Michael walked by the picture window filled with photographs of listed properties and entered a long, narrow room that ran straight to the back of the building, lined along one wall with a row of four desks, reminiscent of a string of abbreviated docks at a marina, each desk having a dinghy-like chair hanging off its far end for visiting customers.
“May I help you?” asked a woman sitting at the first dock. There was a young man on the phone two stations behind her who barely glanced up at his entrance-not the curiously named and smooth-talking John Samuel Gregory he’d met last time.
“I’d like to see Mr. Wolff, if he’s in.”
“And who should I say is calling?” she asked, getting up.
Michael showed her the badge he had clipped to his belt under his jacket. “My name is Jonathon Michael. He knows me.”
“Oh, my goodness”-she paused-“I hope everything’s all right.”
He gave her a reassuring smile and joked, “You haven’t robbed a bank today, have you?”
She looked startled, as if the question were serious. He quickly eased her concern. “Sorry-old joke.”
She laughed uneasily. “Right. I’ll see about Mr. Wolff.”
She was back in under a minute, gesturing to Michael to follow her into a side office, beyond which was a conference room with a large white-haired man standing over a pile of papers fanned out across a table.
“Mr. Michael, Mr. Wolff,” the woman said, retreating and closing the door behind her.
Clark Wolff crossed over to Michael with his hand extended and his best salesman’s smile. “Good to see you again. Still digging around the real estate business?”
As before, Michael noticed that Wolff spoke in an almost theatrical tone, unexpectedly soothing. “Something like that.”
Wolff offered him a seat before settling himself opposite. “How may I help this time?”
Jonathon chose his words carefully, not wanting to reveal too much too soon. “We’re looking into a situation that involves several properties south of town. In the process, I discovered your office brokered not just the Loomis farm but a few others as well, and that some of those deals were kept very much under wraps.”
Wolff’s smile didn’t fade, but his eyes narrowed just a fraction. “And you think there may be some irregularity with that?”
Jonathon also maintained his poise. “If there is, now would be a good time to mention it.”
“There is not, Detective,” Wolff said firmly. “Discretion is just that, for the most part, especially so in real estate. As you can appreciate, emotions run high when properties change hands. Sometimes it’s helpful to keep a low profile.”
“Like getting someone to buy his neighbor’s land so no one will know you’re actually behind the purchase?”
Wolff agreed. “For example.”
“Why would emotions be that hot?” Jonathon asked innocently. “Surely, buying and selling property is what you do.”
Wolff crossed his legs carefully. “The realty business is a little like the stock market sometimes,” he explained slowly. “What may seem like no big deal to us can be misinterpreted by others.”
“As in the purchase of eight farms covering a relatively small area?”
Wolff froze for a moment. “Eight?”
“That’s how many have changed hands recently. When you look at the map, seems like a lot of activity with no logical explanation.”
Wolff pursed his lips. “What’s the nature of your investigation, Detective? Can I ask that?”
Jonathon smiled indulgently. “You can ask. Are you denying that you’ve been involved in eight land deals down there?”
In fact, Jonathon was bluffing here, since of the eight transactions that Joe had identified, only five had been traced back to Wolff’s office, meaning the remainder were either coincidental or just better disguised.
The Realtor stood up and crossed over to the papers that were spread across the far end of the conference table.
Jonathon expected him to retrieve a document to aid in his explanation. Instead, the older man merely placed both hands flat on the table, looking like an ancient and worn-out prizefighter.
“Detective,” he said, not looking up, “I have been in this business for almost fifty years. Chances are, I’ve set foot on almost every piece of real estate in the county, in one capacity or another. That has sometimes put me in awkward situations. I’ve been accused of fleecing widows and robbing destitute farmers and raping the environment and being a multimillionaire at everyone else’s expense.” He finally swiveled his large head to look at Jonathon directly. “But I have done none of those things, including making a million bucks. I have tried to conduct myself with honesty and integrity, and I have bent over backwards to get to know people and to prove that it has never been my intention to do anyone harm or to cause anyone distress.”
He straightened to his full height. “If you have something to tell me or to ask me, spit it out, because while I may conduct some of my business discreetly, I have nothing to hide from the authorities. That having been said, I am also not going to divulge private aspects of a business deal that may cost me everything if word gets out.”
He stopped speaking and waited, putting Jonathon squarely on the spot.
The latter cleared his throat quietly, wishing Gunther were there to keep him company. “Sorry, Mr. Wolff. I didn’t mean to imply you were up to anything. It was just that the pattern of sales I noticed might play into our investigation. You can understand why that got my interest.”
Wolff smiled tiredly. “What I understand is that you have things you can’t tell me, and I have things I don’t want to tell you. Since you’re the one who came to me, maybe you can convince me why I should be more forthcoming.”
Jonathon pondered that for a moment. He had no proof that Wolff was any less honorable than he claimed. During his research, the people he’d interviewed had all said Clark Wolff was a straight shooter. But there were rules of engagement all cops tended to follow, and revealing inner aspects of an ongoing case to an outsider, no matter how trustworthy, was a definite violation.
“Mr. Wolff,” he said, “the Vermont Bureau of Investigation is the state’s primary major crimes unit. We do not investigate misdemeanors. We handle murders, rapes, drugs, arson, and all the other headline grabbers. You can take it from me that the reason I’m here is not trivial. If I sense your holding back is with the intention of impeding my work, a few leaked details about a business deal will be the least of your worries. Is that convincing enough?”
It was a credit to Wolff’s maturity and experience that he didn’t simply blow up and throw Michael out. Instead, he chuckled after a pause and said, “All right. Let’s tiptoe into this and see how far we get. A little mutual back-scratching, okay?”
Jonathon didn’t answer, nonplussed by the man’s apparent imperturbability.
“For example,” Wolff continued, “you said I’d done eight deals in that area. I only know of three. Whose math is off?”
Jonathon extracted his notepad and consulted its contents. He recited the eight names of the farmers who’d sold out.
Wolff absorbed the list and answered, “I arranged the Loomis sale, as you know from before, as well as Cooper’s and Chauvin’s. I’d heard unrelated news-or so I thought-about a couple of the other farmers. That Beatty had been killed by his tractor and Martin put in the hospital for something with his lungs. Of course I knew about how Loomis’s barn burned down; and I won’t deny that I knew Noon was in trouble because of a couple of milk spoilage episodes. But he came to me. Before then, I’d never even met the man. As for the others, I honestly didn’t know their properties had been sold. Which is troubling, because I should have. It means a competitor worked fast and quietly and set in before anything was listed.”