“What about Jo Ellen Caldwell? Doesn’t she have extra space?”
“Do you know her?”
“Not well. She visited the church about a year ago.”
“I hadn’t thought about her,” Delores said thoughtfully. “That’s a great idea. She has an extra room available since her granddaughter moved out. I’ll call her right now.”
Delores had the receiver in her hand before Mike closed the door. Impressed with his insightful suggestion, Mike began returning phone messages and included an appropriate apology for his tardiness in returning the call. After he finished the last one, he called the paper and asked for Brian Dressler.
“He left a few minutes ago,” the receptionist said. “Would you like to leave a voice mail?”
“No, I don’t want to leave a message,” Mike said. “I’ll check back tomorrow.”
Mike pushed aside an unfinished financial report and inserted the Dressler disc into the computer. He scrolled through the file. Except for the memo about Sam, the data looked like benign corporate records. Mike felt slightly uneasy reading what was obviously considered confidential information by the companies furnishing it to the bank. The bank’s exact role wasn’t clear. Nothing in the records indicated the source for funding.
High dollar options to purchase land along the Cohulla Creek watershed had been in place for several years. Real estate options held a high degree of risk since all the earnest money, which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars, would be forfeited by the prospective buyers if the sale wasn’t completed. The option contracts didn’t make finalization of the sale contingent on legislative action authorizing the sale of Horseshoe Bottoms. In fact, they contained no contingencies. Thus, the original owners probably thought they were getting a great deal from out-of-town speculators. Even if Braxton Hodges didn’t write a massive exposé of local corruption, the current owners’ anger when they realized what the developers intended would be newsworthy.
The more recent documents confirmed the project was as big as Mike imagined. The pro forma financial data had eye-popping projections for revenue in the tens of millions. Mike didn’t recognize the names of any of the people connected with the business entities; however, the last folder he opened caught his attention. It contained a letter from his old law firm as local counsel for Delvie, LLC, a Nevada limited liability company. The letter was signed by Bobby Lambert. In the letter, Bobby provided Dressler information about the credit worthiness of Delvie, LLC. However, the supporting documents mentioned in his former partner’s letter weren’t included on the disc. Mike shut down his computer without printing anything. The information in the files didn’t span the canyon between the charges against Sam and the bank’s involvement in the Cohulla Creek project.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, MIKE PHONED THE NEWSPAPER SEVERAL times but never caught Dressler at the office. He began to wonder how the new head of accounting at the paper could hold a job when he didn’t show up. Finally, he called Braxton Hodges.
“Where is Dressler? He’s never there, or he’s avoiding my phone calls.”
“It’s his wife. She’s taken a turn for the worse and is at the hospital receiving treatment. He won’t be back in the office until next week. I should have let you know.”
“Any other news on your end?”
“Plenty. It’s going to be a late spring, so you’d better not plant your Silver Queen corn for another week or two. I interviewed the county extension agent, and we’ll have a suggested schedule for planting all your garden vegetables in this week’s paper. Don’t miss it.”
Mike chuckled. “I’ll take that as a negative about matters of interest to me.”
“Imagine the world without Silver Queen corn. Oh, Maxwell Forrest never called me back about any correspondence from Miller and Hatcher.”
“Which doesn’t mean much.”
“Except that he doesn’t want to talk to me, a sure sign of something to hide.”
“Talk about media bias. Have you considered that some people are afraid to talk to reporters?”
“And lawyers. But does that apply to your old boss?”
“No,” Mike admitted. “Mr. Forrest isn’t intimidated by anyone.”
MIKE DELAYED LETTING MELISSA HALL KNOW ABOUT SAM’ S decision rejecting the plea bargain and desire for a jury trial. It was a week before the deal would expire, and in spite of Sam’s clear instructions to nix any offer, Mike didn’t want to eliminate any option prematurely.
The following morning, he woke up later than usual. He’d stayed up working on his sermon, and while it wasn’t yet up to his usual standards, he was satisfied that all the main points were properly organized. Peg wasn’t in bed when he opened his eyes. He went downstairs in his pajamas and bare feet and found Peg in the kitchen with a coffee cup and an open notebook on the table in front of her. She put down her pen when he entered the room.