STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge.
The Paris Paris Boutique was a small shop located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was founded several years ago by Maria Teresa Hernández-Ballesteros (Hernán-dez), an entrepreneur who has also founded and operated at least two other shops in San Juan. Under Hernández’s management, the shop apparently dealt primarily in women’s clothing and accessories, and had at least two employees, a professional manager and a sales clerk. It purchased clothing from Puerto Rican and New York-based retailers and sold the goods to walk-in customers, primarily targeting passing tourists.
Hernández decided to give up the business in 2000 or 2001, and put Paris Paris Boutique, Inc. on the market. Among a number of interested buyers, Ana M. Cordero-Hernández (Cordero) won out. This suit was brought by Cordero and the boutique over the fallout from that purchase. Cordero and the Paris Paris company alleged various fraud- and contract-related claims against Hernández and George Moll, who was the realtor on the sale of the boutique. They also brought claims against Arnaldo Peñalvert-Vázquez [242]*242(Peñalvert), Hernandez’s accountant; FirstBank of Puei"to Rico, which holds the mortgage that Cordero assumed when she purchased the property; and Elba Maria Martinez (Martinez), the proprietor of the building in which the Paris Paris was located.
Cordero purchased 100% of the shares of the boutique from Hernandez on St. Valentine’s Day, 2001. The purchase price for the store was $69,000 in cash and the assumption of $156,000 in debt owed by Hernández to FirstBank. Included in the deal were promises by Hernández to offer training to Cordero in dealing with suppliers and in the other particulars of running the store, but none of these promises were ever honored. While Cordero had also been promised an easy and immediate monthly profit, earnings lagged behind expectations, and Cordero and the store quickly began to experience financial difficulties. Cordero argues that the store’s plight was worsened by the fact that Her-nández almost immediately set up a new dress shop, named El Sol de Puerto Rico, in the same building as the Paris Paris.
Soon after she established El Sol, Her-nández put it on the market, just as she had done with the Paris Paris. Believing that she had herself been defrauded, suspecting that Hernández was planning to perpetrate a similar fraud in the upcoming sale of El Sol, and hoping to catch Hernán-dez in a pattern of fraudulent activity, Cordero hired two investigators to come to El Sol and pretend to be interested purchasers. Hernández allegedly made representations about the new store to this pair, Damian Soto and Ester Morell, that sounded in the same register as her representations to Cordero about Paris Paris— high margins, valuable inventory, established clientele, and easy money. The hired detectives did not, of course, buy El Sol, and neither did anyone else. Finding no buyer, Hernández abandoned the store less than a year after opening it.
Meanwhile, in May 2001, with her financial problems worsening, Cordero and the Paris Paris company filed voluntary petitions for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. In the course of the bankruptcy proceedings, Cordero attempted to assert a handful of legal claims against Hernández and the other defendants in this action, all involved in the sale of the Paris Paris or the establishment of El Sol, and these claims were eventually removed to federal district court. In her original complaint in the district court, Cordero alleged that Hernández and her agents had misrepresented the value and profitability of the Paris Paris Boutique, and that Hernández had breached her contract with Cordero and had engaged in unfair competition by opening the competing store in the same building as the Paris Paris. In particular, she alleged that Hernández, personally and through Moll and Peñal-vert, misled her about the past profitability of the store and about its likely value going forward. She also alleged that FirstBank of Puerto Rico, which provided partial financing for the deal, had failed to abide by several of its own risk-management policies, was less than fully candid with Cordero about its interest in the transaction going ahead, and so ultimately contributed to Cordero’s injuries. In addition, Cordero also claimed that Hernández had violated an implied contractual obligation not to compete with her by opening up the new shop in the same building as the Paris Paris, and that Martinez, who leased space to both the Paris Paris and El Sol, violated a term of Cordero’s lease by permitting Hernández to open her new store next door to the Paris Paris.
Cordero amended her complaint in April 2002 to include a cause of action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organi[243]*243zations (RICO) Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c). In the newly added portion of the complaint stating a claim under RICO, Corde-ro incorporated her fraud allegations against all defendants, and further alleged that the defendants together comprised an enterprise organized for the purpose of defrauding potential buyers of the boutiques they developed. The specific RICO predicate that Cordero attempted to allege was interstate wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (defining wire fraud) and § 1961(5) (incorporating wire fraud as a RICO predicate): Cordero claimed that Hernández, along with other defendants, made fraudulent representations first to Cordero and later to her hired investigators, and that some of these representations were made over the phone. Cordero never explicitly alleged, however, that the phone calls were interstate calls nor stated specifically during which calls, when, and by whom, the fraudulent representations were made, failings which are the nub of this appeal.
A drawn-out discovery battle ensued, during which Cordero filed no fewer than four motions to compel discovery from a seemingly reluctant set of defendants, and the court noted in one of its orders compelling discovery that it was running out of patience with the parties. Early on in the discovery period, defendants moved together for 12(b)(6) dismissal for failure to state a claim, and Cordero responded. Discovery proceeded apace, while the motion to dismiss lingered on the docket. A year later, the district court issued an order dismissing the RICO action with prejudice pursuant to the defendants’ 12(b)(6) motion and dismissing the state law claims, over which it claimed1 only supplemental jurisdiction, without prejudice.2
In order to make out a civil claim under RICO by way of wire fraud, a plaintiff must allege that a group of defendants “engaged in a scheme to defraud with the specific intent to defraud and that they used ... the interstate wires in furtherance of the scheme,” McEvoy Travel Bureau, Inc. v. Heritage Travel, Inc., 904 F.2d 786, 790 (1st Cir.1990), and in particular that defendants engaged in at least two instances of such predicate wire use, Ahmed v. Rosenblatt, 118 F.3d 886, 888 [244]*244(1st Cir.1997). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure usually permit a plaintiff to make general allegations in a complaint, see
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STAHL, Senior Circuit Judge.
The Paris Paris Boutique was a small shop located in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was founded several years ago by Maria Teresa Hernández-Ballesteros (Hernán-dez), an entrepreneur who has also founded and operated at least two other shops in San Juan. Under Hernández’s management, the shop apparently dealt primarily in women’s clothing and accessories, and had at least two employees, a professional manager and a sales clerk. It purchased clothing from Puerto Rican and New York-based retailers and sold the goods to walk-in customers, primarily targeting passing tourists.
Hernández decided to give up the business in 2000 or 2001, and put Paris Paris Boutique, Inc. on the market. Among a number of interested buyers, Ana M. Cordero-Hernández (Cordero) won out. This suit was brought by Cordero and the boutique over the fallout from that purchase. Cordero and the Paris Paris company alleged various fraud- and contract-related claims against Hernández and George Moll, who was the realtor on the sale of the boutique. They also brought claims against Arnaldo Peñalvert-Vázquez [242]*242(Peñalvert), Hernandez’s accountant; FirstBank of Puei"to Rico, which holds the mortgage that Cordero assumed when she purchased the property; and Elba Maria Martinez (Martinez), the proprietor of the building in which the Paris Paris was located.
Cordero purchased 100% of the shares of the boutique from Hernandez on St. Valentine’s Day, 2001. The purchase price for the store was $69,000 in cash and the assumption of $156,000 in debt owed by Hernández to FirstBank. Included in the deal were promises by Hernández to offer training to Cordero in dealing with suppliers and in the other particulars of running the store, but none of these promises were ever honored. While Cordero had also been promised an easy and immediate monthly profit, earnings lagged behind expectations, and Cordero and the store quickly began to experience financial difficulties. Cordero argues that the store’s plight was worsened by the fact that Her-nández almost immediately set up a new dress shop, named El Sol de Puerto Rico, in the same building as the Paris Paris.
Soon after she established El Sol, Her-nández put it on the market, just as she had done with the Paris Paris. Believing that she had herself been defrauded, suspecting that Hernández was planning to perpetrate a similar fraud in the upcoming sale of El Sol, and hoping to catch Hernán-dez in a pattern of fraudulent activity, Cordero hired two investigators to come to El Sol and pretend to be interested purchasers. Hernández allegedly made representations about the new store to this pair, Damian Soto and Ester Morell, that sounded in the same register as her representations to Cordero about Paris Paris— high margins, valuable inventory, established clientele, and easy money. The hired detectives did not, of course, buy El Sol, and neither did anyone else. Finding no buyer, Hernández abandoned the store less than a year after opening it.
Meanwhile, in May 2001, with her financial problems worsening, Cordero and the Paris Paris company filed voluntary petitions for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. In the course of the bankruptcy proceedings, Cordero attempted to assert a handful of legal claims against Hernández and the other defendants in this action, all involved in the sale of the Paris Paris or the establishment of El Sol, and these claims were eventually removed to federal district court. In her original complaint in the district court, Cordero alleged that Hernández and her agents had misrepresented the value and profitability of the Paris Paris Boutique, and that Hernández had breached her contract with Cordero and had engaged in unfair competition by opening the competing store in the same building as the Paris Paris. In particular, she alleged that Hernández, personally and through Moll and Peñal-vert, misled her about the past profitability of the store and about its likely value going forward. She also alleged that FirstBank of Puerto Rico, which provided partial financing for the deal, had failed to abide by several of its own risk-management policies, was less than fully candid with Cordero about its interest in the transaction going ahead, and so ultimately contributed to Cordero’s injuries. In addition, Cordero also claimed that Hernández had violated an implied contractual obligation not to compete with her by opening up the new shop in the same building as the Paris Paris, and that Martinez, who leased space to both the Paris Paris and El Sol, violated a term of Cordero’s lease by permitting Hernández to open her new store next door to the Paris Paris.
Cordero amended her complaint in April 2002 to include a cause of action under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organi[243]*243zations (RICO) Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c). In the newly added portion of the complaint stating a claim under RICO, Corde-ro incorporated her fraud allegations against all defendants, and further alleged that the defendants together comprised an enterprise organized for the purpose of defrauding potential buyers of the boutiques they developed. The specific RICO predicate that Cordero attempted to allege was interstate wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (defining wire fraud) and § 1961(5) (incorporating wire fraud as a RICO predicate): Cordero claimed that Hernández, along with other defendants, made fraudulent representations first to Cordero and later to her hired investigators, and that some of these representations were made over the phone. Cordero never explicitly alleged, however, that the phone calls were interstate calls nor stated specifically during which calls, when, and by whom, the fraudulent representations were made, failings which are the nub of this appeal.
A drawn-out discovery battle ensued, during which Cordero filed no fewer than four motions to compel discovery from a seemingly reluctant set of defendants, and the court noted in one of its orders compelling discovery that it was running out of patience with the parties. Early on in the discovery period, defendants moved together for 12(b)(6) dismissal for failure to state a claim, and Cordero responded. Discovery proceeded apace, while the motion to dismiss lingered on the docket. A year later, the district court issued an order dismissing the RICO action with prejudice pursuant to the defendants’ 12(b)(6) motion and dismissing the state law claims, over which it claimed1 only supplemental jurisdiction, without prejudice.2
In order to make out a civil claim under RICO by way of wire fraud, a plaintiff must allege that a group of defendants “engaged in a scheme to defraud with the specific intent to defraud and that they used ... the interstate wires in furtherance of the scheme,” McEvoy Travel Bureau, Inc. v. Heritage Travel, Inc., 904 F.2d 786, 790 (1st Cir.1990), and in particular that defendants engaged in at least two instances of such predicate wire use, Ahmed v. Rosenblatt, 118 F.3d 886, 888 [244]*244(1st Cir.1997). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure usually permit a plaintiff to make general allegations in a complaint, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 8, but require more specific pleading where a plaintiff alleges fraud, see id., 9(b). In particular, under Rule 9 “the pleader is required ‘to go beyond a showing of fraud and state the time, place and content of the alleged mail and wire communications perpetrating that fraud.’ ” N. Bridge Assocs., Inc. v. Boldt, 274 F.3d 38, 43 (1st Cir.2001) (quoting Feinstein v. Resolution Trust Corp., 942 F.2d 34, 42 (1st Cir.1991)). “It is not enough for a plaintiff to file a RICO claim, chant the statutory mantra, and leave the identification of predicate acts to the time of trial.” Id. (quoting Feinstein, 942 F.2d at 42). As noted, while plaintiffs asserted conclusorily in their amended complaint that they were alleging wire fraud, they did not make the requisite allegations identifying specific interstate phone calls by time, place, and content.3
Failure to plead with specificity in a RICO action may merit dismissal. See id. at 44. Because, however, it will often be difficult for a plaintiff to plead with specificity when the facts that would support her claim are solely in the possession of a defendant, we held in New England Data Services, Inc. v. Becher, 829 F.2d 286 (1st Cir.1987), that a court faced with an insufficiently specific claim may permit limited discovery in order to give a plaintiff an opportunity to develop the claim and amend the complaint. Id. at 290. Among the particular facts that a plaintiff might under some circumstances have difficulty proving without access to discovery is whether or not a particular communication passed over the interstate wires, and Becher discovery therefore may be called for, though is not necessarily required, when the interstate nature of a wire transaction is in question. But Becher discovery (with concomitant leave to amend) “is neither automatic, nor of right, for every plaintiff.” Ahmed, 118 F.3d at 890. The threshold questions are whether “the specific allegations of the plaintiff make it likely that the defendant used interstate mail or telecommunications facilities, and the specific information as to use is likely in the exclusive control of the defendant.” Becher, 829 F.2d at 290.
The court here considered, and decided against, permitting further discovery under Becher. In doing so, the court noted that discovery had already proceeded for three years. Finding inter alia that the plaintiffs had not been diligent in attempting to collect information that would allow them to fully allege a RICO claim, cf. N. Bridge Assocs., 274 F.3d at 44, the court thought there was no need to drag the case on further, and dismissed the RICO claim with prejudice and the state law claims without. Cordero timely appealed, arguing that the court’s denial of [245]*245Becher discovery was in error.4 We conclude that the district court’s order dismissing the suit was justified. There was no showing under Becher that the defendants were in exclusive control of any crucial information, and appellant had not demonstrated a high likelihood that useful information would result from further discovery.
First, there is little indication that the discovery requested by the appellant would have produced any information that would have permitted her to allege the requisite two interstate communications with particularity. Appellant conceded below, in her motion to reconsider, that all she was seeking was the fulfillment of then-pending discovery requests, but every indication is that appellant’s discovery efforts were never directed towards producing information that would enable her to make out a RICO claim. The district court’s opinion noted that discovery had been underway for three years, and Cordero avers that throughout that time the defendants in the case were stubbornly resistant to her efforts to eke information out of them. She attributes her lack of knowledge about the interstate nature of any communications to the defendants’ foot-dragging throughout the discovery process.
Cordero cites to her early discovery requests pressing Hernandez and other defendants for telephone records in order to demonstrate that continued discovery would have been useful, but it would require a strained reading of those requests to conclude that Cordero had requested phone records relating to the sale of Hernandez’s stores or that any potentially useful request was pending at the time the case was dismissed.5 The discovery re[246]*246quests do not suggest that Cordero would be able to produce information about the interstate nature of any communication with any particular person during the course of the (allegedly fraudulent) sale of the Paris Paris. The district court, which has the best information about compliance with discovery, evidently so concluded, disagreeing with plaintiffs that the problem was a problem of obstruction on the part of the defendants.6 It did not demonstrably err in concluding under Beeher that further discovery was unlikely to produce information that would make it possible for plaintiffs to satisfactorily plead their complaint.
Nor is it anywhere explained why Cordero could not have alleged interstate communications on the basis of information already in her possession if there was any interstate activity to be alleged. Cordero had hired detectives who allegedly spoke on the telephone with defendant Moll. If these detectives called Moll while Moll was in Puerto Rico and they were themselves in New York or otherwise in another state, that information was in fact uniquely in the plaintiffs’ possession, not the defendants’. Thus it is not clear why Cordero insists on appeal that discovery was necessary in order to reveal information about the interstate nature of any communications.
Beeher discovery balances the general liberal pleading policy of the Federal Rules against the more specific policy that requires heightened pleading in fraud cases in order to filter out frivolous, harassing claims. The decision to grant or deny Beeher discovery must be based, in the final analysis, on good, common sense, and here there is every reason to doubt that any of the calls between Cordero and the defendants were interstate calls, as all parties were, so far as the record reveals, based in Puerto Rico at all relevant times.7 Cf. N. Bridge Assocs., 274 F.3d at 44 (where allegations “strongly suggest” fraud was conducted without use of interstate wires, Beeher discovery was inappropriate). It is also telling that Cordero failed to even allege interstate communications on information and belief. Without any independent reason to believe that the alleged calls were interstate communications, the district court could permissibly have weighed Cordero’s failure to allege [247]*247such in favor of an inference that the calls were all intrastate. While information- and-belief pleading is not sufficient to satisfy the rule requiring pleading with particularity, see Becker, 829 F.2d at 288 (citing Wayne Investment, Inc. v. Gulf Oil Corp., 739 F.2d 11, 13 (1st Cir.1984)), in this case such pleading would have at least given the district court some reason to think that interstate communications might be at issue. Because there was no allegation that any calls went over the interstate wires nor a credible suggestion from the plaintiffs that the obstacle to their making such allegations was insufficient discovery, this case appears on its face to be not a RICO action, but an instance of that “localized fraud” that “Congress intended to exclude from the scope of’ the wire fraud statute. United States v. Giovengo, 637 F.2d 941, 943 (3d Cir.1980). Since, as we have noted, the appellant has conceded that on the basis of information currently in her possession she could not make out a RICO claim, and because the district court by all appearances correctly determined that further discovery was unlikely to produce more and relevant information, it properly dismissed the suit.
For the foregoing reasons, the order of the district court is affirmed.