She’d taken a water from the fridge when she spied Imani’s order pad from Ella’s Diner. She brought it home by mistake last night. An idea sparked. Pie. Gemma suddenly wanted pie. Tina Danner made the best cherry east of the Mississippi.
Gemma shot JoJo a text.
“Pie? Ella’s? Thirty minutes?”
“Absolutely!”
Back in the day—’50s and ’60s—everyone in town went to Ella’s for pie and coffee after dinner. It was like a town ordinance or something—must eat pie once a week at Ella’s.
If pie didn’t suffice, they ordered an ice cream sundae or a root beer float.
She dashed to the bedroom, shed her hay-and-dust-infested clothes, then headed out. She’d just locked the back door when a dark sedan stirred up dust in the driveway. Gemma stepped off the porch, squinting to see who sat behind the wheel. No one she recognized.
The driver, a man in a buff-colored cowboy hat, pulled up to where she stood. “Gemma Stone?”
“Who’s asking?” She glanced toward the road, calculating a path of escape, should the need arise. She used to be quite fast until the accident.
“Brick Aloysius Carpenter, Attorney at Law. You’ve not answered any of my letters, emails, or calls.”
“B. A. Carpenter? You’re real?”
He walked toward her with a large manila envelope. In his mid-60s, he looked a bit like the Columbo character Mama watched in reruns. Only a cowboy version. His gray hair was thick and unruly, sticking out from under his hat, which looked more and more tattered the closer he came.
His white shirt was cinched with a bolo tie, and his boot cut jeans flared over a pair of polished cockroach kickers. His brown eyes were sharp, steady, and intense.
“I’m in a hurry. So if you don’t mind…” Gemma stepped around him toward her car. “If you’re here on behalf of the hotel in Vegas, I’m not—”
“Ma’am, I represent the Kingston family. You’re living on their land.”
She stopped and turned, chilled by the August night air. “You mean itwastheir land. I bought it from the Samson Development Corp over two years ago. Paid cash. Don’t try to tell me different. I have the deed.”
She resented the tension she felt and the fact this man was ruining a beautiful evening and the reinstating of an old Hearts Bend tradition.
“Ms. Stone.” B. A. Carpenter drew a little closer. “The Samson Development Corp is—was—fraudulent. They no longer exist. They never held the deed to this land. The older Kingstons left this place to their children.” He offered her the envelope he gripped in his hands. “You’ll see all the pertinent legal information is there.”
“Excuse me, did you say Samson Development doesn’t exist? How? I went to their office, met their lawyer.”
“They rent out a building, hang around long enough to look legit, all the while looking for their next victim. If not two or three victims. They’re modern squatters. Find properties uninhabited with no loans or liens, create a quitclaim deed, which sadly no one researches or checks, and offer their desperate victim a deal too good to pass up. Did they tell you they liked you and were willing to let the property go at a loss?”
Gemma dropped like a rock but caught herself before she completely hit the ground. On her knees, she made her confession. “But I gave them all my money.”
“Did they tell you they just wanted to give you a break in life?”
“Yes.” She tried to stand but her legs refused to hold her.
From the start, she thought the offer was too good to be true. Twenty acres on this side of town for a hundred and fifty thousand. But everything seemed to check out. Even her friend at the county office said, “Go for it.”
“Did they ask you how much cash you had?”
Gemma bent forward with a moan.
“And while they wanted three or four times that amount, they were willing to let it go to you for whatever you could pay?”
When she fell all the way forward, the sharp edges of tire-worn gravel bit into her hands and the back of her arms.
“Ms. Stone? Ms. Stone?” B. A. Carpenter leaned over her. “Can you hear me? Ms. Sto—”
“Now that he’s back, can we expect to see some romance?”
