And God knew Charlie had smelled some bullshit in her time.
Roland seemed to sense an opening. He told Charlie, “Little Flora here, she’s pretty good at getting exactly what she wants.”
Under the table, Charlie felt Flora’s grip tighten on her hand. She looked at the girl, saw the glistening tears in her eyes, the tremble of her lips, and wondered exactly who she was dealing with.
Roland kept talking. “Like, what are you doing here, Miss Lady? How’d a hot-shit lawyer like you end up being at the diner in the right place at the right time, and now you’re here bulldogging this case for a girl you hardly know. Probably for free. Am I right?”
Charlie did not have an answer for him, but her gut was telling her that something was really wrong here.
“The trust owns a white panel van. Same kind of van that was spotted outside the school selling meth.” Roland smiled at Flora. “Only the van was reported stolen this afternoon, ten minutes after the campus resource officer walked across the street to confront the driver. Ain’t that a funny coincidence, Miss Flora?”
Flora stared back at him.
He said, “You reported the stolen van to the police.”
“She did not,” Charlie tried, but then Roland slid over a piece of paper. Charlie had seen so many police reports in her time that she could probably make a stack of her own. She skimmed the written details. At 3:15 that afternoon, Florabama Faulkner had reported that a white panel van had been stolen from outside her apartment building earlier that morning.
The same van someone was cooking meth out of. The same van that was owned by the Florabama Faulkner Trust. The same van that was selling meth to kids outside the school.
What did it take to run that kind of operation? To consistently elude the police? Customer Loyalty. Business Planning. Marketing. Financial Literacy. Top Seller.
It was Juliette Gordon Low’s dream. Every freaking skill Flora had learned in Girl Scouts had found a real-world application.
Charlie felt the slow, free-falling sensation of her heart dropping in her chest.
She was actually believing part of Roland and Coin’s story.
And if part of it was true, what about the other part?
She looked down at the girl. Flora blinked back at her, Bambi-style. The girl had rolled in her shoulders. She was trying to make herself look smaller, more delicate, in need of saving by whatever nitwit she batted her eyes at.
A string of curses filled Charlie’s head. She had to get out of here. The room was suddenly too small. She was sweating again.
Roland asked Flora, “Your fancy pro-bono lawyer know about your real estate deals?”
Charlie worked to keep her expression neutral. She couldn’t leave. She was still Flora’s attorney, and standing up and screaming What fucking real estate deals? would probably land her in front of the ethics board. She told Coin, “Any real estate purchases Leroy made on behalf of the trust had to be in keeping with the initial guidelines of the trust.”
Roland huffed a laugh. “They all moved outta that pretty house on the lake to live in that hellhole because Leroy Faulkner understands the fluctuations in the commercial real estate market?”
“You think Flora does?” Charlie grasped at straws. “Why would a slum be worth more than a house on the lake? There are twelve apartments, total. They can’t be bringing in more than three hundred a month each. You think trading down for an income of less than four thou a month, less maintenance, less whatever mortgage they’re carrying—”
“She’s got Patterson landlocked,” Coin provided. “Mark’s got all his money tied up in sixty acres of undeveloped land, got this supermarket and all these restaurants interested in building, but he’s got no highway access without her parcel.”
“It’s not the apartments,” Roland said. “It’s the direct access that makes that land valuable.”
Charlie worked to keep her mouth from dropping open in surprise. She had grown up in Pikeville, seen the influx of builders from the city, even listened to Jo Patterson wax poetic on Olive Garden and Red Lobster, but it had never occurred to her that the Ponderosa was worth anything.
Coin said, “Leona Helmsley over there talked old Mrs. Piper into selling her the land without going through a broker.”
Charlie rolled her eyes, but she could feel the last crumbs of disbelief falling away.
Roland provided, “Hoodwinked the widow out of two million bucks’ worth of highway access. Tell her what you paid, Flora-girl.”
Flora did not answer, but a smile teased up the corners of her mouth.
Coin told Charlie, “She played on the old lady’s heart strings, said she had a moral obligation to keep that kind of land in the Pikeville family, stop those greedy developers from ruining the town.”
Roland took back over. “And then Little Miss Girl Scout turned around and parlayed it into blackmail for one of the greedy developers.” He asked Flora, “You pay the widow in Thin Mints or Tagalongs?”
Flora tittered at the joke.
Charlie wanted to shake her like a Polaroid.
The smell of bullshit permeated her nostrils.
Roland said, “Flora knew Mrs. Piper from her cookie-selling route. Talked the widow into selling her land for less than half a million bucks.”
“Three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars, to be exact.” Coin slid over a stack of pages. The deed for the Ponderosa was on top. He asked Flora, “They give out a badge for swindling old ladies?”
Roland suggested, “Something with a kid yanking out an old lady’s walker right from under her, for instance?”
Coin said, “You gonna answer or just keep sitting there like the cat got the canary?”
Flora’s eyebrow raised. She slowly turned her head toward Charlie, that familiar angelic expression on her face as she waited for her hot-shot idiot lawyer to talk her out of this mess.
“Jesus,” was the only word that Charlie could push out of her mouth.
There was a flash of white teeth from Flora before she got her smile under control.
Coin asked, “What’s that, Charlotte? You need a moment to talk to Jesus?”
Roland snorted a laugh. “More like she just had a come to Jesus moment with herself.”
Charlie felt hot and cold at the same time. She tried to swallow but ended up coughing instead. Her throat had gone dry. There was a weird ringing in her ears.
“Charlotte?” Coin said, feigning concern.
“I need … I should look …” Charlie held up a finger, asking for a moment. She pretended to read the closing documents from the Ponderosa. The number kept mumping into her line of vision: three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars, roughly what she and Ben owed in student loans. Invested in a dinky piece of land on a desolate strip of highway that might one day turn into a thoroughfare through which half the county traveled.