A Butterfly in Flame (13 page)

Chapter Thirty-one

“It can’t be coincidence,” Molly said. “Have you run into something called the Stillton Realty Trust?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“They’re all of them in it. Maybe not all. But, listen,” Molly said.

“
Pharaohs from Outer Space
—that’s what your mother was watching with the kids?” Fred interrupted.

“She believes every word,” Molly said. “The kids think, since they saw it in her place, she gets to decide what’s true. Of course the whole thing is that word we invite them not to keep saying. Scale model diagrams of space ships on the walls of Egyptian tombs and the rest of it. It was very convincing if you happen to come to it in a state of utter ignorance.”

“It’ll be perfect for my students,” Fred said. “You mentioned a realty trust?”

“They all belong to it. Administrators, beneficiaries, whatever. That Elizabeth Harmony. I got the lineup of the trustees of your academy. They have to publish that somewhere, which means I can find it. Same names, anyway. The lawyer you mentioned? Abe Baum? He’s in it.”

“Rodney Somerfest?” Fred asked.

“Did you give me that name?”

“In a message.”

“Oh. The light’s blinking. No, I didn’t get that.”

“Never mind. Later. How about Parker Stillton?”

“Sure. I figured the trust must be named after him. I don’t know how these things work. Unless you are burdened with money, you don’t have to.”

“What are the assets of this realty trust?” Fred asked. “Now you mention it, what
is
a realty trust? Besides—safe supposition—a tax dodge of some kind. What’s this trust…?”

“Fred, give me a break. I’ve had a total of forty-six minutes to look so far. It took me until eleven o’clock last night to try to decontaminate Sam and Terry from this Pharaoh nonsense.”

“This trust. There’s an address in Stillton?” Fred said, his pencil poised.

“In Boston. P. O. Box. You want it?”

“Interesting,” Fred said. “In other words, they prefer to remain anonymous. Can you find out what they own? Is this just another way to represent the board of the academy? Isn’t a board said to own the institution it represents? Can you find out…?”

“Fred,” Molly broke in, “I can find out a lot, and I’ll keep looking. I’m also driving Mom and the kids to the beach, and making sandwiches beforehand, which they will all despise and reject before they eat them hungrily if not gratefully.”

“I recommend devilled eggs,” Fred said. “Nothing beats a devilled egg once it gets filled with sand.”

“Noted,” Molly said.

***

“I’m interrupting,” Fred said, interpreting the testy sound of Clay’s response.

“I am on the other phone, waiting to bid,” Clay said. “I have seven entries to wait until my number comes. Be quick, if it is important.”

“Oh yes, I had forgotten the…”

“No names,” Clay insisted. “Be quick.”

“If you could trust Parker Stillton, I’d ask you to make him tell you about the Stillton Realty Trust,” Fred said, “But he’s part of it and my guess is you shouldn’t trust him, so don’t ask him. Have you heard of it, though? The Stillton Realty Trust?”

“No. And trust no one. I can’t speak now.” The click at Clayton’s end of the line was not Sèvres, but hard plastic. If Sèvres had made a telephone, Clay would surely want one.

***

“The shoes are perfect,” Fred told Mrs. Halper at the desk.

“That’s lucky. Your loafers will be at least another day. I have them on top of the dryer where it’s warm, but not so warm they’ll shrink.”

The vestibule, or lobby, or whatever they called the small place downstairs through which all guests must pass, this morning was enlivened by persons in teams who carried TV cameras and the kinds of cell phones that might also record what a person said, or take pictures. But there was nothing to record here, or to take pictures of. Everyone had already been to the beach to take pictures of the place where “Nude male body found.” The body’s name hadn’t yet been released “pending notification of the next of kin” if any. At the beach, though, there could not have been much to photograph in the absence of the nude male body. There was the lighthouse, of course. And the lone seagull all of whose friends and acquaintances could be airbrushed or Photo-Shopped out.

Everyone wanted to know why the Inn didn’t provide breakfast. Again and again, Mrs. Halper was obliged to refer her clients to Bee’s Beehive, or to the Stillton Café. Once he had her to himself, Fred told her, “I’d like to meet Lillian Krasic.”

“Why?”

“She’s staying here,” Fred said.

Mrs. Halper pursed her lips and shook her head. “She doesn’t see people,” she said.

“What an enviable position to be in,” Fred said. “Unless—is she in solitary?”

“If you’d like to leave her a message,” Mrs. Halper suggested.

“I’ll phone her room later,” Fred said. “After she’s had a chance to start her day.”

“Or you can leave a message for her with the desk,” Mrs. Halper said. “The desk is me.”

Fred told her, “Thanks,” and strolled outside.

Main Street had taken on the look of the auction room before things get started. Strangers moved up and down, looking for an angle.

“You with the college?” a man of medium age and better than medium girth asked Fred, stepping into his path in front of the dark front door of the unopened barber and beauty shop.

“Not a college,” Fred said. “We call it an academy.”

“Explain the distinction.”

“We make the distinction. We leave it to others to explain it. Who are you with?”

“
Boston Globe.
”

“What’s happening over there?” Fred asked.

“We leave that for others to explain,” Fred’s correspondent said. “Can you give me some background on this place? Anything beyond what shows up on Google? Town looks like it died in 1863.”

Chapter Thirty-two

The office of Homeland Realty in Rockport, Massachusetts, did not show extraordinary hustle. Fred sat in his car across from the entrance which, at ten o’clock, on this weekday morning, still showed no signs of activity. He’d already spent enough time surveying the colorful photographs displayed in the front window, of properties being offered at very attractive prices to their present owners.

The mist was heavy enough to qualify as fog, but not as rain. The added mist of his breathing, condensing on the inside of the windshield, did not decrease the general visibility.

“As Napoleon wisely might have said the evening before Waterloo,” Fred said, “why not rehearse the disposition of our troops, the prospects of our opponents, as well as what brings us here? Are there perhaps anomalies and unknowns?

“One. We started in the deep end, and blindfolded. The academy, represented by Baum, comes to me, demands that I settle the issue of the missing student-teacher couple, and keep it all under wraps because of the primary goal, which is accreditation.

‘Two. Fifteen hours later the academy tries to scare me off. But, three, they don’t try hard. Then they try to buy me off but, again, four, they don’t try hard.

“Five, they claim they want accreditation but, again, they don’t try hard. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s obvious, if you have no admissions program and no real director and no attempt to hire one and no catalogue and no money, and even so you’re offering an unnecessary lunk like me fifteen grand to go away, to be paid out of money you don’t have (if it’s true they don’t have it…)

“Six. What does the happy handyman Milan mean when he asks me, first, ‘Who do you represent?’ and then, ‘What’s your offer?’, and then clams up? Do I take an interest? Is he fishing? Making trouble?

“Interruption. Who is AB? Butterfly boy?

“Seven. We know two things about Rodney Somerfest. Three, actually. He tried to buy the Stillton Inn. He’s fired. On top of that he’s dead.

“There’s somebody now.”

Fred gave the woman a chance to decant herself from her yellow slicker, do whatever adjustments might be necessary to the resulting ensemble, start the office machines warming up, turn on lights, check messages, before he breezed in.

“Hi,” Fred enthused, letting his extended hand lead him across the office. Cynthia Mangone was pinning the name tag over her left breast. Beneath the tag, as background, a floral print suggested hydrangeas against blue sky. An electric coffee pot back of her was already dripping thin tan liquid, but she hadn’t yet turned over yesterday’s page on the desk calendar.

“Cynthia,” Cynthia said. She gestured toward a comfortable client chair. She might be forty-five or fifty. There was less on her desk than on the two other desks in the room. Noticing Fred’s outstretched hand, at long last, she offered hers.

“Fred,” Fred confided. He sat. “Thing is, I drove all through Stillton. You know it?”

Her eyes flickered assent.

“Great little place that seems to have caught the plague,” Fred continued. “The phrase ghost town came to mind. Not even a McDonald’s. Still, I like it. I’m intrigued. The people I represent—let’s say I’m from the Middle West—I’m out here looking. That’s enough to start. But I don’t know the area. So I decide I’ll drive through town, get a feel for the place, before I select one of the local realtors to show me the ropes, tell me how the land lies, what’s what, what’s available, asking prices, recent sales, the rest of it.

“Thing is—and I couldn’t believe the yellow pages or Google, all that—anyway, the way I am, I like to go by what I see—there’s no sign of a real estate office in Stillton. Like the whole town has been dead and buried for a thousand years, along with Rip van Winkle.

“So, I get on the phone to a friend of a friend who’s done business out here, and she recommends Homeland Realty.

“So.

“Here I am.”

“You want coffee?” Cynthia said.

“I’ll keep you company.”

She rose and turned and occupied herself in a series of womanly gestures that served to mask whatever she might be thinking. Fred’s opening gambit had been so broad, so vague, so pregnant with possibility, that she needed to analyze it.

The mug she offered, not Sèvres, was at least china, though it would require a good deal of effort to break it. Fred gestured refusal of adulterants. The coffee smelled bad enough already.

“We do business all over the North Shore and into New Hampshire,” Cynthia said.

“What I want…” Fred started.

“Yes?”

“I like the feel of Stillton. I don’t know why. Well, I do. Something about it, you know?”

“We handle properties everywhere in the area,” Cynthia said. “I’ll check, see what we have in Stillton.”

“Also I was wondering,” Fred said. “Maybe there’s a town ordinance against it? I didn’t see a single FOR SALE sign. I have to say, this day and age, where I come from, frankly that’s just plain weird. Even if everyone knew there was an earthquake coming, like in San Francisco, there’d still be action. At least where I come from, there’s always someone who figures he can make a pile and get out before the next bomb drops.”

While he talked, Cynthia Mangone was going through the motions of scrolling through listings on her computer’s screen. “No,’ she said finally. “Strange. Tell me, what kind of place are you interested in? Waterfront? Commercial? There’s a whole block of storefronts opening in Rockport, for example. A seaside mansion, summer cottage, acreage to develop—what is your pleasure?”

“We want to buy a town,” Fred said.

Chapter Thirty-three

“And I wouldn’t discuss the issue with just anyone,” Fred said, “obviously. Which is why it is so important to check you out as carefully as our people did—discreetly—though you might have gotten wind that someone was asking questions—no?—well, good. Our people know what they are doing.

“You’ll agree at this stage of the game I can’t really say who we are, my firm, or who we represent. An overseas subsidiary of one of the big internationals based in, for example, Bahrain or Dubai. That’s a for-example.

“So—for the moment—we don’t mention the names of our principals. It starts talk, which is always counterproductive. Makes a mess in the market and costs money. And for what? After we look everything over and consider the variables—licensing restrictions, deep-water access, political climate—it’s happened before—we could have the whole package wrapped up with a bow on it and the head honcho tells us, ‘No, we think we’ll go with the west coast. Find a town in northern California, Oregon.

“I’m boring you.”

“God, no!” Cynthia Mangone managed. “It’s just—we’re moving sort of fast. It’s just, in America…”

“We know all about America in Kansas City,” Fred bragged. “Hell, you could say we invented America. Bob Dole. What could be more American than that?”

“Bob Dole?”

“Not to drop names,” Fred said. “Sure, you start quietly, buy through straws—that’s where a discreet operation like yourself comes in. Next, when you control a majority of the properties, there’s eminent domain and rights of way and the condemning of blocks for the good of the community and so for a while mayors and town councils all have to be involved. There’s always holdouts.

“Churches is a big one. Which is one of the big attractions of Stillton. Banks you can always buy out but a church is harder. You have to condemn the building, satisfy the congregation; often it’s easier to work around the damned church, leave it as an island, attractive, church bells and all, people dressed up for Easter: but next to a casino it can be a real downer.

“Forget I said casino.

“And so—and also you can’t sell liquor within spitting distance of a church, and as far as a place where girls might show a little, you know, because we’re talking a
private
…

“But, and so I notice in Stillton there’s no church, which is a plus. No school, which can be a problem. That is, if there
is
a school. Which there isn’t, so there’s no problem. It’s like they saw us coming.

“If there’s nothing listed in Stillton, how come?”

Fred threw out the question, leaned back in his chair and waited.

Cynthia Mangone said, “When Rockport got started, more than a hundred years ago—really got started—it was like Stillton. Bigger, sure. But the same idea. Now it’s got everything. Tourists. Art. Motif number one.”

“I’m wasting your time,” Fred said, getting up.

“What I’m doing, I’m thinking,” Cynthia Mangone said. “I talk when I think, but not necessarily about what I’m thinking about. It’s a habit. Bear with me. How’s your coffee?”

“Pretty consistent,” Fred assured her. He sat and took another sip to prove it.

“Take an example. Say I wanted to put my toe in, start small,” Fred said. “Which is a stupid way to do it but, I mean, imagine if the Hunt brothers, when they wanted to control the world silver market, started by picking up the odd tea set at yard sales. But, for the sake of argument, say I decide to buy the Stillton Inn. Can you do that for me?”

Cynthia jabbed at her computer’s keyboard and scrolled in several directions until she could tell him, “The tax rolls assess it at twoa million seven.”

“OK. So we offer double,” Fred said. “When the time comes. If the time comes. If it comes to that. What else does Mrs. Halper own?”

“Mrs. Halper?”

“OK. On the level now,” Fred said. “And I have a good feeling talking to you. Obviously our people did a good deal of research before I came out here. Do I have it wrong? We show the title in the name of Mrs. Charles Halper.”

“Odd,” Cynthia Mangone said. Blue light from the screen bounced from her face. She had remarkably reflective skin. “The tax bill goes to Mrs. Lillian Krasic.”

“Then there’s been a transfer,” Fred said smoothly. “Doesn’t matter. We’re talking a for-instance.

“We need a local Johnny-on-the-spot. I can’t commute to Stillton and get involved in each little transaction, plus fly out to the conferences every six months in east who-knows, to report on progress, and all the while…

“I mean, we have some really big projects to worry about. The way I like to work, we sew this up in a week or two, nominate someone local to do the nitty gritty, which takes time and more patience than I have, the next time you see me might not be till the grand opening.”

“GRAND OPENING,” Cynthia Mangone said. Her mouth was so full of capital letters she could scarcely get them out past her teeth and lips.

“See, what I am, I’m the big picture guy,” Fred said.

“And the big picture keeps changing,” Cynthia Mangone said.

“I’m that kind of guy. Think big, there’s always that next horizon. I move, the horizon moves. A horizon is like that.”

“And you already own, or have an option to buy, seven eighths of Stillton,” Cynthia said.

“Dream on.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Cynthia Mangone said, her voice turning businesslike suddenly, with an edge of canny interest. “What do you think these things are that you are dropping here? Hints? You think I don’t know bullshit? So. Here you are and yes, I’m interested. Why me I don’t know, and why care? It’s no secret
what’s
happening out there; just nobody could really figure out who, or why. Or how you get past the major holdout,” she continued relentlessly, “being Stillton Academy of Art. And the Stillton Inn too, you mentioned, pretending you don’t know who owns it; Bee’s Beehive, which is a restaurant; a gas station that will cave when the time comes, and about six properties that are so tied up in estates and title problems it will take forever.

“So, what I want to know, Mr. ‘the coffee is consistent,’ what does the Stillton Realty Trust want to waste its time with me for?

“What do you really want? What can I do for you?

“And, by the way, what’s in it for me?”