Kettleman would never have found the house, had he not been introduced to his wife-to-be. Carolyn had just received her Florida real estate certification when they met three years ago. Kettleman was looking to lower his profile and had settled on Jacksonville.

Jacksonville fit the bill perfectly. It was small enough to stay off the radar, large enough to conduct business effectively. The deciding factor had been the profitability of a shipping interest in Mayport that he’d acquired the year before. For that reason, Kettleman had become familiar with Jacksonville during his frequent trips down from Atlanta.

Needing new office space, he bought an old building in the heart downtown, off Hemming Plaza, and moved into condo in Riverside to oversee the renovation.

Carolyn had been introduced to him by one of the contractors, her brother. Carolyn’s brother, Jacob Tatem, had been one of four names flagged during hiring. Tatem had a checkered record that included dings for petty theft and check kiting. But he was a competent craftsman and cheap, so Kettleman gave him the contract anyway.

The introduction to Carolyn had been a clumsy trap. Jacob had pulled Kettleman aside and was pretending to be confused by some aspect of the drawings, kept asking about the same thing, only from a different direction each time.

Stalling.

And then in fluttered Carolyn, a more beautiful butterfly Kettleman had never seen. She was wearing a clingy, floral sundress and white strapped sandals, twirling about the room excitedly.

“I did it, I did it!” she sang out, grabbing her brother’s hand to swing around him. Even her sweet, southern twang was delicious. “I’m officially a real estate agent!”

Kettleman was enraptured. The whole room smelled like the gardenias on her dress. Didn’t matter that he was being manipulated. Didn’t matter that yesterday he’d been on the phone discussing arrangements to transfer some key employees down to Jacksonville while Jacob was standing right there, listening. And it didn’t even matter when, two days later, Martin Goodall pointed out that Carolyn had actually received her license six weeks earlier, pointedly not on the day she met Kettleman.

Kettleman knew he was being set up. It didn’t matter. The moment he laid eyes on her, he made the decision to just settle back and enjoy the ride.

Everybody has to start somewhere. Kettleman saw no harm in appointing Carolyn as the buying agent for the employees transferring from Atlanta. The only minor hiccup was that she had a fixation for two particular areas of town—Avondale and Ortega—and was stubborn, almost obstinate, about showing properties in less expensive areas like Mandarin or Flemming Island. San Marco was apparently ok, though she steered everyone away because the area was “mostly new money”.