SAVANNAH GONE (4 page)

Actually, I knew what a family office was even before Cavanaugh’s spiel this morning. But I played along and said, “Isn’t that a TV show?”

She laughed. “A family office manages the money of the super wealthy. If I’m not mistaken, John D. Rockefeller was the first to set one up to handle his vast fortune.” She looked at me and said, “Oprah uses one.”

“Oprah huh?” I chomped another pretzel.

“I read that in Forbes a couple months ago.”

“Forbes, my ass. You read that in People magazine.”

Caroline laughed again. “What’s Cavanaugh connection?”

“Claire’s father is one of his clients.”

“That means he’s got money. What’s he do for a living?”

“Heart surgeon. He and his wife are driving down from Charleston. I’m meeting ‘em this afternoon at Claire’s townhouse.” I left out the part about hanging up on him.

“Mind if we order?” she asked, laying her menu on the bar. “I need to get back to work.”

The bartender glanced our way. “Hey Steve,” I called out. “I think we’re ready to order.”

“His name’s Jeff,” Caroline said, elbowing me in the ribs.

“Used to be Steve,” I replied. “Witness protection program.”

She rolled her eyes and said to the bartender, “I’ll have a cup of French onion soup and a Caesar salad. And please don’t mind my friend. He’s been hit on the head more times than I can count.”

I looked at Jeff, or Steve, or whatever the hell his name was. “I’ll have the fish tacos with a side of fries.”

After he left to turn in our order, Caroline asked, “Why do I put up with you?”

“Because my wit is razor sharp, and you find me sexy and irresistible.” I added, “Plus I buy you lunch.”

“You’re a moderately attractive imbecile, and quite easy to resist.”

“Must be my dancing then.”

“You’re giving me a headache.” She shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. “Here’s a freebie for you. Make sure you check Claire’s Facebook page.”

I shook my head and groaned.

The entire self-absorbed, social media thing baffles me. It’s like a never-ending nightmare scenario of looking at your neighbors boring vacation photos. Who cares? I just don’t understand the need to share every minute detail of my life. I don’t like to share anything.

“Climb down off your stegosaurus,” Caroline said. “It’s the twenty-first century. Claire might’ve posted a clue about what’s going on in her life that could help you find her.”

“Don’t tell me you’re into that nonsense.” I knew she was right, but I like being obstinate.

“I’m a modern woman,” she said. “You, on the other hand, are a Cro-Magnon. You drive an old car, listen to ancient music, you hate technology. Hell, you’d be communicating with smoke signals if you could get away with it.”

“What can I say? I’m old school.”

The reality is everything’s disposable these days. But I say fuck newfangled, and to hell with the latest-greatest. The numbskulls who stand in line for days in order to score the latest iPhone, then act like they’ve won the lottery, piss me off. I like things with permanence, things that will last and stand the test of time: historic homes, cars made of steel, music from the legends, my divorce. I could go on, but you know where I’m coming from.

“Old school my ass,” she said, smiling. “You’re an old fool.”

“I’m three years older than you.”

“Quiet. I’m making a point. And the point is this...in life you keep up or get left behind. Now that I think about it, you’re probably the only guy in his forties left on the planet who doesn’t use Facebook. Even the department has a page.”

“Thanks for the rant,” I said. “Facebook it is.”

A few minutes later, what’s-his-name brought our lunch. As we ate, Caroline and I slipped into an easy and companionable silence. The food, as usual, was good, and so was spending a little time with her.

Halfway through the meal, Caroline started stealing my french fries.

“Why you?” she asked, nibbling on a fry.

Like most men, I listen fifty percent of the time...maybe. So I did what I usually do when I’m tuned out...I nodded my head and kept on chewing. Caroline must not have heard me nod because she asked it again. “Why you?”

I looked at her. “What the hell are you doing, speaking Mandarin?”

“No knucklehead. I’m asking you this...why you?”

“Why me, what? And stop stealing all my french fries.”

She snatched another one. “Why you, as in why did Cavanaugh hire you?”

“Didn’t ask him.”

“Yeah?” She studied me. “Well, maybe you should.”

“I’ll think about it.” I slid my plate just beyond her grasp.

“I’m serious,” she said, straining for another french fry. “You’re a skeptic, a cynic, a wiseass, a hard-ass, and most of all, a royal pain in the ass. You piss everybody off. You break all the rules and half the laws. You, my friend, are not a team player.”

“Teamwork’s overrated, but I appreciate the pep talk.” I knocked back some of my beer and looked at her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll flop on the floor, curl up in a ball, and suck my thumb.”

“Think about it,” she said, sounding serious. “Cavanaugh can afford to hire anyone. The man has more money than Midas.”

“The muffler shop?”

She laughed once again. I was on fire. I could do no wrong. “King Midas. You know...as in Greek mythology. Everything he touched turned to gold. It was known as the Midas touch.” She swiveled her stool and looked at me. “Let me ask you something. How much time did you spend with Cavanaugh this morning?”

“I don’t know. Thirty, forty-five minutes, maybe.”

“And how many times did you piss him off?”

“Not once.” Unless you counted the time he looked like he wanted to slug me.

“Look,” she said. “All I’m saying is keep your eyes wide open. He may, and I stress may, want something else from you.”

“Maybe he wants my business.” I mean my eyes are always wide open, but now they were ready to pop out of my head.

Caroline smiled. “I know you won a pile when you sued for unlawful termination, but his firm probably has a twenty million buy-in. You didn’t win that much, did you?”

“Not even close.”

The Atlanta paper where I toiled for ten years is owned by a large media conglomerate. Cable, internet, newspaper and magazine publishing...the whole enchilada. Angie, my ex, is a mid-level vice president with the cable division. In fact, that’s sort of how we met. It was the holiday season. Good cheer, and all the warm and fuzzies. Anyway, in an effort to save a couple bucks, the skinflints at corporate decided on one big Christmas party instead allowing each division to hold their own.

I made a cursory appearance, shook some hands, slapped a couple backs, and was about to blow out of there. On my way out the door, I noticed a good-looking blonde standing by the bar. Long story short, we hit it off pretty good and tied the knot a year later. After a four year run, Angie got pregnant. And just like that, it was Angie, Megan, and me.

So one day, not long after Megan’s second birthday, I came home from work around lunchtime. I needed to pick up some notes on a story I was working on. To my surprise, there was a car I didn’t recognize parked in the driveway, a black Mercedes convertible.

I stepped inside the house and heard voices emanating from the guest bedroom. You know where this is going: I found Angie and the number two man in the organization, a schmuck named Troy Holden, in bed sharing a post-coital moment. Talk about awkward.

So there I was, standing at the foot of the bed, looking at my naked wife and her paramour. And the strangest thing happened. In my darkest hour, I found enlightenment. Like a blind man with his vision restored, I had a moment of clarity beyond anything I’d ever experienced. My past fell by the wayside. The sham of a life I’d been leading no longer mattered. I felt at peace. I was free.

Of course, none of that actually happened. Instead, I went certifiable. I dragged Holden’s flabby ass out of the sack and flung him through the window. Then I stomped outside, helped him to his feet, and broke his jaw with a sweet little roundhouse right. To make sure I got my point across, I finished up with a half dozen well-placed kicks to his balls. What’s more, the jerk made no attempt to defend himself. He just laid there in the grass whimpering, while I pummeled him.

Next, I gathered their clothes from the bedroom floor, took them to the garage, and soaked them with gasoline. Then I had myself a mini bonfire on the front seat of Troy’s car. You should’ve seen it; roiling flames leaped six feet into the air.

Someone in the neighborhood must’ve called the fire department because a big red hook and ladder unit came whizzing down the street, sirens blaring. The firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze, but the Mercedes was a smoldering heap by that point.

Anyway, Holden spent a week at Piedmont Hospital. The surgeons wired his mouth shut, plucked countless glass shards from his carcass, and basically put him back together again...except Humpty Dumpty was humping my wife.

Fate is fickle; it can be kind, it can be cruel, or it can be completely indifferent. But whatever the case may be, my own personal fate wasn’t finished with me just yet. A day after Holden was released from the hospital, I was fired. In the span of a week, I lost my family, and then my career.

Dead man walking. Shuffling to the gallows. But I cheated the hangman and refused to go quietly. Instead, I hired a combative lawyer who specializes in workplace grievances named Roy Goldfarb. Stubby, sawed off, and permanently pissed, Roy lives to topple the big guy. And like a modern day David flinging rocks at Goliath, he brought the bastards to their knees.

In the end, wounds scab over, scar tissue forms, and the world keeps right on spinning whether we want it to or not. Time heals, but cash is the best salve of all. We settled out of court for just under two million. A month later I moved to Savannah and hit the reset button on my life. The rest, as Nabokov put it, is rust and stardust.

“Besides,” I said to her, “after the IRS and my attorney took their cut, I had to set up a college fund for Megan, my child support payments are ridiculous, and private school costs a fortune. I’m a working stiff just like you.”

“Sure you are,” she said. “Tell me the truth Fontaine. Why do you keep working? If it were me, I’d never work another day in my life.”

“I am telling you telling you the truth Caroline. I have nowhere near enough money to retire. But even if I did, what would I do? I hate golf, I don’t garden, and I’m too young to sail off into the sunset. If all I did was rattle around the house all day, I’d go fucking crazy.”

My father, a man I despised till the day he died, retired soon after reaching his sixty-fifth birthday. He was ready to enjoy his golden years...kicking the dog and belittling my poor mother. Six months to the day he stopped working, the abusive tyrant dropped dead from a massive heart attack. But I think what really put him in the ground was the thought of having nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Caroline gave me a coy smile. “You’re already crazy. Now stop hogging all the French fries.”

When we finished eating, I settled up and left Steve a fifty dollar tip. I made sure I got a receipt, so I could stick King Midas with the bill...c' est la vie.

We stepped outside and I walked Caroline to her car, an unmarked Ford Interceptor. She opened the front door and bent over to retrieve the missing persons file. I busied myself by admiring her shapely, spin-class ass. “Take your time,” I said, enjoying the view.

“I checked the morgue,” she said, rising back up and handing me the file. “They don’t have anyone that meets Claire’s description.” She climbed in the car, and I shut her door. She slid the window down and winked. “Don’t forget, you owe me dinner.”

I smiled and watched her drive off, not realizing the next time I saw her the circumstances would be far more dire.

The time was now 3:00
P.M
., and I was nose-to-tail in a line of cars waiting on Megan. She was out of school on spring break, spending the week with me while attending a tennis camp. Megan is eight by the way, and since the divorce I’ve worked extra hard to ensure she doesn’t get shortchanged. At this still tender age, I’d prefer she wasn’t screwed up like her parents...there’s plenty of time for that later.

When I drove up to Atlanta last week to pick her up, she gave me a big hug and a belated birthday present, a T-shirt with Chinese proverbs printed all over it. Why Chinese proverbs? Who knows? But each night before I put her to bed, we pull the shirt out and take turns reading some of the more interesting sayings to each other.

Anyway, a couple minutes later camp let out, and torrents of kids poured out the tennis center’s front door. I spotted Megan bounding down the steps with two of her friends, Vicki and Valerie, fraternal twins I can never keep straight. They live around the corner from me, and Megan loves hanging out with them when she’s in town.

I pushed my door open, stepped into the chaos, and the three of them came skipping toward me.

“How was tennis girls?”

Megan gave me a mischievous smile, blue eyes atwinkle. “Tommy Hendricks barfed all over the court. It was so gross.” The three of them looked at each other and squealed at the thought of gross Tommy, spewing a fountain of vomit like an ancient volcano raining lava on the fleeing natives. When they calmed down, Megan asked, “Can I have a playdate? Val and Vicki invited me over...please Daddy?”

“I don’t know Sweetie. I’m not sure how their mom feels about it.”

One of the twins said to me, “She doesn’t mind. Let’s go ask?”

Megan dropped her racket at my feet, and the girls took off running. I watched as they weaved in and out of the loosely assembled pack of kids. They disappeared into the throng, and I found them moments later hopping up and down in front of Bev McCauley, the twin’s mother.

Bev, as usual, was dressed in workout togs. She’s been trying to lose the same fifteen pounds for the last six years ago. Her husband Dave, a fellow I share a beer with from time to time, started an internet advertising agency called Creative-Cranberry. Dave’s a smart guy, and his company has exploded over the last couple of years. But no matter how many new faces he brings on board, he stays on the road at least three days a week.