“No! But I’ll take care of that. Let me know when it’s all set up. Think you can do all this in just a few hours?”
Penny didn’t bother to answer his question. “How about four P.M.? That’ll get you home in time to have dinner with Kim.”
“Penny, I love you!” he said.
She took a while to respond and he thought maybe he’d overstepped himself. “I’m going to have a Realtor send me some information about living in Edilean. I think it must be a magic place.”
“Dad will be glad to buy you a house.”
For some reason, Penny found that statement downright funny. She was laughing as she hung up.
At a quarter to four, Travis drove onto the palatial estate of a man who’d benefitted greatly from his association with Randall Maxwell. It was an hour outside of Williamsburg and Travis had had three calls with Penny on the drive down. The idea was for him to be familiar with everything in the room where he was to meet Borman so it looked like the place belonged to Travis.
“The contract will be on the desk,” Penny said, “and both Russell and I have already talked to Borman. He’s primed to sell, and he thinks you’re so afraid of the competition of his company that you’ll pay anything to get him out of your way.”
“Which I will,” Travis said. “Just not for the reason he thinks. What’s it worth?”
“Russ said no more than a hundred grand, if that. He has too much equipment and not enough commissions. Last week he used a cheap fish in place of crab for a job. He told an employee that no one would be able to tell the difference, but the bride’s mother did. The father refused to pay him.”
“Good to know,” Travis said. “Wish me luck on this.”
“I do, and you may not believe this, but so does Russ. Whatever you did this morning has softened his edges more than I’ve been able to do in his lifetime.”
Travis smiled. “For all that a couple of times he looked at me as though he wanted to burn me at a stake, I liked him. He reminds me of you.”
“Does he?” Penny asked, sounding pleased. “I’ll see you tomorrow in Janes Creek.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Travis said and hung up. If this came off all right, tomorrow night he’d be in a cozy little B&B in a room with a connecting door that led to Kim.
A few minutes later he pulled into the huge circular drive of the Westwood estate and turned his key over to the young man who was waiting for it. If this place was like his father’s, when Travis left, his car would have been vacuumed, washed, and waxed.
A uniformed butler opened the door before Travis got up the stairs. “Mr. Pendergast is waiting for you in the south parlor,” he said as he led Travis to a large, pretty room with walnut paneling and a blue and cream rug. The furniture was meant to look as though it had been there for years. Old money. But Travis’s discerning eye saw that it was all new.
“This is more your style,” Russell said as he walked toward Travis.
“Cut it out or I’ll tell your mother on you.”
Russell caught himself before he smiled. “I was told to tell you that Borman will take two hundred grand, two fifty tops. But that’s way too much. Those vans of his aren’t worth much, and he owes some back wages.”
Travis nodded. “Where is he?”
“In the library. Got here twenty minutes early.”
“Eager to get rid of everything, isn’t he? Has he been told the terms?”
“To get out of town fast. To help him along, I used Mom’s AmEx to buy him a plane ticket to Costa Rica. You’ll get the bill.”
“I bet you enjoyed doing that,” Travis said.
“Very much.”
Shaking his head, Travis looked at his watch. He had on his best suit and a black tie with a gold stripe. He still had three minutes before four. “Your mom wants to retire to Edilean.”
“So she told me.”
“What about you? Where do you live?”
Russell didn’t answer the question. “I think it’s time you went in. Should I carry the papers for you?”