“What just happened? He wouldn’t even file a police report?” Cai’s voice cracked as she looked at me, her eyes full of fear.
We were still standing at the back of Cai’s car in the parking garage, not having moved since I’d asked Michael to leave. My head was spinning with anger and worry and determination. Michael might have been willing to leave Cai stranded without any recourse until something awful happened. I, however, was not.
“I hope Michael didn’t just make a decision based on his anger with me, but it feels like that’s exactly what he did.” My heart sank as I held her shoulders, and she leaned into me for a hug. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to figure this out. I promise.”
I needed a plan. The connections surrounding the murder of these two men were building, but I couldn’t yet understand the big picture—other than construction being at the heart of it.
Now, however, this was no longer just a story. It was personal. Now, it was urgent. Now, it wasn’t just some article that I wanted my name on or an award or accolades for; it was Cai’s life. Michael might be able to convince himself that there was no threat because the words “I’m going to kill you!” hadn’t been written in red ink on that paper. He might be able to convince himself he was right because he stayed firmly inside the lines of police standard operating procedure. I was not going to sit by and wait for my dearest friend to be slaughtered. Damn the rules. Damn the consequences.
“Can you work from home for a while?” I asked. “It might be a good idea to stay away from Daley Plaza and your office, if you can do that.”
“I’ll rearrange what I can.” She paused, thinking through her calendar, moving down the checklist of complications this would add to her life. “I’ll have to tell Richard what’s going on. He can help me decide what explanation to give the staff, clients. Shit, this is going to be complicated.”
For someone whose career was as entrenched in her identity as Cai’s was, the suggestion that she step back for a while would be akin to being plopped down in a foreign land with no guide and no understanding of the terrain. I hoped her fear would outweigh the career drive that was as necessary to her as breathing.
“Who is the client you were representing in Atkinson’s court?”
“His name is Nathan Vogel. He inherited twenty acres from his father back when the area was mostly cornfields. He sold off all but three acres over the years. That’s the parcel under dispute, or rather, the access to it. There’s a ramshackle home on the property, which Vogel lives in, a shed, but nothing else. This real estate developer has been slowly buying up surrounding properties. They’ve approached my client numerous times, and he basically told them to go to hell. Initially he ignored them, but it has devolved into outright hostility between the parties.”
“Is Vogel holding out for their ‘best and final’ offer?” I asked, knowing the first offer was never the highest.
“They’ve already passed that point and have moved on to stubborn, my-feet-are-planted-in-cement. This isn’t about money for Vogel. It’s principal. He wants to stay in his home for the balance of his life. He feels he’s being bullied. And I agree, he is, but what a hill to die on when there’s a couple million dollars on the table. That would go a long way to easing the rest of his life, but it’s his choice to sell or not sell.”
“Do you know what the developer wants to do with the land?” I asked.
“It’s not clear. The group is called APR Holdings, LLC. It’s a private company. They’re keeping things close to the vest. But their bigger plans haven’t really been a concern. I’ve been fighting their audacity to think they can muscle this guy out by cutting him off from the world.”
Whoever the parties were, they were now at the “let’s play hardball” stage where negotiations had basically become dares.
“Call him for me, your client. I want to talk to him. Tell him I can be there in forty-five minutes.”
She nodded.
I took the newspaper from the car, gave Cai a hug, and said, “Get in a cab and go home. Right now. Don’t go back to your office today. They can messenger over whatever files you need. Order takeout. Call or text me if even the tiniest thing happens or you just need to talk. I’ll call you later.”
She nodded, then picked up her bag off the ground. I watched her safely get into a cab, then went to recover my own car for the trip.
As I inched along the surface roads in the midday traffic, I phoned Brynn.
“I’m driving. Can you do a search on APR Holdings? I’m interested in the ownership. I’ll wait while you look it up.”
“Yes, boss. Anything you say, boss,” she said, mocking me.
“Sorry, I barked an order at you. I’m a little on edge, it’s not you. You can bark back if you want.”
“Arf. Arf. Do I get a treat now?”
“Sure. Get me the name of the owner of APR Holdings and I’ll buy you a box of Twinkies.”
“A whole box! This must be important if you’re willing to spend your hard-earned cash feeding me junk food. Challenge accepted. Let’s see what I can find.”
I heard the clicking of keys over my car speaker as Brynn worked her magic.
“Well, I might not be getting those Twinkies, at least not today. Ownership isn’t clear. I’m going to need more time to dig. Can I call you back later?”
“Sure thing. Let me know what you find. My schedule has gotten thrown off, so I don’t know if I’ll make it back to the office.”
Signs of construction were visible as soon as I passed the intersection of Belmont and Harlem Avenue. Industrial-sized bulldozers and graders sat in a dirt field just on the north side of Belmont. I didn’t yet know the scope of the project at hand or what properties were owned by APR Holdings, but it seemed in the early stages of the project. Buildings still stood to the north and west, although vacant and moldering with neglect. It was a patchwork of empty weed-infested lots and odd structures that still held the markings of their former lives as auto repair shops and small warehouses and scary-looking former retail stores.
Siri instructed me to turn onto a narrow alley next to a defunct gas station with blacktop that was in the process of being scraped up. I proceeded until the alley ended at a gated chain-link fence with a large red Private Property. No Trespassing sign. I got out of my car and walked to the gate. Six feet high, it cordoned off a huge plot of land. Large raised-bed gardens lined the west side of the property. Sunflowers and cornstalks were starting their fade into withered brown remnants. I saw tomato cages holding plants still producing fruit and structures for pole beans now wilting and losing steam. Other areas had been left to become fallow and weed infested. An old tractor and various wheel barrows were rusting in the sun.
The road continued past the locked gate to a simple two-story home with a deep front porch badly in need of paint. A shed larger than my first studio sat some distance off to the right. And more chain-link fence surrounded it all. It was a mini-farm with a city built all around it. Buildings and lots and signs of construction framed the property on the other side of the fencing. It was the oddest ramshackle farm oasis I had ever seen.
A man lumbered toward me down the driveway. His pace was swifter than the sparse white hair on his head would have suggested.
“You Ms. Farrell’s friend?” he asked as he reached the gate. His spotty, bronzed skin told a story of a life under the sun. He looked at me as if I didn’t match what he expected.
“Yes, Mr. Vogel. I’m Andrea Kellner. Could we speak about your property situation?”
“Situation? I guess that’s one word for it. Shit show would be another.” He scoffed and pulled keys out of his pocket. Turning the padlock, he slipped the lock into his Wranglers, then slid the gate out of the way.
“We can talk here if that’s okay. I don’t really like people in my house,” he said kind of sheepishly, as if a little embarrassed.
“I don’t mind. Cai tells me you’ve owned this property a long time.”
“And my father before me. He bought the land back in the twenties when this was almost nothing but farmland. Raised five kids here, he and my mom. They’re both long gone, as are my siblings, but those memories aren’t. This is my home. Always has been. Always going to be. I don’t care what those greedy bastards want. I ain’t leaving.”
“When were you first approached about selling the property?” I asked.
“About three years ago. Some lawyer sent me this letter saying to call him about my property. One of those ‘Dear Homeowner’ things. I threw it in a drawer and didn’t give it another thought. Then about a year and a half ago, they started up again. I didn’t respond, and those letters turned into phone calls, then eventually threats. They’ve kept trying, upping the money a little each time, but I keep saying no. I don’t want to move. Where the hell would I go? And you can’t force a man to give up his land just because you want it.”
“In the meantime, I understand they’re buying up your neighbors’ property. Is that correct?”
“You got it. I don’t know how much they owned before they got to me, but yeah, money talks for some. And as this lawyer buys up property, everything else around here starts to go downhill. ’Cause these guys aren’t caring for the places. Don’t fix ’em up or anything. They just sit and rot, which makes the neighborhood decline. You get enough of that and all of our properties lose value. So eventually the people who haven’t sold, they start panic selling, thinking if they don’t take the deal, the next offer will be lower instead of higher. It’s part of that developers game,” he said, visibly disgusted by the tactic.
“But you haven’t been tempted?” I asked, wondering if he was playing the odds that as the last holdout, eventually the number would look good enough or the ordeal hard enough that he would give in and take the money.
“Never!” he said. “I’m dying in this house, even if it’s this stupid shit that does me in.”
That answered my “was he a holdout” question, at least for now. His vehemence was clear. “When did the legal action start?”
“That was about a year ago. It was after that old gas station finally sold. It had been empty for a few years at that point. Costs a lot of money to modernize these little old stations. The big chains, they go for the visibility of a corner lot, so this little place wasn’t something they wanted. And to turn it into another use, well, you gotta deal with the EPA and all kinds of regulation because the ground is toxic. That’s serious dollars, so nobody wanted it until these guys finally worked out a deal to buy it. I don’t know what they paid for it, but I suspect they saved it for the end so the owner would be nervous and take a low-ball offer.”
“Being last can work in your favor, though. I imagine the offers you’ve received have increased over the years.”
“True. I’ve got leverage, as they say, and they’ve put out damn good offers that would change my life. But I don’t want my life changed. It ain’t about money for me. I got no dependents to leave a bunch of money to. I just want to live here in peace. They don’t understand that. So, since I wasn’t a money whore, they’ve had to go the legal route.”
“What specifically is the dispute? No one can be forced to sell a property if they don’t want to.”
“No, but they can make it so hard to live on the property that you get desperate. They claim that since they bought that gas station, the rights to the alley belong to them and that every time I use it I’m trespassing. Some messiness about right-of-way, something that got drawn wrong decades ago. Ms. Farrell understands all that better than I do.”
“They can’t win a lawsuit that denies you access to your own property,” I said. I hadn’t been a real estate attorney, but I knew that much. In the end, the court would force a solution on the developer if a deal couldn’t be struck. What that solution looked like and how damaging it would be to their plan was debatable.
“No, they can’t. Ms. Farrell said the same. They won’t win a legal battle in the end. But I don’t think that’s the point. Not if they drag this out and bankrupt me or wait me out until I’m dead. There are other ways to get what you want if you’re patient and creative. So what we got is a pissing contest. I expect they got more piss, but I got plenty of vinegar.”
“Do you know what the end game is? They must have a plan for all of this land.”
“They aren’t telling me what it is, but the rumor mill is saying a shopping center or a housing development.”
“I understand the company trying to buy your property is something called APR Holdings. Who from that company has been in contact with you?”
“No one. I’ve only had contact with an attorney. Here, I copied this letter for you since I knew you were coming. This is their last threat before I had to lawyer up.”
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of the breast pocket of his plaid flannel shirt and handed it to me.
The letterhead read Stephan Bruni Associates. Who the hell was this?