CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After J.D. left, I went to my computer and Googled Charles (Chaz) Desmond. Doc had been a busy man in the years since I’d seen him. There was quite a lot on him, all of it good. He was what he seemed to be. A successful businessman who dealt fairly with his customers and honorably with his competitors. There was nothing apparent that would lead me to believe that he had any enemies.
I spent some time looking up James Ronald Desmond, the dead son. There was very little on him. Most of what I found had to do with his years at the University of Georgia. He’d been involved in the fraternity life on campus and had written a couple of letters to the editor of the university newspaper. He was not happy with the football coach and vented his frustration in the letters in the paper, but that was not something that usually got someone killed by a professional hit team. Especially at the University of Georgia where half the student body was always unhappy about the coach.
I found an engagement announcement in the Atlanta Constitution dated two weeks before the wedding. A very short engagement. It did give me one bit of information I didn’t have. The maiden name of the bride.
I Googled Meredith McNabb and found pretty much the same stuff from the University of Georgia and a lot of debutante crap from the Savannah newspaper. She came from a very wealthy family whose fortune was several generations old. The only oddity I found was that she had spent a year between high school and college working with volunteers building a school in Laos.
I dug some more and there it was, in the Savannah Morning News about five years before. A picture of Meredith McNabb in Laos, standing with a small group of other young people, including Jim Desmond. Their names were all listed in the caption below the picture. The story was about the local debutante who’d left a life of luxury to spend six months in rural Laos, living among people so poor they had never seen indoor plumbing or electricity. God, they looked so young and dedicated and happy. And five years later, one of them was dead and the star of the story was in mourning. Life can be a bitch.
I called Desmond on his cell phone. He answered immediately. “Good morning, L.T.”
“Morning, Doc. How’re you?”
“About the same. I’m thinking of putting Julie in the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“That’s a nice name for the booby hatch. She can’t seem to snap out of her grief.”
“I’m sorry, Doc. I wish there were something I could do.”
“Find the killers, Matt. Just find the a*sholes who took our boy.”
“Tell me about Jim’s work in Laos.”
“Not much to tell. He wanted a bridge year, I think they call it. A year out of school before starting college. He was aware of the fact that he’d lived an above-average life and felt that he should give something back. Help the less fortunate. He came across this group run by a charity based in Macon that put the so called bridge year kids into projects in the Third World.”
“Was the group legit?”
“Far as I can tell. I checked them out. They seem to do very good work and the money they take in is accounted for. Most of it goes into the projects and very little to administration. The volunteer kids who can pay their travel expenses are asked to do so. The ones who can’t are funded by the charity.”
“Did he like it? Laos, I mean.”
“He came home all hopped up about what they’d been doing. He felt like he had helped some people who had no hope.”
“Love life?”
Doc chuckled. “Oh, yeah. Meredith was with the same group. They met during the orientation on the Mercer University campus in Macon. That blossomed into quite a romance. Took everything her parents and Julie and I could do to keep them single until they finished college.”
“Did Jim ever indicate that there’d been any trouble in Laos?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Any tension with any of the other students. Anything that could have carried over to the present.”
“I doubt it. If there was, I’m not aware of it.”
“What about at the university? Any big issues with other students?”
“I don’t know of any.”
“I’d like to talk to Meredith. Is she in Atlanta?”
“No. She’s in Savannah with her parents. I can call her for you. I’m sure she’d be glad to talk.”
“I think I’ll go up there. Can you set up an appointment in the next couple of days and let me know?”
“Sure thing, Matt. I’ll get back to you this afternoon.”