Authors: Kathryn Meyer Griffith
The woman smiled condescendingly at Frank as a greeting. She didn’t shake his hand. She most likely thought he was the country bumpkin he was playing and his hands would be dirty.
Frank led them into the kitchen and with a welcoming hand gesture offered them seats at the table. The woman sat down but the man remained standing. Frank plopped down on a turned around chair, slouching. He had a toothpick and picked at his teeth with it. He didn’t offer either of his guests coffee or anything he normally would have done. It wouldn’t have gone with his act.
“So you’re Tina Thompson’s nephew?” Lethgrow confirmed. “And her heir?”
“I am. She didn’t have any children,” he lied, “that I know of and only the one sibling, my ma. Ma always told me that when my Aunt Tina passed, I’d inherit all this.” Frank swept his hand around and allowed a manifestation of greed to spread across his features. “Sweet, huh? It’s probably worth a bundle, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re not interested in living here then?” the woman queried, not answering his question.
“Nope. I live in the city. I hate living out in the country like this. Too damn many bugs and no fast food. Have you looked at the one road town here? They have nothing. It’s like being out in the backwoods with the hillbillies. Nope, I don’t want this old ruin of a house or to live here. I’m just interested in what I can get for it and then I’ll hustle back to the city.”
“So you want to sell this?” Lethgrow was smiling like a shark now.
“Sure as hell I do. Faster the better.” Frank gave him a shark’s grin back.
“But from what we’ve heard, your aunt’s body hasn’t been recovered yet, Mr. Stanus. She was on a cruise, wasn’t she, and fell overboard? My condolences, by the way.” Lethgrow feigned sympathy as he hovered behind the sitting woman, but there was a self-satisfied glint in his eyes. Frank had seen that glint often enough when a person was lying or hiding something sinister. In that moment Frank knew this man was the man who probably pushed Tina off the boat and to her death in the cold sea. He
knew
it. “Do you have the right to sell this property under those circumstances?”
“I would think so. Everyone believes the old lady is dead so I don’t think it’ll take long for me to get this house and whatever else she had. I’m meeting with her lawyer later today so I bet I’ll find out more. Gee, could be she’ll have a pile of money in her bank account.” Frank greedily rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get that, too.”
“Did you know your aunt very well?” The woman was trying so hard to behave as if she really cared, yet her voice was abnormally flat.
“I met her once or twice when I was a kid. My ma and her didn’t get along too well. You know how that is? Family,” he huffed, throwing in a scowl to make it look good. “What a circus. I’m only here for the money.”
Both his visitors stared at him. Frank would have loved to know what they were thinking behind their snake eyes. He trusted his performance had fooled them.
No one was saying anything. This was his opportunity to get the information he was performing for.
“Lansing Corporation, huh?” Frank restarted the conversation, glancing at the business card. “Never heard of it. What kind of company is it? There’s no address.”
The woman answered, “It’s a private agency owned by a consortium of highly respected and wealthy business men. They live all over the world and buy land for government facilities across the country. We’re authorized to offer and buy for them.”
“Where’s their home office?”
“New York,” the woman replied a little too quickly and didn’t elaborate. “But you don’t have to worry about that, Mr. Stanus. The check will cash, I assure you.”
“Hmm. In town they were talking about how you’ve been buying up all the land around here. Your company must really want it for something important, huh?”
“We’re not privy to what they want it for. We just work for them.” The man was lying, Frank could tell, and had suddenly decided to sit. He settled in the chair next to his partner.
“This private company,” Frank went on, not giving up, “why do they want this particular hunk of land? They’re not going to build some top secret hidden fortress where the government does weird experiments on people or animals or something like that, are they?”
“No, nothing like that. As I said I don’t know what they’re going to build. We represent them and acquire what they tell us to acquire. We’re just the messengers.”
Frank listened to the lies and bobbed his head. “You two heard about all the bizarre incidents and accidents that have occurred in this neighborhood lately? Pretty strange. Some say there’s a widespread haunting going on. Some say there’s a murderer loose. Wild, huh?”
“Ridiculous. Ghosts don’t exist and they don’t kill.” But once more Lethgrow’s tiny smile tipped Frank off. The salesman knew a hell of a lot more than he was letting on; his associate, too.
“The people are so provincial around here,” the woman remarked with a barely contained smirk. “So gullible.”
That’s when Frank was absolutely sure the two were part of what was going on. It was in the way they avoided his looks, the way their shoulders straightened and the dismissive tone of their responses.
“We don’t know anything about any of that Mr. Stanus,” mouthed Lethgrow, glaring at him suspiciously. “We’re here to buy this house and land if you want to sell it to us. We’ll give you top price. What do you say?”
Frank also knew when he’d gone too far so he returned to his act. “How much?”
Lethgrow was back on track now. “Based on the house and the land here and the neighboring houses and what they’ve gone for, we’ve been authorized to offer you two hundred.”
“Two hundred dollars?” Frank blurted out the erroneous amount on purpose. “You’ve got to be ******* kidding. It’s worth a hell of a lot more–”
“No, Mr. Stanus, two hundred
thousand
dollars,” the woman corrected.
The price astounded Frank. “Whoa! That’s a hell of a lot of money. This place ain’t worth it, no way.” Then he smiled. “But if you’re offering it, I’ll take it. I’m no fool.”
Now both his guests gave him back big satisfied shark smiles.
“Then we have a deal?” Lethgrow lifted himself from his chair, so excited he nearly knocked it over and thrust out his hand to be shook. “We have the paperwork with us–”
Frank had learned what he could from the two, or all they were going to tell him; which hadn’t been much. Now for the second part of his plan. “Uh, wait a minute. Like I said before, I have to talk to the lawyer later today and see when I can take possession of all this. But I’ll call you right away when I know it’s mine to sell, you can count on it.” He handed them a scrap of paper with the telephone number of the throw away cell phone he’d bought just for that reason.
They weren’t happy but they were also smart enough to know he couldn’t sell what wasn’t his until it legally was.
“We will stay in touch then, Mr. Stanus. Nice meeting you.” The woman was already halfway towards the door and her companion was a step behind her.
Frank watched them leave and waited until their car was at the end of the driveway before he sprinted out the rear door, slid into the truck he’d parked behind the house so they wouldn’t see it, and fell in behind them at a safe distance. Almost losing sight of their car after it’d turned onto the highway, he caught a glimpse of it up the road. He made sure he pursued far enough behind so he wouldn’t tip them off.
Though he strained to see the license plate, which would have made everything so much easier, he couldn’t make it out. They’d covered it in mud.
It was a long trip through small towns and past larger ones. At times he wondered where they were going. He’d expected them to drive to a five star hotel where they had rooms. He’d planned on sweet-talking or intimidating a naive desk clerk into letting him into those rooms once the two left to go eat or something, and look around some. He’d also try to get the phone records of any outgoing or incoming calls which might help him trace them back to their company. Apparently they were returning to a satellite or headquarters and not a hotel. He’d lucked out. If he was led to where they worked he’d stealthily break in any way he could–best do it in the middle of the night–and find out what he needed to know. If the company wasn’t legitimate he’d find out.
The sun was dazzling on the road before him. The dark sedan ahead glinted in its light. Sometimes he let the car surge far ahead and sometimes, when tighter packed traffic allowed it, he would move in closer. He was very careful because he didn’t want to lose them.
It didn’t do him any good. About an hour away from Spookie he noticed the sedan was increasing its speed. Could be they’d realized they had a tail or else they were in a hurry to get wherever they were going. Either way, he got caught behind some cars and an eighteen wheeler and couldn’t get by them. When he finally drove around, the sedan was nowhere to be seen. He’d lost it or they’d lost him.
“Damn!” He slapped his hand on the wheel and slowed the truck down. “Where could they have gone? They were just ahead of me.”
He backtracked a ways and checked the side streets, driveways and the motels’ and hotels’ parking lots. No black sedan. No suits. Finally he gave up, swerved the truck around and drove home to Spookie.
This time he was the one peering into the rearview mirror and hoping he wasn’t being the one tailed. He couldn’t afford to have his cover blown. He’d be meeting those two again and he didn’t want them to be suspicious of him.
An hour later he was in town parking in front of Kate’s donut shop. He’d called Abigail and learned she was there finishing up the last of her wall paintings. So he decided to meet her. He had things he wanted to talk to her about.
Chapter 10
Abigail
“So you never found out where their headquarters was located?” Abigail put down the brush on the table’s edge and wiped her hands. She’d put the final touches on the last wall picture in the shop and was proud of what she’d done. Now Kate could open her business on schedule tomorrow as planned.
The images of the giant donuts, of all the varieties requested, lined the freshly painted walls and looked good enough to eat–and if that didn’t get people hungry for the pastries, nothing would, Kate had claimed. And the shop was done. Everything was in its place, the furnishings and all the baking equipment, the ovens and fryers, in the rear rooms were ready to do their jobs. Kate had already done a dry run and everything had worked perfectly. Even Abigail had to admit, the place looked amazing.
Frank, sitting nearby at a shiny new table, answered, “No, I never found where they were going. I lost them somewhere past the JB Bridge. To be truthful, I’m afraid they might have made me early on and led me on a wild goose chase. Maybe it gave them a thrill or they were under orders never to let anyone discover where their home base was. Who knows? But it was odd how they suddenly skedaddled off the road. One second there and the next gone. Darn, and I really wanted to find out where that mysterious company of theirs was located.”
“Where exactly were you when you lost them?” Abigail was putting her paint stuff away in her artist’s supply bag. Kate was behind the counter doing last minute preparations before the grand opening. Abigail noticed the woman was listening to their conversation.
“Going into St. Louis.”
“Then their headquarters is in the city somewhere.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“You know,” Kate broke in. “I got another one of those calls from the Lansing Corporation last night. They really are hot to buy my mother’s house and land. They’ve doubled their previous offer. The amount is ridiculous. Who’d pay that much for my mother’s wreck of a house? They were quite pushy on the phone. I said no for the tenth time and I don’t think they cared much for it. I finally had to hang up on them because they wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She shook her head. “I don’t see why they want my house so badly.”
They want the land. Everyone’s land.
“Who did you speak with…a man or a woman?” Abigail had taken a chair beside Frank.
“A woman, and she was persistent, I will say that.”
“So you hung up on her?”
“I had to. She wouldn’t stop trying to convince me. Coerce me is more like it. Said the house was falling apart. Said there’d been criminal acts all around lately in my neighborhood and I was a woman alone…and so on.”
Frank threw Abigail a look she could read easily enough. He believed the Lansing Corporation was behind the troubles, no doubt about it. He didn’t say anything but stared out the windows onto Main Street and her gaze followed. Midday, the sun was high in the sky and there were no shadows along Main Street. Every shop was awash in sunlight. Nothing could hide.
They were supposed to go out for lunch after she was done at the shop. It was Friday afternoon and the sidewalks were full. Townspeople were bustling here and there going about their daily affairs. Everything was normal to them. It was business as usual in the world and the town. Abigail always found it sad that life went on as other people went through their individual miseries, losses and dangers. People disappeared or died. The world didn’t care.
Many of the people passing by stole looks through the windows, smiled, waved or gave them a thumbs up. They knew that weekend was the grand opening and they were trying to be encouraging. Kate would be beginning the actual donut making very early in the morning so the pastries would be ready when she opened the shop at seven a.m. That evening she’d be going upstairs to the loft to get the sleep she’d need while Abigail would be going home to cook supper for her children.
Abigail exchanged smiles with Kate. They were becoming friends. Not just artist and patron, but real friends, and Abigail could always use another friend. “Well, Kate, it’s all done and ready for the crowds tomorrow morning.”
“Crowds? That would be great. Or all those donuts I’m going to make tonight will go to waste.” Kate’s smile had become uncertain. She’d done her share of crying over her mother’s death and was ready to begin her new business and her new life. A person could only be sad for so long.