Pinkie Parks gestured through the windshield to a gravel lane ahead that cut off the highway and dropped steeply to the lake. “There it is.”
Bree pulled the blue Ford Taurus she’d rented that morning over onto the shoulder and put it in park.
“Not much to see from here,” Pinkie said. “You’d want to be in the woods.”
Bree picked up a pair of binoculars and said, “Then let’s go into the woods.”
Once Pinkie learned that Alex had gone to Florida and that Bree was focusing on Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, he’d insisted on helping her. But now he raised his eyebrow, said, “You looking to kick a hornet’s nest?”
She frowned. “These woods are known for hornets?”
“These woods are known for Marvin Bell and Finn Davis, which is the same thing, way I see it.”
“Suit yourself,” Bree said, opening the door. “I’ll be back.”
Pinkie groaned but got out as well. It was hazy, hot, and humid. They waited until traffic died and then cut down the steep embankment and entered a thorny raspberry thicket. Pinkie led the way, clawing through it until they emerged into piney woods where crickets were sawing.
Below them and out several hundred yards, Bree could see the clean waters of Pleasant Lake. She heard outboard motors and kids laughing.
Pinkie went down a game path that led through the trees growing on the slope above the lake’s eastern shore. Bree followed, her brain going back to everything they’d learned that morning about Marvin Bell and Finn Davis.
After renting the car, she and Pinkie had gone to the Stark County Recorder’s Office and gotten online with the North Carolina secretary of state’s office, looking into the two men’s business interests. Together and individually, Bell and Davis owned five businesses in and around Starksville: a liquor store, a dry-cleaning shop, two automated car washes, and a pawn-and-loan operation.
Pinkie smartly noted that all five businesses would generate and bring in a lot of cash. Convenient if you’re also involved in some sort of illegal cash-intensive business.
But Bree had zero jurisdiction here. She couldn’t get to databases that might give her a look at the businesses’ bank accounts.
On a whim, Bree accessed public databases in Nevada and Delaware because both states had incorporation and tax laws that made them attractive for people interested in creating shell companies. Though there was nothing in Nevada, she was pleased to find that Marvin Bell and Finn Davis were listed as registered agents of six Delaware companies, three apiece. All six corporations had been organized for the purpose of “real estate acquisition and development.”
Which, in a roundabout way, led Bree to look up their real estate holdings in Stark County. To her and Pinkie’s surprise, neither man appeared to own any property in the area.
Pinkie said that simply wasn’t true, that Bell owned all sorts of property in Stark County, beginning with an estate on Pleasant Lake. When they looked up the lakefront property, they found it was owned by one of Marvin Bell’s Delaware companies and carried an assessed value of $3.1 million, which made Bree want to see the place.
Alex had told her to hang back, to stay to the outside, but Bree wasn’t planning to climb over the fence Marvin Bell had around his compound. She just wanted to look over it, get a sense of how the man lived.
Pinkie motioned to Bree to stop. She did, next to a young, fat pine tree that smelled of sap and blocked her view of the lake.
Looking over his shoulder, Pinkie whispered, “If you get low, slide around in front of me, and stay in the shadows, you should get a good look at it without being seen.”
Bree got down on her hands and knees. Pinkie pressed into the wall of pines there and let her pass. She twisted into a sitting position and used her feet to scoot herself sideways out into a shadowy slot in the trees.
A hundred vertical feet below Bree and one hundred yards closer to the lake was the gravel lane and the gate, which was tall, ten feet, anyway, and the chain-link fence was shrink-wrapped in green vinyl. Bree swept the binoculars along the top of the fence, making out coiled razor wire that had also been shrink-wrapped green.
Tiny cameras were mounted on posts to either side of the gate. There were other cameras on posts every forty yards or so before the fence was swallowed by dense vegetation. She assumed the cameras continued on around the six-acre perimeter and turned her attention to the compound.
Rhododendrons had been planted along the interior of the fence, no doubt to block the view from the gravel lane. But this high above the fence and the bushes, Bree had close to a bird’s-eye view of Marvin Bell’s domain, which featured a small lagoon at her left and a blunt point of flat land that jutted out into the main lake. Set back from the point on a knoll to the right of the lagoon and facing the lake stood the main house, a ten-thousand-square-foot log mansion with a red steel roof and matching shutters.
A beautiful stone terrace with gardens above the lagoon complemented the house. Three stone walkways flared out from a second terrace in front of the mansion, one going to the point, one to a boathouse to the left of the point, and one to a six-bay dock system to the right with lifts that held a fleet of Sea-Doos, motorboats, canoes, and sailboats. There was a bar and a huge barbecue built right into the dock along with lounge chairs and umbrellas.
Out on the point itself stood a miniature version of the main house from which, Bree imagined, the views must be incredible. She could see through several of the large and dramatic windows into the main building and could tell no expense had been spared on the interior. And there was art everywhere—paintings, sculptures, and mobiles.
The place looked like it was worth $3.1 million, no doubt, which raised her suspicions even further. In Bree’s mind, owning some small businesses in Starksville, North Carolina, did not get you a home worth upwards of three million dollars. She supposed Bell could have been successful in the stock market, or maybe one of those Delaware real estate investment companies had gone large.
But if so, why would Marvin Bell stay here? The property looked like a little piece of heaven, she admitted, but didn’t people who hit big money like to show it off in more trendy places?
Maybe Marvin Bell was just a homebody, like Warren Buffett. Or maybe he had a reason to stay here despite the wealth. Maybe he had crucial business to attend to.
Before she could weigh those options, Bree caught motion and swung the binoculars to see Finn Davis exiting the mansion. The rest of the estate was quiet and empty. The only sounds—kids laughing, a distant outboard motor—came from well down the shore.
Wearing dark sunglasses, a dirty ball cap, a green work shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, Finn Davis moved in an easy saunter around the circular driveway to a five-bay log garage. He pressed a remote control. A door raised, revealing an old orange-and-white Ford Bronco.
Where was he going in that heap? Looked totally out of place on…
Bree rolled out of her sitting position, scooted back behind the pines, and jumped up.
“We have to get back to the car,” she whispered to Pinkie. “Fast!”