To Get Me to You

by Kait Nolan

  “Victor Burgess, you’re under arrest.” Chief Curry nodded to Judd, who grabbed Vick’s arm, twisting it with a little more force than necessary as he cuffed the older man.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…” Chief Curry finished reading Vick his rights, then he and Judd marched him out of the command center.

  That was when Cam realized the camera was rolling and WTVA News had caught the whole thing.

  “This is Deanna Fossett, live with a WTVA News exclusive. In a shocking turn of events here in the tiny town of Wishful, where a David versus Goliath battle is being waged over store size caps at the polls today, City Planner Victor Burgess, local champion of GrandGoods and the big box store movement, has just been arrested. Burgess stands accused of taking kickbacks from GrandGoods and embezzling more than a hundred thousand dollars from the city. Mayor Crawford, what do you have to say?”

  Deanna tipped her microphone to Sandra, who blinked at the camera. Cam recognized the look on her face as she choked down the more profane remarks that weren’t appropriate for addressing the public.

  “We are deeply disappointed in the actions of the City Planner. His greed has impacted this city in ways we’re only beginning to understand. He has been removed from his position, effective immediately.”

  “Does this impact the vote today?”

  Cam stepped in to take that one. “The vote will continue. The legislation on the ballot today is not specific to GrandGoods, but will impact all future commercial development in the area. We still encourage everyone to make it to the polls today. And we hope that they’ll all look at this situation and recognize the cost of doing business with big box stores before they cast their vote for the future of our town.”

  “There you have it, folks. The vote continues. This reporter will certainly be interested to see how this battle shakes out in the end.” She made a slashing motion, and the camera stopped rolling “Well, nobody can say y’all are dull!”

  Norah slipped her hand into his. “Nice save. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “I’ve been paying attention.”

  “If we could’ve tailor made a blow to GrandGoods and their position, I’m not sure we could’ve done better than this.”

  “That was all you. We wouldn’t have known to look if you hadn’t noted those discrepancies in the city financial records.”

  Sandra laid a hand on her shoulder. “Wishful owes you a debt. For so many things.”

  Norah smiled. “Just doing what I can to help. Speaking of—” She turned to the still silent crowd gathered in the command center. “Okay people, that was news. I know some of you were snapping pictures and taking video. Pull out your phones and share it! Facebook. Twitter. Text. Somebody get over to Dinner Belles and get Mama Pearl on it. And find Cassie and get things moving over at The Grind. I want every gossip tree in this town singing!”

  ~*~

  The polls were closed. The command center had been broken down and packed up. GrandGoods and their tents were gone. In the wake of allegations about offering kickbacks, Bill Sutto hadn’t been available for comment to the press, which had swarmed downtown after footage of Vick’s arrest had aired. The remaining GrandGoods employees had looked shell shocked, with nothing more to say than “No comment.” Norah and Molly had jumped into the void, talking and talking to get the coalition’s message out. And if Norah had used every skill and resource she had to make certain that the news of GrandGoods’ less than above board tactics was spread far and wide, she felt not a shred of remorse.

  But it was Vick’s arrest that remained the hot topic of conversation among the locals. According to the gossip mill, his wife Rebecca was filing for divorce. Judge Carpenter had set bail. Some folks thought it was unnecessarily high, but his wife was one of Rebecca’s best friends. Given that Vick’s assets were frozen, pending the findings of the forensic accountant, he was still cooling his heels in a cell. Rumor had it there was collusion to make sure he stayed there until all his stuff could be packed up and his ass kicked out of the house. Small town justice at its finest.

  Everybody but the die-hards had gone home after the exceptionally long day. Three months of almost non-stop action came down to the results of this night. Those remaining had camped out at the Mudcat Tavern to wait for the referendum results.

  Norah hated waiting. Too keyed up to sit, she’d been pacing for the last forty-five minutes. The City Council had gone into an emergency closed session to discuss the ramifications of Vick’s actions, so she hadn’t seen Cam in hours. It felt wrong that he shouldn’t be by her side for the announcement of the results, when they’d been in this together from the beginning.

  Miranda stepped into her path, a long neck bottle held out.

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “It’s either this or I’m finding a tranquilizer dart. You’re wearing a hole in the floor.”

  Norah took the beer.

  “It’s going to be fine. Even if the store cap didn’t pass, the City Council isn’t going to do further business with GrandGoods after what they pulled.”

  Norah shook her head. “If the store cap didn’t pass, GrandGoods will disavow all knowledge of the kickbacks and put it all on Sutto, claiming he acted on his own. He’ll get fired as collateral damage, and they’ll send some Honest Abe type with a list of concessions a mile long. We need this legislation.”

  “Disavow all knowledge?” Miranda snorted. “Are you an expert in corporate espionage now?”

  “No, but if I ran their PR division, it’s what I’d advise.”

  “If I were in their shoes, I’d cut my loses and get the hell out.” Tipping back her beer, she studied Norah. “Speaking of running PR divisions. What was that whole deal at your presentation last night about being an authorized representative of Peyton Consolidated? I thought you weren’t going to work for him.”

  “I’m not going to run his marketing department. But he needs someone local to liaise with the city, so he hired me on a freelance basis. Between that and the settlement from the lawsuit, I should be in okay shape until I sort out exactly what I’m really going to do for a living.”

  “Well you know I’m entirely in favor of keeping you as a roommate, if that’s what you want. But you might have other plans on that front. It hasn’t escaped my notice that you’ve been spending most nights at Cam’s place.”

  In the wake of Chicago, they’d been reluctant to spend much time apart. “We haven’t talked about what comes next.”

  Mitch swung an arm around Norah’s shoulders. “Pretty sure the next steps are marriage and baby carriage. Isn’t that how the rhyme goes?”

  Norah laughed, figuring it was a sign of how far she’d come that neither idea sent her into a blind panic. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “I was pretty sure he was going to with that crack he made at Grammy’s,” Miranda said. “‘How’s Saturday?’ my ass. What would he have done if you’d said yes? You’re probably the only woman in America who could legitimately plan a wedding in four days.”

  She’d have done it, too, if she’d thought he was serious. And wasn’t that a surprise? But much as he loved his family, an offhand, casual question in front of all of them wasn’t his style. If she’d felt just a little pang of regret, she chalked it up to impatience. They were totally fine where they were.

  “Who’s planning a wedding?” Cecily demanded.

  Christoff made a show of picking up and staring at Norah’s naked left hand.

  Norah freed her hand. “Nobody’s planning a wedding.”

  “Yet,” sang Tyler as she strode by.

  “You’re all completely incorrigible. Regardless of the likelihood of those events—”

  “Guaranteed,” Miranda and Mitch chorused.

  “—in the pretty immediate future, I need to go back to Chicago to finish closing out my apartment and get the rest of
my stuff down here. It’s a fact that there isn’t room for all my stuff at his place. Or yours, for that matter. A lot of it is probably going into storage either way.”

  “Dibs on that tufted sofa with the scroll legs, if you’re getting rid of it,” Christoff announced.

  “It would be a nightmare with dog hair, so it’s all yours.”

  “Maybe you and Cam need to be thinking about y’all’s place. You know I’d design you anything you want. And Lord knows, between the acreage he owns and your land out at Hope Springs, there’s no end of pretty places to build a house.”

  “I hadn’t thought about keeping any of it. You know, it’s sad, but I’ve been so damned busy since I got back, I haven’t even seen all of it yet.”

  “Well I reckon you ought to do that before you go donating every last square inch to the city. You could keep a fair chunk for yourself and still give over plenty for the park.”

  She wanted that, she realized—to walk her land with Cam and Hush and choose a piece to keep. It seemed like a good way to begin putting down those roots she so desperately wanted. Maybe they could manage a picnic over the weekend.

  “The news is starting!”

  Norah pivoted toward the nearest screen. Hissing admonishments swept the bar until the crowd quieted down. Adele turned up the TVs, all tuned to the same news station. They had to sit through reports of a string of robberies in Columbus, a warehouse fire in Tupelo, and a nasty four car pile up in Lawley before the view finally shifted to Deanna Fossett outside City Hall.

  As she recounted events from earlier in the day, Norah began to bounce on her feet. “C’mon, c’mon.”

  “The City Council is still in session and is not available for further comment. Elsewhere in City Hall, results are being tabulated for today’s referendum ballot about retail store size caps here in Wishful. Poll workers report the biggest voter turnout in city history, with a whopping eighty-five percent of registered voters coming out to weigh in on the issue. We’re still waiting to hear preliminary results.”

  “What is taking so damned long?”

  “Paper ballots, sugar,” Mitch murmured.

  “It is not that hard to count to three thousand in an hour.”

  “Maybe it’s really close and they wanted to double check,” Cecily suggested.

  Norah hoped to hell it wasn’t that close.

  “Oh, wait a second. Someone is coming out.” Deanna hurried up the steps of City Hall to meet Sandra, and Norah could see the flurry of other reporters doing the same. “Mayor Crawford, what can you tell us about the referendum results?”

  Norah reached for Mitch and Miranda’s hands and found herself pulled backward against a long, hard body.

  “You made it.”

  “Shh,” Cam said.

  “—were a lot of ballots to go through. Our team is busy recounting to verify the exact totals, but there is absolutely no question of the results. By an absolute landslide, the statute capping commercial spaces at 40,000 square feet has passed.”

  The whole place burst into cheers and applause. Several members of the coalition enthusiastically trumpeted with their noisemakers. Behind the bar, Adele and Joe popped the corks on bottles of champagne. And amid all the chaos, Norah held very still, soaking in the sounds of success, her smile spread so wide, she thought her face might crack.

  Cam bent to her ear. “You did it, Wonder Woman.”

  She pivoted in his arms. “We did it. With a whole lot of help.”

  Tucker bounced over, throwing his arms around both their shoulders. In a TV announcer’s voice he said, “You two have just saved our town from the Big Bad Box Store! What’re you gonna do now?”

  Norah and Cam exchanged a look and a smile and answered together. “Sleep!”

  Chapter 26

  “I can’t believe they weren’t willing to put this off until tomorrow,” Norah said. “We’ve been back in town, what? An hour and a half?”

  “I don’t set the schedule. I just show up when they tell me,” Cam said, as they strode across the town green for a City Council meeting.

  “I still don’t understand why they wanted me there.”

  “Don’t look at me. I’ve been in Chicago with you. It’s not one of our regularly scheduled meetings. Nobody even sent me an agenda. Maybe they want you to liaise in your official capacity.”

  Norah scowled. “I could liaise a lot better if I were unpacked and settled. And if I’d slept since December.”

  “Yeah the last three weeks haven’t so much maintained our original impression of Wishful being a sleepy little town. On the plus side, nobody looking at you would know you’d been driving for the last seven hours.”

  Fifteen minutes locked in his bathroom and she’d erased the fatigue from her face and done something with her hair that made her look neat as a pin and ready for the boardroom. It was a fascinating form of female magic.

  She brought a self-conscious hand to the twist at the base of her head. “Thank God my suits were in a box at the back of the truck.”

  “You shouldn’t have worn a suit.”

  “Without knowing exactly what they want me for, a suit is a safer option. It’s always better to be over-dressed than under-dressed. Besides, it was this or jeans, and I’m not going before the rest of the City Council in jeans. Especially not at what is evidently a public session.”

  “Yeah, but I won’t be able to pay attention to a thing for imagining getting you out of it.”

  She slid him a look that was part exasperation, part heat. “Behave.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” He tugged open the door to the courthouse.

  The halls were empty other than the security guard, George Buckley, one of Violet’s brothers. An easy smile split his dark face. “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks, George. How’s it looking in there?” Cam asked.

  He and Norah walked through the metal detector, collecting their stuff on the other side.

  “Pretty good crowd for a mid-afternoon session.”

  “Hopefully it’ll be a quick one. It’s been a long day.” Cam escorted Norah to the main door of the courtroom. “This is where I leave you. I’ve gotta go in the other door.”

  “Where should I sit?”

  “Somewhere down front.” Cam kissed her quickly, resisting the urge to linger. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Norah stepped through the door. Cam smiled to himself.

  “She suspect anything?” George asked.

  “Not a thing.” She wasn’t gonna know what hit her.

  Cam hurried down the hall to join the rest of the City Council and his mother at the front of the courtroom. It wasn’t as full as it had been for the vote on the special use permit, but still the floor level benches were pretty packed. Norah had found a spot on the second row beside Miranda and Piper. As Cam slid into his seat beside Ed, his mother rapped her gavel and brought the session to order.

  “Thank y’all for joining us this afternoon. We’ll jump straight on in. The forensic accountant has finished her investigation. The former City Planner did, indeed, embezzle $124,000 from city accounts over a period of several years. He has failed this city and is currently awaiting trial.”

  That spawned considerable murmured comment from the peanut gallery, but they quieted as Sandra continued. “The City Council has conducted its own investigation into how this egregious crime remained undiscovered for so long. Without getting into the long details, it boils down to antiquated record keeping and a perfect confluence of circumstances, such that those responsible for oversight were lax in their duties. I take responsibility myself for not being more diligent upon my return to office after my cancer treatment. That being said, a number of changes are being made moving forward to prevent something like this from ever happening again, not the least of which is a brand new electronic accounting system designed by Jay Quimby.”

  Sandra went on a bit longer about the rest of the changes and reiterated a policy of transparency to pre
vent mismanagement of city funds. “Further details are available for those who are interested. However, none of this is why we called this special session of the City Council.”

  As his mother surveyed her audience, Cam thought she’d been taking lessons from Norah on how to play the crowd.

  “Four months ago, our town was struggling financially. Yes, at the civic level, some of that was because of the criminal actions of the City Planner. But even without that added burden, Wishful has been in a long-term economic decline for the last two decades. It seemed that the only way out of that was the recruitment of and dependency on some larger industry, like the ones the town was built around. When no opportunities of that nature became available, we were susceptible to the lure of promises made by GrandGoods, a big box store that would’ve changed our way of life.”

  She paused and shot a look in his direction. “Councilman Crawford was the lone voice of dissent. He made the unpopular choice, the hard choice, to do whatever he could to protect that which we hold dear. And in doing so, he brought in the assistance of a young woman with more grit, determination, and hope than any single person I’ve ever met.”

  Cam watched, fascinated and amused as Norah actually sank lower in her seat, as if to shrink from all the eyes turned in her direction.

  “She almost single-handedly revived the Chamber of Commerce. She was the primary force behind the founding of the citizen’s coalition. At her request, we had a literal army of volunteers help makeover Main Street. As a result of her tireless efforts, we’ve seen a display of community spirit unrivaled in the last twenty-five years. Her Shop Local campaign has brought a forty percent increase in local revenues since its inception, and that number only seems to be going up. She is the brain behind the YES Cap campaign and one of the reasons this referendum saw record numbers at the polls. And, as if all that weren’t enough for an entire team of people, when all seemed lost and everyone else gave up, she kept the faith and gave us the answer for how Wishful can save itself, complete with linkage to the resources to enable us to do exactly that. Norah Burke, can you please join us down front?”