“Cars on Belle Isle?” he said, in mock horror.
“A lot of people were opposed to that. Including me,” Riley added.
He chewed and dabbed at a spot of syrup on his chin. “Besides you, was anybody so opposed to it they might want to kill your husband?”
The question took her by surprise.
“I hadn’t thought about that. The thing is, most people weren’t aware of the full scope of the plan. Since Belle Isle Enterprises owned such a large percentage of the island, Wendell just assumed he’d have carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.”
“Your husband knew you were against this plan?”
“Yes.”
“Belle Isle Enterprises, that’s a family business, correct? How did the rest of your family feel about the plan?”
“My mother was totally in favor. My brother, Billy, I don’t think he’d really given it a lot of thought. Everybody had pretty much gotten used to Wendell running the show.”
“And who runs it now that he’s gone?”
“I don’t know,” Riley said slowly. “Wendell always liked to run a one-man band. He’d hire consultants and marketing and sales folks, but everything else—the big-picture stuff, it was all Wendell.”
“Okay, back to that night. How did it end?”
“Not well,” Riley said. “He got a text and literally dashed out of the house. I told him if he left—without even seeing his daughter, not to bother coming back.”
“And what was his response?”
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He told me to go fuck myself.”
“Did he call later, apologize? Did you discuss what the document was that he was looking for?”
Riley stared down at the tepid eggs. “Now that I think of it, we didn’t talk again. He e-mailed and texted, pretty much acting like nothing happened, but I texted back, telling him I wanted a divorce. After some back-and-forth and foot-dragging on his part, he finally agreed to meet us at the ferry on Friday and, after that, once we were at the house, on the island, we’d break the news to our daughter that we were divorcing.”
The sheriff set his fork down on his now empty plate and took a small spiral-bound notebook from his jacket pocket. He made notes, and Riley sipped her cooling coffee.
He looked up from the notebook.
“Any idea who the text was from?”
“No,” Riley said simply. “I’m guessing it wasn’t good news. He cursed, put his phone away, and left.”
“And that’s the last time you saw him?” the sheriff persisted.
“No,” Riley said. “The last time I saw Wendell was in the morgue at the county hospital.”
23
There were more questions from the sheriff, but Riley had few answers. No, she didn’t know where Wendell had been staying during their estrangement; no, she didn’t have his cell phone; and no, she didn’t know the status of her finances. As soon as she left Onnalee’s, promising to contact him if she thought of anything new, she decided to bite the bullet and get her own answers.
Now, she stood in the Baldwin County Clerk’s office, staring down at the civil proceedings docket book. The fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered overhead, and the air conditioner hummed. The room was quiet, except for the clicking of the nearest clerk’s computer keyboard, and the dry rasp of paper pages being turned.
She’d been in lots of courthouses, back in her early reporting days, but those had been in big cities like Raleigh, Charlotte, or Asheville. There, even fifteen years ago, records were computerized.
But Baldwin was the smallest county on the North Carolina coast. Its courthouse was a modest two-story affair of beige brick with a tiny copper-roofed cupola and a weather-beaten granite foundation. There was a Confederate memorial statue in front and overgrown azalea bushes flanking the front entrance.
The clerk’s office reminded Riley of something from an old black-and-white movie. A battered wooden counter separated the public from the clerks. The floors were wooden, and the room smelled vaguely of tobacco, although a NO SMOKING sign was prominently displayed on the front counter. Rows of leather-bound docket books lined sagging wooden shelves.
She’d been standing there, motionless, for a good thirty minutes. She leafed forward and backward in the docket book, looking for some addendum, some additional document that would assure her that the foreclosure notice was just a clerical error, the result of sloppy bookkeeping, or a monumental practical joke.
But there it was, in black and white.
NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE OF 555 SAND DOLLAR LANE.
There was a lot of legalese she didn’t really understand, but the net effect, it was clear, was that the owner of the listed property, Wendell Griggs, was in default to Coastal Carolina Bank on the mortgage to the tune of two million dollars and that the home was in foreclosure.
The clerk, a gray-haired woman with cat-eye glasses and a friendly smile looked up and gave her a questioning glance. “Find what you need?”
“I found the document, yes.” Riley tapped a finger on the page of the docket book. “This whole thing is screwy. This says the owner of the foreclosed property was properly notified of the foreclosure. But I’m one of the owners, and I never received any notification.”
“I only see one name on this notice. Would that be your husband?”
“Yes,” Riley said. “But the house has always been titled in both our names.”
“Not anymore, apparently,” the clerk pointed out. She looked down at the notice, then up at Riley. “The property is located over there on Belle Isle?”
“That’s right.”
“Is that your primary legal residence?”
“Um, no. We live full-time in Raleigh. The Sand Dollar house is our vacation home.”
“But y’all do get mail delivered over there on Belle Isle, right?”
“Yes, we get mail at our post office box.”
“Then that’s your answer. This is the address in the records, which means it was the address in the bank’s records, and that’s where it would have been sent.”
“There’s something else,” Riley said. “This says the lender is Coastal Carolina Bank. But I never heard of them. And, anyway, our mortgage was paid off two years ago.”
“Maybe your husband took out another mortgage and he just forgot to tell you about it,” the clerk suggested.
Riley’s eyes widened at that notion. But why would Wendell need to borrow more money on a house that they owned free and clear? So much more money. Two million?
“This can’t be right,” Riley insisted. “It just can’t.”
“I wish I could help you more,” the woman said, shrugging. She went back to her desk, but before she sat down, she was back at the counter, looking again at the open docket book.
“Well, here’s a problem right here,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Coastal Carolina Bank? They’re the one that foreclosed on you? I’m pretty sure that’s the bank here in town that just got taken over.”
Riley leaned over the counter to make sure she’d heard correctly. “Did you say it was taken over? By who?”