By Invitation Only

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “This is a nightmare, Susan. But you are an exceptionally strong woman, and I know you will handle this with the same grace you demonstrate with everything else.”

  I gave him my ATM card and the code.

  “How could he do something so terrible, Michael? Help me understand this.”

  “Look, if the charges are true, and I cannot imagine that they are, I’d say he didn’t intentionally set out to cheat anyone. He’s not that kind of man. Maybe he just got caught up in something.”

  “I know he’s not! Thank God Shelby isn’t here to see this.”

  “Honeymoon? Great wedding, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Yes, they’re in Tanzania. Safari.”

  I couldn’t process the enormity of the charges against Alejandro yet. I couldn’t understand how far-reaching all the accusations were. You never think something like this can happen to you until it does.

  “You’re right. She doesn’t need to be dragged into the middle of this,” Michael said. “Anyway, I think what happened was something like, there was a drop in the market and he probably got more people who wanted their money immediately than people who wanted to further invest. So maybe he had to take from Peter to pay Paul, so to speak. I’m guessing there was a run on his fund and he didn’t have time to raise more money to cover his losses before the SEC got involved. Maybe it was just some sloppy paperwork with the SEC. Maybe there’s a whistleblower in his office. I don’t know. I know this, though. It’s all going to come out. So brace yourself, Susan. You’re going to hear a lot of things you’d rather not know. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Tell him I love him, will you? Tell him we’re going to fight this thing together.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  He looked at me with pity in his eyes. If no one else in the coming days would believe I had nothing to do with this horrible crime, Michael would. I closed the door behind him, then locked and bolted it.

  How was I going to get through this?

  Chapter 24

  You Never Know—Diane

  “Currier and Ives!” Virnell said.

  “I know, Mom,” Diane said.

  The only reason we were able to leave Chicago when we wanted to go was Floyd’s rental SUV. I do believe that monster could travel the worst roads in Jakarta without causing one iota of discomfort to its passengers. We were so glad to be home. Tired but glad.

  Floyd had indeed checked out the wine when he went to Fred’s on Saturday morning. It was worth exactly what Kathy claimed it was worth.

  “What do you think, Floyd?” I asked knowing the answer was not good. “Why would he move over a million dollars of wine to an apartment building that doesn’t even have a doorman?”

  “My opinion? He’s scrambling. My gut says we’re going to hear all about it.”

  “Far be it from me to doubt your gut.” I said and thought, Wow. It just didn’t make sense.

  Fred and Shelby were off for Africa. I was very excited for them. I wondered about all the amazing sights they would see—wild animals, exotic birds, and waterfalls. Naturally, I was a little worried for their safety. But then, you didn’t hear very often about lions devouring tourists. It would be terrible for business, so I reassured myself that they must have systems in place to protect visitors. And of course, I was concerned about the EPT tests in Shelby and Fred’s bathroom. Maybe she’d just had a scare.

  It was only eight o’clock in the morning and surprisingly chilly. The grass was glazed with sparkling frost, which was a sweet little hello from Mother Nature, nothing like the havoc she unleashed on Chicago. I was already at the farm stand working on the books, trying to figure out if we made any money last year. So far, 2016 was panning out to be about 2 percent ahead of 2015. No great shakes, but at least it wasn’t a decline.

  I still used ledgers and entered data by hand. Floyd seemed to think that we should have everything on computers, but I disagreed. I still had my wits about me, and doing the math by hand was a good exercise to keep me sharp. Of course I double-checked everything with a calculator. So far I had not made any huge errors. When tax time rolled around I took my books to our accountant and he told us what we owed Uncle Sam. I wrote the checks, my mother signed them, and that was it.

  I was still daydreaming about the wedding. And all the snow, everywhere you looked, was more snow than I had ever imagined. The whole weekend still seemed like a beautiful dream. I had danced with my handsome son on his wedding day to the music of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, wearing a gorgeous gown of champagne silk, hair and makeup done by professionals! I never in a million years thought I would hang those words together in the same sentence. Our ride in the horse-drawn sleigh while snow twirled and danced all around us was priceless. Our mother talked about it the whole way home, while Molly bwarked from her crate.

  “Currier and Ives!” she said about a thousand times.

  We were able to do these marvelous things only because of the resources and generosity of Susan and Alejandro. The only thing missing from the weekend was Alden. Maybe, when the pictures came back, I’d send him an eight-by-ten. I’d not looked that pretty since my high school prom. I wished I had somehow had him at my side.

  Soon it was getting close to lunchtime and I was thinking about what I wanted to eat. Mom had gone up to the house to see what there was to put together. We were long on root vegetables, so my guess was vegetable soup of some sort would be simmering on the stove. I closed the books and stood up, stretching. It was time to lock up the store for an hour and a half. We used to leave the store wide open with an honor jar for customers to use in our absence. That was when we kept the cash in a tackle box, which we simply walked up to the house. But since we installed a cash register a few years ago, we decided that open-door policy wasn’t such a good idea. Folks knew we closed between one and two thirty. Our telephone number was on the front door so that if someone desperately needed their parsnips that very minute we could accommodate them. We didn’t have so much business that we could afford to lose any of it.

  I took the spiral key chain, slipped it over my wrist, picked up my cell phone, and started walking back to the house. When I got there, no one was in the kitchen.

  “Hello? Where is everybody?” I called out.

  I lifted the lid on the big pot. Vegetable soup. I loved my predictable life. I checked the oven. Corn bread batter was in there, but she had forgotten to turn the oven on. I quickly set it to four hundred degrees. Poor Mom.

  “We’re in the living room! Come quick!” Mom yelled.

  I all but ran there to find Mom and Floyd standing in front of the television.

  “Lookie here,” Floyd said. “Alejandro is on the way to the cooler.”

  “What?” I was stunned.

  There was Alejandro, surrounded by FBI officers, in handcuffs, being pushed into the backseat of a car. There was no mistaking him. It was him.

  “He’s a dang crook,” Mom said. “I knew something was wrong with that man. Decent people don’t have that kind of money.”

  “What?” I was still stunned.

  “I’m not surprised one bit,” Floyd said.

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “Remember that wine? What did I tell you?”

  I said, “Never doubt your gut?”

  “Yep. That sumbitch was hiding assets.”

  “What are you saying?” Mom said.

  “That he knew he was getting busted and he was hiding assets at the last minute,” Floyd said.

  Mom said, “Diane, remember I told you there was something fishy about him bringing wine for the party? Who needs twenty cases of wine for thirty people? But I sure didn’t guess it was worth so much money.”

  “You did say that, Mom. Holy hell,” I said.

  “This is a big-time disaster. He’s finished,” Floyd said. “Stick a fork in him. Done like dinner.”

  “Oh, Dr. Cliché rides again,” I said. Done like dinner. Please.

&n
bsp; My phone rang. It was Kathy.

  “Hi!” I said.

  “You watching the news?”

  “Obviously. You want a bowl of soup?”

  “I’ll be right over,” she said and disconnected.

  “I’ll set the table for four,” I said.

  “Check the corn bread in the oven,” my mother said.

  “Well, I guess I’ll start buying the newspaper again,” Floyd said. “Maybe I’ll start scrapbooking or something. BJ used to do that. I think this might be the first relative we’ve had that’s gonna do time.”

  “This is so terrible,” I said. “You hear from her?”

  “He’s not blood,” Mom said.

  “No, but I’ll bet I hear from her now,” Floyd said.

  “He’s not blood, but he’s Fred’s father-in-law. Y’all, this is so awful I can’t even believe it’s true,” I said. “I’ll bet the kids don’t know yet.”

  “Not unless they’ve got cell reception in the Serengeti,” Floyd said. “Let’s eat. This is going to be all over the news for a long time.”

  “In a minute,” I said. “Corn bread’s not done.”

  We watched the news for a few more minutes. I wanted the oven to have the time to heat up. It didn’t matter if we switched from CNN to ABC, NBC, or CBS. Alejandro Cambria’s securities fraud was the lead story on every single network.

  When I felt enough time had passed, I said, “Okay. That’s enough misery for now.”

  Just as we arrived in the kitchen, Kathy walked in through the kitchen door and said, “So, does anyone want to explain this to me? A few days ago I was doing a cha-cha with that man. Now he’s going up the river? What exactly did he do? I don’t understand the whole thing.”

  “He’s gonna be a guest of the state. By invitation only!” Floyd said and chuckled. “No cha-cha-ing allowed in the Big House!” He ladled himself a big bowl of soup.

  “Floyd! This is not funny! Don’t you know Susan must be devastated?” I said, taking the pan of corn bread out of the oven.

  I cut it in squares and dropped them all in a bread basket. Then I filled a soup bowl for my mother, Kathy, and me.

  “Let’s go sit down,” I said. “Here, y’all, take a spoon.”

  We moved to the dining room and sat. I’d put place mats and paper napkins on the table with the corn bread.

  “This is what happens when you ride too high on the hog,” Mom said.

  Floyd began singing an old Sinatra song. “‘Riding high in April, shot down in May . . .’”

  “Stop! Wait just a minute! We shouldn’t be talking like this! As far as I know, we’re the only family Susan has, besides the kids, of course. Don’t y’all think we need to reach out to her?”

  “Why don’t we wait awhile and see if she’s a crook too,” Mom said. “Maybe we shouldn’t get involved.”

  “Miss Virnell!” Kathy said. “You think Susan’s done something illegal?”

  “How would I know? I’m just a humble farmer,” she said and shot me a told-you-so look.

  “Well, we should at least tell the kids. How terrible would it be if they had to read it in the newspaper?” I said. “I mean, it’s going to be humiliating enough for both of them, living with the facts of her father’s crimes. That is, if he’s guilty, and it doesn’t look good. Does it?”

  “Nope,” Floyd said.

  “What exactly did he do?” Kathy asked again.

  “He defrauded his investors,” Floyd said.

  “How?” Kathy said.

  Floyd said, “He blew the money his investors gave him on his lifestyle, I guess. Then the markets went to hell. People wanted their money back and he didn’t have it to give them. The SEC had been watching him for, I think they said, five years.”

  Mom said, “That’s what the man on the television said.”

  “Well, Mom, I know you and Floyd see some gallows humor here, or what’s that word? Schadenfreude! That’s it.”

  “Schadenfreude? That’s a mighty big word for a little girl like you,” Floyd said. “Did you learn that at Clemson?”

  “Sure did! Especially when we kicked Carolina’s butt at homecoming my sophomore year. We were knee-deep in it. We loved watching them be miserable.”

  “I can’t believe you were ever a football fan,” Floyd said. “Mom, this soup is delicious.”

  “It sure is,” she said. “Nothing like a smoked ham hock. They’re practically charmed.”

  “The soup is very good, Mom. Thank you for making it,” I said, feeling terrible.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

  “What’s wrong? You know, sometimes I can’t believe my ears,” I said. “Susan and Alejandro are about to have their entire lives ripped apart and all y’all can do is make jokes.”

  “Aw, come on, Lady Di, we’re just having a little fun,” Floyd said. “What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know. But we can’t stand by doing nothing,” I said. “You know, on a completely unrelated topic, maybe we should make this soup to sell. What do y’all think?”

  “I’ll buy a quart every week!” Kathy said.

  “Why not?” Mom said. “Most people don’t know what to do with turnips. I know how to make ’em sing!”

  “Lord knows, we’ve got a lot of them to do something with,” I said.

  “You’re really upset, aren’t you?” Floyd said.

  “I feel terrible for Susan,” I said. “I’m going to call her tonight.”

  “Well, give her my best,” Floyd said.

  “Me too,” Kathy said.

  “I wouldn’t call her. How do you know the FBI isn’t listening?” Mom said.

  “So what if they are? As long as I don’t bring up the contraband wine, I’m okay. And that’s none of my business anyway. I just want her to know I’m thinking about her.”

  That afternoon, Mom started making the biggest batch of vegetable soup I’d ever seen, which is to say every burner in the farm stand kitchen was covered with a huge pot. I was happy she was working there, knowing I would be there and she wouldn’t burn the house down. Not that she was at the point where she needed supervision.

  This was the time of year that the peach orchard got its early spring pruning. Branches were tied together so they wouldn’t drag the ground or snap under the weight of the fruit when it began to appear. Once that fruit was visible, we pruned them back to about a hand’s width between each peach. That was so we’d get the maximum-size fruit that was very juicy, which was what we were known for. That’s what Floyd and his men were doing now. At this time of year, he’d have about a dozen men working the orchard. But by summer, the number of his employees would swell to around fifty.

  When the weather was chilly like it was now, we had to worry about freezing temperatures that could kill the peaches and wipe out all of our production. We used high-speed wind machines to pull warmer air from the upper atmosphere down into the orchard to raise the ground temperature. This also helped to save the crops from frost damage. Frost and freeze were perhaps our biggest worries. Sometimes I thought farming was something a person should inherit, because when I considered all the variables that had to be just right for a farmer to succeed, the odds were almost always against us. Take my advice, if buying a farm seems romantic to you, don’t do it. Our family had been farming for centuries, and this generation, at least, was always a little surprised when we had a profitable year.

  “How’s that soup?” I called out to Mom. “Sure smells good.”

  “It’s coming along,” she said. “Maybe we should sell corn bread to go with it.”

  “Great idea! I’ll get that together for tomorrow.”

  In the dead of winter, soups do well. I stepped into the kitchen to see how the production was going. On the long trestle table, she had lined up quart-size Ball jars, like a platoon of soldiers, ready to be filled.

  “I still can’t get over this whole thing with Alejandro,” I said. “And I can’t get Susan out of my mind.”


  “Well, now you’re going to see what she’s made out of.”

  “And now she’s going to find out what kind of friends she has.”

  “I’m gonna guess they’re all the fair-weather variety.”

  “I hope not, for her sake,” I said, thinking Mom was probably right. I’d bet her friend Judy was already gone with the wind. “What about another kind of soup? Maybe butternut squash and ginger?”

  “Listen, missy, let’s get these jars filled and see what happens before we go expanding the inventory.” She stopped stirring the pots, turned to me, and put her hands on her hips. “Why squash? Do we have a lot of butternut squash on our hands?”

  “Tons,” I said. “I’ll change the blackboard in the morning.”

  “Yes, this soup has to rest overnight. Then we can see about the butternut tomorrow.”

  I took a spoon and tasted the broth. It needed salt, but I wasn’t saying a word.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well, what?” I said.

  “How is it?”

  “Very good,” I said.

  She tasted it.

  “Needs more hocks,” she said. “Not smoky enough.”

  She went to the freezer and lifted out a box of them. Not many people could say they had cases of ham hocks in their freezer. She tasted each pot and dropped one or two in each one.

  “That should do it,” she said. She raised the heat a little. “Another forty-five minutes, then they can sit overnight.”

  “If you want to go up to the house, I can turn the stove off and put them to bed,” I said.

  “Thanks. I’ll get the meat loaf in the oven.”

  I would move them to the walk-in cooler, cover them, and let them sit on the floor. The fat would rise overnight. We’d scrape it off in the morning, divide the liquid and the vegetables evenly among the jars, and seal them the same way we sealed jam.

  After supper I called Susan. My call went straight to voice mail. If she wanted to talk, she could call me back. If she didn’t, I understood. But at least I had attempted to connect with her and she would know it.

  “I tried to call Susan last night,” I said to Mom and Floyd over breakfast.