The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up (14 page)

If Tom Johnson had any kind of backing at all, he should be able to redevelop the property successfully.

“Is Johnson expecting us?” I said.

“No. I thought it would be best to surprise him.”

“If he’s there.”

“Oh, he’s there. I called. I used what we lawyers call a subterfuge to make sure he’ll be there until closing time.” Joe glanced over at me. “Now I’m going to ask a sexist question.”

“Sexist? You usually seem to avoid that. What’s the question?”

“Do you know how to flirt?”

I batted my eyelashes and crossed my knees. “Have I been too straightforward with you?”

“Not with me. I like you just the way you are.”

“Then why should I flirt?”

“I’ve been trying to think about the best way to approach Johnson. He’s the kind who isn’t even ashamed of being sexist.”

“And you want me to vamp him?”

“Not vamp him. I’m not thinking of anything more serious than getting him to ogle a little. I want to distract him, throw him off balance some way. Have you got a better idea?”

“I don’t want to be uncooperative, Joe, but I’ve tried not to encourage these sexist types. How about if I slap his face?”

“That might be a little extreme. It would be embarrassing if he sued you for assault. We’ll have to wing it. But if you think of a way to distract him from the business at hand, just jump in there.”

Grand Rapids is a typical American city—all the retail and restaurant chains are there in shopping centers lined up along through streets that can’t be told apart from similar streets in Dallas, Miami, Seattle, or, I guess, Boston. In between the shopping centers are the strip malls, and in an older strip development we found the office of Johnson-Phinney Development. It didn’t look particularly prosperous.

The outer office was empty, though the reception desk was cluttered with enough debris to indicate that someone usually sat there. As the door closed behind us, a deep voice called from the inside office.

“My girl is out! I’ll be there in a moment! Have a seat!”

Joe and I found chairs, and the voice continued talking, apparently on the telephone. It said things like “I’ll run that by Phin, but my own feeling is negative” and “Listen, if we don’t have the contract within thirty days, the deal is off.”

I nudged Joe and pointed to the telephone on the reception desk. It had little plastic buttons for the different lines, and none of them was lighted.

Joe grinned and spoke softly. “He could be using a cell phone.” I nodded, but I waited for Johnson with a suspicious attitude.

In a few minutes the telephone call was apparently concluded, and seconds later a big man loomed in the doorway to the inner office. My first thought was what a perfect Santa Claus he’d make. He was tubby and had plenty of white hair—lots on top of his head and even more on his chin. Then he looked at me, and the Santa illusion faded. Santa Claus doesn’t leer.

His eyes bounced from me to Joe and back to me. “Helloooo. What can I do for you?”

A creep. I decided he was fair game for flirting. I lowered my head—he was shorter than I am—and looked up at him from under my lashes.

“Hi, Tom,” Joe said. “Joe Woodyard. We’ve got a contract for sale of that lakefront property at Warner Pier.”

Tom pulled his eyes back to Joe. He looked blank for a minute, then grinned broadly. “Joe! Good to see you. What brings you to Grand Rapids?” He bent over the reception desk and checked the calendar there. “I haven’t gotten mixed up on the date we agreed to conclude the property sale, have I?”

“It’s still a month off. I just thought I’d check in with you, see how things are going.”

Johnson rubbed his hands together. “Fine, fine! Everything’s on schedule!”

Joe shared something interesting that the title search had turned up, and Johnson topped his story. Through it all Johnson’s eyes switched from Joe to me and back again. They kept lingering in my direction, but Joe didn’t introduce me.

Finally, Johnson gave a little bow. “Now, Joe,” he said. “You haven’t introduced me to Mrs. Woodyard.”

“My mom?” Joe blinked. “Oh, you mean Lee. I’m sorry. This is Lee McKinney, Tom. Lee is business manager for TenHuis Chocolade down at Warner Pier. She’s on the Economic Development Committee for our Chamber of Commerce.”

I’d been wondering just how Joe was going to explain me. I bared my teeth into my Miss Texas contestant smile.

Johnson beamed so widely I expected him to bounce his belly and give a ho-ho-ho. “How d’ya do, Ms. McKinney. Well, well, well. If you’re a typical member of the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce, I guess I’ll have to join.”

“We always welcome new members, Mr. Johnson.” I reached for my Texas accent. “But I will admit I particularly wanted to meet you. Ever’one in Warner Pier is jus’dyin’ to know what plans you have for the Root Beer Barrel prope’ty.”

Johnson shook his finger at me, looking more like a lecherous Santa than ever. “Now, now, Ms. McKinney, I can’t say a word until my funding is fully committed. You must let us developers have our secrets.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mr. Johnson. You kin give me a hint.” I pronounced it “hee-nt.”

He chuckled. “No can do. Not even for a pretty girl.”

“We-ell, okay. I’ll just have to keep on tryin’ to git the information out of Frank Waterloo.”

“Who?” Johnson looked completely blank.

Joe jumped in then. “Maybe I misunderstood, Tom. I thought you said Frank Waterloo tipped you off about the availability of the property.”

“Oh!” I could almost see Johnson’s brain scrambling as he tried to recover. “Well, old Frank doesn’t know anything about the specific deal. We just talked about Warner Pier in general.”

Joe nodded. “How’d you meet Frank?”

“Damned if I remember. Ran into him at a party someplace. I don’t know him well.” The Santa smile grew stiff. “Anything more I can do for you two?”

Joe again assured Johnson his visit had merely been a routine call, and I promised to send him some information on the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce. We all shook hands—he gave mine an unnecessary squeeze—and Joe and I left. Johnson stood in his office window and watched until we were in the pickup and driving away.

“Odd to see a beard with a beard,” Joe said.

“What do you mean, a beard?”

“You know, a beard. A front man.”

“You think he’s acting for someone else.”

“It seems likely. Remember that ‘Who?’ He didn’t have the slightest recollection of Frank Waterloo’s name. That little session makes me very doubtful that the sale will be concluded.”

“Oh, Joe! I hope the deal doesn’t fall through.”

“I’m beginning to hope it does. On second meeting, I find Charley Johnson on the unsavory side. I’m not sure I want to see him or any of his associates around my home town. Somebody else will buy that property.”

“Johnson is certainly not like any developer I ever met before.” I shot a glance at Joe. He knew that my past included five years of marriage to a Dallas land developer.

Joe apparently didn’t have any qualms about that. “Your ex wasn’t so secretive?”

“When he or one of his friends was planning a new project, it was generally hard to get them to shut up about it. Of course, there might be reasons for being secretive. Such as trying to buy up other property in the area.”

“I’ll ask the other property owners in the neighborhood if they’ve been approached. But we’d all discussed how much to ask per front foot, and my price was in line with that.” Joe hit his turn signal and changed lanes. “Still in the mood for Chinese?”

I used the time it took us to reach the restaurant and get settled in a booth to prepare to bring up the second item I wanted to discuss—my odd conversations with Trey and Meg Corbett.

It was a little early for dinner, so we ordered drinks. After the waiter left, I crossed my knees and did the old-fashioned footsie bit under the table. “How was my flirting?”

“Great!” Joe grinned and used his foot to nudge me back. “Tom never knew what hit him.”

“Then let’s change the subject. I had a strange talk this morning.”

I quickly sketched the conversations I’d had with Trey and with Meg. “It’s odd, Joe. I never did figure out what Trey was up to. Was he trying to make me jealous? Was Meg? I didn’t understand any of it.”

Our drinks came then, and Joe stared at his for a long moment. “Did Meg make you jealous?”

“Not of her. Actually, you have a perfect right to chase any woman you please.”

“You’re the only woman I want to chase, Lee.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. But I don’t see you as the kind of guy who chases married women. You’re not perfect, but you don’t seem to be stupid.”

Joe grinned. “I defended a few guys who shot people who were fooling around with their wives. The thought of a husband with a gun sure makes adultery unattractive.”

“Do you think Trey has a gun?”

“Probably not. It might wrinkle his pocket protector.” Joe stared at his glass again. “I’m not sure what to tell you about Maggie—I mean, Meg. She was Maggie Mae in high school.”

“I’m not asking for high school confessions.”

“That’s a relief.”

“We’d all be better off if we could erase our teenage years from our memories. But if you knew Meg back then, or more recently, can you figure out what her motive was in telling me all that stuff about you chasing her?”

“Just trying to make herself appear attractive, I guess. She always thought all the men were after her.”

“Were they?”

“Some were. That was one thing that got her talked about. She was illegitimate, for another thing. And, well—her mother was illegitimate, too. Warner Pier can be a really small town about that sort of thing. My mom’s not any more narrow-minded than most, but she really didn’t like my dating Meg.”

“You were popular in high school, Joe. Class president and wrestling champ. I don’t see you taking out the school slut.”

“Meg’s reputation was nothing like that. She wasn’t ‘easy.’ She was just a girl who lacked ‘background.’ Or that’s what my mom thought. Meg talked wilder than she acted. I always thought she was dramatizing herself.”

“A pretty normal teenage trait.”

Joe contemplated his drink seriously, then looked at me. “They say a gentleman never tells, Lee. But as far as Meg went, well, I finally decided she was more of a tease than anything else. If anybody showed an interest in her, she bragged about it.”

“That’s—well, is ‘pitiful’ the right word?”

Joe shook his head. “I’m no therapist, but Meg . . . Okay, let’s admit it. All us Warner Pier locals look at the summer people with at least a little bit of envy. They have more money than most of us do. They have more status in the larger world. They’ve
seen
the larger world, and us small-town guys haven’t! Some, like Trey’s family, are what passes for ‘aristocratic’ in America. It takes lots of us a few years to get that envy out of our systems.”

I knew Joe was talking about himself and his disastrous marriage to a rich and famous summer visitor; her glamor had been one thing that attracted him to her. I’d seen the same feelings displayed by other locals. “Is that why Lindy told me not to date a summer guy if I didn’t want to ruin my reputation with the Warner Pier guys?”

“Exactly! That’s all based on envy. The Warner Pier guys don’t think they can compete, so they bad-mouth any girl who goes out with a summer visitor. But Meg broke that taboo. And she got away with it.”

“How’d she manage that?”

“She didn’t give a hoot about what the local guys said. The first time she saw she could catch the eye of a summer guy—and not just as a sexual plaything—all the Warner Pier guys, including me, were history.

I sipped my drink. “This morning she indicated that Trey—or Trey’s family money and connections—were exactly what she’d been looking for in life. I wonder what Trey saw in her.”

“A sexy little piece, probably. I hope he wasn’t disappointed.” Joe lifted his glass. “Here’s to Meg. May she get every damn thing she wants in life, and may she never bother us again.”

“Hear, hear!” I said. “And may we never again talk about her or about Hershel Perkins or about the
Toadfrog
.”

And we didn’t for at least an hour and a half. We stuffed ourselves with the deluxe dinner for two—including Pupu tray. I let Joe worry about paying for it. Then we drove half an hour across Grand Rapids to a beautiful neighborhood where an executive of an office furniture manufacturing company lived. He proudly showed Joe the boat he’d bought, a twenty-foot 1955 Chris-Craft Continental. It looked to me as if it needed a lot of work. His wife made coffee, and the guy insisted on telling the whole yarn of how he’d found the boat in an old barn. Joe made admiring noises, hooked the trailer to his pickup’s hitch, and told the guy he wasn’t promising any particular delivery date.

“It’ll take a lot of hand finishing,” Joe said.

“I know, I know,” the man said. “I’ve always dreamed of owning a boat like this. I don’t want a slapdash job.”

When we left it was nearly dark. By the time Joe and I had driven back across Grand Rapids and entered I-196 heading south, there was hardly any light in the western sky.

We were almost back to Warner Pier before the next excitement started.