Cultured, page 3
“Robert left us well off, but without him we both felt adrift. April was twelve and she took it very hard. She and her father were close. She remained in a black funk for two years. At first she became quiet and withdrawn but this evolved into more defiant and angry behavior. I actually liked it better when she was locked in her room listening to music and whatever else she did up there. Then it was like one day she snapped out of that and began acting out. That led to trouble at school, and here at home. I wrote it off as teenage angst made worse by the loss of her father.”
“Two things that can have profound effects on anyone,” Nicole said. “Particularly a teenage girl.”
“I know. I regret not taking it more seriously and getting her some help.”
“Would she have accepted that?” I asked.
Another sip of coffee. “Probably not.” She sighed. “You asked how she got involved with Jonathon. That’s on me.”
“How so?” I asked.
“It was two years ago. I was feeling lost and had no focus, no ambition, no anything. Then I read some stuff online about Jonathon Lindemann and his program. He was in Tampa then. I attended one of his weekend retreats. I loved his energy and even his process for improving self-worth and financial stability.” She removed her sunglasses, gave a headshake. “God, I was so stupid and naive and didn’t see it for what it was.”
“Which was?” Nicole asked.
“Look, Jonathon made money for people. And for himself. He did for me before I cut ties.”
“You belonged to TLM?” I asked.
“No. I never joined, but I did hire Jonathon as an advisor. Back then he had a few private clients and I was one of them. But as TLM grew, he pressured each of us to join. Many did, but to me that seemed wrong so I walked.”
“Those types prey on the vulnerable,” Nicole said.
“At that time, I was definitely vulnerable.”
The young man reappeared in the background. He had a pool net and seemed to be removing some debris from the water. At least he earned his keep. Again, the cynical me felt his only duties weren’t leaf removal.
“So it was the initiation fee that put you off?” I asked.
“That plus there was something smarmy about the farm, and the girls that worked there. It felt cultish and to me the girls were the window dressing. And Lord knows what else.”
“You think he was using the girls to entertain clients?” Nicole asked.
“I do. And to recruit new ones.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“If you mean do I have any proof, then no, but it felt that way. Why else would Jonathon mix a bunch of wealthy men with beautiful young girls? That’s one of the many reasons I became so upset with April becoming part of it.”
“How did she get involved?” Nicole asked.
“A few months after April finished her degree at FSU, early I might add, I took her to another of his Tampa-area retreat. She was twenty at the time. That’s when I began to see cracks in his program. Its manipulative nature.” She settled her sunglasses back in place. “But April completely bought into it, which became another source of conflict between us. Her point was that I had thought it was cool, and that I had brought her there, and that just because I no longer wanted to be part of it didn’t mean she couldn’t. She of course played the adult card.” She shrugged. “As I said, the big blowup came when the judge quashed her lawsuit and I wouldn’t release the money from her trust so she could officially join.”
“My impression is that most of his clients are wealthy,” I said. “Why did he offer April membership? She didn’t have a job or anything.”
“The trust,” Clarice said. “Both mine and April’s. He knew about them so he saw me as a current target and April as a future one. He wanted both of us in the fold.”
“But you didn’t join and refused to give April the money,” Nicole said.
“Exactly. I don’t think he was happy and I for sure know April wasn’t.”
“So she moved to the farm,” I said.
“Ultimately. We banged heads off and on for a few months. She wanted to join TLM, I refused to release any money, and on and on it went. After one big fight, she packed up and moved up to Orange Beach.”
“Did she have the money to do that?”
Clarice nodded. “The trust provided her with a monthly stipend, which kicked in when she was eighteen, but she doesn’t get the entire amount until she’s twenty-five. Her father set it up that way and I saw no reason to change it. Particularly now that she was acting like a spoiled child and buying into a group I didn’t trust.” Someone, presumably the young pool dude, said something to her. She turned that way, waved a hand, and said, “Not now, darling. Thanks.” Then back to us, “April got a job at some restaurant down there so overall she was doing OK. After a few months she headed up to TLM’s farm in Magnolia Springs.”
“Since she didn’t have the money to join, they hired her on as staff, right?” Nicole asked.
“Yes. She said she was doing marketing, which I suspect covers a lot of activities. Most of which I don’t want to think about. Jonathon has quite an entourage at the farm. Mostly pretty young women like April.”
I couldn’t disagree with Clarice. Nothing about the entire arrangement sounded good. Why would a man who was looking for wealthy investors need young attractive women around? The answer was as old as time.
Clarice continued. “I was sure that some sort of exploitation was going on. What, I wasn’t sure, but I do have a vivid imagination.”
“As a so-called staff member,” Nicole asked, “what were her duties?”
“Officially, to help run the farm, tend to guests, make them feel at home, that sort of thing.” She looked down for a full minute. “My fear is exactly what that entailed. I know she traveled a lot. All over the country. What she called ‘recruiting trips.’” Clarice shook her head. “Why would a twenty-two-year-old girl be needed for the recruitment of an investor?” A sadness crept over her face. “I can only think of one reason.”
Me too, I thought. “Was she on one of these trips when she disappeared?” I asked.
“Not that I know. April always told me when she was traveling and where she was going. New York, L.A., Las Vegas, once to Vancouver. After a week of no contact, I tried to reach her. I called TLM but got nowhere. I traveled to the farm and met with Jonathon and his assistant, Rhea Wilson. Where Jonathon is charming, she’s all business. Maybe that’s not fair. She was nice and all, but with an undercurrent that business trumped all.”
“Where did they say April was?”
“They didn’t know. They said she wasn’t happy there and left.”
“Unhappy about what?”
“About not being a full member, about being an employee, about life. They actually told me it was my fault for not giving her the money so she could join. I told them that was none of their business. It wasn’t a good meeting.”
“Have you talked with them since then?” Nicole asked.
“I tried but they never returned my calls or acknowledged my emails.” She rubbed her neck. “I went to the Sheriff’s Department up in Bay Minette. They said what you’d expect. That April was an adult and can come and go as she pleases.”
“What do you want from us?” I asked.
“To find her and bring her home. Alive and well.”
CHAPTER 5
NICOLE SHUT DOWN her laptop and we sat in silence for a minute. I sifted through my feelings on everything Clarice Wilkerson had said. A lot of layers there.
“I don’t like any of it,” I finally said.
“What’s to like?” Nicole responded.
“I don’t think she just ran away.”
“She didn’t.”
“So, what happened?” I asked.
She glanced at me. “You want the good, the bad, or the ugly?”
I looked toward the Gulf. The water lay calm, no wind or surf this morning. I didn’t answer Nicole’s question. I didn’t need to since it was rhetorical. We each knew the answer. The good would be her falling into some high-paying job offered by a big-buck TLM member. Or her TLM travels led her to some solid-citizen, handsome, and of means gentleman and she was blissfully happy somewhere. Or maybe she simply met some random nice guy and moved on, escaping her mother’s shadow. None of that really worked for me. Despite their ongoing mother-daughter conflict, she would have told her mother if any of these were the truth. Sure, April might be pissed about her mother keeping her inheritance under lock and key, and who knows, maybe she wasn’t happy with her mother’s apparent boy toy, but to run off somewhere and not tell Clarice, or at least fire a parting shot? It didn’t make sense. According to Clarice, even when their war of wills blazed the hottest, April always kept in touch.
The bad? She was working and maybe traveling as a high-dollar TLM prostitute. We hadn’t seen any real evidence that that was happening at TLM, but from what Clarice had said the possibility existed. April is a beautiful young lady, and maybe she decided using her God-given assets to make her own way could give her the independence she apparently craved and also extract her from her mother’s grip. Maybe she figured it would just be until her trust fund fell into her lap. Not a great career choice, but at least she would maintain some degree of control of her life and make her own choices. Was her maternal rift deep enough to push her that far? Would that imply that TLM had nudged her down that path? Having lost access to Clarice’s wealth, perhaps the Jonathon Lindemann/Rhea Wilson duo felt that keeping April embedded in all things TLM was a sound business decision. Building for the future.
Again, we had no evidence of that. I mean, TLM might have hired young attractive girls as part of their marketing strategy—didn’t every TV ad, car show, and sporting event do the same? Sort of like cheerleaders. That didn’t mean that TLM expected more than a pretty face and a friendly attitude from the young ladies they hired. Or did they?
The ugly? She was dead, or captive, or being trafficked somewhere. It’s a big bad world with many dark corners.
The main question was—Did any of these scenarios mesh with April’s disappearance? Was she in a happy relationship, a working girl, or in dire straits, or had she simply dropped off the grid because she was pissed at her mother?
The other question was—Did any of these roads lead to Jonathon Lindemann? Did he have a hand in her disappearance? Even a benign one. Did he introduce her to the love of her life, or pimp her around the world, or sell her to some foreign national? Had he killed her? A case could be made for each.
Or was all of this my imagination kicking into high gear? One thing for sure, I felt that Clarice had every reason to be concerned.
I hated that I was now hooked on finding the answer. Which of course was Ray’s plan. Pancake’s and Nicole’s too. It was a conspiracy that seemed to repeat itself too often for comfort.
Maybe my life wasn’t so good after all.
Nicole picked up her laptop and stood. “You ready to go chat with Tammy?”
No, I wanted to scream that I’m never ready to talk to Tammy. Can’t I have a root canal instead? I stood. “Might as well get it over with.”
She ruffled my hair. “Poor baby. I’ll be there to protect you.”
She’s funny. Really, she is.
Nicole lived in Uncle Charles’ mansion on The Point. One of the many multimillion-dollar homes that lined the beach of the exclusive enclave. Tammy and Walter Horton lived a few hundred yards down the same road. In Nicole’s white SL550 Mercedes and Nicole behind the wheel, it took all of three minutes to blast down the slope, around the curve, and skid into Tammy’s drive.
Tammy Horton’s house was the last place I wanted to be. Anywhere else would be better. Not an exaggeration—I mean anywhere. A burning building, a sinking boat, a spiraling airplane, you get the picture.
The house was massive, glass, steel, modern. I felt like I owned part of it. Tammy, and her then attorney Walter, had gouged me for seven figures. Adult money to anyone. Good thing the Texas Rangers had paid me well. The silver lining was that it was worth it. A cool million to drop Tammy in someone else’s lap? A deal I’d take again.
Tammy opened the door to Nicole’s knock. She wore black yoga pants and a tight gray tee shirt. Her blonde hair wadded behind her head, pinned by a decorative chopstick.
“Hey, Nicole,” she said. “Did you really have to bring Jake?”
So it begins.
“The kennel was full so I had no place to leave him.”
I should’ve gone to Captain Rocky’s where people like me.
“Too bad,” Tammy said. “Come on in.”
Tammy led us into her living room. Floor-to-ceiling accordion windows stood open to the massive deck and pool, and beyond the beach and the Gulf. We continued to the deck and sat at a round teak table. A warm breeze stirred from the water. A pitcher of lemonade and three glasses sat before us. “I made some lemonade in case you’re thirsty.”
“That’d be nice,” Nicole said.
Tammy filled each glass, sliding one toward me. I took a sip. “Good. Thanks.”
“Thanks for agreeing to talk with us,” Nicole said.
“I love the irony here,” Tammy said. She stabbed me with her gaze. “You coming to me for help after all the times I’ve asked you for help and you were a dick.”
This is Tammy’s World. No basis in reality but revolving tightly around Tammy. The help she referred to would be the constant stream of inane calls asking me to resolve her problem of the day. Tammy attracted complications like a black sweater does cat hair. The truth is that I almost—almost—always gave her answers but rarely the ones she wanted, so here I am, the dick. To me, the issues that wound her up were stupid, childish, and none of my business. I have a hang nail—buy some clippers or see your manicurist; I’ve gained a half a pound—skip dinner and work out an extra hour; Walter won’t let me buy that thousand-dollar purse—use a paper bag; why is “fill in a name here” being such a bitch to me—go look in the mirror. You get the idea. Okay, so some of my responses leaned toward sarcastic, but when you get half a dozen calls a week, you run out of clever answers … and patience.
“But he’s cute,” Nicole said.
“He thinks so.”
I knew this was a bad idea.
Tammy wasn’t finished. “His major problem. His cuteness allows him to be an ass and still have friends. Pancake, anyway.”
“We aren’t here to talk about my charming personality,” I said. It just came out. I hate it when I do that. I should be hunkering in the foxhole and avoiding incoming ordnance but, no, I had to jump right in it.
Tammy smirked. “You’re not that charming. Or cute. Or whatever else you delude yourself with.”
My brain finally got the message. This wasn’t a battle worth fighting since in the end I’d lose. Guaranteed. It was the same with Nicole, and Pancake, and apparently Ray. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with Tammy The Insane about some cult.
I kept my mouth shut.
Nicole to the rescue. “Let’s get to business. We want to learn about TLM and Jonathon Lindemann and your experience with them.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know a whole lot,” Tammy said.
“But you know Jonathon?”
“A little. I heard about his TLM program around six months ago from someone in my yoga class. She raved about it so I checked it out. It looked pretty cool so I went to one of his three-day retreats over in Pensacola. It cost twelve hundred bucks, and Walter wasn’t happy, but I went anyway. I also visited the farm Jonathon has up in Magnolia Springs a couple of times.”
“But you never joined, right?” I asked.
“No.” She frowned. “Walter wouldn’t let me. He said it was too much money. He checked them out and said it looked like a scam. I don’t know where he got that. Everyone I met said they had made good money with Jonathon’s help. Sometimes Walter can be so narrow-minded.”
Score one for good old Walter. He might have skewered me, but he also saved my bacon last year when I got sued. A long story. But, one thing about Walter is that he’s smart and no one’s fool.
“What did you think of it?” Nicole asked. “The program?”
“It’s great. He teaches both self-improvement and how to make money. A winning combination to me.”
Tammy needed the former, not the latter. Just look around the house I helped build and you’ll see. I was sure the massive pool and deck were paid for with the money Walter had gouged from my bank account.
“That’s fairly vague,” Nicole said. “What’s the gist of the program?”
“They teach people to look at what’s not right about their life. To identify the things that are blocking happiness and success. Jonathon calls them ‘toxic elements.’ He shows you how to isolate and remove that stuff. Sort of like cutting out a cancer.” She took a sip of lemonade. “Mentally, anyway. Then you reexamine everything and see if removing this problem makes things better or not. Or as Jonathon says, ‘Is it merely your excuse for not being successful.’ If fixing that problem doesn’t help, look for others until you find the one that’s blocking your path. Jonathon says everyone has roadblocks and that once those are removed, you’re free to focus on what works for you and use that to create success and wealth.”
Sounded like every self-help guru I’d ever read about. Every preacher, too, for that matter. Quit being an asshole or come to Jesus and your life will be fantastic and problem free. Oh, and send money. Cynical? You bet.
“Can you give me an example of how that works?” Nicole asked.
This should be fun. Tammy discussing her roadblocks. Maybe I could help here. Insanity, self-absorption, petty rivalries, pretense, gossip. Let’s start with those and then move on down the list. Maybe Tammy sensed my anticipation because she talked about someone else.
