“No,” Charlie warned. “Let me answer the questions.”
Roland asked Flora, “That’s how you wanna play it? Let your lawyer do all the talking? I thought you were tougher than that.”
Flora’s mouth opened again.
Charlie stuck out her arm, like she needed to physically block any and all responses. To Coin, she said, “Flora is not a drug kingpin. She’s an honor student. She’s a Girl Scout, for Chrissakes. She’s working for tips at the diner, not running a meth operation.”
Roland asked, “Tell her that you can do both, Flora.”
Flora looked at Charlie, desperate. “I thought you said they wanted a name.”
“We’ve got a name,” Roland said. “Florabama Faulkner.”
Charlie shook her head. This had to be one of Ken Coin’s legendarily stupid power plays. “You know the word of a car salesman doesn’t matter. Flora can’t access that money.”
“She manipulated her grandpappy into doing it for her.” Coin made a weird spider-movement with his hand. “Like a marionette pulling the strings.”
“That’s crazy, Ken. Even for you.”
“You think that’s crazy?” He pulled a stack of photographs from the file and started tossing them on the table. “Flora driving the Porsche to work. Flora in the Porsche by the lake. Flora driving through the McDonald’s off Fifteen. Clearly, this is her automobile.”
Charlie scanned the photos and instantly saw the flaw in Coin’s reasoning. “Per the restrictions on her learner’s permit, she has an adult with her in every picture. That’s Leroy Faulkner, her grandfather, in the passenger’s seat.”
Coin said, “She forced him to go with her. Look at this.” He flung over another photograph. Flora was still behind the wheel, but Leroy was passing something out the window to a shifty-looking thug in sunglasses. Charlie immediately recognized the customer: Dexter Black.
So why had Dexter flipped on Flora instead of Leroy?
None of this made sense.
Coin said, “We’ve got detailed audio and video of the drug buy. This fella here bought twenty grams of meth.”
“From Leroy Faulkner, not his granddaughter.”
“Flora was directing the deal from behind the steering wheel of the car.”
“You have that on audio?”
Coin didn’t answer, which meant he was relying on Dexter’s testimony, which meant his case was built on popsicle sticks.
Roland asked Flora, “Where’s the van, sweetheart?”
Flora bit her bottom lip.
Roland told Charlie, “She’s got her boyfriend driving around town, cooking meth out the back of a panel van. It was parked twenty yards down from the school this afternoon. Selling that shit like the ice-cream man.”
Charlie asked, “Then why didn’t you send the SWAT team for the van? Or did you need all of your men to take down a one hundred-pound teenager?”
“She’s tougher than she looks.” Roland gave Flora another wink. “Right, honey-pie?”
“You still didn’t answer the question,” Charlie said. “Why didn’t you scoop up the van?”
Coin admitted, “We saw it on the security camera after the fact.”
Roland leaned over the table. He told Flora, “Don’t think we won’t find that van eventually, girl. What do you want to bet it’s got your fingerprints all over it?”
“Sounds more like it’ll have Oliver’s prints.” Charlie crossed her arms, letting them know she was over this charade. “What do you want, Ken?”
“We want to lock up this very dangerous criminal,” Coin said. “The grandparents are veritable prisoners in their own home.”
“That’s ludicrous.” Charlie tried to figure out Coin’s angle. He was not talking like a man who wanted to make a deal. “If anybody is pulling the strings here, it’s Maude Faulkner.”
Flora sucked in some air. Charlie put out a hand to still her.
It was Coin’s turn to cross his arms over his chest as he sat back in the chair. “I don’t play tricks, Charlotte. You should know me better than that.”
The cocksucker played more tricks than a Vegas hooker. “You think Leroy and Maude won’t let their granddaughter go to jail, that they’ll just step up and confess to—”
“They won’t.” Flora’s voice cracked in terror. “I know they won’t help me.” Her tears were running so fast that they pooled into the collar of her jumpsuit. “What am I going to do?”
“Be quiet, baby. Let me handle this.” Charlie held onto her trembling hand. She told Coin, “Look, the grandparents have been draining Flora’s trust for years.”
Flora stiffened beside her.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie apologized to Flora. “This is serious. Your grandmother is—”
“Not the executor,” Roland said. “The grandfather, Leroy Benjamin Faulkner, is the executor of the trust. He makes all the financial decisions. Or at least, he passes on the decisions that Flora makes in exchange for a little taste of that fine product she’s been selling.”
Coin said, “To make it clear, she’s controlling her grandfather, Leroy Faulkner, a man who was crippled in a horrible accident, who used to be a hard-working man, a good man, because she, Florabama Faulkner, got her own grandfather addicted to methamphetamine, the same methamphetamine she’s got her boyfriend selling out of a panel van.”
“Yes, Ken, thank you, that was already clear.” Charlie tried to reason with them; they had obviously made a mistake. “I’ve been working with Flora on legal emancipation. She’s trying to get away.”
“From what? The good life?” Coin asked. “You’re like that mama who says, ‘My sweet baby fell in with a bad crowd.’ Listen, sweetheart, this girl here, she’s the leader of the bad crowd. She’s the one everybody’s scared of.”
Charlie said nothing. Her head was spinning from their outlandish conspiracy theories.
Roland told Flora, “Why do you want to be emancipated? You own them apartments. You can kick everybody out and have the whole place to yourself.”
“The trust owns the apartments,” Charlie guessed, but she wondered why on earth Leroy would buy the complex. If he wanted meth, there were easier ways to get it. She told Roland, “You said it yourself: Leroy controls the trust. Flora has no decision-making power.”
“You ever meet Leroy?” Roland asked. “He seem like a master financial wizard to you?”
Maude, Charlie thought. Flora’s grandmother could be pulling the financial strings. She had been driving the Porsche last month. She was the one who camped out at Shady Ray’s every night. She was the one who was beating Flora.
Then again, Oliver was driving the Porsche this afternoon.
And there were all those photographs of Flora driving the car.
And what was up with that panel van?
Coin asked, “Why do you think the court wouldn’t let Maude oversee the trust? She was bankrupt six times before her daughter died. Spent a nickel in prison for embezzling money from the Burger King she worked at.”
Roland chuckled. “That old bitch ain’t worth the toilet paper it’d take to wipe her off your shoe.”
Charlie opened her mouth to respond, but then she closed it, because everything they were saying had the sound of bullshit, but not the smell.