Go, Ivy, Go! (25 page)

“I’ve not quite sure where that banana belt is,” Mac said. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“I guess that’s one of the things we’ll find out tonight.” The man sounded jovial, even eager. “I’m looking forward to lounging in that indoor pool instead of shoveling snow all winter.”

“I understand that you have to invest in the company in order to purchase a condo,” Mac said.

“Sounds good to me. Given what we’re getting off our money-market funds and bank CDs, I’ll welcome a more profitable investment,” the man said. “A friend of ours got in early on this, and he’s been getting good payoffs on his investment.”

These people were poised to buy. Wise investors? Or naïve innocents rushing down the trail to sucker-dom?

6:00 came, but the doors didn’t open. Another ten minutes and a man in a dark suit stepped out and announced there would be a slight delay. Behind him, I could see long rows of tables with floral centerpieces and place settings on white tablecloths. I also got a glimpse of a podium up front, with a screen for a video or power-point presentation. Individual cubicles set up along the far side offered privacy for individual hard sells. Everything looked ready to go. But another ten minutes dragged by and nothing happened. Except I started to itch under the duct tape plastered to my skin. I discreetly wiggled an elbow to scratch it.

We overheard part of another discussion. One in which one of the men said he was beginning to wonder if Camelot Golden Age Condos was as good a deal as they tried to make it out to be. “One of those deals that, if it sounds too good to be true, probably isn’t.”

“I figure I can tell a good deal from a bad one,” the other guy said. “They aren’t going to put anything over on me.”

My own thought was,
Famous last words.

Then Mac got started talking to two older women, sisters. They were elegantly dressed, although it was an out-of-date elegance of taffeta and lace. At first they talked primly about wanting to get out of the big, drafty old house they’d lived in for thirty years and into a condo with less upkeep. But something in Mac’s friendly manner apparently encouraged them to get more confidential with him. They edged closer and so did I.

“Actually, we’re not planning to buy anything,” the one with upswept hair confided. “We come to these things for the free dinners.”

The other sister, in old-fashioned pearls and lacy blouse with a bow, giggled. “We sign up for anything where there’s free food. Last week we did an open house—”

“Where the cocktail wiener things were a
disgrace,”
Upswept Hair declared. “If we’d paid anything, I’d have demanded our money back.”

“But the burgers at the car dealership were great. We were really tempted by that hybrid model they had on display.”

I couldn’t tell if they were elders living in genteel poverty and needed free meals, or eccentric rich ladies who could afford a hybrid car and just enjoyed caging free meals.

“We think this condo thing tonight is probably a rip-off. Worse than the time-share-in Hawaii hustle we went to a while back. Their luau dinner was fantastic, but I finally had to pretend a fainting spell to get away from that dreadful pushy salesman.”

“So why are you suspicious of tonight’s event?” Mac asked.

“After a while, you get a
feel
for these things.” Upswept Hair nodded wisely. “You can just tell if they have something authentic to offer or if it’s all bells and whistles hiding an expensive trap. Which it usually is.”

“How’d you hear about tonight’s event?”

“Ad in a local newspaper. That’s where we find most of our events.”

“We’re thinking we’ll try wedding receptions next,” Pearls and Lacy Blouse said. “Who’s going to know at a big wedding if you’re an invited guest or not? And they won’t be trying to sell us anything.”

I didn’t mention that I’d considered this myself a long time ago, when I was newly dismayed to find I’d aged into invisibility. Not that I’d ever actually done it.
Yet.

“Well, uh, happy eating,” Mac said finally.

Ten more minutes went by. People were getting restless. And, given the fact that these were all older people, tired of standing. A couple of benches along the wall were already filled. The itch under my tape got even itchier. What I wanted to do was raise my left arm and scratch like a chimpanzee with fleas, but I settled for edging to the side and surreptitiously rubbing my shoulder against the wall. Until a woman in a white linen pantsuit started giving me an odd look. By now I wasn’t sure itching was much of an improvement over shifting body parts.

Grumbles rumbled through the group. A few people left. More, however, were apparently not yet ready to give up on a free dinner. I figured a free steak was the least of what the Braxtons owed me for my years of running and hiding from them. At 6:50 the man in dark suit stepped through the door again.

“I’m sorry to have to inform you that tonight’s dinner and seminar have been cancelled. This is an unforeseen and most unfortunate circumstance which the management highly regrets. It is, however, beyond our control and you should express your dissatisfaction to sponsors of the event.”

“So where are they to express it to?” someone yelled.

“Yeah, what kind of a shyster outfits do you let come in here?”

More yells, and the man said, “One moment, please,” and stepped back through the door. A few minutes later he reappeared, big smile. He held up a hand. “We realize what an inconvenience this is, and the management would like to make amends by offering you dinner in our main dining room. Just mention to the server that you were with the Camelot Golden Age group and your dinner will be discounted a full fifty percent.”

That brought a mixed response: some applause, some grumbling.

“Interested?” Mac asked.

I shook my head. By now even my belly-button tattoo was itching, and there is no way to scratch your belly gracefully in public.
Or even effectively, if it’s under a big mound of padding. “We can fix something out in the motorhome.”

Which we did. In the tiny bathroom, I yanked off the wig, ouched as I pulled off the duct tape, and scrubbed at the itchy strips on my skin with a washcloth. Then we had canned chili topped with grated cheese, and discussed tonight’s odd no-show situation. Were the Braxtons up to something? Well, the Braxtons usually were up to something, we agreed, but this didn’t seem planned. They were surely stuck with a big bill even though tonight hadn’t produced any investors. Illness? Airplane disaster? We couldn’t figure it out, but we decided we may as well start for home.

We drove a hundred or so miles before parking at a roadside rest area. I tried to get Mac to trade places with me, but he insisted I take the bedroom again. Koop chose to curl up with him this night. I got a fairly good night’s sleep in spite of the noisy refrigerated truck that parked next to us most of the night, an aggravation familiar to on-the-road sleepers.

Neither Tasha nor Eric was at home when Mac dropped me off late the next day. I unpacked my overnight bag and then walked down to my old house to check for mail. Nothing. I felt restless, relieved that there hadn’t been some dangerous confrontation
with the Braxtons but also vaguely let down. I’d been all psyched up to get something definite to take to Officer DeLora about some nefarious scheme the family had going, and now everything just felt . . . unfinished. What was our next move? I couldn’t think of one.

So what I did was find a bottle of rubbing alcohol and remove my ankle and belly-button adornments. Like Sandy had said about her temporary dolphin tattoos, they were fun for a while but I was glad I wasn’t stuck with them for life.

Mac called. He said the guys at the RV park
wanted me to come out for another round of horseshoes tomorrow, but I declined the invitation. My horseshoe-tossing talent is unreliable, and I decided I’d rather rest on my laurels than have an ignominious bad-horseshoe day. He said he intended to spend the next day working on the article about Grandma Braxton and the horses, and next week we’d take it out for her approval. I decided, if Beth was there, I’d suggest the fake tattoos to her. Maybe Grandma would approve of that alternative, and maybe it would also make Beth decide that temporary was better than permanent. I’d point out that with temporary, she could change the designs as often as she wanted.

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I’ve turned into an LOL pushing fake tattoos?

Tasha and Eric still weren’t home by the time I headed for bed. I locked everything up tight and watched out the window for a few minutes after turning the lights off. It occurred to me that if the Braxtons weren’t up in Minnesota hard-selling non-existent condos, they could be right here on Madison Street stalking me again. The mannequin’s head had fallen over. I set her upright but left her facing the wall.

On Saturday evening Mac brought over a rough draft of his article and we popped some popcorn and edited what he’d written. I figured Grandma Braxton would be delighted. The next morning we went to church. I invited Eric and Tasha to come along, but they’d already decided to spend the morning working out at the gym. More admirable than sleeping in, I granted, but a muscular body here wouldn’t make much difference in eternity.

The message at church that morning was lively, about the pastor’s experience buying a house “as is,” which meant it had everything from “termites holding hands to keep the walls together,” to a basement with a rat big enough to terrorize their cat. He compared this “as is” house with the Lord accepting us “as is,” with all our flaws and shortcomings, that we don’t have to try to remake ourselves before we come to him. I really wished Tasha and Eric had come.

By that evening I was still restless. Everything felt up in the air, as if I were waiting for the other bomb to fall. Although, with the Braxtons, it might be waiting for the next explosion to go off. Mac seemed to feel that way too. We spent some time at the horseshoe pit at his RV park
that afternoon. I was glad no one else was there to see my performance. On this day, my horseshoes plunged to the ground as if they had a death wish.

And then at midmorning on Monday, while I was studying insurance papers again, Officer DeLora called. “Have you seen this morning’s paper yet?” Her voice held a controlled excitement.

“No.”

“Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming right over.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Officer DeLora didn’t arrive with siren wailing, but she must have jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard to get here so fast. She ran up the front steps holding the newspaper and thrust it at me when I opened the door.

“Third page!”

The story may not have made the front page, but I sat down when I saw the headline.

Locals Caught in Investment Scheme Roundup.

With Drake Braxton’s recognizable face, his hands cuffed behind him, in one of the photos. Before I could read any further, Mac was there, pounding on the door. He, too, had newspaper in hand.

“No wonder that dinner and sales pitch we went to was cancelled!” he said.

I raced through the article, then
read it more slowly a second time. The gist of the article was that the FBI had been working on this case of investment fraud for months. Coordinated arrests had been made in Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas and Arkansas. The fraud was even bigger than what Mac and I had imagined, and it went far beyond Madison Street. Millions had been bilked out of investors on what they were calling a Ponzi type scheme, paying early investors off with money from new investors. As I read, I realized the arrests in Minnesota must have come only minutes before we were scheduled to sit down to dinner and listen to their spiel.

I was familiar with many of the names listed. Drake Braxton, of course. Several other Braxtons, including Heart of Home manager Dwayne Braxton. That gave me a little pang. Did young Beth Braxton know about her father yet? Even the attorney in the family, Elton Braxton had been nabbed. Also Tyler Zollinger and various other Zollingers. Plus others with non-Braxton or Zollinger names.

There were also names I
didn’t
see. Grandma Braxton wasn’t there. Neither was Deena the Podiatrist or Drake Braxton’s wife. Or Tyler’s twin brother Sam.
Or the young Zack Braxton I’d encountered at the furniture store. Did that mean they were uninvolved and innocent, or just that they hadn’t been arrested yet?

The article didn’t go into complete details about the fraud, but it did say unregistered securities were involved, as well as a network of investment pitches disguised as seminars, and sales of non-existent condos. Other heavyweight government agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulating Authority, were also involved.

I felt a little giddy. The Braxtons had gone
down.

“You knew about this but just couldn’t tell us?” I asked Officer DeLora.

She shook her head. “We’re as surprised as anyone. If we call the FBI in and work with them on a case, we have some idea what they’re doing. But they don’t confide in us on a situation in which we’re not involved, such as this one, even if it is in our area. And this takedown includes way more than our local area.”

“So what happens now?” Mac asked.
      
      

“A trial eventually. Although I don’t know where. Unless they reach some kind of plea bargain agreement. In any case, some of them are undoubtedly going to prison for a good, long stretch.”

“Drake Braxton?” I asked hopefully.

“It looks as if he’s a big wheel in the scheme, so I’d say yes,” Officer DeLora said.

“Where are they?” Mac asked.

“We don’t have that information, but I can tell you that none of them are being held here locally.”

I figured that was also good news. In any circumstance, a Braxton several states away is
preferable to a close-by Braxton. But, after a momentary glee, the bottom-line truth hammered me. Thinking I was Braxton-free was much too premature. “They may be caught, but they’ll get out on bail.”