After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

hasn’t changed much. They don’t care about money so much, just old families.”
     
    One of the best times Carol had with Jim was when they went in Jim’s Jaguar to the polo matches at Rose Hill Plantation in Bluffton, South Carolina. He told Carol just what to wear. They were role-playing, after all. “We took a beautiful tablecloth, fine crystal, and the Czar’s silver,” Carol said. “If you have it, flaunt it,” Jim told her.
     
    As Carol talked about how much fun she had with Jim, it was clear that she dearly missed him: “He was kind, genteel, thoughtful, thoroughly enjoyable and a great friend.”
     
    Hairdresser Joel Moore gave me insight into Jim’s personality. Joel had been rehearsing the opening of his new salon, which was adjacent to the Peachtree Spa, which was for women only. For the opening, Joel had persuaded the spa to open its pool for the festivities, but only to women. Jim Williams had stopped in at the rehearsal with his friend Iris Mock, but for some mischievous reason, he decided to strip off his clothes and swim naked in the pool.
     
    One man that I interviewed was David Sands, a talented designer and decorator who knew Jim professionally. Sands had wealthy clients who would buy Jim’s antiques. During the interview, I mentioned that I toured Mercer House and noted that so many items in Jim’s favorite downstairs room were prints, statues and other artistic renderings of predatory birds and other animals. Did this artistic collection provide some insight into Jim’s character? Not so, Sands told me. Jim was a naturalist and loved paintings, prints and statues of animals, including a framed wasps’ nest and a turtle shell. Jim was never a hunter of animals, though—only a fisherman, he explained.
     

     
    Joe and Nancy Goodman (recent photo)
     
    I interviewed Joe Goodman, the man closest to Jim. Joe’s wife, Nancy, also knew Jim well. While they knew each other for decades, Joe worked for Jim for eight or nine years doing odd jobs. Jim was best man at Joe’s first wedding. Jim trusted Joe completely and told him all the places where he hid his cash in Mercer House. For various reasons, Jim kept a very large sums of cash in the house, and Joe knew where all or most of it was stashed. Jim was like a father to Joe, and Joe never forgot it.
     

Chapter 9: Shady Dealings
     
    When I first start interviewing friends and associates of Jim Williams several years ago, it never occurred to me that he might be involved in unscrupulous dealings. A number of his friends volunteered that Jim came across as trustworthy and credible. “His word was his bond,” his friend Miriam K. Center told me. Then, when I interviewed the late Mike Hawk, who managed the Catherine Ward House Inn in Savannah’s Victorian District, I heard something very specific about unethical and illegal activities going on with Jim’s antiques restoration business. The more people I interviewed, the more individuals brought up frauds that Jim had perpetrated.
     
    Mike Hawk was good friends with Douglas Seyle, who worked for Jim in his restoration shop for a number of years. Doug worshipped Jim. He died in 1994 at the age of 34. Doug spoke at great length to Mike about some of the restoration activities that Jim had initiated. Jim had some exceptionally talented craftsmen, like Barry Thomas, who could produce excellent reproductions of antique furniture. Unfortunately, Jim employed the skills of these craftsmen to defraud some of his clients. These clients were typically clueless about the value of the antiques in their homes and were very impressed with Jim’s expertise when it came to antiques. Here is how the fraud evolved with a hypothetical client.
     
    “Amanda,” Jim told the wealthy matron who had a home full of valuable antique furniture that had been in her family for generations. “This table is a shame. Look how scratched the top is and how stained the marble inlays are. I just hate to see this wonderful