Scott doesn’t know what I want anymore.
“Here’s my offer,” I finally say. “I’ll drop the charges, but you need to leave the department. Quit and get some real help.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Your call.” I slide into the driver’s seat and back out. Scott stays where he is, watching as I turn right onto PCH. As I blend into the traffic heading south, I hope I’ve made the right decision.
Meg
October
Four Weeks before the Election
Ron’s deposit hits the escrow account without any problems, and in another five days, the rest of the money will transfer—$4 million from the Canyon Drive sale and $3 million from Ron’s campaign—and I’ll be on my way out of the country.
But first, I have to meet Ron at the Mandeville property with his landscaping guy, Rico. I’d tried to talk him out of it—the election is four weeks away; focus on winning—because every trip to the property is a risk. The listing agent would be very surprised to find us there.
I’d given Ron the inspection report, obtained from the company who’d performed the inspection on the property a year ago, tweaking dates and adding details to match our needs—appliances that need to be replaced, new gutters on one of the outbuildings. I deleted some of the bigger issues that caused the prior buyer to drop out—a deteriorating roof, an outdated HVAC system, and dry rot. As far as Ron knows, the property is in good shape.
But today we’re going to discuss the idea of regrading the back hillside. Ron had noticed a potential for mudslides and wanted his expert to take a look. We park our cars in a cluster in the front courtyard and slip around the side of the house, walking toward the back.
It’s quiet, the sound of nearby traffic on Sunset completely vanished. Just the wind, passing through the trees and down into the canyon. A hawk flies in a slow circle above us, and I try to imagine what it would be like to live here. How peaceful and removed you’d feel, as if you were living in another era.
Ron is excited, likely imagining himself as a twenty-first-century Reagan, all the way down to the checkered shirt and cowboy hat he’ll wear on weekends. I try to picture how devastated he’ll be to learn that nothing he believed was real.
I chose this property carefully, sidestepping Kat and doing my own research. It took me a month of looking at properties—discarding ones too close to town, ones that were likely to find buyers able or willing to rehab them—before I found Mandeville. What makes it so perfect is its checked-out listing agent and all the invisible issues the house has wrong with it. The ones you can’t see, no matter how many times you walk through it.
As Ron and Rico discuss grading and native-plant landscaping, I notice a car entering the property and parking near mine. The sound of their doors slamming catches Ron’s attention. “Are you expecting someone?”
No one has visited this property in weeks. I spent hours sitting in the driveway, ready with a story that would explain my presence. Just pulled in to make a quick call! Not once did anyone show up. Not the owners, or the caretakers, or the listing agent. Not even a car looking to make a U-turn.
But now, fourteen days before my deadline—the one I set for myself back in Pennsylvania, when I’d dreamed not only of taking Ron’s money but of snatching the election from him as well—someone’s here to look at a house I’d believed had been all but forgotten.
My mind flies ahead, trying to figure out how to get rid of whoever this is and how to explain their presence to Ron. Backup buyers? People who’ve made a wrong turn? I click through possibilities, discarding them.
“It’s probably Sheila,” I finally say. “Another agent who said she’d be in the area with some buying clients and could drop off a set of keys for me. I’ll be right back.”