Also interesting but ultimately useless was that Bernard Fontaine was listed as secretary of BFL Trust, a charitable organization established in Delaware in the fall of 2003. The IRS listed the non-profit as a 501(c)3 in good standing, though Charity Navigator, a ratings agency that collected information about how donated dollars were used, had no information on the organization.
Googling “Dean’s Magic Beans+cult” had brought back an avalanche of fan pages curated by health nuts and fava bean lovers but nothing, not one site, mentioned the fact that the women who processed the beans were literally starving. The intern sites, the college board postings, the Facebook pages dedicated to finding fun summer work, all talked about Dean’s in glowing terms. Even the one-star reviews on Amazon had been overshadowed by glowing recommendations.
Not one post or page mentioned Dean Wexler by name.
Nor did they mention Nardo Fontaine.
Stilton had said Wexler had a lot of lawyers on speed dial. It made sense that an overly litigious cult would be very good at keeping negative shit at the low end of the search results. Barring that, Dean had up to twenty volunteers who could sit at their respective laptops all day scrubbing the internet.
It’s not like the women were stopping for lunch breaks.
One of the few sites that you couldn’t scrub or buy your way out of was PACER, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records, which provided a searchable database of legal filings, motions and transcripts. Fortunately, she had Gordon’s log-in credentials. Desperation hadn’t led Andrea to the webpage. She’d had a hunch. Back at the farm, she had flagged it as unusual that Wexler kept referring to the women as volunteers instead of interns. A court case from twenty years ago had provided an explanation.
In 2002, the Department of Justice had sued Dean’s Magic Beans under the Fair Labor Standards Act for failing what was called the Primary Beneficiary Test. There were seven criteria for judging the legality of an unpaid internship, most of them having to do with furthering academic coursework, offering college credits and following the academic calendar. In other words, the internship had to benefit the intern, not just the sponsor.
If they were going to be exploited, they had to volunteer for that.
Everything had gone downhill after the PACER hit. Andrea had forced herself to take a break when the motel room had started to feel like a prison cell. She’d ended up buying an egg salad sandwich from the vending machine, then gone back to her room where she’d wasted half an hour scrolling through the Sussex County register for marriages, divorces and deaths.
She had found records of Ricky and Nardo’s marriage and divorce, but nothing returned on Eric Blakely when she searched death certificates. If Bible took much longer, she’d probably end up scrolling through rabies tag registrations for domestic household animals.
Her phone pinged. She reluctantly dragged it off the desk. Mike had texted her again. She recognized the animal in the photo this time. The dik-dik was a tiny antelope that stood about a foot high.
Andrea didn’t have it in her to find a clever response to the dik-pic.
Instead, she let her thumb hover over the call button. Mike could be an incredibly good listener once you cut through the bullshit. But he’d also been an adult when she had ghosted him exactly one year and eight months ago. The least Andrea could do now was be an adult and stand by her decision. No matter how much she wanted to hear his voice.
She was swiping away his info when her phone rang.
Andrea closed her eyes. This was the last thing she needed. She tapped to answer. “Hey, Mom.”
“Sweetheart,” Laura said. “I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy, but I was just thinking I could help you find a place.”
“A what?”
“You’ll need a place to live, my darling. I can go online and set up some appointments for you to look at apartments.”
A curse bubbled its way to Andrea’s lips. That would actually be a really helpful thing if not for the fact that she needed a place in Baltimore, not Portland, Oregon.
“You don’t want to make a quick decision and regret it,” Laura said. “Tell me a neighborhood and I’ll go online. It’s better to go through a broker up there, that way you have some protections.”
“I don’t know.” Andrea was desperate to get off the phone. “Laurelhurst?”
“Laurelhurst? How did you hear about it? Do other Marshals live there?”
Andrea knew about it because she’d read in Rolling Stone that Sleater-Kinney had played at a bar there. “Someone mentioned it at the office. They said it’s nice.”
“My God, I should hope so. You should see these prices.” Laura was clearly using the desktop computer in her office. Andrea could hear her typing on the clunky keyboard. “Oh, here’s one but—oh, no, it says you have to have a pet. What sort of landlord wants you to have a pet? I don’t understand Portland. Oh, here’s another one, but—”
Andrea listened to Laura’s streaming commentary about a one-bedroom basement apartment that was clearly a studio and perhaps had a Wiccan altar in the bathroom but, either way, was overpriced.
“Okay,” Laura continued. “Laurelhurst spans the northeast and southeast part of Portland. Oh, one of the parks has a statue of Joan of Arc. But these listings are so expensive, darling. You can’t just pop next door and steal peanut butter out of my pantry.”
Andrea sat on the edge of the bed as Laura started looking for cheaper areas.
“Concordia? Hosford-Abernathy? Buckman Neighborhood?”
Andrea put her head in her hand. The worst hood she had ever lived in was adulthood.
She had to stop this. “Hey, Mom, I need to go.”
“Okay, but—”
“I’ll call you later. Love you.”
Andrea ended the call. She fell back onto the bed and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. A water stain had left a brown cloud. She felt disgusted with herself for carrying on this stupid Portland charade with her mother. For two solid years, Andrea had punished Laura for being such a damn good liar. The apple had fallen right on top of the tree.
“Oliver!” Bible banged on her door. “It’s me, partner. You decent?”
“Finally.” Andrea pushed herself up. She opened the door. Bible had changed into jeans and a USMS T-shirt, identical to what Andrea was wearing. They both had their guns on their belts. Which made the tiny woman standing behind him in a navy power suit and very high heels look even more out of place.
“I gotta confession,” Bible said. “I made an executive decision to bring in the boss. Deputy Chief Cecelia Compton, this is Deputy Andrea Oliver.”
“Uh—” Andrea tucked in her shirt. “Ma’am, I thought you were in Baltimore?”
“My husband works in the area. Mind if I come in?” Compton didn’t wait for an invitation. She walked into the room. She looked around, taking in all the things that Andrea did not want anyone to see, let alone her boss. Her duffel hanging open, all of her underwear disgorged onto the floor. Her running clothes wadded up beside the mini fridge. Her backpack tossed onto the bed. Thank God her mind had been too consumed by Alice Poulsen and Star Bonaire to take out Emily Vaughn’s case file.
“All right.” Compton sat on the edge of the desk where Andrea’s half-finished egg salad sandwich was molting. “Bible told me about the farm. What were your impressions?”