Killian (Hope City #8) - Kris Michaels Page 0,18

can’t.”

Killian stared at her for a moment. “What information do you have for me to look at?”

Bekki smiled and shoved her last forkful of lasagna into her mouth. She stood and crooked her finger at him as she grabbed her wine. Finally, someone who could decode the tangled mess of information she had on her table.

Killian rubbed the back of his neck. They’d been slogging through the information in her small office for over three hours. “So, you see it, right?” Bekki stroked Duke’s ears as she pleaded with Killian to see things that just weren’t there. He’d noticed something, but it had nothing to do with contractors getting favors at City Hall.

“I’m sorry, Bekki, there is nothing here that would lead me to say you should go after any of the major—or for that matter, the minor—contractors.”

She groaned and dropped her head into Duke’s scruff. “This sucks.” She popped her head up and rubbed Duke’s shoulders. “Not you, buddy. You don’t suck.”

Killian pulled a folder forward. “There is something I noticed that is strange, however.”

“What?” Bekki jumped up, startling Duke. He barked and scurried toward the front door of the condo, snarling and barking as he went. With a sharp whistle, he called the dog back. “Dang. Sorry, didn’t mean to excite him.” Bekki sat back down and calmly asked, “What did you see?”

“When we were looking through the Planning and Land Use Management and Economic Development committees meeting minutes, there appears to be a systematic purchase of waterfront property owned by the city. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t seen the meeting minutes strung all together.”

Bekki leaned forward and glanced at the minutes and watched as he pointed to the information he was talking about. He continued, “What is puzzling is there are only a few purchasing companies listed in the minutes, and it doesn’t look like there are any competitive bidders listed either, which is odd. When we purchased the property for the Pinnacle development, the city listed the land for sale and we gave a closed bid against fifteen other interested entities.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked up at him. “Maybe someone just didn’t include it in the meeting minutes.”

He nodded. “Possibly, but that’s land we would have been interested in bidding on. I didn’t see it advertised.”

“Property being sold by the city should have been advertised?”

Killian nodded. “It’s the law.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his pictures, bringing up a photo of the map he had on his wall in the construction trailer. “Here is our land. These areas that the minutes stated were sold, here and here.” He tapped the map, showing another adjacent parcel of land. “I know this land is privately owned. These parcels over here are also city-owned, and over here, this landlocked portion bordering our waterfront property that we are developing in Phase Three is also privately owned. We tried to purchase it, but we never received a response on our offer.”

“What would be the benefit of getting the land without competition?” Bekki pulled the meeting minutes toward her.

“The benefit would be substantial depending on what is built on it. We have thirty acres that we are developing for the Pinnacle in three different stages. Fifteen hundred feet of that development is waterfront. We’ve already sold office space, retail, and restaurant spaces, and seven of the fourteen luxury condos have already been contracted. Our profits, if we stick with our estimates and timelines, are in the millions. So, you can see, doing anything to jeopardize the build, like shoddy work and paying someone off to okay substandard performance, is stupid and usually isn’t in the developer’s best interest.”

“I’ve been chasing the fleas but not the dog.”

“Perhaps.” He glanced at the meeting minutes. “The city-owned land had to be advertised as for sale—as I said, it’s the law. Records of sale of land is public record. You can find out who is buying the land by going to the clerk’s office. But I will caution you, just because I didn’t see the posting for this property doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Still, it strikes me as curious that the meeting minutes indicate the winner of the bid but not how many bids were received and by who, which it should.”

“Okay, then that’s the direction I’m going after I tear Davis a new one.”

Killian jerked his head up. The woman boomeranged from one point to the next without warning. “Councilman Davis?”

She looked up at him and