“What’s wrong, dear?” Mother asked. “You look pale. Do you need an aspirin?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Hungry, but fine.”
Rose Noire took the hint and handed me a ham sandwich.
“Thanks.” I took an enormous bite and closed my eyes to savor it.
“You still look stressed,” Mother said.
Luckily chewing allowed me time to think about my answer. Should I tell her about the surveyors? Perhaps better to wait until I heard what Cousin Festus could learn. Ask her if she thought the place looked blighted? She’d probably use my question as an excuse to foist off some new furniture on us.
But then an idea struck me.
“Mother,” I said. “I have a decorating project for you.”
She blinked slightly and peered at me as if suddenly unsure who I was.
“You’re not interested?” I asked.
“Of course I’m interested, dear,” she said. “I’m just rather surprised. Normally I have to nag you to take an interest in your home.”
“Well, I’m taking an interest now. Let me show you.”
I led her out onto the back porch. It was large for a back porch, six feet by twelve feet, and largely empty.
“Yes,” she said, recovering enough to look around with something more resembling her usual critical eye. “Yes, there’s a lot we need to—er, could do here. You want me to tackle the deck?”
I glanced around. I wouldn’t have called it a deck. It was a plain slab of concrete. I’d just have said stoop instead of porch if it hadn’t been so large. But if Mother thought “deck” a more elegant term, who was I to argue?
“Yes, the deck to start with,” I said. “But why stop there? We need to do something about the whole yard.”
I spread my arms wide as if embracing the space, then strode toward the side yard.
“The yard? But that’s really landscaping.”
“Outdoor decorating,” I said, as I rounded the corner of the house and headed for the front yard. I was trying to see my surroundings through unfriendly eyes and finding more and more to wince at. “You’re always saying how important the foyer is, that it gives your guests their first view of the house. Well, that’s not quite accurate. Before they get to the foyer, they have to walk down the front walk, through the yard. And look at it!”
I was striding through the front yard by now, with Mother close behind. I stopped to survey my surroundings. So did she. She was still a little taken aback.
“When you come down to it, it’s the largest space of all,” I said. “And it’s virtually untouched. We need to deal with those overgrown hedges in the front yard. Plant something along the front walk. Maybe replace the front walk with something nicer. And don’t forget the backyard. All these sheds and outbuildings look so junky. We need to spruce them up or get rid of them! Move some of them to better locations so they don’t block the view.”
“We could do that.” She still sounded dubious.
“We need an outdoor foyer in the front yard! An outdoor dining room there!” I gestured toward the side yard. “An outdoor living room … somewhere! An outdoor playroom for the boys! And the pool—it needs to be an outdoor party space. A safe, kid-friendly outdoor party space.”
“Yes,” she said. The word “room” seemed to revive her spirits. “Yes. This should be interesting. My first real venture into outdoor decorating!”
“And Dad can help with the plants,” I said. “What he doesn’t know about plants isn’t worth knowing.”
Mother nodded, absently.
“So you’ll draw up some plans?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded absent. Clearly she was already hard at work. She turned and went back inside.
Maybe it didn’t make sense, revving Mother up to decorate something we might be in grave danger of losing. But it made sense to me. By the time Mother finished with it, there was no way anyone could possibly call our yard blighted. Over the top, maybe, but not blighted. I felt a surge of power, as if I’d just put a stake in the ground to tell the encircling forces of development, “Not here!”
“Hey, Meg!”
It was Randall, waving at me from atop the macaw shed. I strolled over to see what he wanted. As I did, it occurred to me that maybe I should have him give me an estimate on painting the house. Better yet, I should ask him what repairs he thought we needed to make the house look first rate.
And I also remembered that half the county board was made up of Randall’s family, and the rest was mostly people whose grandparents had gone to school with his. Surely if the developers wanted to seize our land through eminent domain, they’d have to go to the county board, not the town council. And the county board wouldn’t do that—would they?
By the time I reached the shed, Randall had climbed down from the roof and was standing with crossed arms, supervising a cousin who was continuing the work.
“You still working on figuring out how Parker was murdered?” he asked.
Okay, I hadn’t been, but if that was what Randall wanted to talk about, I didn’t mind. I was curious, and maybe it would give me an opening to work the conversation around to see what Randall knew about the surveyors and which way he thought his relatives on the board would jump.
“I’m not trying to do the chief’s job,” I said aloud.
“’Course not.” He sounded amused, as if he didn’t really believe me.
“But I am curious,” I said. “Someone suggested Parker was killed by one of his former girlfriends. Or possibly one of their husbands or boyfriends.”
Randall chuckled softly.
“It’s possible,” he said. “More than possible. The man got around, I’ll give him that. But I’m wondering if maybe they want us to think that.”
“They? You mean whoever did it?”
“I mean the powers that be in town,” he said. “I have a feeling maybe someone doesn’t want the chief to look past Parker’s love life.”
“I think the chief’s smart enough and stubborn enough to keep looking till he finds the truth,” I said. “And what do you think he’s going to find?”
“I think Parker was about to be a whistle-blower.”
“A whistle-blower about what?”
“Remember that whole town beautification project?” he said. “The one that was supposed to turn Caerphilly into a major tourist destination?”
“The one where they went around putting down cobblestones in streets that weren’t built until long after cobblestones went out of style?”
“The cobblestones, the gas streetlights, the miles of split-rail fence.” He snorted and shook his head. “Maybe if they’d picked one historical era and tried to stay authentic to it.”
“I didn’t realize they were trying for historical authenticity,” I said. “I thought they were just trying to pretty everything up. A lot of that work was done over in the ritzy part of town, and it’s pretty hard to make the houses over there look like anything but McMansions with pools and tennis courts.”
“They wanted to go for historical accuracy,” he said. “But that plan ran aground on the fact that up until the late eighteen hundreds, there wasn’t really anything here. Maybe twelve houses surrounded by a few thousand acres of cow pasture. So they went in for prettifying the town center. And I guess they succeeded.”
“Succeeded in prettifying all the character out of it,” I said. “Looks like hundreds of gentrified town centers all across the country.”
“Maybe that’s why the tourist traffic they were expecting never materialized.”
“Yes, we Virginians are reasonably picky about our history,” I said. “We’ve got too much of the real thing to be fooled by some developer’s plastic imitation. But fascinating as this all is, what does it have to do with Parker’s murder?”
“We tried to raise a red flag when that project went through,” Randall said. “Me and some of my cousins. But no one wanted to believe us. Mayor Pruitt made it look like sour grapes because they brough
t in an outside firm for the construction work instead of hiring us. Nothing came of it. No one believed us. Then Parker started poking around.”
“Why?” I asked. “Is he a Shiffley relative?”
Randall shook his head.
“Parker’s people are all gone now,” he said. “They came here and opened that furniture store right after the war.”
“The Civil War?” I asked.
“World War II,” Randall said, giving me an odd look.
“You never know around here,” I said. “So if he’s not a Shiffley, what was his interest in the beautification project?”
Randall smiled and leaned back against the shed.
“He started out wanting one of those beautified buildings,” he said. “He figured the only way to keep his store going was to go upscale. No way he could do that a couple blocks from the bus station. So he made a list of the buildings that would do for his fancy new store, and then he started digging into who owned them. And the more he dug, the less he liked what he found. Nearly every one of those buildings in the beautified section of town is owned by a Pruitt or someone who’s thick as thieves with the Pruitts.”
“And that surprises you?” I asked.
“No, but it surprised Parker, and he was going to blow the whistle on the low-down scam Mayor Pruitt pulled—putting the county up to its eyeballs in debt for a bunch of expensive civic improvements that never benefited anyone except for a few dozen property owners that he happens to share a family tree with.”
“Wait a minute—up to its eyeballs in debt? I thought the beautification project was done with federal funds and private donations. That’s what he said in that newspaper article last year.”
“And he wasn’t completely lying. He did get a small federal grant or two, and a few rich locals kicked in a few hundred dollars here and there. With federal funds and private donations, yes—but not entirely with. Not by a long shot. Most of the money came from borrowing. And they lied to the county board about it, or they wouldn’t have gotten approval. That’s what Parker figured out.”
A lot of what had been happening in recent weeks was all starting to make more sense. Caerphilly wasn’t an impoverished area. In addition to the college, the town had a small but thriving high-tech industry, with Mutant Wizards, my brother’s computer gaming company, as its centerpiece. The county was full of farmers who had adapted very successfully to the world of modern agriculture, mainly by providing organic or boutique meat and produce to the high-end restaurants and markets in the nearby cities. Like everyone, I’d assumed that a little belt-tightening would get the town and the county through the current financial hard times. The news of Terence Mann’s draconian service cuts had taken everyone by surprise, and most of us were still alternating between wondering if he was overreacting and fretting over how it could possibly have gotten so bad so fast.
“So that’s why the county financial situation suddenly got so dire?” I asked aloud.
“Yeah, we probably could have trimmed our sails a bit and weathered the recession,” Randall said. “It’s Pruitt stupidity and Pruitt greed that’s bringing us down. And maybe a little old-fashioned Pruitt profiteering. I know construction costs, and in my opinion we should have gotten a hell of a lot more for our money than we did.”
“So what happens now?” I asked.
“What usually happens when someone doesn’t pay a debt?” Randall said. “Swarms of lawyers should start showing up soon. And if the county can’t pay, the lenders are going to want their collateral.”
“Collateral? What collateral?” I asked. “You think they’re going to repossess all those overpriced cobblestones and wrought-iron streetlamps?”
“The collateral’s all the government buildings in town,” Randall said. “The courthouse. The library. Even the police station and the jail.”
I was stunned.
“It’s okay,” Randall said. “Odds are they won’t actually take over the property. After all, what’s a New York bank going to do with a Reconstruction-era courthouse, a beat-up Carnegie library, and a small-town jailhouse? Parker said they’d probably just rent them back to us.”
“They might,” I said. “Or they might try to cut a deal with the mayor. What if they offered to trade all the town buildings back if he got the county to seize some property that the bank really wants—some waterfront property and a few hundred acres of prime farmland. A tract of land one of their other customers might find useful—say a real-estate developer who’s been hankering to build fancy condominiums and a golf course in Caerphilly County and has been beating its head for years against the county’s antidevelopment stance.”
Randall frowned and pondered for a few moments.
“Can they do that?” he asked finally. “Seize private property to give it to a developer. Seems … un … un…”
“Unconstitutional?”
“I was thinking just plain un-American. Can they really do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It has worked in some places. And even if it doesn’t work, you can bet fighting it will cost the moon and take forever.”
“And the whole time that sneaky bastard of a mayor will be doing everything he can to help out his developer buddies. Okay, the first thing we have to do is figure out what land they’re targeting and make sure the owners are ready to fight.”
“I already know that,” I said. “I found the surveyors working on Michael’s and my land and Mother and Dad’s farm.”
“I reckon you aren’t interested in selling, as much money as you’ve put into the place.”
“You’re right.” Randall, of course, had a very good idea how much we’d spent, since Shiffley Construction had done most of the work. “They probably want Seth Early’s sheep farm, too, and I hope the surveyors steer clear of him, or they’re likely to see the business end of his shotgun. And they’re talking about waterfront condos. I can’t remember who owns the farms on either side of the road between us and the creek, but they’re very nice farms, and I doubt the owners want to sell.”
“That would be my cousins, Orville and Renfrew on the east side of the road,” he said. “And you’re right. Likely as not they’d join Seth’s shotgun brigade at the mere mention of building condos and a golf course on their land. And the farm on the west side of the road belongs to Deacon Washington of the New Life Baptist Church. Just try to pry him off that land—I think his family’s been there since just after the war—and this time I do mean the Civil War. Okay, we know who the developers are after—now we need a lawyer.”
“I already called one,” I said. “Festus Hollingsworth. One of Mother’s cousins.”
“No offense, but we probably need a pretty high-caliber lawyer,” Randall said. “You think your mother’s cousin is up to it?”
“Cousin Festus is pretty high caliber,” I said. “He specializes in making life miserable for sleazy developers and their corrupt friends in local governments. Makes a very good living at it. Wait till you see this year’s Jaguar. If anyone’s up to it, he is.”
“You have a useful kind of family.” His cell phone rang, and he reached for it automatically. “Now what we need to do is— Hang on a minute. I need to take this. Yes, ma’am?”
I watched Randall’s face as he listened to his caller. His expression went from one of cheerful respect to shock.
And clearly whoever had called him had a lot to say. Randall did a lot of listening, interjecting an occasional “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am.”
“I’ll have them there as soon as possible,” he said finally. “Yes, ma’am. You bet!”
He hung up and stared at the phone for a few seconds.
“It’s starting,” he said. “That was my aunt Jane.”
“Judge Jane?” I asked.
“The same. She just called up and ordered me to bring as many of my trucks as possible down to the courthouse. That financial company gave notice that they’re seizing their collateral Monday morning and kicking everyone out.�
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“And she’s going?”
“She’s hopping mad, but she says so far she can’t see a clear legal way around it, and she’s damned if she’s going to give them grounds to cause trouble, so she’s moving. Looks like anyone who wants a warrant or needs to pay a traffic ticket will have to go out to her farm for the time being.”
“Are they starting with the courts, or have they given everybody notice?”
“Everybody,” he said. “Whole town’s in a tizzy. Aunt Jane called to make sure she and the courts had first dibs on our trucks. I’d better get moving.”
“By the way, on this developer thing—”
He turned and tilted his head as if asking a question. Probably whether my question was important enough to keep his aunt waiting.
“Rob’s looking it up, but he thinks in Virginia you can’t seize land for economic development unless it’s blighted. Michael and I might need you to do a little work around the place to make damned sure no one in their right mind could call it blighted.”
“Good call,” he said. “And once we’re sure where else they’re targeting, we can make sure they’re all showplaces.”
“One more thing,” I said. “When did you find out about all this? I didn’t know anything until just now, when I ran into the surveyors.”
He frowned and clenched his jaw.
“I first heard about it Thursday,” he said, finally. “Parker told me. But it sounded so loony I thought he had to be wrong. Then yesterday, after I heard someone had killed him I began to think about it, and it didn’t sound nearly as loony. And then I started asking a few people some questions, and the more I asked, the saner Parker seemed.”
“Where were you when he told you?”
“On the sidewalk outside Geraldine’s bakery,” he said. “And before you ask, I have no idea if anyone was listening in. It was just past eight A.M. Thursday, and lots of people were coming and going, getting coffee and pastries. I suppose any one of them could have heard what he was saying. I didn’t get the idea he was trying to keep it a deep dark secret. Sorry; I know that’s no help.”
The Real Macaw Page 10