David and Nancy Beckwith Pen A CALCULATED CONSPIRACY

In 2005, David and Nancy Beckwith felt overdue for a new adventure and replaced their Orange Beach vacation home with one in the Florida Keys. They both felt they were at a crossroads and were both anxious to enter this new phase of their lives. In their longstanding careers, both had received extensive training and had had hands-on supervisory level experience in compliance matters regarding the financial services industry. Coincidentally at that time Cay Club descended on the Keys like a Category 6 hurricane. David and Nancy first heard Cay Club lauded by their handyman. He told them Cay Club would transform the Keys in much the same manner Disney had transformed the sleepy, backwater burg of Orlando. To the skeptical (and I will admit somewhat jaded) Beckwiths, this seemed to be a gross exaggeration. To them, it had all the earmarks of a corporation which was or soon would be out of control. Their thoughts reverted to the old hackneyed maxims that if something was too good to be true, it probably was and that there are no free lunches.

The Cay Club story continued to grow like an undisciplined bougainvillea to mammoth, almost mythological proportions with viney tentacles reaching in all directions. The larger it grew, the more the Beckwiths examined it to identify if its roots were solid. The more they scrutinized it, the more they became convinced it was a house of cards eventually due to fail.

As Nancy and David watched Cay Club from an academic perspective, another event was occurring in their lives. They were creating their alter egos - Will and Betsy Black. One day during a swimming pool happy hour, they decided the Cay Club business model would make an ideal backdrop for a Will and Betsy adventure novel. Thus, A Calculated Conspiracy was born.

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