Three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars? For farmland she paid two thousand an acre for? What kind of operation were they putting here?
Penelope’s senses went on full alert. She glanced from Rudy to Todd to Grandpa Murphy, all eagerness for her to say yes.
She couldn’t endure it. She wheeled slowly around. Her eyes followed the lay of the land as she made her turn. Could she do this? Could she sell this land out from under Brandon and let it be scarred by garbage?
She spotted Brandon at the fence. He was watching them, she realized. This time, he didn’t stand so straight. This time, even from this distance, she could see how his whole body drooped in defeat.
In one fell swoop, she could rescue her grandfather, give him all the resources he needed for his legal defense, and she could wound Brandon where it hurt the most.
Say no.
Grandpa Murphy jostled her elbow. In her ear, he muttered, “Penny-girl, they’re waiting! This money will help me pay my lawyers, keep me out of prison. I gotta have it. Tell ’em yes.”
She tore her gaze from Brandon. “Grandpa,” she said, patting him on the chest. “We have to be sure. Besides…” How to buy time? “If they’ll pay fifteen, who’s to say they won’t pay twenty?”
Her grandfather’s eyes lit up. “Now you’re thinking like a businesswoman. You’re right, don’t look too eager.”
Penelope addressed Rudy and Todd. “I think to short-circuit all that community protest you talked about, perhaps you should meet with the county commissioners, maybe even have a public hearing.”
They didn’t look happy. “Well, we’re not required—there’s no zoning ordinance,” Todd said.
“My grandfather’s assured me of that. But I’d like to do this as transparently as possible. So? What’s your answer?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
BRANDON SAT on the end of Ryan MacIntosh’s dock, a handful of pebbles in his hand. Ryan and Sean Courtland leaned up against the dock’s railing.
When he tossed the pebbles, one by one, instead of skipping across the surface of the dark water, most of them sank.
“So these waste dump people, they’re on the up-and-up?” Brandon asked. He’d called Sean from the field that day, gave him the name of Mid-Florida Environmental and asked him to find out what he could. It had only taken a couple of days for Sean to get the information, but by then, it was common knowledge Penelope was selling out.
Sean hesitated. “Well, no mob connections that I can find out. That’s the first thing I thought of when you said waste disposal. They’ve been in business for about ten years, very profitable, but they’re running out of dumping room. They specialize in medical waste, biohazards, stuff like that.”
“I hear it’s all automatic,” Ryan said. “They’re hiring maybe fifty people, and that would cover all three shifts.”
“They believe in technology, robotics. In Florida at their main facility, as technology improved, they gradually cut their workforce. They had about two hundred when they opened, but now they’re dealing with twice the volume and they’ve got half the employees. So I wouldn’t be surprised in a couple of years if that employee count was slashed.”
“So why here?” Brandon asked. “How’d Penelope find them so damn quick?”
Sean dropped down beside him. “My sources tell me they’ve been looking for land without zoning ordinances, but with water and access to a railroad. That’s been hard to find. They’ve been turned down in three counties in South Georgia so far. This land fits the bill.”
“But that begs the question, how’d they find this place?”
“Maybe Murphy’s been working with them, and the auction interrupted his deal,” Ryan speculated.
“So Penelope knew? All this time?” Brandon slung the entire handful of pebbles into the pond. “And she never told me?”
“Do you think she knew?” Sean asked.
Brandon thought back to the argument she and Murphy had before they left for Oregon. “We’ll discuss this when we get back,” Penelope had said.
“Hell.” He sprang up from the dock so fast his foot connected with Sean’s leg, eliciting a “Hey, watch it” from Sean. “Sorry, man. I think she damn well did know. Something happened…” He choked out the events of that morning, ending with, “I thought she was worked up because she wanted him out of her house. But maybe she was afraid he’d say something to me about this sale. She had me played. I cannot believe I fell for her wide-eyed Miss Innocent look. I built her a damn barn!”
“So what are you going to do?” Ryan asked.
“What can I do? There’s no zoning ordinance in this county. I tried to tell people we needed land-use regulations, but no, no, they wouldn’t believe me. I guess they’ll believe me now when they’re downwind from a garbage dump.” Brandon paced the dock, his hold on his temper slipping with every Penelope moment he recalled.
“There’s that meeting you told us about,” Sean reminded him.
“Fat lot of good that will do me. The county can’t do squat without some sort of zoning, and any zoning they pass now would be after the fact.”
“Yeah, but Brandon, you’re forgetting something,” Ryan said. “They got run out of three counties already. Why was that?”
Brandon stopped. “Yeah. That’s right. Sean, how did the counties fight back?”
“They changed the owners’ minds. Protests, petitions, signs, mass public awareness meetings. You name it, they did it. The owners backed out, because they knew they wouldn’t be welcome there if they did sell.”
Could Penelope be so heartless that she would go through with this if she heard how it affected the community? He had seen her crying on that bed in her grandmother’s house, seen the softness in her expression after he’d kissed her. Her hand in his on the beach….
It can’t all have been an act.
He cursed himself for the stubborn hope that wouldn’t be extinguished.
Ryan propped a foot on the railing. “Murphy’s been bragging all over town that this money will buy him enough legal horsepower to shake off the federal indictment.”
“Good luck to him then.” Sean grinned. “The way I hear it, the deputy U.S. attorney’s just about ready to present to the grand jury, and you know what that means. He thinks he’s got that airtight case he’s been looking for. So Murphy might as well take a match and burn that money up.”
“Yeah, but.” Brandon couldn’t take it anymore. He walked back up the dock, toward the grass and his truck, his footfalls echoing in the quiet of the early evening.
“Yeah, but what?” Ryan called after him.
“The land will still be gone. And this time…forever.”
WHEN PENELOPE HAD been four, Trent had talked her into going down the big, curvy slide. She’d thought she was ready—until she’d managed the climb up the fourteen steps to the top of the slide.
Trent had been behind her, huffing with the imperious impatience of a nine-year-old. “C’mon, Penny! Mom’s gonna tell us we gotta go! So move, will ya?”
When she’d whimpered and wanted to go back, Trent had stuck his tongue out at her and sneered. “Baby! You’re a widdle-bitty baby!”
So she’d done it. She’d turned around, settled on the top of the slide and let gravity take over. A fraction of a second after she’d let go, before the first hairpin turn, all her doubts supersized into gigantic screaming monsters. She wanted to stop. She wanted off.
Instead, she’d been sucked along on three more curves before she’d been able to set her shaky knees on solid ground.
All these years later, Penelope was beginning to get the same feeling she’d had on that slide.
The Dyno-Trash-Duo as she’d taken to calling them to herself, had scheduled the meeting as she requested. It had a downside she hadn’t calculated. Now everybody in the county knew the company’s intentions and blamed her.
She pulled into the crammed parking lot of the county board office. Conversations hushed as Penelope pushed
through the crowd gathering on the lawn and spilling out of the commission office onto the old-fashioned front porch. From the rubbernecking, it was clear Penelope had been the central topic of discussion.
Inside the boardroom, Penelope nodded at Rudy, seated in the front row of stackable chairs, and at Todd, who was busy setting up a PowerPoint program. Grandpa Murphy was standing beside Rudy and waved her over.
“Whew,” Penelope told her grandfather. “Those guys out there sounded like they were after my blood.”
He laughed. “If they’d had a chance to switch places with you, darlin’, they would. In a heartbeat. Let ’em complain. It’ll give them something to do while you and I are on our way to the bank.”
A few minutes later, the chairman of the county commission took his seat. He brought the meeting to order with a stern warning about the consequences of disruption. “We’ll hear from folks in a civilized, courteous manner—from all sides—and then we’ll give you the county’s legal position.”
First up was Rudy, his pink scalp gleaming through his comb-over. With the help of Todd’s PowerPoint presentation, he made a pitch to the board about the solid-waste facility, how it would bring jobs and tax revenue to the county, how technologically advanced it was.
“We’re not asking for any county tax abatement. We’re not asking for the county to pony up any funds, just the quitclaim deed to the county road that bisects the land we intend to buy,” Rudy finished up.
“Hogwash,” somebody from the back piped up, and the room erupted into bedlam.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE CHAIRMAN RAPPED his gavel for order. “I have here a list of people who have actually taken the trouble to get on the agenda. Now, I’m not going to be here all night, and the board’s got some other matters to tend to, so y’all keep this short and remember to share the time.”
One by one, they came. Penelope recognized more than a few as people who’d helped build her barn. She felt her stomach turn over as she heard their disappointment and anger. A few of them even mentioned the barn raising, and how they’d been affronted by her willingness to betray their hospitality.
“Least she could have done,” one farmer said, “was tell me about it herself. Instead, I find out about it through the grapevine.” He sat down, shaking his head.
When Penelope glanced behind her at the crowd standing, she saw Uncle Jake leaning against the doorjamb, near Brandon.
Would either of the two of them speak up against the land deal?
“Well, now,” the chairman said, “we’ve got one more person on the list. Brandon, what do you have to say about all this?”
The crowd’s muttering ceased. Brandon rose from his folding chair and strode up to the podium set before the commissioners. Instead of addressing them, he turned and faced the crowd.
“I heard all of what you said tonight.” He nodded in the direction of a couple of people who’d spoken already. “And I couldn’t agree more. I don’t have a lot to add. The land they’re buying is the best land in the county, at least I think so. Most of the farmers here would agree. It’s a sin to see it used for a facility that will only hurt the community.” His voice cracked with emotion at these last words. “It’s made even worse because we trusted Penelope. We trusted her and reached out to her—in spite of who her grandfather was.”
Beside her, Grandpa Murphy stiffened and started to rise. Penelope saw Rudy put a restraining hand on him. Grandpa didn’t look happy, but he made no further move to get up.
“We all know what this money is going for,” Brandon continued. “It’s not to help her have a better living here—no one could blame someone for that. No, this money will go to Richard Murphy’s attorneys. Now you decide. Is that something we should support?”
The grumbling and murmuring grew louder, and angry hisses came from all corners of the room.
Brandon waited, silent for a long moment, while the tension built. “If it’s not, then the only person who can control this, the one person who can make this all go away, is sitting right over there.” He pointed to Penelope. “It’s her land, at least, that’s what the title says. So you tell her if you have a problem with it. You tell her. As for me, she knows how I feel.” Brandon’s mouth twisted. “She knows, and she’s doing this anyway. She’s not one of us. This deal tells me she’ll never be.”
Under his accusing stare, Penelope dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap.
How can I feel so guilty about this? If only he’d back off, give Grandpa—and me—some breathing room.
When she looked back up, he was already moving to the door.
The chairman of the commissioners leaned forward and spoke into his mike. “I think it’s clear here how the public feels about this. But, folks, according to our lawyer, there’s not one whit that can be done about it. We got no zoning ordinance, no land-use ordinance—something the county residents voted down two to one just a few years ago. It’s Penelope Langston’s land, and she’s got the unbridled right to do whatever she wants to with it.”
Penelope barely noticed the grumbles of discontent in the audience. She couldn’t think of anything except what Brandon had said.
The chairman rapped his gavel again. “Now, as we can take no action on this, we’re going to move on to the next portion of the meeting.”
Grandpa Murphy startled her when he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Let’s get out of here, nothing more they can do to us. We’ve sat through their public flogging. Now we can do what we please.”
He followed in Brandon’s wake. For a moment, Penelope simply sat there, too numb to move. Then she saw Rudy follow Grandpa, and Todd hurrying to pack up his equipment. She crossed over to the table and began helping him. Her fingers fumbled with electrical cords and cables, and she dropped one of them. Todd retrieved it.
“Hey, don’t let them get to you,” he whispered. “That’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen before.”
Right. Nothing. A man she loved—her heart squeezed at this realization…How could this have happened? How could she have fallen in love with someone who wished so much ill on her family?
Outside, Brandon was nowhere to be seen. Rudy and Grandpa were talking near Rudy’s rental car.
Todd let the door close by itself as he came out to join her. “Glad that’s over,” he said as he shifted his laptop case and the projector in his hands. “I wasn’t kidding when I said it was nothing compared to other communities. We should have taken Mr. Murphy up on his offer when he first came to us three years ago.”
“You mean two.” Penelope pulled her jacket tighter around herself. “He’s only had the land for two.”
“Oh, no. It was three. I remember. We’d been run out of one county, and he’d heard about it. Came to us and said he had his eye on a piece of land he could pick up for a song and wanted to know if we were interested. At the time, I hate to admit it, but I thought he was shooting off at the mouth. I mean, the property might have been perfect, but it wasn’t even his and the owner at the time told us he wasn’t interested in selling at any price. Guy hung up on us as quickly as if we’d been aluminum siding salesmen. Wouldn’t even listen or take down our contact information. But damn if your grandfather didn’t pull it off, just like he said he would, and now we’ll all be sitting pretty.”
The blood turned to ice in Penelope’s veins. The late evening swirled around her. She grabbed for anything to keep her knees from buckling.
“Are you okay?” Todd’s voice seemed to come from a distant place.
She shook her head. She’d never be okay, never, ever. Her grandfather had lied to her—Brandon had been right. Grandpa Murphy had wanted Uncle Jake’s land three years ago, for this. He’d played her. All along, he’d played her.
What have I done?
The bile rose in her throat. She had lost Brandon, and for what?
She dashed back inside and made the turn into the ladies’ room. Falling down in front of the lone toilet, the cold tile floor bit
ing into her knees, Penelope retched.
CHAPTER THIRTY
WHEN SHE CAME out of the bathroom, Grandpa Murphy was waiting for her in the anteroom of the commission offices. “Penny-girl, you sick? Todd said—”
“I’m not selling.”
“What?” At first, he went slack jawed with disbelief. Then he smiled and reached out to touch her. “Don’t let ’em get you down, Penny-girl. Life’s not a popularity test.”
“I mean it. I’m not selling.”
“Because a bunch of complainers and whiners flapped their jaws?”
“Because I know how long you’ve been working on this deal. Brandon was right, wasn’t he? You did steal that land from Uncle Jake. You stole it so you could sell it to them.” She jerked her head out the door where Rudy and Todd waited, concern on their faces.
“Who the hell cares how I got it? It’s mine.”
“No. That’s where you’re wrong, Grandpa. The land is mine. And I do care how you got it. I can’t sleep at night knowing you’ll profit from whatever deal with the devil you made to get this land.”
He grabbed her by the arm, shook her. “Now you listen here, girl. I need that money. Three years ago, it was just a nice little cherry on the top, but now I need it! And you’re gonna get it for me. That money’s mine, and I worked damn hard to get it.”
Her reflexes kicked in before she could even think. With a sharp jab to the instep of his foot and an elbow in his soft belly, she was free. He staggered backward. “Penny-girl, you’re acting like a stranger.”
“You didn’t work hard to get that land.” Her stomach churned, but there was nothing else to come up. “You stole it. To me, you are a stranger.”
UNCLE JAKE LOOKED up from the piece of paper in his hand. “Penelope, are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. I can’t keep this land a minute longer.”
“But…you’re giving it to me, well, selling it for a dollar. And now you’ve got that nice little house on it…”
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