “Quite a prominent businessman in Jacksonville. He founded Oceans South and served as its CEO and board chairman.”

  In the background of our call, editors chatted about the front page. Someone yelled something about a deadline.

  “What do you know about his trip up here to his place on the river? I was out there yesterday.”

  "There’s a lot I don't know, which is why I am calling you," she said. "The cabin is on an old cotton plantation. He'd go there whenever he could get away, which wasn't often enough for him. Every January he hosted a quail hunt for the company's top clients. I'm told for him the occasion meant more than Christmas."

  My fantasies about the place ran to fishing on the river and hunting dove in the fall and quail in the winter. A fire ring would be nice, too. Didn’t see one.

  “From my visit yesterday, I can understand his love of the place,” I said. “How did you learn he was missing?”

  Someone near Julie’s desk talked on the phone, loud enough to distract me for a moment.

  "It’s all over social media," Julie said. "Our night editors called me after a friend of ours at Oceans South phoned him. I filed a news brief and need to write a full story as soon as possible. Oceans South is a public company. It's only a matter of hours before the New York papers jump all over it. Then it'll be the wire services, CNN, The Financial Times, on and on. I want to have the first story."

  "What do you need from me?” I jotted a note to check Google after the call. “Understand, Julie, you can't quote me. Deal?”

  "OK, not a problem. First, tell me what you know about the police investigation. Any arrests?”

  The first question a reporter always asked.

  "Very early stage, so they don't know much right now," I said. "No one has been arrested. The car they found may give you something to hang your hat on. The registration for the Mercedes sedan discovered near the hunting cabin showed the company owned it. The insurance card inside gave Cunningham’s name and address. Confirm all this with Tom Weltner, the Maxwell County sheriff. No indication of other vehicles going in and out. Deputies will talk with the neighbors in the area this morning. The state boys will likely search the Piscola River for bodies and clues."

  Julie paused for a moment, as someone asked her a question. She came back on the line and apologized. "Do you know if they've talked with Wanda Ramirez’ family?"

  "The sheriff and I interviewed her mother last night,” I said. “Tom had told me someone called in a disturbance near her mother’s home Friday evening. What do you know about Wanda?”

  “Copy!” an editor yelled.

  "From what I hear, she is the latest in a string of Cunningham's girlfriends. Understand, Woody was married, which didn't matter much to him."

  I informed her of my knowledge to a point. Some of it squared with what my client told me about the man.

  The newsroom suddenly quieted down. Another edition put to bed.

  “Julie, we ought to get together in Jacksonville and discuss this some more.”

  “Sure thing. When will you be down here next?”

  “How about tomorrow? Mid to late afternoon?”

  “OK, meet you at Jack’s Bean Stalk on Beach Boulevard. I’ll text the address. Say around 3 p.m.?”

  “Sure, I have another appointment at three forty-five. We can talk for a few minutes,” I said. “Good?”

  “It’s a plan. Bye.”

  Our call ended.

  * * *

  Gloria Whitworth Cunningham, the missing man’s wife, hired me. She asked me to delve into Woody’s fraudulent financial dealings and investigate his latest dalliance. The missing money was the main reason she paid my fees plus expenses. I dialed Gloria’s number to update her on my conversation with Julie. I didn’t want her surprised by the story in her hometown newspaper. I also briefed her about my visit to the cabin and discussion with Sheriff Weltner.

  Gloria answered in her cordial, businesslike voice despite the fact her husband had vanished. “Yes, a short Union-Journal story appeared online a minute ago. They are likely working on a longer version, but no one has called me yet.”

  “They will,” I said. “A reporter named Julie Cezanne just phoned me. I informed her she couldn’t quote me.”

  “Please continue to keep a low profile,” she said.

  I extended my condolences, only assuming she wasn’t glad to get rid of the S.O.B. She didn’t give away much in the way of emotion. So, maybe she was overjoyed Woody had left the building. I promised further updates as required.

  We scheduled a face-to-face meeting at 1 p.m. the next afternoon in Jacksonville.

  * * *

  I sat there a moment and thought about my conversations with Julie and Gloria. Needing to bounce some things off someone, I called Jake Winslow, the editor and owner of the Badenville Express. Years ago, Jake worked as a deputy national editor for The New York Times and later as a big-time public relations man in the city. He did a stint with the Atlanta papers, too. After he got married and started a family, he had a chance to buy the Express and move back to Badenville, where he grew up.

  Jake is a good friend and seasoned sounding board.

  First, we talked about Julie Cezanne. He spoke of her fondly as one of his brightest young stars in journalism and PR. He followed her career after Julie married and moved on to work for a Fortune 500 company. Eventually, Jake lost contact with her until she moved to Jacksonville for the Union-Journal job.

  "In this era of the Internet, you didn't try to track her down?" I asked him.

  "Considered it. Never got around to it,” Jake said.

  Then, we caught up on Woody Cunningham, although there was not much to say.

  “So tell me about this big shot gone missing up county,” he said.

  “The real reason for my call,” I said. “The executive, Woody Cunningham, had his girlfriend with him Friday night. They stopped to visit her mother in Badenville. The sheriff got a call about a disturbance at the house, likely while they were there.”

  “And what became of it?”

  I heard the clatter of a keyboard as Jake typed notes.

  “Nothing. Tom and I spoke with the mother late yesterday. She’s Mrs. Gonzalez. Might be a good idea for you to talk with her, along with a few of the neighbors. I know Tom has his deputies canvassing the neighborhood."

  "Yeah, could be a great lead," he said. “Hey, I’m going to have to scoot. Come by the house for a coffee soon.”

  "Thanks, Jake. I can drop in tomorrow if you’re up early enough," I suggested. “I have to leave for Jax around ten or so.”

  “Come on over. I’ll buy you an espresso,” he said.

  My favorite drink.

  “See you then.”

  Chapter 2

  People have called me a lot of names in my time. I have to say "eccentric" ranks as my personal favorite.

  Jake called me an eccentric after I showed him my new ride. He said my midlife crisis came in the form of, not a trophy bride, but a thirty-year-old black off-road vehicle, fully restored to its original level of testosterone. The enhancements included a few apocalyptic features to create a survivalist-certified, backwoods arsenal on wheels. The "retirement" gift to myself, I shall concede, proved quite useful once I went back to work.

  In truth, the part-truck, part-tank, if not fuel-efficient, carried everything I needed in my line of work and pleasure. In it were two shotguns—a twelve-gauge pump and an elegant English-made over-under for skeet and trap—along with a rifle for many kinds of prey, and several handguns, all locked in the two black safe-boxes in the back.

  People might wonder how I came to own the English shotgun. If that happened, I'd have to lie, as my two-bedroom house cost a lot less.

  I've always enjoyed the outdoors—the backwoods of South Georgia's Wiregrass, so named for its vast acreage of pine trees and grasslands along with attendant rivers, streams, and swamps. I preferred the muddier areas, as remote as possible from the beehive of human activity, namely Atlanta.

  The top box on the truck housed camping equipment. On the day I returned to Badenville to meet the sheriff, I'd stopped the night before at some property I'd acquired from a lawyer friend near the Okefenokee Swamp. I hiked into a remote campsite and had dinner of fresh fish over a fire. Gators growled nearby; one crawled close enough for me to get a little nervous. Beyond the menacing sound, I swatted gnats and mosquitoes, kept an eye out for snakes, and continuously checked for ticks. Fun time.

  The trip proved its worth as I settled into my sleeping bag for the night. The swamp’s orchestra tuned up all at once and broke the quiet and solitude with loud hums, coos, chirps, caws, and growls. The symphonic sounds of nature, wild nature, eased me into sleep.

  I left the Georgia Bureau of Investigation six or so years ago. For three years, I fished and hunted and lived off savings, and held off dipping into retirement funds. Soon enough I got tired of the so-called good life. When I decided to go back to work, no one wanted me. So I started my private investigation shop and took cases from insurance companies, law firms representing banks and their clients, wealthy families, betrayed wives, and suspicious husbands. A Washington investigative reporter hired me to look into the shenanigans of a Georgia congressman.

  I also consulted on local criminal cases with my police contacts. The money wasn't as good as my corporate work. These assignments did keep me in touch with my law enforcement colleagues. Corporate jobs, of course, turned out to be downright lucrative. The work just wasn't the same as hauling in the evil guys—and gals.

  I welcomed calls from old friends like Sheriff Weltner, who never really thought of me as having left law enforcement. I appreciated his confidence in my work and the counsel I offered, even though some of my old GBI colleagues hated seeing me at a crime scene. Thankfully, I didn't hold any grudges.

  Tom and I shared similarities in thinking and approach to solving crimes. He was the only black sheriff in the state. Between some white officers’ bigoted views and their dislike of me, Tom and I often got shut out of the investigative process. No matter, working on the same case together, we always found out who did it before the other authorities. A damned good team.