Sacred Trust

by Meg O'Brien

  I put that on a back burner and call Frannie, asking if she’d like to bring her new boyfriend to dinner tonight.

  “I know it’s late,” I say, “but I’d like to talk to Cliff about real estate.”

  I deliberately leave that vague, letting her think Cliff might be able to land me as a prospective seller at dinner tonight. Feeling a pang of conscience, I add, “I’m not really selling, I just want to know some things.”

  She accepts for both of them, and I tell her to come around seven.

  Preparing chicken cilantro and vegetables, Frannie’s favorite dish, I run through everything I learned at The Prayer House. It’s not much, but some things are starting to come together in my mind.

  When the food is in the oven I take Murphy for a walk along Scenic. While we’re walking I look for the kid who brought him home the other night, thinking he might be walking his dog, too. I still would like to give him back his leash. There are plenty of people out with their dogs, but none of them is the kid.

  The sea is wild today, the waves unusually high. Murphy loves this, and wants to go down to the beach and romp in them. I check my watch and see there isn’t time before dinner. “Next time, boy,” I promise. “Just cut me some slack for now, okay?”

  He doesn’t actually speak his answer, but the message is clear nevertheless. He’s disappointed in me.

  Ah, well. I’m disappointed in me, too. So many things I haven’t known, so many things Marti was up against, things she never shared. What was it in me that told her she might not be able to trust me? Did I brag about my marriage to Jeffrey too much, caught up in my need to make myself believe I was living the fairytale? Did I seem too much in the ivory tower?

  I always thought of Marti as my best friend; that was the way it appeared to me. But to her? Had I become someone not worthy of trust and friendship?

  Standing on the path that runs along Scenic, my eyes tear as I feel I’ve lost her twice. I look out over the ocean and the drop-dead, half-moon coastline that stretches from Pebble Beach to the north and Big Sur to the south. The homes here run in the millions, and along this stretch there are no homeless—if one discounts those under the bridges.

  How many times have I thought of the homeless, the way Marti did? The way Lydia Greyson is doing now? How many times have I used what I have to help those without homes?

  Marti had so little…a tiny studio apartment she kept in New York for the few times she wasn’t in some third world country helping everyone but herself.

  I wonder if Ned has cleaned it out yet. If so, he can’t have found much of his sister there. Marti was the type who threw newspapers out the minute she read them and paid bills the instant they arrived in the mail. She kept no clutter around, and wasn’t the type to shop, at least in recent years. As she grew older, she became less and less acquisitive, probably because she worked day to day with people who had so little.

  I can’t help wondering how many homeless people I could feed with that BMW in the garage.

  Murphy is tugging to move on, so I let him walk me back to the house. The chicken looks good, and Murphy has already eaten, so I put him in my study next to the kitchen. He’s into silent begging, plunking himself down beside guests and looking soulful while they eat. I don’t mind this, but it drives Frannie to distraction.

  When my guests arrive, I have the table already set and the salad ready to serve. There’s no time to waste with predinner cocktails; I am on a mission tonight. With any luck I’ll learn how best to nail Jeffrey for his illegal manipulation of real estate in the Carmel Valley.

  In so doing, I just may be able to get him off Lydia’s back.

  And I’ll get him for you, too, Marti. I swear I will.

  14

  Frannie, her boyfriend, Cliff, and I sit at my dining-room table having after-dinner coffee. I have laid out for him what I learned from Lydia Greyson, as told to her by Marti, though I haven’t mentioned their names or The Prayer House. Nor have I told Cliff that I suspect Jeffrey of having manipulated prices in the Carmel Valley. Instead, I’ve told him I’m working on a book, a novel, and need some information as to how this sort of scam might be carried out.

  “You’re working on a novel?” Frannie says, looking skeptical. “I thought you were a reporter back in the old days. And what about your column?”

  It’s always been difficult to hide anything from Frannie, but I tell her I feel in need of a change. “That happens, you know, when someone has gone through a loss.”

  There’s not much she can say to that. She sips her coffee and watches the two of us as Cliff hands me a possible scenario and I take notes.

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this right,” he says, ruffling his short blond hair, then making marks on the tablecloth with his fork as if drawing a map. “Your character wants to sell some property at maybe thirty percent more than he just paid for it. And what he just paid for it was the normal market value. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so first, he has to convince a prospective buyer that the price he’s being asked to pay is the normal market value—even though the normal market value is really thirty percent less.”

  “I see.”

  “So, what he might do is pay off a local Realtor to show the prospective buyer a fake comp, or ‘comparable.’ I don’t know if you know, but that’s a study that shows a prospect what similar properties have recently sold for in the area. The price should be close to the one he’s being asked to pay. In other words, it gives the buyer a sense of security about the sale price of the property.”

  “Okay.” I write that down.

  “A fake comp wouldn’t be enough, though,” Frannie chimes in.

  Cliff sends her a smile. “That’s true. To manipulate the value of property in the way you describe, Abby, your character would need a certified appraiser on the take, as well, to appraise this particular property consistent with the fake comps, so a bank would approve the loan.” He scratches his chin. “And now that I think of it, banks usually pick their own appraisers, so the banker might have to be in on it, too. Otherwise, he couldn’t very well justify giving the buyer a mortgage in that amount.”

  “You mean, a local banker?” My thoughts immediately go to Harry Blimm—Jeffrey’s good buddy and president of Seacoast Bank.

  But Harry Blimm, a crook? The man who danced wearing his wife’s red hoop earrings, with my Spanish tablecloth wrapped around his waist? He’s always seemed so harmless. Could he possibly be involved in Jeffrey’s scam?

  “A local banker would be best,” Cliff is saying. “Someone your character knew well and trusted.”

  “That’s a lot of people your character would have to trust,” Frannie says, her emphasis on the word “character,” telling me she knows exactly who I’m talking about. She doesn’t say any more, however, and Cliff continues.

  “She’s right,” he says. “Your character would have to have a lot more at stake than one piece of property, to take all these people into his confidence. On the other hand, by including everyone in the profits—the real-estate agent, the appraiser and the banker—he could keep the fraud in the family, so to speak. They’d each be breaking the law, so no one would be tempted to talk.”

  “And, speaking of the law, aren’t we talking about bank fraud here?” Frannie says.

  Cliff looks at her, surprised.

  “Well, I’m not some dummy, after all,” she says. “I hear you talking about this stuff all the time.”

  “Again, she’s right,” he agrees, smiling. “Which is why I’m saying your character would have to have a lot at stake. Hundreds of acres, at least. Something that would bring in a ton of bucks.”

  “Still, the beauty of it,” I suggest, “might be that after the initial scam—that is, after my character sells three or four properties at, say, thirty percent over what he paid for them—those inflated prices would become the actual, legal comps for properties in that area. Right?”

  Cliff nods. “For a while, at
least. Your character’s remaining acreage could then be legally sold at this higher comp value, thus taking some of the risk out of the scam. He could sell it to developers at a price at least thirty percent higher than it would have gone for before the scam ever was perpetrated.”

  “And are you saying no one, not even other Realtors, would get suspicious of this?”

  “Well, other Realtors in the Carmel area, of course, might suspect something is up, because property typically doesn’t go up in price that quickly.”

  He picks up his coffee cup and takes a deep swallow. “I don’t think most Realtors would complain, though, because their own commissions are based on the price of the homes they sell. And this scam has made the prices of the entire area much higher, so those other Realtors win, too. Why would they want to rock the boat?”

  He shrugs and looks uncomfortable. “Understand, I’m not saying other Realtors would necessarily know about your character’s scam, or have any facts about it. Just that they’d be happy with the end result. You know—thank God for small blessings. Shoot, even the long-time Carmel Valley residents would be happy. Their homes would have just shot up significantly in value.”

  He looks at Frannie. “Abby’s four cohorts could collect a king’s ransom and retire for life. Boy, wouldn’t that be nice! If it were me, I’d be rich by sundown.”

  “Don’t look now,” Frannie says mildly, “but it’s well past sundown.”

  He makes a face, and she sticks her tongue out.

  “What about you, Cliff?” I ask. “Have you ever heard anything about an actual scam like this in the Carmel Valley?”

  “Not here, but I just moved down from San Francisco, and I’m still getting to know the area. I’ve heard about it other places, though. Manipulating prices with fake comps, I mean.”

  He looks around my dining room and through the windows, where he can only be imagining the ocean view, as it’s dark by now. “This place is really incredible. You sure you don’t want to sell? As long a time as you’ve been here, I’ll bet you could turn a nice profit right about now.”

  “Well, let’s put it this way,” I say. “When and if I ever am ready, you’re the first person I’ll call.” Frannie’s boyfriend has grown in my estimation tonight.

  Cliff sighs, and I know his hopes for more than a dinner this evening have been dashed. Still, like any true dyed-in-the-wool salesman, I feel certain he won’t give up.

  Turning back to me, he says, “One more thing I should add about that scam.”

  “And that is?”

  “If you want this plot to be credible, you should take into account that this kind of scam would be short-lived. Within a year after your character’s first manipulation of prices, the comps of the surrounding homes would almost certainly begin to drift slowly back down, finding a more natural market level. I think he’d feel an urgency to find a developer before that happens.”

  “I see. And if anyone stood in the way of his landing that developer in time to clean up? Say, for instance, someone caught on and threatened to expose him?”

  Cliff smiles. “Depends on what kind of story you’re writing. If it’s a mystery, and your character’s greedy enough, he might want to kill that person off.”

  15

  Since Marti’s funeral, I’ve been running on pure adrenaline. The minute Cliff and Frannie leave, however, I crash. Turning off the lights downstairs, I leave the mess in the kitchen for morning and trudge on up to bed, Murphy at my side.

  My sleep is disturbed by dreams of Mauro and Hillars, Jeffrey and the Ryans, Lydia Greyson and Sister Helen. They all seem to come together in one big pot, at the bottom of which are Marti and Justin. Mauro is hollering, “Justin has been kidnapped, you idiot!” while Jeffrey stands with a trust deed in his hand, arguing, “I know nothing about any of this.”

  The symbolism of it being a “trust” deed doesn’t escape me when I wake in the morning, more wrung out from exhaustion than rested.

  A kind of change has taken place inside me, however. I feel that, since Rio and The Prayer House, I have traveled light-years from the person I’ve been to the person I used to be, BJ—before Jeffrey. Though I feel vulnerable and unsure of the next step I should take, I am beginning to understand that, from this point on, those steps must be more decisive. It’s time I looked deeper inside myself and discovered what I’m really made of.

  Somehow, finding out about Jeffrey’s many manipulations has freed me in a way I’ve never felt free before.

  To get myself mentally grounded for whatever’s to come, I call Davis Bowen, a Kenpo black belt I’ve been practicing with on and off. I began studying Kenpo, a version of the martial arts, when I lived in San Francisco. Someone suggested I take a course in self-defense for those times when I was out at night alone, working on stories for the Chron. I found that Kenpo centered me, gave me a feeling of personal power that carried over into my work.

  After Jeffrey and I married, however, I couldn’t fit myself into the schedules of the martial arts schools on the Peninsula. I was too busy being Jeffrey’s wife. Then one day someone introduced me to Davis. It was like going home. I’m only a blue belt, so Davis takes it easy with me. Almost as much as the Kenpo, I enjoy his conversation.

  When I ask if he has time for a quick practice session, he says to come over at ten. I jump into the shower, don jeans and a sweater, tie my hair back and run downstairs.

  In the hallway I pause, thinking something is not quite right. A quick check assures me I’m alone. My computer in my office, however, is on—and I definitely remember turning it off after sending my column in.

  While this would ordinarily scare me, I do work with Windows 98. One of its many little idiosyncrasies is that, when my computer is in the sleep mode, it routinely turns itself back on and starts to “house-clean.” When I first got Windows 98, this freaked me out. I’d be in the living room watching television in the dark, and all of a sudden I’d hear my computer turn on, as if someone were in here working on it. But no, it would be here all alone, busily scanning for errors like some overachieving housewife dusting in all the corners.

  Now I usually just shut it down, instead of putting it to sleep. That way it stays put.

  So, did I forget the other day and lapse into my old habit of hitting the sleep button? I suppose that’s possible. I was in a hurry to get going.

  I cross over to my desk and sit down, hitting Start from the desktop and then Shut Down. I watch while it does its thing, assuring myself that it won’t pop back on while I’m gone.

  Murph knows I’m leaving and is in the kitchen wagging his tail, already at the cupboard that holds the box of Beggin’ Strips. Still shoving away an uneasy feeling about my computer, I get out the dog treats and give Murph two as a bonus for absolutely nothing other than being a good dog. Then I grab my car keys, dash through the pantry into the garage and set out in the Jeep.

  Davis lives in a great house on the hill above Clint’s Mission Ranch Inn. There’s a view from there to sundown and a private patio with flowers and fountains. It’s in the patio I find him, sitting on the ground meditating, legs crossed, a calm expression on his face. Soft meditative music plays inside the house, and knowing the program, I go in there, take my white gi and blue belt from the hall closet and go into the bathroom to change.

  Out on the patio again I take a seat on a bench by a bronze Buddha, close my eyes and wait quietly for Davis to finish. The sun beats down on my face till I feel like a lizard on a rock. My bones unbend and tension leaves through the tips of my fingers in waves.

  “Don’t get too relaxed,” I hear Davis say. “I plan to give you a real workout.”

  “Shh. I’m about to levitate.”

  “Oooh, take me with you!” he says.

  I laugh and open my eyes. Davis unwinds himself and crosses to one of the fountains, where he splashes his face with water. The fountain is an angel, with the stream of water pouring from a vase she holds in her hand. I have always loved Davis for hi
s interest in, and openness about, all things spiritual—from Zen Buddhism, to Catholicism, to Protestantism and the world’s most obscure religions.

  “You ready?” he asks, preparing himself with stretches.

  I join him in the stretches, loosening my muscles as we talk. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “You don’t seem quite yourself today.”

  “Well, a lot’s been happening.”

  “That woman who was crucified. She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s really tough. But there’s more, right?”

  “Not much. Only that now I don’t know who to trust.”

  “Oh, that.” He grins. “I thought you’d come up with something new.”

  I glare at him. “And what exactly does that mean?”

  “Only that you’ve been surrounded by people you can’t trust for a long time. Too long a time, if you ask me.”

  “Are we talking about Jeffrey? Again?”

  He shrugs. “Think about it. You’re a good person, Abby. Despite that tough attitude of yours, you like to believe in people. That gives them all the room in the world to take advantage of you.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s over now,” I say.

  I take the starting position and we bow to each other.

  “You think so?” Davis’s expression changes in an instant, going from friend to foe. He grabs me suddenly in a bear hug from the front, pinning my arms to my sides. Instinctively, I make Eagle’s Beaks of my hands and jab his lower rib cage. Both my arms circle under his to strike his floating ribs with an inverted punch. My right foot steps back to six o’clock, and at the same time I grab his head from behind. My right knee slams up to his groin. Planting my foot back to six o’clock, I drive his head down to my left knee.

  When I’m finished, my opponent is stunned and even breathing hard. Not that he’s hurt—most of my movements have been light practice ones, and for the rest he was wearing guards.