Finding Shelby Moore, Part IV

We took my car to Shelby’s father’s house. It was less conspicuous than his Mustang. Her father lived in an upscale house in a gated subdivision in Odessa, a suburb to the northwest of Tampa.

“Shelby’s father was borderline abusive to her, the stereotypical sports parent. He washed out of a golf scholarship at Florida State back in the seventies. She was his chance to hit it big. So, of course, he’s been an overbearing pain in the ass. As soon as she turned 21, Shelby fired him. Gave him a bunch of money and told him to go away.”

“How come we’re here?”

“He said he’d make her regret the day she fired him.”

It was dusk and we were in a dead end a couple hundred yards up the road. The car was idling and the AC was running and I was remembering why I prefer to do stakeouts alone.

“Wouldn’t the FBI be all over him if he were really a suspect?”

“They interviewed him for six hours yesterday and told him not to go anyplace.”

I glanced over to him. He hadn’t shifted his gaze from the subdivision’s entry gate since we pulled in.

“I know this because I have friends on the Tampa PD and they hear things,” he said. “That’s what you were going to ask, right?”

“Sure.”

Nothing happened and both of us watched it not happen until nine.

“You think he’s going anywhere?”

“Eventually,” he said.

“Why do you think he has Shelby?”

“He’s the most likely person, as far as I can see.”

At ten after ten, a black Hummer H3 emerged from behind the gate.

“That’s him,” Carl said. He’d been slumped in his seat, but was now sitting up, pointing toward the car.

I waited for it to pass us, then pulled out after it. It drove south on Hutchison to Ehrlich Road, crossed it, went into the supermarket and came out with a gallon of milk. Then we followed him back to his community and watched him go in the gate.

“That was exciting,” I said.

“Maybe he’s seeing if someone’s watching him.”

“Maybe he needed a gallon of milk.”

Twenty minutes later, I took Carl home, then went home myself.

Jeff Spangler went to college with me. Then he became a sportswriter for the Albany Times-Union about the time I started working as an investigator. He moved up to the New York Daily News before covering womens’ sports for Sports Illustrated. When he got the job at SI, Jeff thought it was ironic to cover womens’ sports, considering how many women he’d uncovered in bedrooms and hotel rooms across the land. Jeff was a horndog, and some common friends had wondered if he’d had to agree to be castrated to cover womens’ sports.

Jeff could be rude and borderline sexist, but he had a way of cultivating sources. Even people who thought he was a knuckle-dragger did things for him. If something was going on in womens’ sports, Jeff Spangler knew about it. If didn’t know about it, he knew who did. He was a natural to call about Shelby and her father.

“Sorry I’m calling so late,” I said when he answered.

“Afraid you’d wake me up?”

“No, afraid I’d catch you in bed,” I said.

“Gotta work in the morning. I’m interviewing the Williams sisters tomorrow. After that, I think I'll play ice cream sandwich with them.”

“They'd kick your scrawny ass all over the hotel room."

He laughed. “When’s the last time you had sex?”

“Who’s president now?”

He laughed more. “I could set you up with Diane Tate.” Diane Tate was a professional golfer about my age who grew up in Saratoga. She'd recently been divorced by her husband, a club pro in Myrtle Beach.

“I think I can manage,” I said. “I need to know about Shelby Moore’s father.”

“I heard you saw her get snatched.” His voice lost its jauntiness. He was working now.

“Anything you can tell me on the record?”

The FBI was clear on my not talking to the media. They'd looked into me and knew I used the media when I felt the need.

“I can tell you what’s already in the paper. I’ve been on the outside of this one.”

“Except that you want to know about the father,” he said. “Were you working on this?”

“I happened to see it.”

Jeff was smart enough to pick up on my evasion, but he didn’t push the point. “Her father's an asshole. He cost her a lot of money with his bullshit. No one wanted to deal with him. She probably lost a couple million in endorsements because of it. And he treated her like his golf slave.”

“Physically abusive?”

“Just rumors. When Shelby was in high school, she broke her arm. Said she fell off a horse. But it happened right after she got caught skipping practice to go boozing one night. One of the teachers saw her. She got suspended from the team the next day, the--boom--she falls off a horse. The suspension didn't matter. She missed the rest of the year with the injury.

“Meanwhile, her dad gets tagged with a couple sexual harrassment suits and a battery charge. The second she turned 21, she emancipated herself and threw him out. He sued, so she gave him a lump sum and one percent of her tour earnings to go away. She made seven million last year, so his cut was seventy grand, give or take.”

“That’s not much.”

“You hinting at something?” he said.

“Wondering. He drives a Hummer and lives in a gated community in a pretty nice house. He’s not doing that on seventy grand.”

“He made a boatload of money as a day trader. He’s set."

"A lot of day traders lost money when the market went down."

"Not him. He diversified while he was doing it. Houses, property. Owns a couple restaurants. If he took her, it's to prove he owns her, not for money."

"What about her mom?"

"Not in the picture. Died when she was six."

“She a party girl?”

He laughed. “Until the thing with her arm. After that, she wanted to know everything about the business. By the time she was 21, she was capable. Day after her birthday, she fired her father and hired Crosetti.”

“He’s not much of an improvement,” I said.

“He’s the right guy for her. He'll bust your balls if he needs to, but he does it for her. He knows where his bread's buttered and because he's the hardass, she gets to be the nice Shelby everyone goes gaga over.”

We fell into silence. I tried to figure out what question to ask next. Jeff used his quiet time to jump to conclusions.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You wouldn’t know about Crosetti’s temper unless you’d pissed him—you were working security for her.”

“I promise you I wasn’t,” I said.

“Then what?”

“I’m just interested in this working out right.”

“The security guy’s name is Carl Clayton,” he said. “I talked to Crosetti today. He said Clayton got fired. Said the only reason she got taken was because of his incompetence."

“They blind-sided him. Jumped out of a van and tasered them both. Clayton told them walking on the beach wasn’t wise. Nothing he can do.”

He said nothing.

“You might want to talk to him about it,” I said.

“Been trying. Could you set it up?” he said.

“I can try. You got any thoughts on who might have done this?”

“Crime’s not my venue, unless it’s steroids, doping, or trying to cut your ex-wife’s head off , then running away in a Ford Bronco. You, on the other had, seem to attract it. I know a mortician sennding his kid to college because of all the people you killed up here last year."

He was joking, but I still had nightmares about killing those people. I let it pass.

"Seriously, I like Shelby a lot. She's a great kid. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know."

And with that, we were done. I was done, too. The FBI was handling this and I had no skin in the game. For the second time, I walked away.