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.