Chapter 29

We declared the conversation over for the night and Jill and Liz went to pick out clothing for our “Beverly Hills Walkabout.”

Stephanie and I looked at Ryan as soon as the others left the room.

“I don’t know of anything like that,” he said. “I swear!”

“We know that,” Stephanie said. “But you’re likely the one with the best recollection of Liz’s activities during that time.”

He sighed.

“One of her favorite games back then was trying to ditch us,” Ryan admitted. “It only happened two or three times but ... once she was gone for 30 hours. We weren’t in New York. We had flown to Italy for a fashion thing. She slipped out a window and we didn’t know about it until it was too late. The other times we would find her in an hour or two. I mean, social media wasn’t huge back then but a Liz Larimer sighting still generated enough of a buzz that we could track her down. The one in Milan? I don’t know and she’s never really told me what went on. I’m not sure she even remembers. She was in pretty bad shape when we finally found her.”

“Drugs?” I asked.

“She got kicked around pretty good,” Ryan admitted. “Nothing broken but she had a black eye, some bruised ribs and a lot of scrapes and bruises. We tucked her away from everyone. We found her in some low-budget hotel. I asked her what in the hell she got into and she wouldn’t tell me. I called a private physician and ... I had her do a complete checkup after she sedated Liz. The rape kit was negative.”

“Holy fuck!” I muttered.

“I had to check,” Ryan protested. “I had to know if she had somehow wandered into something. You know?”

“We know,” Stephanie said in a soft voice. “But there wasn’t...”

“No indication of sexual activity at all,” Ryan said. “It was really weird. She had an elevated BAC. I mean, it was almost point-three and the bruises were ... older, from the day before, the doctor said. But no sign of illegal drugs or even legal drugs. She was on some anti-anxiety medication back then and she didn’t even have that in her system.”

“GHB?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Ryan admitted. “You can’t really test for that unless you get there early. I’m guessing that whatever she did, she did it the night before. I mean, she was running with some really ... fucked up people. Those girls she was with are nasty. I mean, you see them smiling on a magazine photo and you’re like ... hmm. Then you talk to one of them and you’re like ... no way. But they always drew a crowd.”

“And there are assholes in every crowd,” I said.

“In this case, almost everyone in the crowd was an asshole,” Ryan said. “The set they run with are the trust-fund kids and sons and daughters of kings and shit like that. She got away from me on a Tuesday night. It was Thursday morning before I found her. Like I said, the other times, it was in New York and we knew where to look. This time...”

He shook his head.

“If she hadn’t used a credit card to pay for the room I don’t know that she wouldn’t have been gone for another day before we could locate her,” he continued. “Liz was pretty adamant about staying in only the best hotels. Uh, back then, we would never be here. It wasn’t up to her standards.”

I looked around at the opulence and compared it to the dingy hotels I had been staying in at about the same time.

“It’s how things were,” Ryan said with a shrug. “It was a big surprise to find her staying in what we would think of as a Super Eight here. We thought someone had stolen her credit card and we were just going to shake him down for a fresh lead. I kicked in the door and scared the hell out of her. She was just ... there. Someone had worked her over but she would never tell me who. That’s why I wanted the rape kit done.”

Stephanie shook her head.

“A video of someone hitting Liz is not going to help RFN,” she said.

“There is no telling what she said and did to get her ass kicked,” Ryan said. “You weren’t there, Stephanie. You didn’t see things up close. That girl was ... she was a nasty piece of work. If I didn’t have a wife in medical school and a bum knee, I would have dropped her like a hot rock and gone to work at a warehouse before I put up with her. But I had both of those things and the gig paid two or three times what I could have made doing the same thing anywhere else. I was still underpaid for the shit I put up with.”

He set his jaw and looked away.

“The fucked up thing is that I started to look at her ass-kicking as a good thing,” he said bitterly. “For the next five or six months, she was pretty OK to be around. I mean, the pretty people still showed up from time to time but she didn’t do anything ... horrible. As soon as I let my guard down, she was gone again. One of them started a fight with a rapper’s entourage at a club. It took everybody to calm that shit down. I was worried the guns were going to come out. Uh, I had a guy whose only job was to get Liz away from ... problems. He got sucker punched as he was hustling her out a side door. She got away but instead of heading to her apartment, she took off for the fucking airport. One of that crew had a private jet and they were going to Monaco ... without their babysitters.”

I saw the anger in his eyes and I was very thankful that he appeared to like me. Ryan was a large man. I would estimate that he stood six-feet-eight. He was fit, without the rolls of fat that NFL linemen often carry around their waists and hips. I was certain that he was close to 350 pounds. He was a scary sight when he was happy.

“Is that when she finally wised up?” I asked.

His gaze turned to me for a moment and I did my best not to shrink back in my seat. His face lost its stony edge and he gave a half smile.

“She told you about that, too?” he asked.

“I think she’s told me, at least in general terms, almost everything,” I said.

He nodded.

“She got to the airport and called her manager,” Ryan said. “He called me and I went to get her. That was the last time it happened and she stopped spending time with those people except for photo ops. I’ll be honest, I had already told the label I was done with her. There were enough times that I saw through her ... behavior to know that there was a nice person underneath it all. But I had to spend every minute of every day babysitting an adult. I had already told them I wasn’t going to be the one to find her body. Sondra and I had talked it over. She was willing to put off medical school for a year or two while we saved some money. I was going home. Liz flew back with me. She stayed at her house for a few weeks, cleaned herself up.

“I was ... surprised ... when she called me out of the blue after a month or so. I was still with RFN but I was working low-level stuff. I would go with their scouts to these dive bars to protect them if the locals got all rowdy and stuff like that. I mean, I had no skills. I didn’t get a degree from Miami. If I’m honest, I didn’t really go Miami to learn. I went to play football.”

I nodded my agreement and Ryan understood.

“So, Liz calls and invites Sondra and me to go with her to Spain,” the large man continued. “She said she wasn’t looking for security work. She didn’t plan to do anything but write and think. She just thought my wife and I might enjoy a free vacation and she wanted to make it up to me for being such a butthead ... her words ... for the past year or so. I told her I’d think about it but that was a lie. I was done with her. I didn’t call her back. A week or two later, I got a package at the house. It was from Liz. She said that she knew her antics had kept me away from home and she felt bad about it. She sent my wife and me a note saying that she had made arrangements with a travel agency to pay for us to go anywhere we wanted in the world ... on her ... for a vacation. She also picked up the tab for Sondra’s last year in medical school so I ‘never had to take on a problem child again.’”

He sighed.

“That’s when I figured out that the nice girl underneath had pushed her way to the surface,” he said. “We didn’t take the trip and ... the school wouldn’t let us give the tuition money back. When Liz got back to the States – it was around Christmas time – she called RFN and asked if I was available for some local work. They assigned me without even asking my opinion. I mean, when Liz wanted something, she pretty well got it. She ... she had spent probably a hundred thousand dollars on gifts for local kids. She wanted me to take them to the Salvation Army and the Toys for Tots program and pediatric wards at hospitals. She didn’t go. She didn’t want to have her name associated with it. When Sondra finished her finals, we spent like a week at Liz’s house putting together care packages to be delivered to military families and to soldiers overseas.

“Sondra was in her last year of med school and she was doing her rotations through the hospital. There was a little girl, cute as a button, with bone cancer. Her family was ... fucked up. I mean, they loved the girl and it hit them hard to see her suffer. They didn’t have insurance and even big hospitals have their limits to what it can give away for free. The big pharmaceutical companies charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for each treatment and the hospital just can’t write it off. A place in Switzerland had some experimental treatment that showed promise. Sondra was talking about things ... not to try to get Liz to do anything. They were just talking about her job, you know. Sondra said she hated the pediatric wards because of things like that little girl. My wife had let a little dying girl get under her skin, you know. I mean, you can’t let that happen as a doctor. You have to be objective. You can’t take every death personally. But the thought of that little girl dying before everything was tried really hit Sondra hard.

“Three days later, an anonymous donor paid for the little girl to be flown to Europe for the experimental treatment. Liz ... she just played it off. She said that she was sure that whoever had made the donation would be happy to know that everything under the sun had been tried but that since it was done anonymously she was also certain that the donor didn’t want recognition for doing the right thing.”

The eyes that had so much anger a moment before now were brimming with tears.

“Did she ... make it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “She’s 12 now. She’s a junior volunteer at the hospital where Sondra still works. She comes in to read to little kids with cancer. Sondra pointed her out to me last Christmas. She’s a little small for her age but she’s alive. Sondra said that she’ll catch up soon. She’s been cancer free for almost five years now.”

“Pretty cool,” Stephanie said softly. “I didn’t know about that. I mean, I didn’t know much about a lot of things I’m learning. Liz and I tend to focus on the present, you know. I knew she did a lot of things anonymously to give back but I only know about the stuff that she’s done since I started to work for her. She never talks about the good things she’s done before.”

“I went to work for her again full time when she got back from Spain that time,” Ryan said. “I was still technically employed by the label but I guess I might have been the first person to actually work for Liz. She and my wife ... I wish both of them had more time to get to know each other. Sondra is a trauma surgeon and she works odd hours. Liz is always writing or recording or touring or ... something. They only get the chance to spend time together a few times a year. But they get along really well.”

“She told me your wife is a great person,” I confirmed. “And she knows Sondra would really like to have you home more often. She’s trying.”

“I know,” Ryan said.

“It’s the same with me,” Stephanie admitted. “My husband is a good man. You’ll like him when you meet him. But it’s hard on a family when one person is gone most of the time.”

“Depends on the family,” Ryan said, laughing slightly. “My old man was a truck driver and we never minded when he went away for weeks at time.”

Stephanie laughed.

“I’ve met your dad so I understand,” she said. “It’s going to be nice to have a home base for once. Doug and I’ve been married for almost 10 years. We figured out that in those 10 years, we’ve spent less than a year together if you add up the time. We haven’t had kids because there just wasn’t time to devote any attention to them. I’m a little worried that we’re going to be disappointed when we’re finally around each other all the time. We’re both a little set in our ways.”

“Have you always ... been a tour manager?” I asked.

“No,” Stephanie said, smiling broadly. “I came to Nashville wanting to be the next Liz Larimer! My parents convinced me to finish college before I made the leap. That way I had something to fall back on. I went to the University of Alabama and have a degree in public administration. Liz is five years younger than me but she was already a success by the time I got there. I worked as a backup singer for a year or two and then did my time in Branson for their shows. I came back to Nashville after six months and did some studio work. That’s where I met Liz again. She got me hooked up as a manager for another group because, well, being a studio musician doesn’t pay much and I missed being out there.

“I did some backup work for the group and handled their tours and stuff. They were small-time. They didn’t need two managers like Liz does. We’re talking county fairs and honkytonks. I did that for them until they split up but I sort of liked it. I was home a lot but I got the chance to go out on the road, too. About five years ago, Liz called to see if I wanted to work for her ... directly ... in merchandising. She grosses about $2 million each year from the sale of hats, T-shirts, cups, you know, anything with her tour emblem on it. She wanted me to make sure that the manufacturers weren’t based in Thailand or Cambodia. She wanted products made exclusively in the North America or Western Europe even if she made less money on them.”

“She found out that the wholesaler where she got her T-shirts from was getting his stuff from sweatshops and then repackaging it with Made in the USA labels,” Ryan explained. “She went through the roof.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“I did that for a couple of years,” Stephanie said. “It took me that long to vet the bidders and tour the facilities. I didn’t really deal much with Liz. I dealt with McHenry. I never really gave much thought to RFN. I had worked for them a few times on studio cuts or as a backup singer on tours. They seemed ... OK. I mean, I didn’t think they were any better or any worse than the others. Then I actually had to deal with one of them. The label gets a cut of all the merchandising sales. Do you know that Liz had to pay the difference from her end? I thought, you know, they’d at least go 50-50. Nope. They didn’t care if the shirts were made by six-year-olds chained in a basement somewhere. They just wanted their cut. They actually suggested we pass the costs along to the consumer ... conveniently forgetting that they’d misled the consumer for the previous five years. That’s when I figured out exactly how big of pricks they really are.