“I’m sort of a consultant, really, just heading up this one project. I was told that we were about to buy a building, and that the information would be relevant to my work.”

“Well, ma’am,” she said, “I don’t know what that would be. There isn’t anything being done through us anyway.”

“No title searches or surveys or anything?” I asked.

“No, ma’am,” she answered. “Far as I know, the last piece of property you people bought was over a year ago. The three properties you sold were in the last few months, but other than that I haven’t heard of anything new.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” I said, ready to hang up the phone. “Guess I’ll have to go back to Alan and see what he was talking about.”

“Alan Bennet?” the woman said. “Is he your supervisor?”

I hesitated, berating myself for tossing off his name just to make myself sound legit. Ah, what a tangled web we weave…

“Well, no, not really,” I said finally. “I just thought I overheard him say something about a new building.”

“If anyone knows about it, he probably would,” she answered. “At least, he was fairly involved with the last three sales. I’d talk to him if I were you.”

“I sure will,” I said, eager to hang up before she asked any more questions.

“I don’t know about you,” she continued, lowering her voice, “but if I worked over there at your company, I’d look for any and every excuse I could find to talk to that man.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s so gorgeous. Around here, we call him ‘The Hunk.’”

“Yes, well, he is good looking,” I said lamely. I was usually lost when it came to silly girl talk, even now when I was just trying to fake it. “Thanks for your help.”

I hung up the phone and sat there for a moment, thinking about what she had said. Unless they were using another lawyer, which apparently was unlikely, then there was no pending building purchase. So what had the money really been needed for? Tom had sent me here urgently, I thought as I recalled our conversation from Sunday, on the airplane. If not to buy a building, then just what did Wendell Smythe have in mind when he called his old friend Tom and asked him for a quarter of a million dollars?

I found the possibilities very disturbing. Wendell Smythe was by all accounts a forthright, honest, Christian businessman. What would make someone like that tell a lie to one of his dearest friends—a quarter-of-a-million-dollar lie, no less? I knew there weren’t going to be any easy answers to that question for the time being, but I would keep it at the forefront of my mind.