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.
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-bon
o 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.
Charlie got to the last page. She studied Leroy Faulkner’s shaky signature.
She finally made herself accept the facts that Ken and Roland had laid out in front of her: Leroy controlled the money, but he was also an addict. Flora trafficked in the drug to which Leroy was addicted. You didn’t need to be a world-class economist to figure out supply and demand. Leroy did whatever Flora demanded so long as she kept him supplied. Which meant that Charlie had spent the majority of her day chasing her own tail on behalf of a budding psychopath.
And still, Charlie had an obligation to defend the little asshole.
She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “According to your own paperwork, the Widow Piper sold the land to the trust, not to Flora Faulkner.”
Coin smiled. “That’s how you wanna play it?”
“It’s not a game, and I’m not playing,” Charlie told him, because he knew as well as she did that she couldn’t simply get up and walk away from Flora. Now that they were here, she had a professional obligation to at least see the interview through. “You have no proof that my client had anything to do with this transaction or anything else. Flora is a minor. She cannot legally enter into any agreements, real estate or otherwise. Her name is not on any of these documents.” She let the papers flutter back together. “Leroy Faulkner signed off on everything. The only other signatures are the notrary, the director of trust relations at the bank, and Mrs. Edna Piper. I don’t see Flora’s name anywhere.”
“Here.” Coin jammed his finger on the top of the front page where it read PURCHASER: THE FLORABAMA FAULKNER TRUST.
Charlie met his smug grin with a smirk. “Do I need to explain to you the difference between a financial entity set up through common law jurisdictions and a minor child?”
Coin’s expression remained unchanged. “Do I need to explain to you about collusion to commit fraud?”
“I think you mean civil conspiracy, which you would know if you’d gone to a law school that wasn’t housed between a massage parlor and a Panda Express.”
Coin stood up, fists clenched, and walked out the door.
Charlie knew he was pacing the hall. She had seen him do this before. His fuse burned quick, but the explosions tended to be of the premature variety.
Roland ignored the antics, asking Flora, “Did you see a map or a drawing on Mark’s desk? Is that how you figured it out?”
“Nope.” Flora knew she had lost Charlie, so there was no point in pretending anymore. “If I did what you’re saying, which I didn’t, I’d tell you that I’ve got two eyes in my head. Anybody can see that land needs a right-a-way.”
Roland had the pleased look of a man who understood that criminals loved to brag about their bad deeds. “How’d you find out who owns the property?”
“It’s all at the courthouse. Anybody could look. If they wanted to, I mean. Not that I wanted to. But if.”
“And you recognized the old widow’s name?”
“Mrs. Piper?” Flora shrugged. “I could sell her the moon if I wanted to.”
“And?” Roland gave her a second before prompting, “Keep going, little bit. Tell me how you worked it. I mean, if you worked it.”
“No,” Charlie said, because Flora seemed to think her ifs were some kind of legal krypton. “Flora, my advice as your lawyer is to shut the hell up.”
Flora cut her with a look, her eyes flashing like a snake’s.
Charlie suppressed a shudder that could’ve shaken her out of her chair.
“Charlotte, let’s figure this out together.” Coin stood in the doorway. He had one hand tucked into the waist band of his shiny slacks. His anger had been chased away by his idiotic belief that she could be persuaded to throw her client under the bus. “
You need to talk your client into taking a deal or she’s gonna be too dried up for anything by the time she breathes free air again.”
Charlie said nothing.
Coin tried another track, talking to Roland instead. “I gotta give it to her: gal’s got the nose for property.”
Roland nodded. “Too bad she didn’t know Mark Patterson’s broke. He can’t afford to pay her market value for the highway access, and nobody wants the apartments without Mark’s land attached to the deal.”
Flora could not quell her grin. “Good thing I’ve got the cash to buy Mark’s piece when he goes into foreclosure.”
“Flora,” Charlie tried, literally the least amount of trying she could do. “You need to stop talking.”
“I will, Miss Charlie. But you can see they ain’t got nothing on me.” Flora crossed her arms. She told Coin, “You heard my lawyer. I’ve talked about as much as I’m gonna talk.”
“Good, because I’m tired of pussy-footin’ around your bullshit.” Coin leaned over the table. He told Flora. “We’ve got you dead to rights on the drug trafficking, peanut. Come clean and maybe we can shave some time off your sentence.”
“I know my rights,” Flora shot back. “You gotta charge me or let me go.”
Charlie felt her head swivel around so hard that her neck popped. “What did you say?” Flora started to speak, but Charlie held up a hand to stop her. “You’re not in cuffs. Did they fingerprint you?” Flora shook her head. “Did they take your photograph?” Flora shook her head again. “Did they ever say you were under arrest? Read you your rights?”
Roland sighed. He switched off the recorder.
“Flora?” Charlie prompted.
“No. None of that.”
Charlie asked her, “Why did you change into jail clothes?”
“They told me to because my other ones were dirty from being on the ground.”
“But they let you keep your sneakers and your necklace.” Charlie gave Ken Coin a furious look. “You fuckwad.”
Coin shrugged.
She remembered the first full sentence that had come out of his mouth.
“You’re gonna be charged …”
He hadn’t said that he was actually charging Flora. Charlie had been so stunned by the possible prison sentence that she hadn’t noticed, but now she understood that the district attorney had played her almost as well as Flora had.
Last Breath Page 10
