While the walk through the darkened woods with Molly Carrillo’s ghost was pleasant and a bit amusing, what came later wasn’t quite as much fun.

After Steve and Ann returned to the house, he went up to his office and started in with airline reservations. Pendersburg didn’t have an airport that handled airliners, nor was there anyplace Steve could fly into without a couple of hours’ drive from an airport in a rental car. The best airline connections on his end were out of Chicago, and they weren’t very good, at the price of a long drive through a lot of traffic before a long wait for security and fiddle-faddle. By the time everything was done, there was no way he wouldn’t blow up a day in traveling.

Much like the trip from his apartment in Dillon, he soon figured out that he could come close to beating the airlines by driving and avoid the airline indignities in the process. In the end, that was what he decided to do.

In order to maximize driving in daylight, he went to bed very early that night, and was up again well before Ann went to bed. Under the circumstances, he let her make breakfast for him, and she even filled his insulated coffee mug before he got on the road. “Good luck, Mr. Taylor,” she said by way of farewell. “Keep us posted.”

“I’ll be sure to do that, Ms. Rutledge.”

“Oh, all right,” she sighed in defeat. “Good luck and drive safely, Steve.”

It was a long day on the road, and most of it was dull. He spent at least part of the time thinking about Ann, who was still a strange and mysterious woman to him. Her reserve and cold formality was just about as off-putting as ever, but every now and then her human side showed through, like on the dark-woods walk the evening before. She actually had a sense of humor if he was willing to look for it and wait for it to appear. On balance, he was coming to like her and see how she was a valuable co-worker. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go beyond that, and he wouldn’t bet on it being possible, anyway.

Still, working with her for Uncle Homer was proving to be interesting – and rewarding. There was no telling if this little jaunt would lead to a payoff like the Hardin deal, but he hadn’t been expecting that one, either.

It was getting late when he pulled into Pendersburg. He found a reasonably priced motel, had a steak and a beer at a nearby chain steak house, his reward for sitting behind the wheel all day. That left the rest of the evening to kill, so he opened up his laptop, got on the motel’s wireless connection, and decided to do a little web surfing.

Out of sheer curiosity he did a Google search for “Molly Carrillo ghost” and quickly turned up the website Ann had been talking about the night before. The page was quite dated, but it was easy to see how authentic the ghost hunter thought his sighting was. There were even a number of pictures that proved absolutely nothing – over-processed, noisy, and blurry digital shots taken with a camera with a slow lens, a slow chip, or both. Knowing the real story, there were places Steve had trouble keeping from breaking out in helpless laughter. That was enough to send him to bed in a mood good enough to overcome the long day of driving.

He was still occasionally chuckling when he got up the next morning, got dressed in a suit and tie, checked in briefly with Ann without mentioning the website, and went out for breakfast.

It was tempting to go see the auditor first, but Steve decided it might be better to get the lay of the land instead. It didn’t take him long to find the dealership; he knew from the audit and from other research it was run by a man by the name of Nathan Hansen.

Even at the beginning of the day the place seemed busy; Steve had to fight off two salesmen before he could even get to the receptionist outside Hansen’s office. “I’m sorry, he’s in conference with the sales manager right now,” the receptionist said as she eyed some imperfection in the polish of her nails. After having spent the time with Ann that he had recently, she didn’t come across to him as being very businesslike. “You’re welcome to have a seat outside if you like.”

“Guess I’ll have to,” Steve replied, and found a seat outside her office in a rather uncomfortable chrome and plastic chair, next to a man in a pullover sweater.

“Waiting to see Nathan?” the man asked.

“Yeah, I need to talk to him.”

“You may be waiting a while. God knows what he and Ben talk about in there but I doubt it has much to do with sales. His old man wasn’t like that, that’s for sure.”

“I didn’t know him.”

“He was one of the good guys, that’s for sure,” the man said. “Now I have to waste an hour on the average just to get a proof approved.”

“A proof?”

“Yeah, I’m the ad rep for the Pendersburg Democrat,” the guy said. “Pete Robinson’s the name. I handle most of the car accounts for the Democrat. This one has turned into a pain in the neck since Junior has taken over.”

“I’m from out of town,” Steve replied. “I guess I didn’t know that.”

“It was pretty good when Forrest Baldwynn was really running the place, but after Nathan Senior wound up in a nursing home Junior wound up taking the place over, and he doesn’t know cars from goats.”

That didn’t jibe very well with what Steve had been told. The records he’d studied had Nathan Hansen as the primary owner, but there had been no indication that his son had taken over running the place – at least not that he’d noticed, and maybe not that Ann or Uncle Homer had noticed, either. Forrest Baldwynn was only on record as one of the other stockholders. But it was also clear from the audit that there had been something serious happen with the management two years and a few months before. Just from what Steve had learned from this ad salesman he had a pretty good idea of what had occurred.

“That happens, I guess,” was all Steve could say. He decided he’d better change the subject. “So how has the newspaper business been?”

“Not what it was a few years ago,” Pete replied. “But car sales are up from what they were a few years ago too, so on balance I’m doing all right. I don’t like to think what the advertising business is going to be in ten years, though. So what do you do?”

That wasn’t an easy question for Steve to answer. “I’m a representative for an investment group,” was about as honest and noncommittal as he could get.

“Then let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t invest in newspapers. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think they’re eventually going to go the way of the dodo bird, and people aren’t going to know what they’re losing until it’s gone.”

Steve wound up sitting there and jawing with Pete for half an hour. He was an easy-going and knowledgeable guy, able to talk about just about anything; they kicked around just about everything from chain hamburger joints to the prospects in the National League.

Finally the door to Hansen’s office opened, and a tall guy with a shaved head came out. Pete was quick on the draw, and cornered him about the ad proof before the guy could get away. Figuring that the conference of whatever it was had to have finished up, Steve went back into the receptionist’s office, to discover that she was busy fixing whatever flaw in her nails she had found. “I guess Mr. Hansen can see you now,” she told him, the gum popping in her mouth.

Steve went back to Hansen’s office, to see a young guy with a mullet hairdo sitting behind the desk. He could barely be in his mid-twenties, or at least so Steve thought, several years younger than he was. He was wearing a football jersey with the number “00” on it – nothing like a business suit. Well, sometimes car dealers were a little casual, he thought. “Hi,” he said. “Mr. Hansen?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Mr. Hansen, my name is Steven Taylor. I’m a representative for Halston, McFadden Holdings. The group is a fairly large shareholder in this dealership, and I have a few questions for you.

“What if I don’t want to talk to you?” Hansen sneered. “I’m the majority shareholder and I don’t need to talk to no goddamn minority shareholders. What I do ain’t none of your goddamn business. Now go piddle right straight up a hemp rope and get the fuck out of here.”

Well, this was starting off on a very promising note, Steve thought. The hell of it is that it’s going to take an army to get his attention. Without saying anything, he turned and headed toward the door, with Hansen’s, “And don’t fucking come back,” ringing in his ears.

As Steve walked out the door, he didn’t yet know what to do next, although it was clear that a load of shit was going to land on Nathan Hansen, Jr., as soon as he could figure out where the lever for the truck’s dump box was. The obvious thing to do would be to call Uncle Homer or Ann, but he figured he might as well do a little more investigation first. Besides, Uncle Homer and most likely Ann would be sound asleep at this hour.

As Steve was getting into his car he saw Pete, the ad salesman come out of the building and head for his own car, parked next to the Caliber. “That didn’t take long,” Pete commented.

“What needed to be said was said,” Steve frowned. “Just out of curiosity, would you have any idea how to get hold of this Forrest Baldwynn?”

“Yeah, he’s working at Affordable Autos, that’s a used car lot out on the strip south of town. If you’re looking to buy a used car he’s likely to give you a better deal than these jokers.”

Forrest Baldwynn proved to be a clean-cut, businesslike man in his late forties, starting to go a little gray, and he was happy to talk to anyone who walked in the door. Once again, Steve identified himself as a representative for Halston, McFadden Holdings. “I don’t know if you’re the person I ought to talk to about this,” Steve told him. “But I wanted to ask you about Hansen-Baldwynn Motors.”

“That young fool is running what used to be a good business right into the ground,” Forrest snorted. “I told his dad time and time again that no good would come of letting Junior into the business.”

“But Mr. Hansen Senior let him do it anyway?”

“There wasn’t any ‘let’ about it,” Forrest said. “Nathan had a stroke, and he’s in a nursing home. His mother is almost as big a fool as Junior is, so you can see where he got it from. Anyway, she had Nathan’s power of attorney, so she essentially gave the business to Junior, who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. After he was handed the majority of the stock and the proxies, he basically ran my ass out of there. It looks to me like he plans to milk it for all it’s worth and then go back to playing tiddlywinks or something, which is about all he’s good for.”

“After a very brief meeting with Junior I think I can say I share your opinion on that,” Steve laughed. “But as a shareholder and Senior’s associate, didn’t you have something to say about that?”

“Not the way it turned out. I don’t know why it was set up the way it was, but Senior held the proxies from your outfit. The way it worked was that Senior held forty percent of the stock, and your outfit and I each held thirty percent. Junior, and I should say Junior’s lawyer since Junior isn’t smart enough to come in out of the rain, claimed that Senior’s power of attorney gave Junior control of the proxies. I really couldn’t fight that, since if the proxies didn’t count he still had a majority of the stock that could be voted.”

“I wasn’t with Halston-McFadden at the time so I can’t speak as to what happened,” Steve told him. “But it seems to me that if you’d notified them and informed them of the circumstances some action might have been taken.”

“Sounds good, boy, but you guys are hard to find, especially when I couldn’t get to my desk down at the dealership. They pulled all that shit behind my back, and I was basically thrown out on my ass when I showed up for work one morning. I decided there was no point in beating my head against a brick wall.”

“Well, now that we are aware of the situation, it sounds like it would be easy to fix. Between us we’d have enough stock to run Junior’s ass right out the door like he did to you.”

“I sure as hell would like to do that. That used to be a good business, and it could be again if he hasn’t wrecked it too badly already. Most of the management would have to go right out the door with him, though, and it could take years to rebuild the public trust he ruined.” Forrest let out a long sigh and went on. “While I’d like to see it rebuilt I’m not sure I’d want to try, especially if there was a chance I could get it in the back again.”

“I can’t say as I blame you. What would you need to do it?”

“I’d need to be sure I couldn’t get it in the ass again. I’d have to have a majority of the actual voting stock, not just a proxy. I don’t want to get lost in the shuffle again.”

Steve thought for a few seconds. This was obviously a mess that would take time to heal – and Uncle Homer was trying to get out of complicated messes. “I can’t make any promises,” he said finally. “At least not without contacting my superiors, but it seems to me that something of that nature could be arranged.”

“Sounds good,” Forrest snorted, “but there’s no way I have the money to buy enough stock from your people to get the majority. The audit report those fools released is a bunch of horse manure. I can’t see the details in it, but there are things there that make you wonder just what the auditor had been smoking.”

“I sort of got that impression, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“Oh, it’s bad enough. I suppose it’s a legitimate audit in a way, but the auditor is an old buddy of Junior’s and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d been smoking the same thing, and more than once at that. But realistically, discounting the horse shit in the audit, it would still take, oh, maybe three quarters of a million to buy up that stock, and there’s no way I could raise that kind of money.”

“There might be a way,” Steve replied, thinking of his rescue of Phil Crocker’s business, which was still a long way from a done deal, “but it’s not a decision I can make, at least right now. All I can do is ask my superiors.”

“Go ahead and ask,” Forrest replied. “I’d be willing to take some degree of a hit just to be able to do to that bastard what he did to me.”

There were a few more calls Steve needed to make the rest of the day, but they were mostly filling in the cracks a little bit – Baldwynn had more or less told him what he needed to know. He went ahead and had dinner again to give Uncle Homer time to get up and running before calling him.

“So,” Uncle Homer said after Steve called and had identified himself. “Did you find out anything?”

“I think I’ve got both the problem and the solution figured out,” Steve replied. “Is Molly Carrillo’s ghost on the line?”

“Oh, she told you about that little incident, huh?” Uncle Homer laughed. “That wasn’t exactly the brightest thing she’s ever done, but she was still pretty much a kid at the time, and she needed a little fun in her life. We’ve had some giggles about it from time to time. No, she’s not on the line at the moment, she’s out filling the bird feeders. Rocky got into them again and made a hell of a mess, so she’s just about mad enough to get out the .22 after all. So what happened with Hansen-Baldwynn?”

“It’s a long story,” Steve sighed. “Somebody screwed up somewhere, but it’s easy to see how the mistake got made.” He recapped his brief discussion with Junior, and his longer and more productive discussion with Forrest. “So after that I spent most of the rest of the day just checking facts to make sure that Baldwynn was giving me the fairly straight scoop. I couldn’t check everything, of course, but what I could find out seems to support what he told me.”

“So what’s your solution?”

“The easy thing to do is to sell him the stock. That way it gets most of the mess out of your hair. I’d say to give him a pretty good price on it, too, just to make up for the fact that we, I mean you and Ann, should have had a little closer finger on what was going on.”

“You might have a point on that, Steve. That’s not a mistake I would have made ten years ago. Besides, if we don’t do anything the stock isn’t going to be worth much of anything in another couple years anyway.”

“Maybe not that long. Baldwynn seems to think the audit report is full of shit, but it could be full of shit several different ways.”

“You’re probably right on that. How the hell does an audit get screwed up like that?”

“It might have something to do with the fact they changed auditors after Junior took the place over with, and he gave the job to his asshole buddy.”

“God, that whole swamp is full of alligators, isn’t it? I have a story about Florida real estate that I need to remember to tell you sometime. But how the hell is Baldwynn going to come up with the money to buy the stock?”

“I thought a venture capital outfit by the name of Macomber-Calligan would be interested in loaning it to him.”

“It’s nice when you can work both sides of the street at the same time, isn’t it?” Uncle Homer laughed. “Look, Steve, I shouldn’t have to remind you that this Baldwynn isn’t exactly your buddy Phil Crocker. You just met him today and you really don’t know him from Adam. Don’t forget, he’s a used car salesman, and you know what that means.”

“It’s not quite the same thing,” Steve pointed out. “Yeah, I trust Phil, and I’ve known him for a long time. But I’m thinking that we have real collateral this time, and I don’t mean the thirty percent of the stock we’d be selling him. If he wants a loan and thinks he can make a go of it, then he ought to be able to put up the whole sixty percent he’ll own.”

“That does put a little different spin on it,” Uncle Homer conceded. “If he boots it, then you could go find a manager somewhere else. Or, even sell it at a loss, if it came to that.”

“Right, but somehow I don’t think it’ll come to that. I mean, if it does, it does, but this Baldwynn is like Phil, he knows what he’s doing, he’s on a comeback, and he has a point to prove. Actually, the only fly I can see in the ointment is that there may be some agreement somewhere where Hansen might have a first refusal right on purchase of our shares of the stock.”

“I can’t give you a straight answer on that one, Steve. I doubt it like hell, but I’d have to look into it. I’ll have Ann look at that part of the paperwork and we might have to run it past a lawyer to be sure.”

“You mean you can actually get a lawyer to give you a response in less than a month?”

“You can if you pay them well enough, and I’ve got some tame ones on the string. I’ve learned that if you can’t get a lawyer to give you a timely answer it’s time to find another lawyer. Anyway, let Ann and me take a look at that question first, and we might not have to run it by a lawyer at all. You’d probably better not get back with Baldwynn until we get that question settled, but we ought to have it in a day or two. Why don’t you get back with Ann or me in the morning? Your morning, I mean. We might even know something by then. Even if we’re clear on that issue, there are still going to be some numbers that’ll have to be worked out.”

“Can’t ask for much more than that. I don’t think Junior is smart enough to realize he’s in trouble, but I think it’d probably be best to do this as quickly as possible before he has a chance to find out.”

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