Page 24 of The Wrong Guy

“Hey, Ben?” When I see him look up, I jerk my head. “Come on, we’ve got work to do before you escape this place for a life of leisure.”

He leans back in his chair, his brows furrowed behind his glasses. “What’re you talking about?”

I shake my head. “Only explaining it once, so c’mon, unless you’ve already quit on us.”

I don’t close the door, so I hear Ben’s chair squeaking as he gets up quickly and shuffles after me, but I’m already at the base of the stairs. “Going to see Francine if you want to hit the elevator instead,” I suggest.

“I’m not that old, young lady. I can manage a flight of stairs.”

He absolutely can, but this has become a love language of sorts—him calling me young and me calling him old. We end up doing a quasi-race up the stairs—him hanging on to the handrail for dear life as he propels himself up and me trying not to trip in my heels or plant face-first onto my laptop. Ben wins, and I’m glad to see that I only had to let him by a little.

In Francine’s office, her assistant tells us to go on in. As we do, I can feel his eyes following us curiously. Last-minute meetings between the mayor and two city attorneys scream bad news. Add in a very public and particularly sketchy divorce that affects the whole town and it’s likely front-page, headline, awful news.

Francine Lockewood became our city mayor after my dad stepped down a few years ago. She’s a true believer in the magic of Cold Springs, previously serving as our librarian and self-proclaimed town historian. She’s done a great job fostering our community back to a better place, especially through the negotiations with Jed over the Township development. She was the one who said we should hear him out and not squash the idea outright because Jed had a history of shady shenanigans.

Of course, she also said she got that idea from an owl while she was sitting under a full lunar eclipse, drinking hard kombucha. But we don’t hold that against her. In fact, everyone appreciates that Francine is a little bit out there.

She’s sitting behind her desk, her oversize glasses perched on the tip of her nose and her frizzy curls clipped back, which gives her an owllike appearance. I’ve never told her this, and I never will, but Francine reminds me of Ms. Frizzle of Magic School Bus fame. She has the hair, but it’s really more about the knowledge in her head. She knows everything about everything. In fact, I bet she would know if last night qualifies as a threesome. Not that I’m going to ask.

“Well, hiya. How’s things?” Francine says, smiling easily as she waves us in. I’m pretty sure I’m about to ruin her good mood. Maybe I should’ve brought bagels or something to soften the blow.

“I don’t know. Wren hasn’t told me a thing yet,” Ben grumbles as he helps himself to a chair. “Floor’s yours, girl. Get to gettin’, because Francine and I aren’t growing any younger.”

“Buckle your seat belts. This whole Jed-and-Chrissy thing has gone off the deep end,” I warn, and then dive headfirst into explaining my meeting with Oliver and Chrissy yesterday, including Chrissy’s ridiculous appearance and outbursts, and ending with the petition for an injunction to stop the building at Township completely until the divorce is settled.

“They can’t be serious!” Francine exclaims, getting up to stare at the city map behind her desk. “After everything we went through to make Township possible?”

It wasn’t all owl magic to get that deal done. Francine had to meet with Jed numerous times, fighting through the early stages when she called him a “sneaky land shark” to get to a point of actually listening to him enough to evaluate the Township plan objectively. Even then, there were a lot of naysayers she had to deal with too.

This whole debacle is going to be lighter fluid on an already burning fire, making the entire town angry with not just Jed and Chrissy, but Francine on top of it.

“Afraid so. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jed is hiding money, and with construction ongoing, he could easily hide more, so I can understand where Chrissy’s coming from. But hitting pause is going to hurt. Badly.” Letting that sink in, I tap my fingers on my notes. “There’s more, and all that’s not even the weirdest part.”

“Money stashes and letting construction sit idle because Jed couldn’t keep it in his pants isn’t the weird part?” Ben asks. “What else could there be?”

I look at him wryly. “Remember, you asked.” Francine swats at the air as though backhanding Ben for jinxing us. It’s not his fault, though, so I drop the bomb. “Chrissy wants the construction company in the divorce.”

Francine laughs as though I told a hilarious joke, sounding like Muttley as she runs out of oxygen. “She hasn’t worked a day in her life! I don’t begrudge her that, seeing as I could happily spend my days in a lounge chair with a good book and a margarita. But now she wants to start working?”

That’s not it at all. Chrissy’s reasoning is all about hurting Jed the way he’s hurt her, and taking away something that means everything to him. But the “why” really doesn’t matter in the scope of what we need to focus on.

“What’s our move?” Ben goes straight to the point, only concerned with one thing ... what can we do to help mitigate the impact of this on our town?

“I’ve got a call in to the property tax assessor’s office requesting a full list of properties owned by Jed, Chrissy, and joint holdings. Both lawyers are going to want that, so we might as well speed the process up a bit, given that they’re public records.” I wait for Ben and Francine to nod their agreement. “And Oliver is requesting a forensic accounting of their bank and business accounts. We can’t do anything to speed that up, unfortunately. That’s totally out of our hands, but I could try filing an amicus brief with the court to see if they’ll urge things along a bit—”

Francine interrupts to ask, “Can we have the bank pull records on properties too? We know where the loan is held for Township at least.”

I shake my head. “Against banking laws. They can’t share any of that without a court order or consent, so it’ll have to come from Oliver. Which leads me to the other thing worrying me ... I still haven’t heard a peep from Jed’s lawyer. Not even a name, and we all know Jed’s making plans. Ones that will serve him best, and fuck all the rest.”

Ben offers to call a few old friends and see if he can figure out which firm is representing Jed. “There’s not many of that caliber, and even less of the style he’d go for.”

“Expensive, cutthroat devil,” Francine summarizes.

I look through my notes. “I think that’s all we can do for now, but we need to stay on top of this. This has the potential to go bad really fast, especially with Jed involved.”

We’re all thinking about the myriad of ways Jed always looks out for himself, no matter the cost to anyone else. Cold Springs has paid the price before, and I won’t let that happen again.

“Agreed. I’d really like to hit that man where it hurts,” Francine adds, doing a few air punches for good measure. There’s a bang beneath her desk, and I realize she must’ve been doing some knee strikes and kicks, too, with her air-fighting moves. “Ouch!” she hisses. Frowning, she glares at the desk like it attacked her instead of the other way around. “This isn’t over, Mr. Ford.”

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