Death's Half Acre (6 page)
“When we do a flyover, all we’re doing is counting rooftops,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if those roofs are low-end starter houses or high-end mansions on two-acre lots. Every rooftop means at least three or four potential shoppers. The more growth, the more businesses you’re going to have here and the bigger your tax base to pay for the roads and schools and infrastructure.” She glanced at her watch and wound up her argument. “Rooftops, people. The more, the better. I was recently at a commercial trade show out in Las Vegas. When I told them I was a commercial developer in North Carolina, some of those business reps wanted to give me their cards. When I told them I was from Colleton County, they asked for my phone number. They know that this county is one of the twenty fastest-growing in the nation. You start limiting that growth and you’re not going to get your Wal-Marts, your McDonald’ses, or your Targets.”
The whole courtroom burst into applause and yeah, most of them were in support of her optimistic, single-minded spin on how wonderful unfettered building could be, the rest of us were hoping that such a limitation would indeed slow the invasion of chain stores.
Take that, NutriGood!
After a brief consultation among the commissioners, Thad announced that because they were missing one of their members, they would take the planning board’s recommendation under advisement and table it until the next meeting. Half the audience left at that point, having made their feelings known.
Next came the application of one Chester Coburn, who owned eight landlocked acres a half-mile to the west of us. His request to turn those eight acres into a stump dump had originally been approved by the planning board, but their chair was here tonight to point out that they had not realized that his only access to that land was through a thirty-foot wide “cart path” easement and not a fifty-foot easement as required for a real road.
A stump dump is exactly what the name implies—a place where developers can rid themselves of the tree stumps that have been bulldozed up after they’ve clear-cut a tract of land.
Coburn argued that a wider easement wouldn’t be necessary because his would be a puny little stump dump that would probably be open for only two or three years. He promised to follow all the regulations, cover the stumps with lots of dirt, and then grade the land so he could use it for something else. “I’m hoping to open a wholesale nursery and this will give me the seed money to build greenhouses,” he said.
Minnie’s name was first on the speaker list for this item and it didn’t take her long to shoot it down. She merely reminded the commissioners of the stump dump over in neighboring Johnston County that had caught on fire by spontaneous combustion several months ago and was still smoldering despite all the efforts to put it out. “Yes, there are regulations to ensure this won’t happen here. Regulations cost nothing. But do we have enough paid inspectors to make sure this stump dump would meet those regulations? Do you know how much it’s cost Johnston to try to put out that fire? Do you know how much the dump’s neighbors have had to endure living downwind from the smell of burning, rotting wood?”
In case they didn’t, she had facts and figures.
Other neighbors spoke of the dust and noise from a steady stream of dump trucks on a narrow dirt road. Then some of the new people from Grayson Village spoke of how they hadn’t moved to North Carolina to smell like New Jersey. “We don’t want our neighborhood to be known as the armpit of Colleton County, okay?”
Another consultation of the commissioners, then Thad announced that Coburn’s application was denied because the easement was insufficient for dump truck traffic.
When they moved on to an application to change the zoning for a lot down near Makely from agriculture/residential to commercial, we got up and left.
As we walked out to the parking lot, I asked Daddy, “So how you like living in a place where its value’s based on how many rooftops they can count?”
“Long as they keep giving us the agricultural assessment, I reckon I can stand it,” he said, climbing into his red pickup.
I followed him back to the farm and when he pulled up to his back door and waved good night, I continued on down the lane past the smaller house where Maidie and Cletus Holt have lived for the past thirty or so years. Maidie keeps house for him and Cletus helps with the garden and yard work. About a half-mile farther on, the lane splits. The left one leads to Seth and Minnie’s, the other to the house I now shared with Dwight and Cal and Cal’s dog, Bandit, a mixed-breed terrier with a mask of dark hair across his eyes, which is how he got his name.
It was not quite nine-thirty when I let myself in and found Dwight at the dining table with a glass of beer and stacks of manila file folders spread out in front of him. Bandit came down the hallway to make sure I wasn’t some stranger he needed to protect Dwight from, yawned widely, and trotted back to Cal’s room, where he sleeps at Cal’s feet.
“Looks serious,” I said of Dwight’s folders.
He gave me a weary smile. “We need at least two more patrol cars, three uniforms, and two detectives. Bo says he can only pry one car and two men out of the commissioners, so we’ve got to figure out how to deploy our people for maximum coverage.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” I asked with phony brightness. “All this growth gives us such a large tax base that you can probably get five cars and ten more officers in another year or two. Of course, by that time, the population will have tripled so you’ll still be playing catch-up.”
He leaned back in his chair and took a swallow from his half-empty glass. “Does this mean the stump dump passed?”
“Actually, it didn’t,” I said although I immediately began to rant about how we were nothing but a bunch of rooftops these days. “God, listen to me! I’m turning into one of those cranky old ladies who yearn for how things used to be when the world was young.”
“C’mere, old lady,” he said.
I took a sip of his beer and sat down on his lap. His arms went around me but our lips had barely touched when the phone rang.
Dwight sighed and let me up. “That’ll be Will. I told him you’d probably be back by now.”
He was right. Will’s name and number were on the phone screen.
“Hey, Will,” I said. “What’s up?”
“How come you don’t ever leave your cell phone on?” my brother complained. “What’s the point of having one if you don’t use it?”
“I use it,” I said. “But I use it at my own convenience, not everyone else’s. Did you want something or did you only call to bitch at me about my cell phone?”
Will’s the oldest of my mother’s four children, and like my other ten brothers, he thinks he can still boss me around.
“I was wondering if you’ve got some free time tomorrow?”
“My lunch hour. Why?”
“Remember Linsey Thomas?”
“Of course I remember him.”
“Remember how his cousin came up last summer and took everything out of the house he wanted and sold the rest of the contents to me?”
“So?”
“So I put most of the furnishings in my big fall auction back in September, but now I’m getting around to his books and papers and I found a bunch of files in a hassock and one of them has your name on it. Mostly clippings and stuff. You want to come over to the warehouse tomorrow and pick it up?”
“Sure,” I said, waiting for the real reason for his call.
“And there are some court records and stuff that maybe you could look through and tell me if I should toss them or turn them over to the historical center? Shouldn’t take you more than an hour. I’ll pick up some sandwiches or something.”
As I hesitated, he said, “There’s a file on Daddy, too. Linsey started a story about you and him three or four years ago.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, but here’s what’s crazy. It’s like he thought you and Daddy had some sort of connection to G. Hooks Talbert before he started buying up the land for Grayson Village. Isn’t that weird?”
“Very,” I said.
Only three people knew about the devil’s bargain Daddy had made with Talbert: me, Talbert himself, and Daddy. How the hell could Linsey Thomas have heard about it? Or was it merely his instinct for taking a closer look at things that might not be what they seemed? I remember his asking me why our governor had appointed me instead of a conservative male Democrat closer to his own political leanings. I had shrugged and made a flip answer about the governor recognizing that the best man for the job was a liberal woman.
After agreeing to meet him at his warehouse at noon, I hung up and Dwight raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What was that about?”
“Will’s been going through Linsey Thomas’s papers and thought I might want a file he found about me—clippings and things of public record, but maybe I’ll start a scrapbook or something. Now where were we?”
He grinned and patted his knee. “You were here.”
“Right,” I said.
(
Ping!
)
. . . I was
born in that house in the hedge, the dogyard
outback, the mulestables, chickens running
free, the hogpen homey with grunts and
tail-twitches . . .
—Fiddledeedee,
by Shelby Stephenson
O
yez, oyez, oyez!” intoned the bailiff in my courtroom next morning. “This honorable court for the County of Colleton is now open and sitting for the dispatch of its business. God save the state and this honorable court, the Honorable Judge Deborah Knott pleasant and presiding. Be seated.”
He paused as if hearing his words on a playback track and looked up at me sheepishly. “I mean, Judge Deborah Knott
present
and presiding.”
I laughed. “You saying I’m not pleasant, Mr. Overby?”
“Not me, ma’am.” He cast a significant eye to the side bench where three attorneys waited for their cases to be called.
Two of them had broad grins. The third, the one who was audibly snickering, was my own cousin Reid Stephenson.
“A little decorum here, gentlemen,” I said with mock sternness.
Today’s calendar listed the usual DWIs, the bad checks, the drunk-and-disorderlies, the shoplifters, and the brawlers. Usual to me, that is, and to the prosecutors and attorneys, and even to most of the defendants. But there are always some for whom this is a first-time event.
About ninety minutes into our morning session, Kevin Foster pulled a shuck and said, “State versus Dorothy Arnfeldt and Monica Udell. Assault and battery.”
Both looked to be middle-class white women, late forties. Both were charged with assault and battery, and even though both looked embarrassed to be there, both had facial expressions that proclaimed the righteousness of whatever actions had brought them to my courtroom.
Although they were neighbors, this was clearly not kiss-and-make-up time for either of them. They sat at the defense table with their attorneys, George Francisco and my cousin Reid, between them.
“How do you plead?” I asked.
“Not guilty!” they chorused.
The older attorney placed a calming hand on Mrs. Udell’s arm and rose to address me. “Your Honor, my client pleads guilty, but with extenuating circumstances.”
“Thank you, Mr. Francisco,” I said and looked to the prosecution’s table and ADA Kevin Foster. “Call your first witness, Mr. Foster.”
A uniformed patrol officer took the stand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Referring to his notes, Officer Maynes described how he had responded to a call about a domestic disturbance on the outskirts of Cotton Grove in February in the late afternoon. Stripped of the formal officialese, he had arrived to find these two women slugging it out in the backyard of the Udell domicile. A dead and mangled chicken was being worried by a dog owned by Mrs. Arnfeldt, whose backyard butted up against that of Mrs. Udell.
“As best I could make out, Your Honor, Mrs. Udell keeps a few chickens in her backyard. Mrs. Arnfeldt said that one of them flew over the hedge that separates the two yards and her terrier got hold of it and killed it. Mrs. Arnfeldt says the dog was in his own yard and she’s had trouble with Mrs. Udell’s chickens scratching in her flower gardens. Mrs. Udell says the dog was not fenced and came into her yard and killed her chicken. She got the little .22 rifle she keeps to kill snakes and squirrels and was going to shoot the dog when Mrs. Arnfeldt jumped her.”
“The dead chicken was in Mrs. Udell’s yard?”
“Yessir.”
“And the dog was in her yard, too?”
“Yessir.”
“Were there any witnesses to the incident?”
“Not to my knowledge. The 911 call came from the Arnfeldt house. I believe her daughter.”
On the bench in the front row, a teenage girl in torn jeans and a long-sleeved orange top that showed off her navel ring gave an involuntary nod.
“According to her statement, she saw the altercation from the window of her room on the second floor after it was already in progress.”
Again the girl in the front row nodded.
“When you arrived, what did you see?” Kevin asked.
“As I came around the corner of the house, I saw Mrs. Udell give Mrs. Arnfeldt a shove, and their language had a lot of profanity. Both had lacerations on their faces and their clothes had dirt and grass and chicken manure on them.”
“Your witness,” Kevin said to the nearer of the two attorneys.
Despite his soft voice and courteous manners, George Francisco has the tanned and athletic build of an outdoorsman. He doesn’t like to argue criminal cases and I wasn’t quite sure why he had agreed to represent Monica Udell.
“Tell me, Officer Maynes,” he said. “Is it against the law to own chickens in this county?”
“No, sir. Not outside town limits. Some towns do have regulations, but—”
“Does the Udell residence lie within the limits of Cotton Grove?”
“No, sir. About a quarter-mile outside.”
“And is there a leash law in the county?”
“Some of the towns have them, but not unincorporated areas.”
“Was the dog on a leash when you arrived?”
“No, sir.”
Francisco took an eight-by-ten photo from the folder before him and asked for permission to approach. I nodded.
