Blue Magnolia

By WF Ranew

PI Red Farlow dives headfirst into a hornets' nest of extremists. His new client, Hank Tillman, only wants to get a shot at country music stardom. While playing in a Georgia bar, Hank—known as Cowboy to his fans—stumbles into trouble. The kind that kills. PI Red Farlow steps in to help him.

Hank’s song, Redneck Devil, attracts the attention of a violent group called the Blue Magnolia. Its leaders want him to perform at their next hate rally. There's another, darker reason the Blue Magnolia wants Hank in its fold.

An elderly patient in a Florida insane asylum reveals a decades-long secret that devastates Hank. It’s the worst kind of fake news.

Can Farlow root out the truth? The PI has his own problems as he confronts a hired killer face-to-face.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing
• Release date: May 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781370035892

WF Ranew

W.F. Ranew is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and communication executive. He started his journalism career covering sports, police, and city council meetings at his hometown newspaper, The Quitman Free Press. He also worked as a reporter and editor for several regional dailies: The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The Florida Times-Union, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Ranew has written two previous novels: Schoolhouse Man and Candyman’s Sorrow.He lives with his wife in Atlanta and St. Simons Island, Ga.

Book preview

Part I

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once . . .

—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Chapter One

The storm raged. Rain fell hard. Thunder roared. Ahead of the rumbling, lightning flashed, giving a glow to bent weeds in the red-clay ditch, the babbling stream of water, and stones washed bare.

Hank Cowboy Tillman—shot and bleeding in the gully—tried to move. Later he remembered his efforts to crawl. Not because he could crawl. He could not. But if he managed somehow to do so, maybe that might get him out of his predicament. As if any movement could help on the remote stretch of rural road.

Cowboy, shocked and muddled by his painful wound, recalled a foggy memory about a freakish July hurricane somebody mentioned in the bar last night. This must be the one. Rain pelted Hank’s head. Muddy water flowed in a rivulet around his right ear. Georgia clay smudged part of his face and much of his clothing.

His hat. Did I leave it at the bar? Oh yeah. Some asshole knocked it off his head before plowing a fist into his gut.

And my guitar? Shit.

Worrisome as those quandaries ordained, memories of Nashville came to haunt Hank as rain drenched him down in the ditch.

A similar night, he told Red Farlow later.

He’d creased his Texas straw hat perfectly. Grease spots stained it here and there. His 1951 Martin 000-21 guitar, ragged, rugged, and chipped, with the rosewood split a few inches. Still, its glorious sound resonated in his memory. Priceless both.

These things he contemplated in nightmarish images as he kept his face above water. Then the shock of reality hit. Will I live? Or am I dying? Any chance I can get out of this wet hellhole?

Those two thugs in the bar. He heard people talking about the hurricane. It was right then the pair—one named Bugger, the other Swansy—accosted him. That led to the gunshot wound.

Why’d they do it? Why’d they hurt me?

Thinking about their assault on him and feeling the pain, Hank Tillman tried to cry, but no tears came. He’d desperately looked around the back room of the bar for Red Farlow but didn’t see him. His protector. Nowhere around.

Now, here was Hank, soaked completely through his clothes, muddied to the core, and hurting. He had to pee, so he went in his pants. Who would notice?

Right then, he couldn’t think anything mattered. Not playing. Not singing. Not making his next gig.

His hat and guitar. The only things he could contemplate, along with life itself—the important stuff.

Will I play again?

He passed out and dreamed an angel hulk bent down and cradled his head. A shock of lightning lit up the familiar face.

Thunder roared. Rain fell.

* * *

Two years previous, Cowboy walked into a seedy bar near the Alabama line. With his guitar case and gig bag in hand, he moved across the room. His boot toe hit a snag in the floor. Hank nearly tripped. He looked down at the cracked, uneven concrete littered with peanut shells and cigarette butts. He took in the acrid smoke from cigarettes, cheap cigars, and weed that filled the room. People coughed a lot as they puffed away. The older ones looked unhealthy, and the younger ones not much better off.

He went over to a corner where an amp stood and prepared his equipment.

A waitress named Wanda strolled past. Hank asked her for a bottle of water. She dominated the place, a big soulless wench who cursed anything and often. She got into an argument with a millwright as Cowboy adjusted his mic and tuned his guitar for the first set. Wanda won; the mill worker left.

He played to pipefitters and other workers from a nearby paper mill, along with farm laborers, auto mechanics, and veterans. A lot of the male patrons had nothing else to do but shoot pool, drink a lot, and tease the three waitresses for a chance, slight as the odds might be, for a night in the sack with one of them. A few women patrons sat among the crowd drinking hard liquor or cheap wine or both.

Hank belted out one of his best, his namesake’s Hey Good Lookin’. He let it rip in a loud voice and heavy beat that elicited from the crowd romping ’n’ stomping two-stepping, extravagant toe-tapping, and booming laughter. The locals loved it. Hell, everybody loved it.

* * *

You couldn’t help but like Hank. He smiled broadly and often, friendly in a wholly Southern way. Which is why there was no easy way to explain what happened to loveable Hank Tillman. But it did happen. How could he offend anybody? Not easy, if you knew him. But he did.

Hank’s story told a long and complicated tale for his number of years, a romance bitten with tragedy, his life’s destiny crawling along like a rattlesnake on a hot July afternoon.

Yet, Hank himself smiled brightly. He always made most well-adjusted people feel good, whether he played in a honky-tonk or just talked while sipping iced tea on his mama’s screened front porch in Norman Park, Georgia. He preferred the sweet tea rather than bourbon during periods of hoisting himself up on the wagon for another short ride. Besides, his mother wouldn’t allow the hard drink in her house. Other times, liquor held on to Hank and wouldn’t let go. He tried Alcoholics Anonymous once. Didn’t take. Couldn’t take. Probably never would.

Hank’s story evolves from a crossroads in his life. There, he encountered some people who wanted to destroy him. He also met Red Farlow, who happened to be in the audience the night in Southwest Georgia.

Farlow worked as a private investigator with a checkered past in law enforcement and a real badass attitude. But, like Hank Tillman, Red was a pretty nice guy. Most of the time.

Cowboy’s story started in Nashville, Tennessee. If you asked Hank, he hoped it would end there one day.

* * *

For his Music City debut, Hank Tillman stepped into a dim spotlight in a little-known, but loud honky-tonk in Printer’s Alley, up the street from Nashville’s famous and raucous Broadway. A no-name band headlined the bill, and Cowboy opened for his one-night stand.

Bars in most places have a fragrance of their own, generally not very pleasing. Along Nashville’s Broadway runs a strip of restaurants, cowboy boot stores, guitar emporia, and drinking establishments, most of which feature country music day and night. Odiferous stale beer and whisky spills, puke, and cigarette smoke wafted in the air. In the Alley bar where Hank played, the odor assaulted patrons’ nostrils as they approached the steps. Many went inside because the music was pretty decent. So good the place was packed, mostly because a duck callers’ convention had descended on the city.

Hank’s nerves rattled him as he held a brew. The glass shook so much beer spilled onto his hand. But he collected himself with three swigs. It was important to make a good impression, even in the Alley bar.

He opened by singing Country Roads. Midway into the song, Cowboy heard a scraggly bearded drunk in bib overalls on the first row scream out, Play me some Hank, Hank. The man apparently considered his quip funny. He turned to the busty blonde next to him and giggled. She dangled a mug of beer in her left hand and smirked.

Cowboy continued with the John Denver classic and tried to ignore the ill-behaved cur. He launched into Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain—his favorite Willie Nelson song—and just when he started the fingerpicking solo, the drunk erupted again, this time in anger.

Hey, you limp dicked little piece of shit, the hillbilly said. Get off Willie, and play us some Hank!

The blonde cackled at this and took a swig of her beer. Her flinty eyes daggered at Hank even as she laughed.

Cowboy went on with the song, scanning the back of the room for the manager or a bouncer. No one came to his rescue.

OK, so this clown wants some Hank Williams. Finishing Willie’s song, Cowboy paused a moment and belted out the beginning verse a cappella. He let the words hang there a few seconds of silence and started his upbeat flatpicking intro to Honky Tonk Blues.

The drunk seemed pacified with this.

Cowboy finished it quickly and hit a few licks to move into one of his tunes, with the chorus, Stroke me here, rub me there, and stay with me all night long, sweet baby.

Hank took a break, put his guitar into its rugged and scarred case next to his stool, turned off the mic, and got up to hit the head and have another beer.

As he stepped off the stage, the drunk grabbed his arm.

Hey, man, you need to expand your . . . what do you call it, your rep . . . rep. Your songs, man, the drunk said, slobbering on Cowboy. Hell, man, you ain’t worth shit.

Cowboy pulled out of the drunk’s grip and turned to leave. As a man, Hank could hold his own, but a natural-born fighter he never was. The drunk, still gripping his beer mug, pushed Cowboy hard on the back. The singer stumbled a few steps, turned, and took a swing at the guy, landing his right fist squarely in the man’s face. The drunk staggered back. His beer mug erupted with a foamy lava cloud that splattered Hank and splashed onto the floor. Flailing wildly, the man came back and desperately tried to land a blow but lost his balance and fell belly down on the floor.

A crowd gathered around them. Magically, the manager and his bouncer appeared. Too late. The cops arrived and arrested Hank. The drunk got a trip to the hospital and received attention his nose didn’t require in Hank’s opinion.

Hank went to jail for twenty-four hours. His cousin bailed him out and got him a lawyer, who settled the case by paying a fine.

Afterward, Cowboy headed back to Georgia. He left part of him behind in Printer’s Alley—his battered hat and crumpled sheets of what might be a hit song.

He remembered the song. The hat he lost forever.

Chapter Two

Mary Ellen Winship’s conference call with a client in New York went over, and she was late for a meeting down the hall. She finally ended the call and, with files in hand, headed for the ladies’ room before seeing her clients.

A mother and daughter from Macon, Georgia, waited on her in the large conference room. Mary Ellen went in and greeted them. On a sunny day in May, she wore a pale pink silk blouse and a cream linen skirt. Her string of pearls radiated light of their own. She’d applied a coral lipstick. Her brown hair bounced as she tilted her head and extended her hand to each woman.

As she sat, Mary Ellen glanced out the room’s wide window to a blue-sky day with a few clouds off in the west. Inside, her mood wasn’t so bright. She dreaded the meeting, which brought the business of death and grieving to her door.

The mother, Jean Weber Gleason, and her daughter, Georgie, had just inherited forty million dollars upon the death of Walter W. Gleason, a lawyer, commercial real estate investor, and corporate director of several manufacturing companies.

Walt Gleason died of a heart attack while playing golf in South Florida on a business trip a month previously. That’s what his best friend and partner, Jimmy Pascal, told the Gleason family. In reality, Walter died while engaged in vigorous sex with his mistress the night before a corporate board meeting in Miami.

Mary Ellen met with the mother and daughter to discuss the inheritance and what to do with all that money. Both women looked bled dry of tears over the tragedy. Their somber expressions posed a question which, if uttered, might be something like, What the hell are we going to do now?

Mary Ellen might be the perfect person to work with relatives of deceased multimillionaires. She lost her father, Calvin Mason Winship—a wealthy lawyer, investor, and former Georgia governor—when she was four years old. In her mother, Irene Gibbons, she saw the model of a steady head and hand at handling sudden departures of loved ones and the resulting emotional wakes.

First, Mary Ellen offered her condolences to the mother and daughter. She paused a moment as Mrs. Gleason consoled herself and thanked Mary Ellen for the kind thoughts.

Getting down to business, Mary Ellen pointed out the money had been invested in mutual funds, bonds, and growth stocks. She’d done a portfolio analysis of the investments, retirement funds, and cash in three bank checking accounts. She advised Mrs. Gleason to keep the money invested where it was and, as the executor of the will, consolidate the checking accounts for her use. Mary Ellen would handle that for her and provide continuing financial counsel and tax advice as necessary.

I’m here for you, Mary Ellen said. Please know you can call me anytime with any questions. Or, just to talk.

Right then, the three women jumped, startled by the thump and bang of a window cleaner high up on the outside of Mary Ellen’s office building. He did his dance, suspended by ropes, and swung out of sight.

Georgie’s inheritance reverted to a trust fund her father had set up for his only child. She was given an allowance of two thousand dollars per month until her thirtieth birthday. At that point, the amount increased to eight thousand two hundred fifty dollars a month. Her father’s will also liberally provided for her college tuition and living expenses at school.

Georgie, who had just turned eighteen, asked several questions about accessing money for college. Mary Ellen answered those. The young woman would attend Duke University in the fall.

The Gleasons left, somewhat bolstered by their confidence in their counsel. Mary Ellen walked to her office.

Mary Ellen, Penny said to her halfway down the hall.

Yes?

Mr. Tillman called and left a message for you and this number. Penny handed Mary Ellen a note.

She read it as she entered her office. Please call me. Urgent. Got a little problem in Nashville. In jail. Need help. Hank.

Mary Ellen uttered a groan, not so much anyone could hear it, but definitely a sigh of angst.

Her cousin, Hank Tillman, likely had gotten into another bar fight. What did I do to deserve this kind of kinfolk?

She closed the door to her office and listened to Hank’s earlier voicemail. Then she called the number he left with Penny. Of course, no one answered. The phone was in the possession locker room at the Nashville Police Department, the auto message said.

She dialed information, got the PD’s main number, and called it.

* * *

Hank knew he’d disappointed Mary Ellen and imagined her worried look upon learning the cops arrested him—again.

As one of the shorter boys in his class, the curly-brown-haired Hank Cowboy Tillman early on discovered the best way to deal with a bully—or, most recently, a heckler—was to tear into him with fists swinging. Unfortunately for Hank, this rarely worked. No matter the transgressions of the offender, Hank always got in trouble. Or got hurt. Or both.

There he sat in a jail cell with drunks and other lawbreakers when a deputy approached the cell block. Tillman, the man said. Everybody in the cell looked up expectantly in the vain hope they’d misheard, and the jailer had asked for one of them.

Hank stumbled to the door as it opened and followed the deputy to the phone.

Hello.

Hank?

Yeah, Mary Ellen? Thank goodness you called back.

The ambient noise of a jailhouse buzzed into the phone call.

Hank, speak up. I can barely hear you, Mary Ellen said. She spoke loudly. I’ve been in a meeting. What happened to you?

Sad to say, M.E., but about the same as last time, Hank said. A drunk at the honky-tonk complained I wasn’t playing a song he wanted to hear. Even when I did, he continued pestering me. After the set, I broke for a beer, and he accosted me. I defended my person and my honor. But I got busted. Hit him a good one, though.

Are you OK? Did he hurt you?

He got a couple of licks in. But he was so drunk he could hardly stand up. He went down faster’n a watermelon truck wrecking in a ditch.

I should ask, is he OK?

Dunno and don’t care.

Next, Mary Ellen asked a question she knew would cost her money. Can you get out of there?

Yeah, I’ll reckon. They say I will have a court appearance later today. Likely there will be a fine.

Well, damned, Hank. What are we going to do? Mary Ellen asked him. Are you still traveling around on a Trailways bus?

Well, yeah. That’s the only way I can get to my gigs, he said. I still don’t have a truck. And, of course, I couldn’t get a license anyways.

Hank had it rough on the road. When he graduated from high school in Norman Park, Georgia, he set out to make his fame and fortune as a country singer. His first gig was in a place called Tomcat Joe’s in Moultrie near his hometown. He did all right, too, playing to the Friday and Saturday night crowds for three weekends. Then he set off for Albany, Tifton, Waycross, and Brunswick. After his first of three nights in Brunswick in a redneck dive with a name he’d forgotten, he got a chance to play Murphy’s Tavern on St. Simons Island for a weekend. In his earliest string of engagements, Murphy’s ranked as the big time.

Hank performed well as a country singer—itinerate was what Mary Ellen called his trade—and his exceptional talent playing the guitar. He knew all the Texas Outlaws songs by Willie, Waylon and the boys, and everything recorded by David Allan Coe. He even had his own rendition of the Perfect Country Song. And always, always, he closed his sets with Dave Dudley’s Six Days on the Road. Cowboy loved the song, even though he didn’t have his own home to go to or a baby there. But it was a crowd favorite, especially at bars that catered to on-the-road truckers.

Of course, his specialty was Hank Williams, his idol. He knew all of Hank’s hits and then some.

Well, we’ll try to get you out of there as soon as possible, Mary Ellen said. She tried not to sound as disheartened as she felt about Hank.

Oh, thank you, Mary Ellen. I’m trying to do better. Honest, he told her. I appreciate this and will call when I get out of court.

* * *

Booking gigs challenged Hank’s sales skills at times. He wanted to expand the one- and two-night stands and perform several nights at a single bar and on a regular schedule. Catching the bus across Georgia for short gigs meant lower wages with higher costs.

The Shot Dead and Gone to Hell Saloon in Macon stood as the exception. The place booked him every four or five weeks for three-night stands.

When Hank started his circuit of playing across Georgia, he traveled in his pickup until he totaled it early one morning. He lost his next truck in his third DUI crash, which relieved him of his driver’s license.

He needed a new marketing strategy. But on that day in Nashville, as a deputy escorted him back to the cell, Hank Tillman had a more immediate worry. How could he get bailed out of jail in time to catch a bus to Macon? If he could get there by six o’clock the next afternoon, he could fulfill his contract with the Shot Dead country dance hall. It was the biggest place he’d ever played, and the area fans liked him. Although the hall was rarely filled for his sets, a local music reporter told him he drew bigger crowds than most people the bar booked, except for the country stars.

The next two hours would be crazy, what with court and getting out of jail, and not even knowing which bus he could catch to get there on time.

He hoped Mary Ellen would come through for him. Last time, down in Columbus, Georgia, he got into a fight with an Iraqi war veteran. His cousin got her lawyer to intervene, and Hank walked out of jail a few hours after he talked to her.

This time, three hours later, a young, well-dressed attorney from a silk-stocking Nashville firm called on Hank at the jailhouse. The singer strolled out a free man in an hour.

* * *

Hello, Mother, said Mary Ellen. She made the call on her cell phone in the office.

Why, hey there, darling, Irene Gibbons said. She spoke into her desk conference phone, which added a scratchiness to the connection. You sound worried. What’s wrong, sweetheart? Mary Ellen had previously urged her to get a new phone.

Oh, Mother, it’s Hank Tillman again. He’s right now getting bailed out of jail in Nashville. Got into another scuffle in a bar last night.

Sorry to hear this, Irene said. Heaven forbid if his mother finds out. My sis is a loving woman and wonderful mom, but she has no idea how to handle Hank and his, ah, career. It’s wearing on the poor lady, I will tell you.

Mary Ellen gazed out the window upon the downtown skyline of Atlanta from her Buckhead office. The clouds drifted in, and a bluish haze blanketed the city under a smoky sun. She looked upon her face and brown eyes in the reflection of the glass.

I just don’t know what to do, Mother.

Well, let me think on this a moment, Irene told her.

I mean Hank’s a firecracker underneath his smile and normally positive outlook, Mary Ellen said. You know, he was always teased in school. The August he was eight, he asked me what he could do about the boys who bullied him. He already was worried about it just before a new academic year started.

Silence on the phone.

Finally, Irene offered some advice. So, he gets in fights. Is it by his provocation or others’?

Mary Ellen didn’t have firsthand information, but Hank told her he would defend himself when people pushed him around.

Hard to tell, but I have to believe Hank doesn’t go out looking for trouble.

Mary Ellen, this all goes back to the tragic loss of his father, Irene said. The boy was only fifteen when Gerald died. That’s a tender and formative age for any teenager. Guidance is needed. Sis did all she could do, but he needed a father. Of course, you know about it. We lost your daddy when you were four. And your brother James lost his father, too.

Mary Ellen swiveled to her desk, bent forward, and put her head down as she talked. We’re all fatherless. Thank goodness we have you, Mother. But back to Hank. What can we do to help him?

Irene told her daughter that short of going to some of his performances in far-flung places, there wasn’t much they could do. Besides, even if you went out to one of his bars in the boondocks, what could you do if he got into trouble?

Mary Ellen sighed.

There is one thing we could do. A bit extreme, but it might work, Irene said.

What’s that? Mary Ellen asked.

In two words. Red. Farlow.

Who?

Oh, honey, you remember Red, Irene said. He was your brother James’ good friend at Georgia. You know, the football player on the Bulldog squad.

Hmm. Slowly my memory is focusing. Mary Ellen rose from her chair and walked around her office. She noticed a sunray breaking through the haze.

He had Thanksgiving with us in Macon one year. Nice man. He’s now a private investigator. Used to be a law enforcement officer. For the state, I believe.

But, Mother, what could a private eye do for Hank?

Visit some of his performances. Watch out for him. Maybe befriend him. Red would be one heck of a security force. All we have to do is ask, Irene said.

But he’s probably busy. Like all of us, he has to make a living.

Pay him, Irene said. God knows, you have the money, and Hank seems to be your number one charitable case at the moment.

Mary Ellen sat down on the office sofa. I don’t know. Seems a bit extreme. But I’ll think about it.

Do. At least call Red and talk it over with him, Irene said. "I’ll get his number from James and text it to you. Wouldn’t hurt to at least get his